Why Sing?

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to John chapter 4. And as you're turning, please also hold a place at Colossians chapter 3.
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So John chapter 4 and Colossians chapter 3 today as we're going to be looking at both of those passages as part of our continued study this morning.
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Over the last several weeks we have been in a mini -series of studies in the
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Word of God. Normally we go verse by verse through books of the Bible. We've done that for many, many years, ever since I began preaching here.
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And it's our practice to simply work our way through the books. But as we work our way through books of the
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Bible, we often find ourselves with key passages which open themselves up to specific subjects that need to be unpacked.
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And we had been looking at the story of Jesus and the woman at the well.
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And the story of that woman is as she's speaking with Jesus and he's talking to her about living water and he's talking to her about her sin and her five husbands and the man she's living with not being her husband.
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She remarks about the difference between worship that the
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Jews practice and the worship that the Samaritans practice. You Jews worship in Jerusalem and we worship on Mount Gerizim.
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And the implied question is who's right? Whose worship is correct? And Jesus says there is coming a day where geography will not matter.
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There is coming a day where you will not worship on that mountain or this mountain.
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But you will worship in spirit and truth. And so that leads us to the text that led us to this series.
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And this series, again, is on the subject of worship, specifically gathered corporate worship.
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We could talk about individual worship. We could talk about devotion. We could talk about family worship and the things that we do in our homes.
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But that's really not the subject. The subject is why do we do what we do on the
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Lord's Day in the way that we do it? Our first message was on the elements of worship.
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We talked about this now three weeks ago. We said, what are the parts that go into our worship?
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What are the what are the elements of worship, the necessary elements? And we talked about what's known as the regulative principle.
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The regulative principle states that God is to be worshiped in the way that He commands.
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He governs worship. He commands what we do. We are not to be innovators in worship.
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We are to be subservient to His word. Not creative, but we are to be submissive.
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And so and we talked about Nadab and Abihu who came and offered up a strange fire before the
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Lord and the danger of offering up to the Lord that which He has not commanded.
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And also the danger of approaching Him in a way that does not regard His holiness. Remember what
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Moses said when the two sons had been burned and their bodies taken away.
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Moses looks to Aaron and says to the one who approaches me, I must be regarded as holy.
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So that's the regulative principle. That's the elements of worship. What we do is governed by and commanded by God.
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And then last week, we talked about the order of worship. I was very encouraged by how many of you came to me afterwards and said that the message was an encouragement to you.
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Because I was nervous about preaching that message. I had never preached a sermon on liturgy. Never have I even heard one.
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So last week's sermon was different. But I was encouraged by how many of you came and said that there is actually something important about learning about the way we do what we do.
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It's not just the elements of worship, but that we do them in a certain way. Because God is a
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God of order, not of chaos. And He demands to be worshipped not in chaos, but in order.
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He says in 1 Corinthians 14, 40, all things are to be done decently and in order.
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And so today, we're going to begin moving through the elements of worship.
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And we're going to ask ourselves this question, why do we sing?
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Why do we sing? This is an element, we would say, a necessary element of worship.
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But why? And moreover, not only why, what do we sing? And even more so, how?
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So let's stand together and we're going to read John 4 and 24. And then we're going to move over to Colossians chapter 3 and verse 16.
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And then we will pray together. John chapter 4, verse 24.
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Jesus is speaking and He says, God is spirit and those who worship
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Him must worship in spirit and truth.
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And now turn over to Colossians 3 and 16. 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.
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Let's pray. Father in heaven, I thank you for your word. And I thank you that we have the opportunity today to examine your word on the subject of singing out to you.
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And I pray, oh God, first and foremost, that you would keep me from error. Because Lord, I know that I am a fallible man.
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I am capable of preaching error. And for the sake of your name, for the sake of my conscience and for the sake of your people,
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I pray that you would protect me from error. And I pray, Lord, that this message would not only be a lecture on history and music and worship, but Lord, that it would be an encouragement and an exhortation to sing to the men in this room who lead their families, let them lead their families in song.
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To the wives, the women in this room, let them sing out aloud to the
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Lord. And to the children, may they be catechized by our music.
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May we learn of you from what we hear in song. As my brother said this morning in the opening of worship, so much of what we sing becomes part of us.
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It becomes part of our daily walk through life that we sing these songs and we know them.
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So Lord, may it be that we are singing out to you in spirit and truth, worshiping you the way that you have commanded.
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And may all of it, Lord, be for your glory and for our good.
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And ultimately, Lord, may it be that the gospel reigns during this message, that we are reminded that we as Christians have something to sing about.
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And that is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Lord, as we discuss this, if there be those here who do not yet know
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Jesus, who have not yet trusted in his name, that today might be the day that you open their heart, give them a new heart, give them the gift of regeneration,
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Lord. Draw them to yourself, that they might know you and be saved.
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We pray this in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. Worship music has undergone many evolutions since the time of the apostles.
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I think many people believe that whatever the standard music was that they grew up with or that they're used to in their church, that that is the standard for all time.
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I think that's just sort of natural. The church songs I learned as a child, the church songs
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I sang as a young man, as a young woman, these are the standards. In fact, I remember right at that back door many, many, many years ago, a man was walking out of our church, he was an older man, and he stopped me at the back door and he said,
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I want to know why we no longer sing all of the old standards. And I looked at him and I said, when did they become standard?
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And I wasn't trying to be, maybe I was being a little sassy, but I wasn't trying to be mean.
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I was just asking, when does something become the standard? Is four -part harmony, Southern Baptist style,
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Gaither music, is that the standard? Is that what makes up the best of church music?
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Or is it Gregorian chant, right? Is that the standard? I haven't heard that in church in quite a while, at least not in our church.
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So depending on our age and our upbringing, our idea of what makes up worship music will probably be quite different.
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Growing up at this church, and many of you know I've been here since I was seven years old, but back in the 80s and 90s, this church was very much a hymn -only, used the book, we didn't have screens.
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I remember the first time we bought a projector. It was a big deal. This was in the early 2000s.
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And it was almost like, you know, we had accepted the mark of the beast for some people.
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It was bad. Some people took very great offense to the fact that we were moving away from the hymn book and moving into a digital age.
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But the hymnal was our use or our book of choice when I was a kid, and we sang the verses of the hymns, and we had a choir.
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My stepmother, who's here, was a member of the choir and wore the choir robes, had the shoulder, whatever, sash, whatever it's called, yeah.
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And that was the style. But then once a month or so, I would go to my mother's church, and my mother was in a
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Pentecostal church, much different style. They didn't have choir robes, and they didn't have an organ.
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We used to have an organ. They didn't have an organ. They had several men with different guitars, some with banjos, and they had a drummer, and they would play and sing with banjos and drums.
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And one of the songs I remember growing up was, I'm gonna have a little talk with Jesus. I'm gonna tell him all about my troubles.
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I mean that, y 'all know that one? Some of y 'all go, no, because you didn't grow up in a church like that.
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But to them, that was the standard, right? That was a song they sang every Sunday.
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That was how they got worship going, and everybody clapped, and it was part of what they did.
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And it's interesting, again, that's just my experience. I come to some of you, and I say, hey, we're gonna sing a song this morning.
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We're gonna sing an old hymn. And I start singing, and to you, it's a contemporary worship song, because you ain't never heard it.
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To you, it's brand new, because you've not grown up in church, or not grown up in church that sang hymns.
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And so, when we sing like this morning, praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation.
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Some of you were, ooh, that's new. It's different, because it's not what you grew up with.
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And what I did this week in preparation for today's message is, I actually, I asked myself this question, what has church worship looked like down through the history of the church?
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And you know church history didn't begin in the 1950s, right? We know that church history didn't begin at the turn of the 20th century.
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But church history has 2 ,000 years of historical change.
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And I want to share with you this morning for, and some of you, you might think this portion is a little bit like a lecture, and it is. But I promise you, there's going to, we're going to move to an exhortation.
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But I want you to understand kind of where I'm coming from. If you look at church history, church history can be broken down into three parts. Church history best understood is understood as early church history.
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And that is approximately the first 500 years of church history, is what we would call early church history.
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This ends around the time of Augustine. So we would say from the time of Christ to about the time of Augustine, fourth and fifth centuries are the first early church history.
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We actually did a class on that in our academy. We called it From the Fall of Jerusalem to the
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Rise of Augustine. After this, we have the medieval period.
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The medieval period is sometimes called what? The Dark Ages. The Dark Ages lasted a thousand years.
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In that time period, there's the rise of Islam in the 7th century. There are the
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Crusades which come after the rise of Islam. And then, of course, there is much theological change in the
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Western and Eastern church as there begins to be the veneration of icons.
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And there begins to be things like worship or prayers to the saints.
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And there begins to be a different understanding of the way that worship should be done.
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And the structure and hierarchy of the church. Even to the split of the church in 1054 which the
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Eastern and Western church split over doctrinal issues. And then, of course, continuing on to what we call the time of the
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Reformation. About 500 years ago now. So we would say the last 500 years is where we have the post -reformational church.
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It's after this that it gives birth to things like denominations. The Anglicans, the
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Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Baptists, the
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Methodists, and the Pentecostals are all products of the post -reformational church.
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They can all find their history in that last 500 years.
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And so that's a snapshot of church history and the things that have happened. Very simple and easy snapshot.
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I'm not trying to dig into anything deep. But ask yourself this question. Did the church in the first 500 years sing the same way the church now sings?
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Did the church do worship the same way we do now? Now, I said last week something important.
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I said this. I said that the early church often worshipped in the catacombs. Remember the burial places?
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They would go down into the caves and they would worship because many of them were under persecution or the threat of persecution.
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So they would worship in hiding. And what did we say last week? We said if the worship, the elements of worship could not be done in the catacombs, then they weren't essential.
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If it can't be done in the caves, if it can't be... Like a little story. Yesterday I get a call from Chrissy Belcher.
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Chrissy cleans our church and yesterday we get a call from Chrissy and she said half the lights in the church aren't working.
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Now, this was after Pastor Tyler told me he was bringing a whole group of visitors to be with us this morning.
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And I was like, oh, mercy me. I said we got a church that ain't got an air conditioner.
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We got a church that half the lights aren't working. So about five o 'clock yesterday,
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Brother Andy and I came up here. We met with my cousin who works in the electrical field and he was able to look at our system and figure out what was wrong with it.
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We had lost an entire leg. There's three legs of electricity coming in here. And one sweet squirrel made his way into our transformer outside and gave his life to take our power.
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Poor, poor squirrel gave his life to take away our... And so we're sitting here without a whole leg of power, no air conditioner.
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And we said we're going to call JEA. And by God's grace, JEA was here in an instant. They fixed it for us in less than two hours.
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And I was thankful Brother Andy stayed and made sure everything was good so I could go home and be with my family.
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So thank you, Brother Andy, for that. But here's the thing that I just want to say. If we came in this morning and didn't have power, we could still worship.
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If we came in this morning and we didn't have lights, we could still worship. Right? Because those things aren't essential to worship.
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Those aren't elements of worship. Those are incidentals. It's nice to have an air conditioner. I will say this, if I didn't have it,
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I wouldn't have this coat on right now. But the idea is worship in the catacombs shows us the essentials, those things that are essential.
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And when we think about how worship has been done for the last 2 ,000 years, it has changed as church history has given rise to many different eras.
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The rise of the Holy Roman Empire, the rise of the Catholic Church and the expansion of worship in that way gave great change in the history of how gathered worship was done.
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So I want to just walk through the history a little bit with you just to kind of tell you what has happened over the last 2 ,000 years and how we got to where we are today.
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First things first, let me just say this. The earliest of the early church is
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Jesus and his apostles. And Jesus and his apostles sang.
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Did you know that? It says in Matthew chapter 26, verse 30, that Jesus, having prayed with his apostles, sang a hymn, and then they went to pray.
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They sang together. Can you imagine hearing the Lord Jesus Christ lead a hymn?
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Can you imagine hearing the voice of your Savior? And we don't know what they sang. It just says they sang a hymn.
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And by the way, the word hymn, hymnos in Greek simply means a song of praise. And we're going to talk a little bit about Colossians 3 because it says psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.
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We're going to talk about the differences there. But ultimately, they sang a song of praise. And Jesus led that song of praise.
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Singing was a part of the early church in the book of Acts. We walk through Acts. What do we see? We see the people of God singing.
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What was Paul doing on the night that he was in the prison with Silas? He was singing.
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Even some of the Bible texts that we read are believed by scholars to be examples of early
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Christian hymns. You can mark this down if you're taking notes. Philippians chapter 2, verses 5 through 8, is often referred to as the
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Carmen Christi. And that simply is Latin for the song of Christ. He who was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant and coming in the form of a man.
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He went to death, even death on a cross. I'm not quoting it verbatim here, but you understand that portion. And at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess.
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There's this flow of Jesus coming down from heaven, giving himself on the cross and then being exalted again to the right hand of the
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Father. And many scholars believe that itself is a song, is a hymn to Christ.
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And we know the early church did sing hymns to Christ. There's actually a man named
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Pliny the Younger. He was a governor of Pontus and Bithynia, and he wrote to Emperor Trahan in the 2nd century, and he described
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Christians like this. He said they meet before dawn to sing responsibly hymns to Christ as a
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God. That was how he described it. He said this is what they do. They meet together and they meet together to sing responsibly to Christ as a
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God. And so this was the practice of the early church, to gather together and to sing.
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And Paul admonishes us, as we already saw in our text, let the word of Christ dwell richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom.
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And then the three phrases, singing psalms. Psalm, the word psalm comes from the idea of a song set to music.
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If you read through the psalms, how often does it say, this is played with the lute or the lyre or the stringed instruments.
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That's what a psalm is. Or a hymn, which is a song of praise. Or a spiritual song, a pneumatikos, a spiritual song.
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And so Paul gives us these different types of songs that were sung in the early church. And when we go back to the early church, this is what we learn about the early church.
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When we look at the history of the early church, these are some of the pretty standard practices in the first 500 years.
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The first thing is, there were no instruments that were used. In fact, many of the early church leaders believed that instruments were not good to be used in the church.
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Many of them believed that they were too connected to pagan worship, because pagans used instruments in worship.
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And others believed that it was too close to Jewish worship. Remember, the early church was identifying itself and distinguishing itself from Jewish practices.
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And so the idea of instruments, I mean, you can read through the early church, and you'll see that instruments were not used.
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And this is interesting, because I believe instruments can and should be used in worship.
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I don't have a problem with that. Obviously, I play the guitar. We have piano players here. We have Richard who plays the bass,
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Nathan who plays the drums. We don't have an issue with instruments here. But I must be fair to history and say, in the early church, it was not the practice to use instruments.
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In fact, today, most of the time, when you think of non -instrumental worship, who do you most associate that with?
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The churches of Christ. Because the churches of Christ have held a very strong position against the use of musical instruments in worship.
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But historically, the early church did not use musical instruments. The second thing that was notable about early church worship is that, oh wait, let me just give you a quote, by the way, just so you know
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I'm not just making these things up. Paul James Griffiths, who wrote on this subject, said, the majority of church fathers, between 100 and 500, did not accept the use of musical instruments in church, and the
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Christians worshipped God with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs in a chanting fashion. So it would have been acapella.
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And by the way, I love acapella. I really do. You know, we stopped victory in Jesus today, and we sang the third verse with no instruments.
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And how beautiful was that? To hear just the voices. Did you know Charles Spurgeon did not believe in the use of musical instruments?
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Charles Spurgeon preached against it. He said that the use of musical instruments was using a mechanical device to do what our bodies should do.
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Our bodies should be praising God. Now again, I disagree with the great Prince of Preachers. Who am I? But I can disagree with Spurgeon, but at least
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I want to be honest to history. You know how worship was done at the Metropolitan Tabernacle?
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He would go down onto the lower platform, and he would lead the people. There was no instrument.
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So he just led the people in the hymns, and then he would mount the stairs, walk up, and he would preach.
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So their worship was simple. I do like simplicity. But the early church was no instruments, and it was congregational.
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It was congregational. Much of what was sung was done in the form of what's known as antiphonal singing, which is where one would sing out and the other would sing in response.
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So there's this call and response. And we sing songs like that today. I mean, it wouldn't be like the early church's song, but you know the song that we sing,
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Do you feel the world is broken? We do. Do you feel the shadows deepen?
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We do. Like that song. That song is a call and response. So this is the style that was very common.
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Again, they didn't have hymn books for the most part, but many of them had memorized the canonical psalms.
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So the psalms, and this is the last part, the canonical psalms made up most of early church worship.
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There were hymns, as we talked about. Philippians chapter 2 is an example of one of those. There were doxologies, and we see these doxologies in Scripture.
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But the vast majority of worship was simple, no instruments, congregational, and related to the psalms.
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Related to the psalms. So this is what the early church. Think of the simplicity and beauty of that. Just the simplicity and beauty of early church worship.
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Now, in the medieval period, there's a major shift. In the medieval period, not only is there the rise of the
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Holy Roman Empire, but there is also a growing distinction between clergy and laity.
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There is a growing distinction between those who are considered of the priestly class and those who are considered of the lay class.
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And as such, there began to rise the use of the choir. The choir wasn't so much to give the people someone to sing with, but rather professional singers to sing to the congregation or to sing for the congregation.
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It was part of this hierarchy of church. So the congregation began to sing less, and the choir began to sing more.
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Many of us grew up with choirs. As I said, Pat was in the choir when I was a kid. But the choir usually sang with us.
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The choir was like a worship team. Well, for lack of a better phrase. They were leading the congregation.
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But during the time of the medieval period, the choir was more of a...
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I don't want to say performance. Because I don't want to be unfair, and I don't want to straw man the situation.
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But it was very much understood. These are the singers. These are the people who do the worship singing.
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And the congregation sat and observed rather than participated. So we see the move to choir singing.
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I didn't mention this. Instruments began to be included during this portion of history. What do you think was invented in the 8th century?
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The organ was invented, or rather not invented, but introduced into the church in the 8th century.
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And guess what the organ allows? You ever think about what an organ or a piano does?
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An organ or a piano takes the place of several other instruments. When I was in the orchestra in high school,
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I played the baritone horn. And when you play the baritone horn, you're playing one part.
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And when the trumpets play, they're playing one part. And when the flutes play, they're playing one part. And everybody plays all their parts together.
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And what does it create? It creates a symphony. The word symphony means coming together. Sound that comes together, right? And so I would sometimes just be...
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That's all I did. And that doesn't sound very cool, but when you put that with the trumpet going... And you got the flute going...
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All these coming together, and it creates a beautiful symphony. Well, an organ does all of that together, because a skilled organ player can play a melody line with their right hand and a bass line with their left hand, and they can bring all of these sounds in with one instrument.
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And therefore the orchestra is not needed. You have an orchestra with one person who's skilled. So the advent of the organ changes the style of worship and begins to introduce more of an instrumental style of worship, and the choirs take the songs from the people and puts them into the hands of the few, from the many to the few.
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And the hymns begin to change. The hymns begin to be focused not just on Christ and not just on God, but they begin to be focused on the
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Virgin as the rise of Mariology in the middle -aged church, and we know what
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I'm talking about with the veneration of Mary, which is done in both the Western and the Eastern churches, the veneration of Mary.
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And so songs to Mary began to be popular. Songs to the saints or of the saints began to be popular.
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And songs which divided up into the worship calendar, the liturgical calendar, began to be popular.
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So the middle -aged period showed a major shift in worship. Then came the time of the
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Reformation. And most of us, most of us think of the
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Reformation only in terms of reforming doctrine. But I want you to understand the
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Reformation was not just reforming doctrine. Martin Luther, John Calvin, Hilrich Zwingli, and the other reformers were not just concerned that the people knew the right thing, but they also wanted them to be doing the right thing in worship.
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So there came not only a reformation of doctrine, but a reformation of worship, and a reformation of worship style.
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So we have in the time of the post -Reformation church, there's instruments debated.
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Calvin didn't allow instruments in Geneva, at least as far as I know. I don't believe he did, but there were other places instruments were allowed.
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Certainly instruments among the Lutherans. We think of like the great instrumentalists, the great symphony writers,
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Bach, and ones like that who were tremendous instrumentalists.
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But here's the huge change with Reformational worship. It was pushed back to the congregation.
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Whereas in the medieval period it had moved away to the choir, now it was again congregational worship began to be the focus.
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And out of that come some of the greatest hymn writers in history. Men like Isaac Watts, John Newton, Charles Wesley.
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The magisterial reformers who we call Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli. Magisterial does not mean that they are infallible.
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Magisterial means that they were supported by their local magistrates.
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Luther had the people of Germany and the magistrates of Germany on his side. Calvin had
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Geneva and Zwingli had
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Zurich. So we have these men who have the ability to make great influence.
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Luther was a great hymn writer. In fact, I don't know how many of you have been around Lutherans or been in Lutheran churches, but Lutheran hymnody is beautiful and powerful.
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Some of the great hymns of the church have come out of the Lutheran church.
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My favorite was written by Martin Luther. A mighty fortress is our
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God, a bulwark never failing. That is Luther's version of Psalm 46.
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During the height of the Reformation, when there was great consternation in the heart of Luther and Melanchthon, his partner, he would say,
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Come, Philip, and let us sing the 46th Psalm. And they would sing together,
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A mighty fortress is our God. By the way, it rhymes in German as well as it does in English. Can't sing it in German.
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My wife knows one thing. I said, When I die, I want two things. I want sing mighty fortress and have somebody preach the gospel.
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That's all. It's my favorite song. So Luther was a hymn writer.
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But Calvin believed that the canonical
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Psalms should make up the diet of the church. That the canonical Psalms, and by canonical, you know what
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I mean. The 150 biblical Psalms. That the 150 biblical Psalms should make up worship.
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And so out of Calvin's teaching began to be developed what were known as Psalters.
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Psalters, that's P -S -A -L -T -E -R. A Psalter is when the 150
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Psalms are set to music. In fact, if you are taking notes, again,
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I'll give you something to look at. If you go home today, look up Seedbed Psalms.
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S -E -E -D -B -E -D. Seedbed Psalms. The Seedbed Psalms take all 150
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Psalms and they set them to tunes you already know. In fact,
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I'll do it right now. Sing the first line of Amazing Grace. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound.
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Stop right there. Stop right there. Now, Psalm 46. We just said Luther rewrote
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Psalm 46, right? Mighty Fortress. Here is Psalm 46 directly from the scriptures, but set to Amazing Grace.
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Sing with me. God is our refuge and our strength.
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In him our hope is found. An ever -present help in need.
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When trouble is around. That's an example of a
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Psalter. Taking the canonical Psalms and setting them to psalm.
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So this is what Calvin believed. Now, Zwingli did something interesting.
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And I like Zwingli. He's one of my heroes. But I don't agree with everything Calvin did.
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I don't agree with everything Luther did. And I certainly don't agree with everything Zwingli did. And one of the things Zwingli did, he took music out totally.
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He was so committed to moving away from what he considered to be the faulty teachings of the medieval church.
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That he began to reform worship and use what he would call the regulative principle as we do.
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But I would say it was a very strict form of the regulative principle. So too and so strong that he would make it to where we just don't sing at all.
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I disagree with Brother Zwingli. And all of his wonderful things that he did teach and believe.
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I would say on that, I believe he went too far. I believe we are commanded to sing.
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We've already read. Paul tells us, let the word of Christ dwell within you richly. Teaching and admonishing and singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
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We are commanded. This is not an option for us. This is a necessary element of worship.
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Is singing. So, that is our brief history of worship.
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Actually, let me at least bring us up to today. Because I only brought us up to 500 years ago.
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In the last 500 years, there have also been shifts. We have gone through two, what are known as awakening periods.
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There was the great awakening. Under the preaching of men like George Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards. And out of that came some of the greatest hymns that have ever been written and put to tune.
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Then there was the second great awakening, which I would argue wasn't as great. Included some manipulative tactics of men like, who am
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I thinking Mike? Charles Finney, thank you. Charles Finney who brought in manipulative tactics into the church.
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And the camp meeting style that came out of that were not as, I would say, fruitful and godly.
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But still, a style of music came out of that. What we would call spiritual singing or camp style singing.
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A lot of the songs we do today come out of that. In fact, a lot of times
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I'll say, what's your favorite hymn? A lot of people will say songs that aren't necessarily hymns.
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They're more camp style songs. Nothing wrong with them, it's just a different style of music.
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And in the last 50 years, we have seen some of the biggest and most explosive changes in worship.
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And it has come as a result of technological advance. Consider what has brought about many of the changes of the last 50 years.
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Particularly after the rise of the Jesus movement in the 60s and the contemporary Christian music scene of the 80s.
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We now have songs that are played on the radio. And people who expect those same songs on the radio to be sung in church.
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And songs grow in popularity even because of their style and tempo.
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And because of the enjoyment of listening to them rather than because of what they say.
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And many songs today do not proclaim the truth of who God is or what
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God has done. But they still gain popularity because they are easy and fun to sing. And very empty.
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That's true. But I must say, that is not to say that everything contemporary is bad.
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One of the greatest hymns in the history of the church was written within the last 50 years. It's called
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In Christ Alone. In Christ Alone is a hymn and it's beautiful and it's true.
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And it has one of those lines in it that should be emblazoned upon the heart of all believers.
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On that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied. Our every sin on Him was laid.
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Here in the death of Christ I live. If you can't sing that as a
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Christian, there's something wrong. So we have tremendous songs that are being written and continue to be written.
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Men like Isaac Watts. You know what they said about Isaac Watts during his lifetime?
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He's a contemporary hymn writer. And many people didn't want to sing his hymns because they were contemporary. And now they're considered to be the old standards.
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See, times change and things change. There's two major issues in the church today.
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And I do want to address these because I think they're important for us to consider. Even a church as small as ours has not been immune from these two things.
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First, one of the leading causes of congregational infighting is music.
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And if you can't say amen, say ouch. There's my nod to Brother Vody who went to be with the
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Lord this week. Is it not true that so many churches have fought battles?
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There was a time in the 90s and the early 2000s where books were being written called Worship Wars. Because the battles were so deep.
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Churches began to split in half. Mike, you know this. Andy, you know this. You've seen it. Churches would have to have two services.
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A contemporary service and a traditional service. And what happens when you do that, church?
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You have two churches. You have two churches. Now, I'm not saying a church can't have two services.
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But if you're having one service to satisfy this group of people and another church service to satisfy this group of people, guess what you're doing?
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You're dividing your church into two churches. And they're not fellowshipping with one another because they can't even sing together.
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Beloved, that's not good. But that's one of the things that has occurred.
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Music has caused no small division within the church. But the second thing is that music in many churches has become the primary focus of worship services.
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And this is where I'm going to get a little zwingling on you. If it's the primary thing, it'd be better if you didn't do it.
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If music and singing is the primary act of worship, and here's how you know this.
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People say this way. People come to church and they'll say, you know, I like the worship today or I didn't like the worship today.
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What are they talking about? The singing. They're talking about the singing. Or I remember this happened to R .C.
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Sproul. R .C. Sproul was preaching at a church and the guy came up to introduce him. And he says, now that worship has concluded, we'll have
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Dr. Sproul come and preach. And Dr. Sproul, boy, he's like a bulldog. He growled.
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And he came up there and he says, I want you to know, worship has not concluded.
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Worship will continue with the preaching of the word. That's R .C.
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Sproul impression. But that's the reality.
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Worship is all of what we do. As I mentioned last week, we have seven different prayers that we do in our time of worship.
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We have catechism. We have confession. We have our statement of faith. We have
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Mike reading the scripture to us every week from the old covenant since I'm preaching in the new covenant. We have
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Brother Andy coming and leading us in our statement of faith. We have the deacon who comes and leads us in the catechism.
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Every one of those is an element of worship. The song singing is important, but it's not the only thing that we do.
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And here's the thing that is so sad. People will leave churches over singing. Doctrinally sound churches over the worship music.
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And I find very little that's more immature than that. Well, I just can't get into the music.
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Grow up. Could you get into the music in the catacombs?
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Because I guarantee you they didn't have no guitar. And they weren't worried about four part harmonies.
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It's not about you. And it's not about me. It's about the
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God who has called us to worship. If we come in here and we sing all hymns or if we come in here and we sing all contemporary music.
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The only thing we should be concerned about is are the songs true to the word of God? Do they exalt the
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Lord Jesus Christ? And are they singable? I will say this.
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If you go to a church and all the songs are impossible to sing. Then guess what? You've put yourself back into the medieval church.
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Because part of the reason for the advent of choirs was because the songs became songs that were only to be sung by people who were professional singers.
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And the congregation couldn't participate. That's a problem. If the songs are too difficult for the people to participate in.
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Then they're not the songs that should be used for worship. I have some great songs that I love. I have wonderful songs that I sing at home or sing in the car.
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But we don't sing them in worship because they're not singable for a congregation. I mean honestly and I know this is not a church song.
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But if I asked you all to stand up right now and sing Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You. We're going to sound like a bag of cats with our tails tied together.
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But if I said. And do this with me. Jesus loves me this
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I know. For the Bible tells me so.
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Little ones to him belong. They are weak but he is strong.
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Yes Jesus loves me. Yes Jesus loves me.
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Yes Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.
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How much more beautiful and worshipful can you get than that? Congregational participation must be part of what we sing.
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Because the question of why do we sing? We sing because God deserves it. We sing because it's one of the ways that we're catechized.
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We learn things through singing. And we memorize through singing. And we sing because the scripture commands it.
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To sing to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. What should we sing?
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We should sing songs that glorify Christ. And that everybody can participate in. And then how should we sing? We should sing together.
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Whether with an instrument or without. The Bible says praise him. What does Psalm 150 say?
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Psalm 150. Let everything that has breath praise the
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Lord. Praise him. And it just goes on and on and on. Beloved we are called to sing.
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We are called to sing out. And one of the most desperately sad things I sometimes see.
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And I'm not again trying to be too harsh on you today. But I am trying to nudge and even urge you to consider this.
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It is a sad thing when I see a father with his family. And he's doing this during worship.
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You fathers are called to lead your homes. Not just by earning a paycheck.
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And not just by reading a few Bible verses in the evening with your children. Do those things.
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They're good. But on Sunday morning, lead your family to church.
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Lead your family to the pew. And lead your family in the singing to your
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God. Because you are the worship leader of your home. You're called to lead.
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Don't let me hear your kids and not you. Or your wife and not you.
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Sing. Sing. Why do we sing? Because God is worthy.
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What do we sing? Songs that glorify him. And how should we sing? We sing with thankfulness.
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So sing. If you don't want to, repent. And then sing. And then sing.
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And sing with joy. Sing with thanksgiving. Sing when it hurts. Sing when it heals. Sing. Sing. Sing.
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Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. For we have a gospel worth singing about.
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We have a gospel that can save a dying man. A gospel that says if you today have come here, and your sins have never been forgiven, we have a gospel that says that the
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Lord Jesus Christ, when he died on the cross, took the sins of everyone who believed, and he paid the penalty for them, and drank the cup of God's wrath down to the last dreg.
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And if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved.
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In a moment, we're going to take communion. We're going to remind ourselves of what
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Christ did on our behalf. And I want you to remember, that is worthy of our song.
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What Christ has done. Let us pray. Father, we thank you for the opportunity to consider what it means, and why we should sing out to you.
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And I pray, oh God, today, that through the preaching of your word, that your people have been edified, challenged, and encouraged.