How Sweet The Sound Week 4: It Is Well With My Soul with Sam Roberts

God Is Close to the Broken-Hearted

Scripture References

Primary text

• Psalm 34:18
• Psalm 22
• Matthew 27:46

Other references

• Psalm 73

Overview

Pastor Sam Roberts closed the “How Sweet the Sound” series by anchoring the hymn “It Is Well with My Soul” to one unshakable promise: the Lord stays near when life shatters. Through Horatio Spafford’s story, personal illness, and Christ’s cry from the cross, he showed how God turns even the darkest moments into “treasures” of deeper intimacy. Again and again the message rang out: in the middle of our pain, God is still present, and because of that presence our souls can say, “It is well.”

Context

The series has taken classic hymns and re-introduced their meaning. This final week centered on loss, suffering, and the unexplainable questions every believer eventually faces.

Main Points

1. The Hymn Was Born in Unthinkable Loss

• Horatio Spafford, a successful Chicago lawyer, lost his only son to pneumonia, then his real-estate holdings in the Great Chicago Fire.
• While his wife Anna and their four daughters sailed ahead to Europe, their ship sank. Anna telegraphed two haunting words: “Saved alone.”
• On his own voyage to meet her, Spafford wrote:

  “When peace like a river attendeth my way,
  When sorrows like sea billows roll;
  Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
  It is well, it is well with my soul.”

• Question we all ask: How can anyone pen those words amid such pain?

2. God’s Nearness Is Our Anchor (Psalm 34:18)

“The Lord is close to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

• Refrain:

  “In the middle of our pain God is still present.”

• Presence, not explanations, is God’s first gift to the suffering.
• It is okay to be honest; God is big enough for the raw questions.

3. Treasures in Darkness – Sam’s Story

• Story: Vacationing with his family, Sam was rushed from a seaside ER to an isolation room on the oncology floor in Portland. Doctors said, “I don’t know that you’re going to walk out of this hospital.”
• Overwhelmed, he prayed to see one sunset on the beach with his kids—a medical impossibility. In three days his white-cell count normalized, and he watched that sunset.
• Oswald Chambers: calamity awakens the soul and reveals “treasures of darkness.”

• Psalm 73 calls that treasure “the nearness of God.”

4. God Meets Others in the Same Darkness – Mandy’s Story

• Story: Mandy, grieving a divorce and the death of her child in that same Portland hospital, moved to Oklahoma. Returning reluctantly to Life.Church she saw Sam’s photo of the hospital view—identical to hers.
• She sensed God whisper, “I was with you then, I’m with you now, and I will never leave you.”

• Coincidence? “Coincidence is just God choosing to remain anonymous.”

5. The Cross Proves the Promise (Psalm 22 & Matthew 27)

• Jesus, sinless yet burdened with humanity’s sins, cried from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).
• As a rabbi, Jesus was quoting the opening line of Psalm 22, pointing listeners to its entire prophetic description—pierced hands and feet, divided garments, eventual vindication.
• His cry was not doubt but proclamation: even in history’s darkest hour God was present and working salvation.

6. A Hymn of Hope, Not Despair

• Spafford’s second verse:

  “My sin—oh the bliss of this glorious thought—
  My sin, not in part but the whole,
  Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more;
  Praise the Lord