WWUTT 170 Making Music In Your Heart to God?

Hey, it is a Friday threefer. On Friday I typically take a question from a viewer or a listener and respond to it.

Well today I've got three questions that I'm going to be responding to, all pertaining to knowing the Word of God better when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know we don't. When we understand the text promotes sound doctrine while exposing the faulty.

Here's your host, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. Some deads of famous people in the news yesterday, China, former

WWF wrestler, well WWE now, yeah, but when I was a kid it was the WWF and that was when

I watched it, when I was a kid. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.

Sorry if that offends any wrestling fans, but it's true. Anyway, China passed away at the age of 45.

The more famous of the of the deads yesterday had to have been Prince. Did you know his real name actually is

Prince? I didn't know that until he passed away. Prince Rogers Nelson died at the age of 57. He had recently been treated for a drug overdose and had also been battling the flu and was dehydrated and a combination of those things is probably what ended up killing him.

You know, anytime that somebody famous passes away, their name will be trending on Twitter with the letters

RIP, that epitaph RIP, which means rest in peace. You know, that can only be said of those who in life were followers of Jesus Christ.

Only they know peace with God because it is Christ who gives us peace with God with his death on the cross and resurrection from the grave.

I made that comment on Twitter that that only applies, RIP only applies to those who in life were followers of Christ.

And a fellow by the name of Rusty responded to me and said, so Noah, Abraham, Moses, all of the prophets, they're just out of luck.

And I replied to Rusty that those men knew Jesus. In John 5, 46 through 47,

Jesus says, if you believed Moses, you would believe me for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?

And then we see in John 8, 56, Jesus saying, your father, Abraham, rejoice that he would see my day.

He saw it and was glad. You know, these prophets of old knew who Christ was.

They didn't know him by that name, but they knew the son of God. And so it is as true in the Old Testament as it is now, even under the new covenant.

Only those who are in Christ Jesus will be saved. Salvation has always been by grace through faith.

Well, it is Friday and always taking a question from a listener on Friday. And I've actually got two that I'm going to respond to because on the subject of Twitter, one of them came to me by Twitter and another by email.

So first, here is the Twitter question. And it has to do with yesterday's episode.

Forrester said, hello, in your podcast in Exodus, the blotted out of the book. Is that the same as blotted out of the book of life in Revelation 22?

So it was in Exodus chapter 32 is where I was yesterday. And I was equating

Moses is pleading to God on behalf of Israel to when Paul was saying in Romans chapter nine, his desire to be cut off from Christ if it meant that he would save his fellow kinsmen.

So the anguish in his heart that he felt for those who were Jews and were not followers of Christ, though the oracles of God had been given to them, that he should be cut off from Christ if it meant saving his fellow kinsmen.

And Paul or rather Moses said something similar in Exodus 32. That's where we see the story of the golden calf and God saying that his anger was burning against Israel and he would wipe them all out while he would make

Moses a great nation. But Moses said, do not do this. Spare them this wrath.

And so the Lord relented. And later on toward the end of the chapter, Moses said, but now this is verse 32.

But now if you will forgive their sin, but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written.

In verse 33, the Lord said to Moses, whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book. But now go lead the people to the place about which

I have spoken to you. Behold, my angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit,

I will visit their sin upon them. And so the question that you had, Forrester, was, is the blotting out of the book reference in Exodus 32 the same as blotting out of the book of life reference that we see in Revelation 22?

And not to get too picky with you, Forrester, but I'm guessing the reference that you're thinking of in Revelation is chapter three, verse five.

The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments. And I will never blot his name out of the book of life.

I will confess his name before my father and before his angels. And then we have the book of life referenced again in chapters 20 and 21.

Is this the same book of life that is being talked about in Exodus chapter 32?

Yes. In fact, we have this book referenced several different ways throughout the scriptures. In Psalm 69, it's referred to as the book of the living.

In Daniel 12, one, it's the book in Luke 10, 20, Jesus talks about names written in heaven and in Philippians four, three,

Paul talks about the book of life. So it's referenced in several different ways. The book as we see it talked about in Exodus chapter 32 would be the same if you will forgive their sin.

But if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written. And to clarify something here that I didn't mention so much yesterday,

God was sanctifying Moses as an intercessor for Israel. Moses was basically for Israel, what

Christ is for us now as our intercessor sitting at the right hand of God.

And Christ is referred to in the book of Hebrews as the greater Moses. So God was perfecting

Moses as an intercessor. And this is why God allowed Moses to be able to plead for Israel.

And later on in chapter 33, where he talks about, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and compassion on whom I have compassion.

It was always God's will to spare or to destroy Israel, regardless of Moses pleading for behalf of Israel.

It's not that Moses actually changed his mind. But the Lord allowed him to do that so he would be perfected as an intercessor for Israel.

Yesterday when I mentioned that the apostle Paul would desire himself cut off from Christ if it meant saving his fellow kinsmen.

But realistically, he understood that he could not take the wrath of God for someone else.

Only Christ could do that. And one connection that I didn't make with that lesson yesterday, I kind of alluded to it in the very beginning, but didn't really come back to it.

We might desire for somebody to be saved so much. There might be an anguish in our heart for this other person to be saved that we would be willing to do anything and go to any length to see that person come to Christ.

But ultimately it is not our decision. And this can help to relieve a burden from you in understanding this also, although it probably doesn't hurt your feelings any less.

There still is going to be a burden in your heart for this other person to repent of their sin and come to Christ.

But it isn't up to you. It is the Lord who wills, who calls, who changes hearts.

So continue in steadfast prayer for that person and continue to witness to them as well the words of the

Lord Jesus Christ, that they might hear the gospel, repent of their sin and be saved.

When the day comes that all nations will be gathered before God and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

Jesus is describing this in Matthew chapter 25. On that day, we will see

God's justice in all of its perfection and glory. And there will be no doubt in our hearts that God made the absolutely right decision where we are in heaven praising the

Lord for all of his glory and righteousness and love and justice and all of the things that we can praise

God for. We will not be feeling in our hearts a loss for those who had been cast out of the

Lord's presence and into hell. There will only be God's glory that we will be in for all eternity.

All right. Another question that I had to come to today was by email, and I'm going to try to get through this because I'm actually losing my voice here.

This is from Grant in Minnesota, and he says, Pastor Hughes, thank you for creating your what shorts.

They've been beneficial to me in fashioning concise responses to common objections people raise in conversations.

I'm a freshman at Bethel University, St. Paul, and some students have an interesting understanding of the

Bible. Long story short, I'm trying to get an opinion article submitted to my university's student newspaper.

The article is a plea to stop using unbiblical music in chapel, Vespers, etc., specifically

Jesus culture, Bethel, Reading, Hillsong at all. Though the article is intended to give a framework for critiquing all music, not just condemn these three bands.

That's a great approach. In my draft, I included Matthew 6 -7 as a biblical discouragement against repetitious songs.

A critique by one of my peers was that Matthew 6 -7 is dealing with prayer and therefore has no bearing on music.

My question is this, was it a hermeneutical error to apply this passage in this way?

Perhaps, instead of focusing on the repetitious nature held in common, I could use it to illustrate that our worship should not sound like that of pagans.

I don't have much time to reformat my article if I've misused the text, and the paragraph dealing with this could easily be cut out since there are other angles

I mention in the article. I'm mostly looking for a quick response on the wisdom of including

Matthew 6 -7 for this purpose. Thanks, Grant in Minnesota. Well, thank you,

Grant, for your email, and I hope that I'm responding to this in a timely enough manner that you're able to submit your article on time.

Matthew 6 -7 says, And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the

Gentiles do, a word that is interchangeable with pagans, as the pagans do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.

So what Grant wants to know is if that verse can be tied to music and certain groups like Jesus Culture, Hillsong, so on and so forth.

He will repeat phrases over and over and over again, and I believe it's Jesus Culture that does the thing where they have the spontaneous worship, and they just kind of break out in phrases that they just repeat for like 12 straight minutes or something like that.

I can't remember if it's Jesus Culture or not. So is Matthew 6 -7 being used in a proper context, or is

Matthew 6 -7 only talking about prayer and cannot be applied to music? Grant, I will tell you that I think that you used it in a very right way.

Just be prepared that somebody is probably going to argue with you and say, just like one of your peers did, that the verse is applying to prayer and not music.

Well, the music that we sing is more prayer than you think it is. In fact, you can break up the hymns that we sing in church or any sort of praise songs that we sing in church.

You could basically break them up into five different categories. There's statements of belief or creedal songs.

There are narrative songs, testimonial songs, songs of exhortation, and of course, there are songs of prayer.

Songs that would include statements of belief or creeds would be like the church's one foundation, that hymn, the doxology, praise

God from whom all blessings flow. That might be considered a creedal hymn. Songs of exhortation would be songs to other believers.

So you think of songs like Onward Christian Soldier, they'll know that we are Christians by our love. We're marching to Zion, which is one of my favorite hymns.

I love that one. Trust and obey. We sang that one in church just this past Sunday. There are narrative songs.

A lot of our Christmas songs come out this way as narrative songs while shepherds watch their flocks by night, hark the herald angels sing.

There are testimonial songs, Amazing Grace, I consider to be a testimonial song.

John Newton was writing that out of personal experience. It is well with my soul, Horatio Spafford.

Alas, and did my Savior bleed, which is also known as at the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light.

That is a testimonial song and blessed assurance. This is my story. This is my song.

OK, that's another one that you might consider a testimonial song. Songs of prayer then would be songs like Holy, Holy, Holy.

Great is thy faithfulness. How great thou art. Be thou my vision. Come thou fount of many blessings.

These would also include songs of thanksgiving, like thank you, Lord, for saving my soul. Rejoice the

Lord is king. These songs would be songs of prayer. And we find many passages of scripture that encourage singing to one another, singing to the

Lord. You think of Psalm 96, sing to the Lord a new song and then singing songs to one another like Colossians 316.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Well, in that context, you're probably talking about singing songs to the Lord. But Ephesians 519 talks about addressing one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the

Lord with your heart. Now, how do you tie then? Is there a scriptural reference that you can use to tie prayer and music together directly?

Well, there's those passages I gave you, Colossians 316, Ephesians 519, also 1st Corinthians 14, 14 through 15,

I think does this really well. Paul is talking about praying in tongues, but he yet applies music to this.

For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. What am

I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also.

I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also.

So here is the major critique when it comes to deciding if the music that we are singing in churches truly is edifying to the body of Christ as well as being true praise to the

Lord. Are the words that we are singing rooted in the word of God?

Because again, coming back to Colossians 316, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.

And then Paul goes on to say in the same context, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

So the understanding is that the psalms and the hymns and the spiritual songs that we are singing are part of this word of Christ that is dwelling in us, are flowing out of a heart in which the word of Christ dwells.

Is that making sense? So our songs should be rooted in God's word. Now that does not mean that every song that we sing has to be word for word exactly as you would find those words written in the

Bible. There's not a whole lot of songs written that way. You can find some good psalms that people have added music to, and you're singing the psalms as you would read them in the scriptures set to music.

That's great. Great way to do that. But you look at the hymns that we sing, and if they are truly rooted in what the scriptures say, that's what this has to come down to.

But Grant, I would also encourage you, and maybe you can bring this up with your friends too, that the music that is being sung should come from a church that is rightly grounded in the true words of Christ.

Bethel, Hillsong, and Jesus culture are not. And I do not think that their songs should be included in church.

Even though Hillsong has that tune Cornerstone, which is basically the lyrics of On Christ the

Solid Rock I Stand, just with a different chorus added to it, and the music is different, but I don't think we should even be singing that one.

Because a person is going to know that that song comes from Hillsong, and it's going to sound like an endorsement of that church to some measure, while the teaching coming out of Hillsong is unbiblical.

So we should not be borrowing music from churches that are not teaching from the pulpit the sound words of God.

As many people love Carrie Job, are you aware of the church that she comes from?

I mean, do you even know what's being taught at her church? Unfortunately, we think of the artists more often than we actually think of the church that they come from and whether or not the teaching is sound.

It is very important for us to look into the church that an artist would come from to see that that teaching is solid, so that we know that the heart that is singing those lyrics is actually a heart that is filled with the true words of Christ.

Grant, I hope that that helps you out and best to you in your article. Let's bring this to a close with prayer.

Our great God, we thank you so much for your word that we might know the words that are most pleasing to you and are most edifying for your people.

So let us be grounded in the word of Christ and be filled with those words and let the songs that pour from us, pour from a heart that is indwelt with the spirit of God by the words of God.

And Lord, we pray that you guide us according to these things. May our very lives be a melody that we are singing to the

Lord of hosts. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen. Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.