Recognizing the New Song--part 2 — John D. Martin

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Understanding the Times Through Scripture

Would you open your Bibles to 1 Chronicles, Chapter 12, and verse 32 for a little scripture tucked away there in Chronicles that is often overlooked. 1 Chronicles, Chapter 12, verse 32. This was when Israel was trying to decide what to do with David, whether he was going to be their king.

Judah had already accepted him as king, but Israel had not. Well, I think previously in this chapter they had, but it's sort of explaining after the fact sort of what happened. But it says in verse 32,.

And the children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do. You know we need people like that. We need people to know the times. And exactly what we'll wish a hundred years from now, or somebody will wish a hundred years from now, we did at this moment.

That's a rare gift, but God would that we would all be prophets. We're talking about prophets. We're talking about seers. We're talking about people who just can see what the issues are and can do the right thing at the right time.

And here were these men that were able to do that. We need such men today when so-called Christians do not know a number of things. That the gospel and entertainment are incompatible. There are many people who call themselves Christians that don't seem to understand that those two are the antithesis of each other.

In fact, I'll put something else here on the board. What does this word mean? Just a second. To think, to meditate. What does that word mean? Not to think and not to meditate. Ah, typical means not typical.

Ah, moral means not moral. One way or the other. Ah, amuse means not to amuse. We used to sing, I stand amazed in the presence. The modern church might as well say, we stand amused in the presence. And there's no such thing.

You don't dwell in God's presence that way. We have people today, like I said, that don't know that the gospel and entertainment are incompatible. They do not know that worship is not synonymous with excitement.

They think that there's excitement. There must be some worship taking place. They don't realize that those two are not synonymous. I've already told you what worship is. Worship often is very quiet. And then sometimes it's exuberant.

But excitement does not equate with worship. You don't have worship just because you have excitement. We need children of Issachar because there are some so-called Christians that do not understand that novelty is not synonymous with spiritual spontaneity.

Just because you're doing something different doesn't say that that was some great spiritual spontaneous outburst of some sort. And so we need people who have an understanding of the times and what Israel ought to do.

Wouldn't it be sad to find ourselves in 20 years somewhere with this subject, as important as I told you it was in the last session, to find ourselves somewhere where we don't want to be. In fact, I'm just going to say it up front.

Contemporary Music and the Direction of Worship

If we're going to go down the road of contemporary music, I'll tell you what we're going to have. Down the road. We're going to have worship teams standing up here. And we're going to have instrumental music, especially percussion.

Because that contemporary music, the rhythms are so wrenched and unnatural that you can't give people a hymn book and all sing together without some rhythmic help and without a worship team to keep everybody together.

And I heard of a very plain church that just recently adopted a hymnal that's going to take them to that place eventually. And it grieves me. Music is a very powerful thing, as we've hopefully told you in the last session.

Even the heathen knew this. Socrates said, Let us write the words to the music of our nation, and we care not who writes its laws. In fact, David said one time something similar. He said, Your statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage.

Music has something to do with people's behavior. And Socrates said, Let's write the words to the songs, and then you can make whatever laws you want to make. It will be the words and the songs that people are singing here in Greece that will determine what happens to this nation.

I'll tell you, I grew up with this kind of music. And I'm going to surrender it with a hard fight. Now listen to this text. My God, I thank Thee who has made... It's not in this hymnal, or I'd have you sing it.

My God, I thank Thee who has made the earth so bright, so full of splendor and of joy, beauty and light. So many glorious things are here, noble and right. I thank Thee, too, that Thou hast made joy to abound.

So many gentle thoughts and deeds circling us round, that in the darkest spot of earth, some love is found. I thank Thee... Now listen to this. I thank Thee more that all our joy is touched with pain, that shadows fall on brightest hours, that thorns remain, so that earth's bliss may be our guide and not our chain.

Did you get that? This woman died when she was in her thirties. I'm just going by the dates on the song. I have a sneaking suspicion this woman was sick all her life. And this is her testimony. I thank You that all our joy is touched with pain, that shadows fall on brightest hours, that thorns remain, so that earth's bliss will be our guide and not our chain.

I challenge you to find a contemporary song that says something like that. I thank Thee, Lord, that Thou hast kept the best in store. We have enough, yet not too much to long for more, a yearning for a deeper peace not known before.

I thank Thee, Lord, that here our souls, though amply blessed, can never find, although they seek a perfect rest, nor ever shall until they lean on Jesus' breast. Now that's a song. And if you have people singing those kinds of songs, you're going to have a certain kind of people.

They're going to have people that know how to face pain, and know how to rejoice in sorrow, and know the value of shadows, and the things in life that people normally don't choose. So you see why Socrates said that.

Let us write the words to the songs of our nation, and then it won't matter who writes the laws. His student Plato said this,. The introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned, as imperiling the whole state, because the styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

So he said, look, here in Greece we have a type of music that has served us well. You cannot change that without creating a major change in our whole culture. His student Aristotle said this, Music directly represents the passions or states of the soul.

Gentleness, anger, courage, temperance. If one listens to the wrong kind of music, he will become the wrong kind of person, and vice versa. Now these are not Christians. These are Greeks. They say you cannot change a culture's music without imperiling the state.

You cannot have music that will not make people into certain kind of people. Why is music so powerful? Well, I've already basically explained this part of it. Music addresses the whole being. It actually transcends even the conscious thought, and reaches the deepest part of our being, which is our desires.

It stirs up in us desires. You know, when the Hebrews talked about the heart, they always considered the heart the seat of desire. And your desire is the deepest part of your being. What you desire will work its way from the subconscious up into the conscious, and will control all of your life.

And music goes straight past everything else right to that center of your being. I believe it with all my heart. That's why the proverb writer said, keep thy heart, that seat of desire, the seat of what drives you from underneath, from the subconscious part of your being.

Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. And music addresses that. It addresses itself directly to the heart. It probes the hidden areas of a man's being, and brings out the best and the worst that is in him.

Schumann, the composer, said music is the perfect expression of the soul. Whatever is inside a person will be evidenced finally in his music. And that's why when we look at heathen cultures, we see that, and I'm not going to mention these, because I'm not trying to specifically label anybody, but there's one part of heathen culture that their music is floating melodies, that never have any resolution.

They just sort of float, and there's no resolution. It just goes on and on and on. If you've heard any of this New Age music, that's sort of how it is. Well, the reason for that is because that's the way they think.

That says something to them. It addresses the deepest part of their being, because their basic concept of life is that it goes in circles. If you study their philosophy, reincarnation, or the many other mechanisms they talk about, that life just cycles and cycles and cycles and cycles and cycles, and maybe someday you can get out of that, but basically life just goes round and round and round.

I want to tell you something. That's not at all becoming for Christians to sing that kind of music, because we actually don't believe that history or life or anything is that way. We believe it's all going somewhere.

There in Ephesians it says, one of the problems of the heathen is they were without Christ. They were without an anointed One. In the darkest days of Hebrew history, they could always say, the Messiah is coming.

History is going somewhere. Things are going to culminate. There's going to be a better day. And we're used to that here in Western civilization, because this whole civilization has been strongly influenced by a Christian concept that history is going somewhere, and that our lives are going somewhere.

Now, things are changing. People are starting to go in circles in our society, and so is their music. That's the point I'm trying to make. And we need to understand that. When my children play music, the first thing I listen to is, is it going somewhere?

Or is it just something that just goes on and on, and it doesn't have any resolution, it doesn't have any build-up, it doesn't have any climax, it just doesn't go anywhere. It's just going round and round and round and round.

Another heathen culture has pulsating, chanting rhythms that show the restless emotions of the heathen heart. And contemporary music, for the most part, with very few exceptions, lacks a sense of direction, is a lot of atonal, and rhythms that introduce misdirection into the song.

Now, I told you that the new birth should give us a new song. The Christian should have a distinctive kind of song. It should not be borrowed from that mentality out there. Now, there was a time people were going to say, well, the Anabaptists wrote their words to the folk songs of the day, and even Handel with the Messiah.

Probably a fair proportion of those choruses were melodies that he heard on the streets of London. Well, we're going to talk a little bit about music. There was a time when society, Western civilization, had been influenced sufficiently by Christianity that the music was like this, even if it was folk music.

This was the kind of music it was. And so, even though it was not religious music always, it was good music. The music itself was good. Now, I want you to turn to 1 Samuel 16. Verse 23. A brother here said the effect that music had in heathen cultures.

Well, here's the effect it had on Saul. This little passage of Scripture tells us what David's music did for Saul. And we know that Saul was possessed or troubled by an evil spirit. So, verse 22 says, And Saul sent to Jesse, saying, Let David, I pray thee, stand before me, for he has found favor in my sight.

And it came to pass when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul that David took a harp and played with his hand, so Saul was refreshed. The word here literally means he physically breathed easier. So, music affects us physically.

And according to this verse, and according to what has been discovered, it's been discovered that rock or disco music affects 9 out of 10 people in weakening their muscle tone. It actually, they can measure muscle tone and they can actually tell when rock music is played there's a difference in the tone of the muscle and the response.

Because rock music is the exact opposite of the heartbeat. A heartbeat is a long, a short, and a pause. Rock music is short, short, long, pause. And it sets up a conflict in the normal rhythms of the body in a negative kind of way.

It says that he was well. That literally means mentally relieved. And people know it affects you mentally. We're talking now about the music. We're not talking about the words. We're just talking about the music.

Did you know that department stores, and when I lived in Virginia, there was a little building there. It said Comsonics on the outside. C-O-M-S-O-N-I-C-S. You know what they did for a living? That whole outfit.

It was a building twice the size of this church. Those people were experts in creating the music you needed to sell whatever it is you were selling. They did the music for department stores. They did the music for grocery stores.

They did the music for boat sales. They did whatever you were selling. You went there and you engaged their services to provide you with the music that would make people disposed to buy what you were selling.

It affects us mentally. I'm trying to show you that what these philosophers said had some... That wasn't just something they dreamed off at the top of their heads. These things actually happened. And I want, in this session, I told you what my purpose was in the last session.

My purpose in this session is for us to get real serious about what kind of music we're going to listen to. And then it says, the evil spirit departed from him. So we have a physical response. We have a mental response.

And we have a spiritual response. It's very clear here that the demons are uncomfortable around certain kinds of music. And that's the kind I want. Vice versa. The demons apparently are very comfortable around other environments.

Hallie says, Congregational singing next to Bible teaching is the best feature of a religious service and one of the most effective ways to preach the Gospel. I've already told you that music is a veritable doorway to the spiritual world.

No wonder man after God's own heart is given to song. Because he knows that somehow it has something to do with that spiritual world. We're not going to look up all these verses. I'm just going to give these.

The presence of God always accompanies praise. I've already told you that. The Word of God promotes praise. The Spirit of God empowers praise. And music is very, very powerful. The first thing that happens when a person becomes a new creature is we find it in the Psalms, we find it in the New Testament.

He has a new song. And we have already looked at those. Alright. Let's talk about the dynamics of good music. I just was trying to convince you that there is something to this. Good music has a varied and dominant melody.

Do you know that for years the church sang no harmony? Or used any instruments? They sang only the melody. And that's where the definition of music needs to rest. It has a dominant and varied melody. And if it has harmony, it should have variety of chord changes and modulations, as much of that as possible.

It doesn't have to have all that. But that's good music. In fact, it obeys the basic principle of all communication. If you want to be a good public speaker, if you want to be a good writer, if you want to be a good symphony writer or hymn writer or whatever, you obey these two rules.

One of them is repetition. You need to do it often enough that it makes its impression. But if that's all you do, people will get bored. And they'll soon not benefit from the repetition. And so preachers know that if they want people to continue to hear what they're saying over and over and over again, they have to say it over and over again in different ways.

And so we have variety. Writers do the same thing. Musicians do the same thing. If you listen to a great composition of music, it'll have a theme. And so you'll hear that theme introduced. And then you'll hear it varied.

And then you'll hear it varied again. And then it'll seem like the theme sort of disappeared. If you're listening carefully, it hasn't. But after a bit, then it comes back. And it all finally builds up and resolves in the end.

But you have repetition with variety. And music is no exception. Architecture is the same way. Anything that anybody ever does as a means of expression has repetition and variety. And so a good melody has repetition and variety.

It makes it memorable. You sing it in the bathtub. It's a song that just impresses itself on you. It's a melody that you can't get away from. Bad music, monotonous melody, constantly repeated chords with almost no variety, just fragments of melody repeated over and over again, no definite melodic direction or resolution.

Musical Structure in Congregational Hymns

Now we're going to illustrate from the hymnal. Would you turn to 232? We're not going to illustrate the bad because I don't think there's any bad music in this hymnal. We might point out some hymns that are better than others.

I want you to sing this song to the beginning of the third score. And I want you to sing to the middle of the third score and stop. Okay? And I want you to listen carefully.

This is a good hymn. O soul, love divine, all love's excelling. Joy of heaven to earth come down. Fix in us thy humble dwelling. All thy faithful mercies crown. Listen carefully. You can stop. What just happened there?

What changed? We do this all the time and nobody thinks about it and I want to call it to your attention. What changed? Let's sing that second line again and we're going to go into the third line and we're going to stop and I'm going to ask you what you sense.

O soul, fix in us thy humble dwelling. All thy faithful mercies crown.

Okay. What happened? Nobody recognized that little third piece, that last piece we sang as a minor? It's a minor. The song shifted into minor. And, you know, we had repetition. First two lines were very similar.

Not exactly. I just want to show you how this thing is built. Love divine's all love excelling. That's exactly the same as the second line. But then the rest of the second line is different. So there's your variety.

We have just enough repetition for it to do what repetition's supposed to do and then we have variety. Then the song shifts totally into a minor key. And, by the way, that never is sung right so I'm going to take the time to teach it.

Jesus, thou art all compassion. You always sing a so and it's a C. Alright? Now let's all sing the melody and see if we can get that and then we're going to sing it very slowly and I want you to hear the beautiful harmony on that note we always sing wrong.

Alright? I'm going to sing it for you and then you sing it with me. Jesus, thou art all compassion. Sing it. Jesus, thou art all compassion. No, you still sang a so. Jesus, thou art all compassion. It's a half step above the so.

Let's do it again. Jesus, thou art all compassion. Now we're going to sing it very slowly and we're going to stop on that note and I want you to hear that chord. Ready?

Jesus. Excellent. But the problem is I didn't hear any alto, tenor or bass almost. Let's hear the part. It's a fabulous chord. We won't go into discussions of what kind of chord it is but the musician knew what he was doing.

Let's hear some good harmony. Tenors. Everybody sing tenor, the ten and alto likewise. Ready? La, tenors. La, basses. So, mi, baltos. G. Now, when we sing that it's always dissonant at that spot. Now, I've remedied one of my pet peeves.

But you see, isn't that fabulous? Here we have repetition and then we have this beautiful little minor section and then if we'd have kept singing it goes back into a major. Let's do it again. Do, Jesus.

We're starting right there. Do, so, mi. Do, la, la. Ready? Jesus. Pure. This is. Fabulous song. Fabulous message. Now, I don't want to make fun of any songs but it doesn't compare with Heaven Came Down and Glory Filled My Soul.

Now, we can sing that one once in a while but I wouldn't want to sing that one every Sunday. This one I could sing about every other Sunday. Alright. Now, so the dynamics of a good song have a good melody.

And that's just a good melody. And really, that's the genius of the song. The melody is the genius of the song. The geniuses write the melodies. You can go to school and mathematically learn to write harmony but nobody can tell you how to write a melody that is unique.

That's the art right there. Alright. Good music has varied levels of intensity. The sound is always under control. Bad music, the sound is loud and unrestrained. It's just one long loud noise. You can hear it coming down the road.

Even if the windows are shut on the car. Good music has varied and accurate rhythms. Bad music has unvaried repetition of a rhythmic pattern with unnatural accents that dominate the song. We'll illustrate that a little bit later.

And that's why my children will tell you that even if a song has a little monotonous tick, somebody's just, some dumb little piece of metal in the background just ticking away in the song. I hate that song.

And I say, turn it off. That kind of a monotonous rhythm should never dominate the song. That's a bad song. Good music conforms to the created order. Repetition with variety is a very strongly held and recognized widely concept of the created order.

So, let's talk about each of these in turn. A well-conceived and dominant melody. The melody is the personality by which a song is identified. And I'll put this little diagram on the board that somebody referred to.

You've all seen it. But just simply to have it there for us to see. The melody should be the strong part of the song. The harmony, if there is any, should serve the melody. And the rhythm should serve both.

Now, of course, you see what the world has done. They've turned this totally upside down. There's almost no melody. It may have a fair amount of harmony, but this dominates. This appeals to the body. We all know that.

You can make an argument that this appeals to the spirit. And you can make an argument that this appeals to the soul, to the emotions, and that center part of that circle that we had. I want you to look at some good songs.

We're just going to look at examples. This is going to be an enjoyable time of singing good songs. Turn to number five. Now, I'm not saying that all songs have to always conform to this, but this is the ultimate.

This is what we're aiming toward. This is what we want our people to learn to really appreciate, because this kind of music, you will find, somehow attracts the most worthy text. Don't ask me why. But when you have the kind of music we're going to be talking about, for some reason, the very best kind of text, the one I just read to you, that had this kind of music to it.

Don't ask me why, but the lighter music somehow attracts that kind of text. It's just... Someone else can get up and explain it. Denny, maybe after I'm done, you can explain why. But that's just the way it is.

And a lot of this lighter music doesn't really say an awful lot. I sit in church and sing these great hymns of the church of people who went through pain and trial and struggle and martyrdom and sit there and am blessed to the bottom of my being in every aspect of my personality by what they said.

And I go away thinking all week about some phrase of a song that was just so well said. But it's usually to this better kind of music. Now I want you to notice what this song does. Look how this thing's put together.

Come thou almighty king, so me do. All right? Help us thy name to sing. See what we have? So me do. But it's different. Repetition with variety. And then it doesn't go back up again. It goes the whole way down the so.

Then we have an interesting little repeated pattern. Father all glorious, or all victorious. Then we have an inversion. Do me so. It goes the opposite direction. And then it keeps on going and the highest point of the song is right there at the end.

That's the climax of the song. Remember I said that our concept of life has us going somewhere. This thing builds up and the highest note in the song is there at the end. Come and reign over us. But the songwriter's not done.

He has to put a climax in the tenor too. So we get a double whammy at the end. Isn't that something? No wonder this song is in almost every book. You could sing this song every Sunday for the next 100 years.

And people won't get tired of it because it obeys the law of the universe. Let's sing it.

Do me so. Now listen to what it's doing. Listen for the repetition. Listen for the variety. And listen to that splendiferous climax with the soprano and then the tenor. All right. Do me so. Come thou almighty king.

Help us by name to sing. Help us to praise. For the victorious come and reign over the ancients of days. It's unbeatable. Number 18.

I'm just going to be talking through this whole thing. Don't let us do anything that takes those away from us. There's nothing can replace that that I know of that's worthy of replacing it. O come let us worship.

I know John Everhold did an amazing thing on this song. I don't know how much he realized what he was doing. But this song is tied together in an amazing way. O come two does. All right. The second phrase.

Two does. Come kneel. The third phrase. Two does. These are the highest notes in the song except there's a climax at the end. And then it climaxes in hearing his word. Then two does. And when you sing that, the whole song is tied together with those double does at the beginning of every phrase.

Yeah, that's basically what I wanted to say. Oh, and then he has sort of a double climax at the end too. It's sort of an unusual climax and that's that repetition of that so at the end. Somehow that just, at the end of that song, just sort of solidifies everything that has said at the end of the verses.

Let's sing, let's sing this, just one verse of this one. Notice these double does and how they tie the song together and notice his unusual emphasis at the end. It's sort of an unusual kind of climax.

It doesn't go up. It just repeats.

O come. Shepherds come before him in reverence and fear with thanksgiving praise and in his spirit.

And yes, you have that climax there in the tenor. Now another very unusual song is number 96. We usually think of the climax at the end of the song. But this one has it at the beginning. The highest point in this song is the second syllable.

But notice what's going on here. Look at the words. When all thy mercies, O my God, my rising soul surveys. And then the rest of the song is sort of like a reverie. Transported with the view I'm lost in wonder, love and praise and it comes down, down, down, down, down and ends in sort of a reverie.

Ten thousand. Through every, through all eternity. You see why that high note was put there? The song writer knew what he was doing. Let's sing just one verse of it.

Though me soul when all thy soul surveys.

Transported with the view. I'm lost in wonder, love and praise.

Did you sense that sense of reverie at the end? Transported with the view I'm lost in wonder, love and praise and every verse is sort of that way. I think the music must have been written for these words because it just fits perfectly.

Let's turn to 138. Alright, again you will notice that it begins on low do. Lift your glad voices. And the high point in the song is right at the end. It ends on a high do and there's a re before that.

The only repetition in this song is in the second line. They were the tears that gathered around him but notice, it's the same pattern but it's different. We're singing different notes. It's re, re, fa, mi, so, fa and the other one is mi, so, fa, la, so.

But it's, you know, you have that little bit of repetition but there's variety. It's not, you're not singing the same notes. And then, it has a very strong climactic ending.

Let's sing this one. And just notice how it keeps building and building and building. It's going, this song's going somewhere. Do, lift your glad voices in prison and Listen for the repetition. They were the tears that gathered around him and sure the...

You're going to have to pardon my comments but they'll be singing that long after they quit singing When the Ransom Get Home. When the Ransom Get Home's fine. I'm not putting it down. But you're talking about an altogether different quality of song and a different quality of text.

When the Ransom Get Home basically says one thing. And it's good. It's a wonderful thing. I can't wait till I get home. But this song says a whole lot more. Okay. And the music supports a whole lot more.

Okay. Let's turn to 141. And you can sing When the Ransom Get Home but please don't take these songs away from us. We want these songs for our children. All right. Rise, Glorious, Conquer, Rise. This is interesting.

You know what ties this song together? Da, da, da, da, da, da.

It's that low note, upper note, low note, dotted quarter, eighth note. You have that da, da, da. Da, da, da. Da, da, da. It goes up and down. Up and down. Up and down. Up and down. See that repetition?

And the notes are never the same. Then on the third score it starts at a high do and it starts coming down. Then it's up down and then it goes up and then up and down again. Down, up, I'm sorry. Yes, up and down.

Up. So la so, so me fa. And then up and down. And then it builds to its climax. So it has those little, it has those little jiggers in there. And space throughout the song is a dotted quarter and an eighth.

So you have that rhythmic tie that's repeated. And then of course it builds to a splendiferous climax too. It's a double one. See, look at the double one. We have the tenor and the soprano. This is almost a Mennonite marching song.

All right.

Let's sing it. So, so me do. Rise, Gloria. Conquer, rise into thy name. Disguise, assume thy right. And wear it manifold. The clouds are there. Twenty-three.

Preserving the Hymns of the Church

My purpose here, and I'm not making any secrets, my purpose here is for you to go home and say we don't ever want these songs to be taken away from us. We're not going to allow any kind of music to rob us of this stuff.

This is quality worship. Yes. And you'll sing them for the next 100. After those other songs, you said, well, now we've sung those enough. Let's get a book with some new ones in. And you know what? The new book will have this one in.

Mine won't have some of those other ones. But I don't think you'll miss them too badly. But you would miss that one. How many think you'd miss that one? It's in there. All right. Twenty-three. Great God, indulge my humble claim.

All right. So here we have Great God, indulge my humble claim. Thou art my hope, my joy, my rest. Okay. So far, no repetition. Now we have repetition. The glories that compose thy name. And that's the same as the first line up until the end of the second score.

But then it just keeps going on up. It just keeps going on up. And again, you have the double climactic ending. These are the songs that people like, the ones that have that soprano and then the tenor comes in for the double punch.

All right. Let's sing this one. So great. God, indulge my humble claim. Repetition.

Stand. Now there's something I always listen for in this song. I listen for it and it's almost never sung. Altos, would you do me a favor? At the end of the last score, there's a special little thing there and the altos almost never sing it.

Notice that above make, that is a ray. That is a dissonant note that is absolutely beautiful because you're waiting for it to resolve. And it's really, really pretty. So let's have some good strong altos and be sure you sing a ray there.

Okay. Did somebody say something?

Okay, let's sing it. Let's sing the first verse again. And sing, all the people who can sing altos, you sing it so we can hear it. So great God, indulge my humble claim. Stronger altos. My joy, my rest, the Lord come for thine stay.

I heard just a hint of it. That's really, to me that's the prettiest chord in that song. Turn to 815. Now we're going to look at a gospel song that sort of does the same thing. It's not in the same category as the ones we've sung.