What Makes A Good Song?

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. And I'm thankful for lots of reasons and to lots of people, especially thankful today for Spencer, who is the behind -the -scenes

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Today I want to talk about songs. What makes a great song?

Did you know I typed in to the, I don't think I typed in Google, I think it was

DuckDuckGo, a different kind of search engine that doesn't track everything that you say and do, and I typed in what makes a song great, and this is the very first article that came up.

What makes a song great? Number one, a great song connects with people. And you know, that could be an emotional connection, and therefore, you know, you got your heart broken and this song's about a broken heart, see,

I can identify with that. In addition, what makes a song great? A great song causes a reaction.

You might want to dance, you might want to cry, you might sing along, some type of reaction.

Number three, a great song is memorable. This is something that you know is called a hook, when they put a hook in a song, and that helps its memory building.

A song is well -crafted, you have the right lines and rhythm and structure and craftsmanship.

A great song stands the test of time and it's relevant 25 years ago, 100 years ago, etc.

And that's pretty good, I mean, this is not written by a Christian, as far as I know. What makes a song great? And a great song connects with people, causes a reaction, is memorable, is well -crafted, and stands the test of time.

And when I read that, I thought, no wonder Nahum, chapter 1, verses 2 through 8, no wonder

Nahum is so popular. Isn't that true when I think of the book of Nahum?

Somehow I drop something and I can't find out what I dropped, there it is. Now I see. Nahum is a song, most people think, a song of praise, in Nahum 1, 2 through 8.

And so that's what we're going to look at a little bit today on No Compromise Radio. We live in a world that's pretty chaotic, as you know, and fearful.

Pandemic, fear, people wandering around like sheep without a shepherd.

The media is exacerbating all this fear and where do we find comfort, especially with the possibility of Christian persecution on the rise with a possible new administration that's not as keen on protecting the rights of Christians, in my opinion.

What do we do? The book of Nahum, I think, gives us some answers.

And if you wanted to know what the book of Nahum is all about, it's essentially giving comfort to God's people in times of oppression.

Doesn't that sound relevant to you today? Doesn't that sound like that would be a good song?

If you could have a divinely inspired song about that, I think it would match up all the different characteristics of what makes a song great.

Nahum means comfort. God is my comfort. Yahweh is my comfort.

Nehemiah is the larger version of the abbreviated

Nahum. I've said before my name is Michael and my nickname is Mike. Maybe that's an easy way to think of Nehemiah and Nahum.

So, comfort. God is my comfort. And 100 to 150 years after Jonah was written, we have the book of Nahum.

And you've got the Ninevites and the people of Assyria. Ninevite is the capital of Assyria.

And they were going back to their old ways. And therefore, God has

Nahum write a message. Many people think as Jonah's message was a message of grace extended and mercy allowed,

Nahum writes a message to judge God's oppressors. So while the oppressors receive the judgment,

God's people, they receive mercy because the enemies, their enemies, are judged.

Does that sound right? That sounds exactly right. Isaiah might say the

Messiah is coming, Nahum. The good news is not that the

Messiah is going to come, but that the enemies, the persecutors, the oppressors of the people of God will be vanquished.

That's a good reason to preach Nahum these days. Well, it's in the Bible. That's a good reason to preach it because it's

God's word and it's inspired. But also it's good because how do we get our comfort these days in the middle of a world that's very uncomfortable?

Answer is you preach Nahum because Nahum rightly starts off with a song about the character and nature of God.

That's what goes on there. The nature of God is what's front loaded in this chapter,

Nahum chapter one. Nahum chapter one really is a precursor to the judgment that's going to be found in chapter two and chapter three.

This book, we could call it an oracle. We could call it a vision. We could call the furnace in the background bad.

I don't know if you can hear that, but that's a loud furnace. That's one more reason maybe to record the shows at the church.

But what are you supposed to do? Nahum, I have no idea what

I was talking about. Oh, yeah, an oracle or a vision. This is the burden from the

Lord given to Nahum to preach about who God is as he then takes care of the enemies of God.

The Lord is a jealous and avenging God, Nahum 1 .2. The Lord is avenging and wrathful.

The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the

Lord will by no means clear the guilty. I don't know if you love that part of the character of God and his essence and nature.

We've talked about simplicity of God before. God is wrathful.

God is jealous. God is merciful. God is faithful. God is love.

God doesn't have wrath. God doesn't have love. God is not separate from his attributes.

All that is in God is God, as we have talked about the Dolezal book and the simplicity of God.

He's not made up of parts. The sum of God language shouldn't be used because he's not the sum of anything.

Just God is. And even with his name, I am who I am, he just exists, right?

It's just a present tense existence. And here, these so -called attributes, perfections, and it's okay to use those words.

They're words of accommodation. We're humans and finite and sinful trying to explain who

God is. And God uses this kind of language. God is jealous and avenging

God. That's what he is. He just is. He wasn't. He's not going to become something.

He just is this very thing. And therefore, at the very beginning, if I was an oppressed person,

I would want something about the destruction and annihilation of the people that were oppressing me.

Now, that will come in due time. But first, we all need to get a good look of who God is.

I think these attributes, quote -unquote attributes, about jealous and avenging and wrathful, slow to anger, great in power,

I think those cause this book not to be read that often. And by the way, when you do read it, what verses do you underline?

My guess is you underline part of verse 3 and verse 7 in this song section.

You underline the good parts about God's slow to anger and you can take refuge in him because he's good.

Did you underline the jealous part, the avenging part, the wrathful part? My guess is if I take your

Bibles and I open them up, how many of them will have these attributes underlined?

Jealous, avenging, wrathful, great in power. Probably not many.

And here, as I read this book, Nahum, it's a tragedy that we don't grasp who

God is. God is all these things and therefore we can't just pick and choose the attributes. I'll take double love and no wrath.

I'll take triple mercy and no judgment. We can't do that. We embrace the whole counsel of God and we realize that comfort is found in this triune

God. Some trust in horses and some trust in chariots, but we trust in the name of the

Lord, our God. That is Psalm 20, verse 7. That is the essence of what's going on here in Nahum.

My name is Mike Ebendroth, this is No Compromise Radio. I know as you teach for a while and then you listen, sometimes you just need a break and get distracted.

Therefore, I will remind you that if you order Sexual Fidelity through the website nocompromiseradio .com

and then open up the package a week later through media mail, you will find

Things to Go Bump in the Night also included. You can't see that in the shopping cart or anything like that, but they will be sent out that way.

Anyone that orders Sexual Fidelity gets a free copy. I think it's $14 .99 list.

A free copy of Things to Go Bump in the Church included. How's that? Back to Nahum chapter 1.

God shows himself and his nature so that we, along with the people that receive this letter as well, might look to him with trust and faith.

There is a response later for us, responding with faithfulness, but right now it's faith.

God to be glorified, and that's what's going on here in Nahum chapter 1.

It is God -centered. It's not for us to do anything except to just see and to know and maybe remember or to trust.

Calvin said, Nahum begins with the nature of God, that what he afterwards subjoins respecting the destruction of Nineveh might be more weighty and produce a greater impression on the hearers.

The preface is general, but the prophet afterward applies it to a special purpose. If he had only spoken of what

God is, it would have been frigid at least. It would have been less efficacious. But when he connects both together, then his doctrine carries its own force and power.

What does that mean? Essentially, he's saying, here's who God is up front, then we'll deal with why the character and nature of God is going to help you in these oppressed times.

Everything about this first chapter is, to use some commentator's language, unified and dominated by the revelation of who

God is, his nature, his character, his essence. He exists. He personally exists.

He exists to help. He exists with no dependency on any creature or anything.

He does whatever he wants, always as he wants, with his own prerogatives, with absolute prerogatives.

He is the God of the universe. That's what we need. Think about any problem you have.

That's how it's solved. Thinking about the God of the universe.

In this particular case, in Nahum chapter 1, you're not just to think about him, but I think this is a psalm.

ESV study Bible says, Nahum 1, 2 -8, a psalm descriptively praising the

Lord. This praise is general in nature, describing God as he has been and will be throughout world history.

If they mean by that this is how God manifested himself back in those days, that's fine.

There's no like has -been language for God, technically speaking, but I'll give the

ESV a benefit of the doubt in this study Bible. I think this actually is. I never would have thought

I could say this, but I think it's my favorite study Bible, the ESV study

Bible. There are things in it that I might not like, but overall, if I had to pick a study

Bible, that would be the one. So many good articles in that study

Bible, good background for the books, nice notes. And even the notes sometimes will tell you, well, there's a problem with this and we don't know which way to go.

If you want to have other study Bibles, I know many of you probably have the MacArthur study Bible or the Reformation study

Bible. I personally like the ESV study Bible the best.

So anyway, that's just a side note there. What do you do when you're in trouble?

I think what I tend to do if I could just be honest, maybe you don't want to be honest sometimes, but you just have to be honest.

I think if I'm not careful, left to myself at least in my own strength, I don't praise

God when there are problems. Especially if it was persecution or oppression. I don't even know how

I would relate to that. I'm thinking I'm getting persecuted when there's a long line at the grocery store.

That's a trial for me. You're driving a long distance and you've got to stop for gas.

You can't find a spot for a fill up very easy. What if you're really getting oppressed? I think maybe you might grumble.

You think of Israel out in the wilderness. Complain, sigh, murmur.

Here's something to do instead. Here's something to do positively. When you think of sanctification as a

Christian, there's the put off and the put on. You've got the put off of Ephesians chapter 4 and the put on of Ephesians chapter 4.

You replace the negative thing with the positive thing. I think that's a biblical way to consider sanctification.

While it's not here in the text explicitly, I can imagine the grumbling and the sighing.

I've been reading through Exodus so I understand even that. Exodus. What do you do instead?

Here's a hymn. Here's a song. Here's a psalm that praises the

Lord. That's one of the reasons why Nahum chapter 1 verses 2 -8 is so important.

Later he will get into something, Nahum will, something that we would call a taunt.

A nanny, nanny, nanny kind of thing. Where he's going to say, you know what, look at you.

This is what you're going to get. You think of a basketball game maybe. Duke has to go to North Carolina for NCAA men's basketball.

There's this big rivalry. You've got all the people in the stands taunting. I'm trying to think of a synonym for taunt.

But I can't. So I know you all can. You'll probably email me in a month from now and I'm like,

I don't even know what you're talking about. When I ask you, the listener, what about this, what about that, what about the other, you actually send in the answer.

But the show has been so long ago. I don't remember what I was asking. One person called

Nahum 1, 2 -8, a hymn to the sovereign warrior God.

Pretty amazing. Pretty amazing. This God rebukes the sea.

This God makes the mountains quake. This God has the earth heaving before him.

We have ice heaves here in New England. The world and all who dwell in it shake and quake and heave before this

God. This is a God who's a God of justice. I'm going to have something to drink here and clear my throat.

I have in front of me a health aid, A -D -E, kombucha, a bubbly probiotic tea, ginger, lemon.

Not bad. The top thing says, follow your gut. What would that mean?

Follow your gut. Pucker up with our classic and fan favorite organic and raw ginger lemon kombucha.

1 -8 -8, sorry, 1 -8 -4 -4 ferment. That's a good, that's a good phone number.

The cadence of this song in Nahum. You just read it and you go, well, something's going on here.

It's fast paced. It's a quick song. Short little phrases, not sentences, but short little phrases.

And you say, this is who God is. God is all these attributes. God is one. Remember the great

Shema, Deuteronomy 6, 4. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the

Lord is one. And everything about God is who God is. And you can't slice up God with some pie chart or something like that and different pieces.

As Matthew Barrett says, you know, love is 10%, holiness 15%, etc. That's not how we have to approach

God and how we should approach God. He doesn't have love. He is love.

And that's the doctrine of simplicity. God is his attributes.

That's the best way to put it. God is his attributes. And therefore, he has no parts or anything like that.

It says he's jealous. We looked at that at our last show. When you think of jealousy, just kind of for some new information here, it's used solely of God.

And when you think of God being jealous, you should be thinking of God's revelation of himself at Mount Sinai.

That is in Exodus 20 and in Exodus 34. God not only protects his people, but also his honor and his reputation.

And therefore, he has promised the Israelites many things.

And you think going back to Genesis 12 and the Abrahamic Covenant, therefore he's going to keep his word, right?

He's not going to let these people, the Ninevites, wipe out his chosen people, right?

He's just not going to let it happen because he is a jealous God. Jealous for his people and jealous for his own honor.

And I think that's what you really have to think about. God regarding his people, they have become unfaithful and gone after other gods.

And God is using the Ninevites, of course, to cleanse and to purify and to sanctify

God's people. And now we see that his jealousy, even that as I talk,

I'm like his jealousy. God is jealous and therefore it shows when there's been some kind of rival for his love and for his affection and for his people.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, right? And when there's a rival

God, we see, I mean, he's always jealous, but it comes through here in the way scripture talks.

God is going to regard his own honor, his own covenant faithfulness, and nothing's going to stop him.

He's avenging. He's got vengeance, right? This is language of judicial judgment.

How about that for a word, judicial judgment? God is going to avenge. Maybe you're not allowed to avenge those

Judahites. The Ninevites need to be dealt with.

And maybe you want to take the law in your own hands. God is going to take care of his adversaries. He'll take care of his enemies.

He is avenging and he is wrathful. This is who

God is. And you say, well, that's not my God. That doesn't matter what you think. This is who God is.

And his revelation, scripture, teaches us how to think about God. Any other way to think about God is the wrong way to think about God.

Well, my name is Mike Ebendroth. This is No Compromise Radio. We've got that furnace in the background. Maybe we could have

Spencer even figure that out. But we're just trying to do the best we can here. The Israel trip has been postponed to 2021.

You can still write me, Mike, at nocompromiseradio .com. You can be added to that list. Hopefully all the

COVID stuff will be done by then. And we just take one day at a time. And we realize we plan our steps.

But the Lord has the ultimate say. James chapter 4, yes or no in what we do.

Anyway, you can always write me if you're in central Massachusetts. We'd love to see you during COVID at 830 or 1030 for our services.

At about half capacity, a little bit less than that. But that's what's going on there. Good to have you listen today.

See you soon. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.