When the Holy Spirit Comes to Church

Providence Baptist Church iconProvidence Baptist Church

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Ephesians 5:19-21

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Amen, I'm so encouraged just to hear you sing, the scripture reading, the confession and catechism reading.
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Thank you all as we consider the greatness and glory of Christ. You know, expectation and reality, they don't always match up, do they?
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I'll tell you a little story about yesterday. It's a little bit gruesome, so if you're queasy, maybe you should prep yourself.
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Yesterday, my son, Caleb, most of you know, had a little bit of an accident mowing.
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He was mowing, and for some reason, they didn't think that they should use a weed eater on kind of this part of a yard, and it's pretty steep.
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And so he fell over, and the mower's coming down, and he like pushes it away. And it turns out, it slices his finger open very badly.
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And so, of course, he's only 13, and he's wailing, and he's running around.
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My wife and I and the other three kids, we're in Van Buren at this time. And just in the providence of God, Gunner had already taken him to this place to mow, but Gunner, in the providence of God, just had this thought, well,
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I'm going to go and check in on him. And so when they called him and said, there's a problem, he was like, you know, two minutes away.
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But here's the idea of expectation versus reality. When they got in the truck, and they're speeding on to Conway to get
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Caleb to the ER, they've called us and all those things. In the truck, they're on the way, and Gunner whips out his knife, and he unfolds it, flips it out.
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And he says to Caleb, Caleb, I'm really sorry, and this is really going to hurt, but we've got to do this.
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And Caleb begins just wailing, like what in the world is about to happen here?
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And he's like crying, and even Braden, you know, they're both wide -eyed, and Braden's like, what are you doing,
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Gunner? You know, and Gunner begins to cut off a piece of his shirt, and he uses that as a tourniquet to tie really tightly around the finger.
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But apparently, Caleb and Braden thought that he was going to whip out the knife and just go ahead and finish off the finger.
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So expectation and reality are not always the same. And so this morning,
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I invite you to turn in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 5, and verse 18 and following.
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Now, we've technically finished verse 18, but we've got to start there to get into our text. What I want to say this morning is
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I want the expectation and the reality of the Holy Spirit to line up.
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That's what we're looking at. What should we expect when the Holy Spirit is working in a church?
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What are the kind of things that we should look for? And this morning, we see that. We don't want to have one thought in our mind and another thought be the reality, like my sons did with Gunner.
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We want to know the biblical truth of what it looks like when the Holy Spirit, as it were,
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I don't mean this irreverently, but what does it look like when the Holy Spirit shows up to church?
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And so that's what we want to take from our text, Ephesians chapter 5. Let's begin in verse 18. I invite you to stand as we honor the reading of God's word, and I'll read through verse 21.
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Paul says, And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. So we've covered this, and now we dive into verse 19.
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Addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the
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Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father, in the name of our
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Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
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Let's pray. Father, help us to have the right expectation when it comes to the Holy Spirit. And we pray that His visiting this place,
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His being with us and in us and filling us would be a reality. And we pray,
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Father, that you would be honored through the heralding of Christ this morning. Help us to rightly understand this truth.
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Lord, in my weakness, help me to preach. And we pray that Jesus would be honored in this place.
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Lord, we know that today is a day that we have a few people out for various reasons. We pray that you'd be with them and bring them back to us soon.
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And we pray that the Holy Spirit would be pleased to apply this truth today, deeply in our hearts, challenge us as Christians, encourage us as Christians.
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And those who are not believers today, those who are unconverted, we pray for the gracious and saving work of the
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Holy Spirit, even today to convict rebels of sins, to take hardened hearts and soften them and draw sinners to Christ.
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We pray you do all these things for your glory. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. This morning, we're going to start out with everyone's favorite portion, and that is grammar, right?
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We do a little grammar work. I know that that's not everyone's cup of tea, but we want to rightly handle the
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Word of God, and we want to rightly divide the Word of truth. And we want to understand the
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Scriptures as the Holy Spirit has given them to us. And so in verse 18, we have these two imperatives together.
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Do not get drunk with wine, so don't do this, for that is debauchery, but do this, but be filled with the
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Spirit. So you have these commands working together. And then flowing out of this command though, and that's the grammar lesson, are five participles connected to this.
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So I'm demonstrating here that the filling of the Spirit in the
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Christian is directly connected to these five participles.
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And I'm actually taking these five participles I want to show you as the result of what it means to be filled in the
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Spirit. So how the grammar works, you have these commands, and now flowing from these commands are these participles, all right?
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And that's what I'm trying to communicate in today's sermon, the title, When the Holy Spirit Comes to Church.
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What does it look like? This is not to be irreverent, but rather when the Holy Spirit is present and filling a church, what are the things that are happening?
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What are your expectations? Well, they should be these. So in the
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English Standard Version, essentially every I -N -G word in verses 19 through 21, that is a participle feeding off the command.
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The only exception is in verse 20, the word everything is used, that's not a participle.
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But every other I -N -G word in the English Standard Version is a participle flowing from these commands.
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So let me just walk through them real quick. So verse 19, which I -N -G words do you begin seeing?
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Verse 19, addressing, okay? Addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
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Number two, singing. Number three, making melody.
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That's together, making melody. So addressing, singing, making melody.
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Number four is in verse 20, giving thanks. That's together. And then number five is in verse 21, submitting.
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So what I'm saying is these five verbs flow out of the imperative of verse 18.
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You need to understand that when Paul says to be filled with the Spirit, that this is what that looks like.
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This is in Paul's mind. These five words, these five participles together flowing out of the command.
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So what does it look like to be filled in the Spirit? It looks like addressing one another and singing and making melody and giving thanks and submitting.
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And so we've spent a few weeks, you know, we've spent a few weeks on verse 18 and we've looked at some big picture ideas of what it means to be filled in the
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Spirit. But now what we're doing is we're diving directly into these verses and we're showing
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Paul's connection to being filled in the Spirit with the life of the local church.
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All right, so the first point to consider, and I have four big points. We'll get through two today and will not come as a surprise,
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I know. But the first point to consider as we ask this question, what does it look like when the
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Holy Spirit comes to church? What does that look like? Number one, the first answer is regular assembly.
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Number one, what does it look like when the Holy Spirit comes to church? Number one, regular assembly.
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So we start here in verse 19, addressing one another. I start here because in the
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King James, it translates this way, speaking to yourselves. And so this may be taken if you just thought about that, speaking to yourselves, what does that mean?
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I found as I get older, I speak to myself a lot, right? Like, Dad, who are you talking to? Oh, just myself, right?
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So you might come under the impression if you think about that, speaking to yourselves as just individuals in the church encouraging themselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
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And beloved, this is certainly true. Like, we do this and it's good.
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You're having a tough day and you just begin singing one of the great hymns of the faith or a psalm and spiritual song.
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And it encourages your soul and it strengthens you. Praise God, that's wonderful.
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We would never want to discount that. You should sing. But I want to point out that Paul's purpose here is not for individuals to merely encourage themselves individually.
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That's not Paul's intent. Rather, his purpose is how the
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ESV translates. I think the LSB is similar here, that we would do this to one another.
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That's the point in verse 19, addressing one another. So it's not merely just speaking internally to yourselves, but it's to one another.
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So for this point, I'll just put it very simply this way. When the Holy Spirit comes to church, there are people there, right?
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He does gather with us no matter how small we are in small churches all over the world, but he never gathers at a place where no one is assembling, right?
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Because the local church is an assembly. And so the local church assembles because we are in Christ and the
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Spirit of God is in us. And part of what it means to be filled in the
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Holy Spirit is that we are speaking the truth of God to one another and we're singing the truth of God to one another.
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Now, let me also mention this. There are aspects of this reality that can and should be done outside of church meetings.
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Think about this in verse 19. Addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the
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Lord with your heart. You begin to sing at a Christian gathering or you begin to encourage someone outside of the church and they say, no, no, brother, you can't do that.
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We're not in church, right? Like, no, we can apply this beyond our meetings.
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In fact, let me say this. Let me encourage us and myself and you. Let's make singing more of a part of our
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Christian gatherings, right? So when we gather for lunch or when we gather in homes, singing is part of the life of the
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Christian and it is a way that we encourage one another. One commentary this week,
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I was reading Harold Horner. He says, music is the means by which believers minister to each other and worship the
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Lord. Addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the
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Lord with your heart. So let us then as a church body minister to one another in song even outside of our regular gatherings.
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But don't miss this. In verse 19, Paul is addressing the whole church and the way, the only way for the whole church to do this together is what?
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If the whole church, what? Assembles and comes together. Even, and I have friends and brothers and I understand the necessity of this and we have to think through these things.
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Sometimes churches find the need to have one service at this time in the morning and another service at that time in the morning and again,
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I'm not trying to disparage my brothers who end up going to that, that misses the point.
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Like how can I minister to you in song if I'm in one service and you're in another service, right?
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We come together and we sing the whole church assembles. Let me point you for a moment real quick.
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Turn over to Hebrews 10. You know this passage but turn for a moment real quick to Hebrews 10. Now this passage in Hebrews 10, it's its own passage with its own purpose but just consider something that Hebrews 10 24 and 25 tells us.
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And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. Not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
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Now before you assemble on Sunday morning, I want you to think about something. Before you come together with God's people, you are commanded by God to consider, right?
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How to stir up one another to love and good works and you are commanded by the
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Lord to think about how you ought to encourage one another and can I give you just a one application of this?
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Like in one sense we can marry Ephesians 5 19 and Hebrews 10 24 and 25.
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Do you know that one simple way that you can come in the church and encourage one another in the church?
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One way. Sing. Come in the church and prepare your voice to sing.
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I'm tempted to use an illustration of Buddy the Elk. The best way to spread
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Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear. Well if that's true on a silly little movie, love, it's so much richer and fuller and truer in the church.
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The way that we encourage one another, one of the ways, not the only way of course, but one of the ways that we come together and encourage one another in the
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Lord is singing loud. I don't mean sing obnoxious, but I mean lifting our voices to the
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Lord and encouraging one another in the faith. So when the Holy Spirit comes to church, there is regular assembly.
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Certainly we do more than just sing. We pray, we preach, we catechize, we do all these things, but there's no understanding of the feeling of the
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Holy Spirit that can be entirely disconnected from our assembling together.
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All right, so what does it look like when the Holy Spirit comes to church? First, regular assembly. Secondly, what does it look like when the
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Holy Spirit comes to church and fills the place with His presence and fills believers?
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Secondly, rejoicing all. Number one, regular assembly. Number two, rejoicing all.
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Now we're only gonna finish verse 19 today, but one week on a verse is actually not too slow, right, in comparison.
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So addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the
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Lord with your heart. So now what we're gonna do, rejoicing all. We're going to hone in here on this element of singing.
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So when the Holy Spirit comes to church, God's people sing.
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This is rejoicing all. I have four points to consider here that will take the rest of the sermon.
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First, what are the means? Number one, what are the means to singing?
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Okay, what are the means to this rejoicing all? Specifically, Paul says here that they are singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
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God's people are singing people. Why, like, if you just say to yourself, well,
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I don't like to sing. Now we have different dispositions about it, right? Some of you like to sing and you sing loud and you sing all the time and maybe you sing even when your wife says, would you be, hypothetically, if your wife's pregnant and she says, could you sing maybe a little less, you know, maybe a little less loud.
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Maybe some of you are still tempted to sing loud. But all of God's people sing.
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This is because we serve a singing God. Zephaniah 3 .17,
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for example, says that the Lord, Yahweh, sings over His people.
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We're made in the image of God and we're renewed believers, are renewed in the image of Christ. We sing because we are the people of God.
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The Holy Spirit of God is in us. And how could we not sing if God, since God, is a singing
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God? And of course, we sing also because of what God has done for us.
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Christ was crucified for our sins. He rose again from the dead.
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We are alive in Him. We have been given grace upon grace. If you are familiar with the
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Razorback fight song, when the Razorbacks score a touchdown this fall in football, then you get up and you celebrate and you sing.
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Why? You sing in celebration. Well, how much more do Christians have to sing about?
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Because Christ is King and because He's redeemed us and He's a full atonement.
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Can it be? Yes. Hallelujah. What a Savior. The mother rocks her young infant child in order to comfort him or her by singing.
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How much more should the church's natural response be to the soothing power of the gospel?
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We sing. We're full of rejoicing awe. And the means by which we express this rejoicing awe is singing, the text says, psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
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So let's talk about this for a minute. Now, there are some churches today that practice what is called exclusive psalmody.
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They sing only psalms. That's what that means. And they don't sing anything else.
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And so they take here in the text psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. They say that they just mean the same thing and it's referring to the same thing.
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Now, I disagree. I don't want to disparage my brothers who sing only psalms. But I disagree with exclusive psalmody for a few reasons.
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First, I don't think that this text here is teaching this. I think that we can differentiate between psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
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Maybe subtle differences, but differences nonetheless. Secondly, I want you to think about this. If we were only to sing psalms, there are a lot of words that we would never sing.
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We would never sing the name Jesus. We would never sing the word church.
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We would never sing some of so many of the great words that we have revealed later on in the scriptures.
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And then thirdly, I want you to consider this. We do a lot in our service of just specifically reading the scriptures.
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But we also do a lot in our service that's not explicitly reading the scriptures, but is guided and shaped and led by the scriptures.
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For example, we pray, but we don't believe that we need to pray only the scriptures. So we pray and we use the scriptures, by the way, to pray.
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But when we pray, it's not verbatim scriptures. Or when we preach, we preach from the word of God.
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But the words that we're preaching are not exclusively the scriptures. And so I think it's a little silly actually to force us to only sing the scriptures, only actually sing the psalms.
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And so I think that's in the text that we sing more than. We sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.
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So my argument is that we're not exclusive psalm.
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But let me mention this. I don't think probably anyone came in here struggling with that. But I do wanna say this.
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And listen, I've already talked to Gunnar about this. I've talked this week about it and said, hey, this is in the text and I need to bring this up.
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Of course, it's mine and Jacob's job to oversee the worship anyway. So it falls upon us.
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But I do think that we need to do a better job in our church of actually singing some psalms.
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Because it's in the text, right? Paul says, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the
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Lord with your heart. A church is being disobedient to this text if she never sings any psalms, right?
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So it's something I think that at our church, we wanna be a church that's reforming and always reforming.
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And so as we come across a passage like this, we think, okay, this is something we can do better at.
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We need to do this. I don't think it means that every time we gather, you have to sing a psalm. I don't think that's the application here, but it's something
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I do think that we need to improve as a church. And besides that, I jotted down four reasons.
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So besides the command, I jotted down four more reasons I think it's wise and helpful for a church to sing psalms.
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First, these I'll go through quickly. But first, think about psalms. The book of psalms is the church's oldest hymn book.
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And when we sing the psalms, we are connecting ourselves to the saints of all ages by singing these words.
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Secondly, these psalms are God breathed. God wrote these songs through human authors.
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Think about that for just a moment. Why wouldn't, like, why would we say, well, I don't wanna sing God breathed songs.
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Well, of course we do. Thirdly, the psalms teach us how and what to sing.
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Or let's just be honest, read the psalms. If you're writing music and then you read the psalms, like there's some things that you would never think it's okay for me to say in a psalm, right?
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Unless you read the psalms and you realize, dash your children against the rocks. Maybe you're not gonna put that in a song that you write.
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That's in the psalms. And there's a context to that. And there's a reason that God's people ought to sing things like that.
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Fourthly, the psalms teach us that singing is appropriate in every season. Do not walk out of here and think
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I have to be joyful. I have to be, meaning I have to be happy in order to sing.
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No, no, read the psalms. The psalms are written in various times, right?
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We have songs of praise and we have songs of lament contained in the psalms. We have times of spiritual highs.
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We have times of spiritual lows. We have times of suffering. We have times of lament.
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We have times of victory. We have times of triumph, all contained in the book of psalms.
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So do you know what this teaches us? There's never a time in the Christian life when it's not appropriate for us to sing.
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When we're on the mountain, we sing. When we're in the valley, we sing. When we're preaching on the streets, we sing.
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When we're locked up, we sing. That's what you heard today from Paul and Silas in the scripture reading from Acts 16.
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What were they doing? Sometimes you can't get a bunch of Baptists to sing on a
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Sunday morning in an air -conditioned building when everything's going wonderful. But what happened to the first Baptist?
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They were stinging in jail. Friends, there's never a time that the church doesn't sing.
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And so when the Holy Spirit comes to church, God's people sing. Our means of rejoicing all is singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
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I also mentioned this, to sing the psalms, this is, again, I don't think you're struggling with this, but I do wanna bring it out.
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To sing the psalms is to sing songs written for musical accompaniment, right?
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So as long as instruments are serving the songs, as long as the instruments are serving the people and they're not being a distraction or putting the focus on the instrument, right?
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Like if I say, like if Gunnar was playing and then he's like, okay, now watch my guitar solo.
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Like that would be inappropriate. But we need to use instruments as available to sing.
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It doesn't mean that a church has to use instruments, but we should reject any notion of the idea that it's wrong to use instruments in our worship.
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I'll go ahead and say this, but the church of Christ, they don't use instruments.
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But I want you to turn to Psalm 92 for just a moment. And Paul says here, clearly, we should sing psalms.
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Now consider Psalm 92. This is just one example.
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I mean, we could have walked through a lot, but in Psalm 92, it says this, it is good.
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Oh, by the way, let me just read it. Did you know, maybe you didn't know this. Do you know those, do you have words? You should, you should.
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Psalm 92, and do you have these words? Mine are in all caps. A Psalm, a song for the Sabbath.
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Did you know that that's not just a title? Did you know that's scripture? Oftentimes we don't realize that, but that is breathed out word of God.
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Each one of the Psalms have a little title above it. So a Psalm, a song for the Sabbath.
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It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High, to declare your steadfast love in the morning and your faithfulness by night.
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And listen to verse three. To the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre, for you,
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O Lord, have made me glad by your work. At the works of your hands, I sing for joy.
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So my argument is not that you're wrestling with this by any means, but I know this is an area, we have a church of Christ in town, and so maybe you run into people like, well, you shouldn't use instruments, and here's why.
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Well, no, you should, because we're just singing Psalms. So when instruments are available and they're used to serve the singing of God's people, they are good and right for a church to use.
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So when the Holy Spirit comes to church, God's people are filled with rejoicing awe, and the means by which they express this rejoicing awe comes through Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.
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Secondly here, let me mention motivation. So means, Psalms, hymns, spiritual songs.
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Secondly, motivation, verse 19, addressing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the
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Lord with your heart. Melody in your heart. So listen, we're not singing merely because we have to.
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We're not singing just because, well, I went to church today and I'm singing because that's what I have to do.
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We don't merely sing from the lips. We sing from the heart.
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By the way, this is not silent singing in your heart because look at the text, notice something.
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It's hard to pick up in the English, but at the end, it says your heart.
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Now that doesn't sound funny, not to be irreverent, but let me translate this into Perry County vernacular.
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Y 'all's heart. That's what
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Paul's saying. Y 'all's heart. In other words, the word your in the text is plural and the word heart is singular.
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We would expect him to say either your heart, singular, singular, or we'd expect him to say,
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Perry County, y 'all's hearts, right? I mean, that'd be plural, plural. But no, it's plural, singular, all right?
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Why? Okay, because Paul is not saying make melody in your singular hearts or your plural hearts plural, but rather singing unto the
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Lord is flowing from the united heartbeat of the church. In other words, how many hearts does
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Perryville Second Baptist Church have? Well, in one sense, you would look at our membership role and you'd say, well, there's 34 members, so there's 34 hearts, right?
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No, that may be in one sense, okay. But actually what Paul's saying is there's 34 members, but there's only one heart.
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That's right, there's a united heartbeat of the church. We sing then because we love Christ and our hearts have been redeemed, but we also sing because we love one another.
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Ephesians has emphasized time and again, our unity in Christ. And we have, as a church, one heartbeat.
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We have one heart together. So sing church, sing out of that heart, sing out of that united heart, sing loud because when you sing, you're not only expressing your rejoicing all, but you're also edifying your brothers and sisters in Christ.
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If you don't sing, you're robbing me of something that God intends for me when we gather to worship.
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Addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the
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Lord with your heart. So our motivation for singing flows from a united heart for Christ and a united heart with one another.
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Also, let me mention the word melody in our text. You could literally translate that as psalming.
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That's just hard to say. And it doesn't, you know, psalming instead of making melody, you could say and psalming to the
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Lord with your heart, because that's where the word comes from. It comes from the Greek word for psalms. And it carries again, the connotation of instrumentation.
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So when we use instruments for singing and to help us with melody, we remember that we use them to help us and to aid, not for a distraction or to be center stage.
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By the way, this is not in my notes, but that's why when we gather for singing, we don't turn out the lights to you poor people in the pews and then shine the stage up here.
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Not long ago, I think it was Connell and I, or maybe it was Monty. I think it was
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Monty and I, we were doing door to door. And this man said that he has sang for 30 years in the
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Episcopal choir. And that's where he should be every Sunday, not in the cheap seats.
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I was like, what? Oh, I understand what he means. Oh, he thinks the congregation is the cheap seats and appears where everything's really happened.
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No, no. That's why we don't turn out the lights and then just shine spotlights up here so we can all focus on Gunner or me or whoever happens to be leading in song that week.
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No, we wanna see one another because we wanna make a melody together out of a united heart.
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I think about melody. I think about how stinging various parts of songs together sometimes, you know, where you have those songs and you have people singing parts.
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This is really a lost art. Some people who are younger than me may not even have an idea of what
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I'm saying when I say sing parts, you know, like bass and treble and alto and tenor.
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Or there's those songs sometimes where the ladies sing a part and then the men sing a part. I'm not saying every song has to be that way, but I'm saying, isn't that a beautiful thing?
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Because it's all different people singing various parts of songs. And yet they come together and they give what?
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One united heart of the glory and wonder and all of Christ. And it's just something lost on too many modern worship songs,
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I'm afraid. We don't always have to sing in parts. Don't misunderstand me. But there is something about the people of God singing in parts that make up one beautiful song to honor the
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Lord. That leads me to my third point. We have the means of our rejoicing all, the motivation of our rejoicing all.
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Thirdly, the mark of our rejoicing all. And don't miss this in verse 19. The goal, the mark, the prize, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
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Singing and making melody. And then this important prepositional phrase right here. To the
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Lord. To the Lord. Our mark, our goal, our aim is the resurrected and exalted
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Christ. We sing to the King. We're not singing about how great and worthy and wonderful we are.
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We're singing about how great and awesome and mighty and worthy He is.
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I don't want to hear songs in my ears that diminish the glory of Christ and exalt the glory of man.
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I don't want to hear songs in my ears that treat Jesus as a poor, miserable beggar.
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I don't want to hear songs, get them out of my ears that make Jesus out to like a high school boy who has a crush on us as his girlfriend or whatever.
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That's not the kind of songs we sing. We want to sing unto the Lord. He's worthy.
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This is the kind of singing God requires of us. And it is for the point of this sermon, the kind of singing that the
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Holy Spirit produces in the church. Of course, we also honor the
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Son when we honor the Father and the Holy Spirit. So we sing songs about and to and for the
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Trinity because our singing first and foremost is not about us, but about the glory and honor of God.
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Sometimes, by the way, that means that we sing songs that show the reality of who we are apart from Christ.
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We are worms apart from Christ. We are vile apart from Christ.
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We are deserving of hell apart from Christ. And if you listen to the way that churches sing today, sometimes we don't want to put those things in our songs.
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We want our songs to be more therapeutic, and we say encouraging, and we say uplifting.
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Modern music does not like to address our depravity. That's because of the pressure of our present culture.
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But listen, we need to sing about God's wrath and our wretched condition. Why? Because these things, we don't just sing a song that ends on our wretched condition.
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We sing a song that begins with our wretched condition and then leads us to something else, the sweeter and the sweetness and the beauty and the glory of the gospel.
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When we paint the blackness and the vileness and the wretchedness of our sin, what does it do to the diamond of the gospel on the black canvas of our sin?
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It makes it shine all the more beautiful. Would he devote that sacred head?
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Do you know what the original is? For such a worm as I.
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If you look in your hymn book today, it's changed it. Would he devote that sacred head for sinners such as I?
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Now, that's still true. It's gloriously true. And there's not a problem singing sinners.
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It's just, you see a little bit of a move away from hard words like worm.
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Friends, we're singing to the Lord. Above all else, this is the driving mark of our songs.
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We want to honor Christ. Let me give you another application. This ought to help us move past personal preferences.
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Can you believe that churches fight over style sometimes? You like this style of song.
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I like this style of song. But these preferences fade in only one way.
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How? When we look to Christ. You actually have churches that say we're going to have a 9 a .m.
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traditional service and a 10 a .m. contemporary service. What they mean is they can't get along.
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They can't figure out how to both look to Christ together. And so they have one group that's going to sing the traditional songs and at nine o 'clock.
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And you have another group that's going to sing contemporary songs at 10 o 'clock. Who's right? Nobody. They've all lost.
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They're wrong. Christ is our unifier.
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We look to Christ. Sometimes it also means that we look at songs that we thought we liked because of style.
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And we actually think about the words and we're like, this ain't good. We eliminate it because they're not theologically accurate because we're singing to the
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Lord. He is our mark. Our goal is to honor Christ. So this leads me now to my last point here.
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We've considered the means, motivation, mark. And finally, I'll mention the message, which is similar to the last point, but I want to press this a little bit farther.
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So Paul says addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the
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Lord with your heart. Now, I've addressed this a bit, but let me just put it this way.
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Our songs that we sing ought to be rich.
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We sing the psalms, but we also sing hymns and spiritual songs that are rich and deep and theologically full.
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Now consider some of the modern songs that some people sing. I printed this off the internet, so it's true.
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But I'm just going to read. I'm just going to read. Okay. I'm not like,
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I didn't be like, man, I need to really figure out how to how to make this song sound a little bit shallow and repetitious.
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No, I just printed it lyrics. So I'm not adding any. I'm just going to read the lyrics as is.
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Way maker. Miracle worker. Promise keeper. Light in the darkness.
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My God, that is who you are. Yeah. Yeah. Way maker.
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Miracle worker. Promise keeper. Light in the darkness.
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My God, that is who you are. Sing. That is who you are.
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Oh, that is who you are. That is who you are. Oh, and that is who you are.
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That is who you are. Yeah. And that is who you are.
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Yeah. That is who you are. Oh, that is who you are.
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Oh, it's who you are. Now, Jesus. Okay.
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It's not that there's not some truth in that song. And I'm not trying to just pick on the song.
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I'm trying to show you a contrast. Consider these condensed lines from the old Charles Wesleyan.
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He left his father's throne above. So free, so infinite. His grace emptied himself of all but love and bled for Adam's helpless race.
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His mercy all immense and free, for oh my God, it found out me. What about the song this morning?
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Oh, to grace, how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be. Let thy grace now like a fetter bind my wondering heart to thee.
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Prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, Lord, take and seal.
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Seal it for thy courts above. Or how about this line from an old Isaac Watts tune?
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Oh, Lord of hosts, almighty King, while we so near thy presence dwell, our faith shall sit secure and sing defiance to the gates of hell.
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What I am trying to teach us is there is so much depth and richness packed into these tight, concise sections of songs.
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We don't have to just keep saying, that is who you are. Yeah, that is who you are ad nauseum, right?
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We have so much gospel here. There's so much truth instead of just repetitious shallowness.
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This is not me saying old is good, new is bad. We sing, I think, some great newer songs here.
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But the songs that we sing, beloved, whether new or old, we want the message to be rich.
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And let me just tell you something. It pains me to have to say this, but it's true. You will remember the songs that we sing far longer than you'll remember the finely crafted, alliterated sermons that I preach.
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I'm not even gonna ask you tonight what the points were. You'll sing far longer than you remember the points of the sermon.
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The songs we sing minister to our souls. They comfort our hearts.
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They inform our minds. They teach us. Many songs even have a call to the lost.
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They even call sinners to look to Christ and be saved. Think about this line. Lay aside the garments that are stained with sin and be washed in the blood of the
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Lamb. There's a fountain flowing for the soul unclean. All be washed in the blood of the
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Lamb. So let us obey this text by singing rich and full and weighty songs, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing, making melody to the
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Lord with your heart. No one is going to sit around a hospital bed with a man's dying breath and sing reckless love.
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But they will sing, and I have sung this, the man's dying breath, my sin, all the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin, not in part, is nailed to the cross.
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And I bear it no more. Praise the Lord. Praise the
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Lord. Oh, my soul. Let me make this point again in verse 18.
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And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. What do drunkards do?
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They sing little ditties. Maybe they sing crass or funny songs, little catchy tunes.
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But the church isn't drunk. She is filled in and led by the third person of the
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Trinity, the Holy Spirit of our almighty and righteous God.
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So her singing, then, is much richer and deeper and fuller than a drunkard.
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We sing, friends, truth. We sing Christ. We sing of sin's defeat. We sing of Satan's downfall.
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We sing of the cross and the resurrection. We sing of the virgin birth. We sing of trust in the Lord. We sing of mercy.
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We sing of grace. We sing of our triune God. We sing of the birth of Christ. We sing of the ascension and the kingship of Christ.
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Crown Him with many crowns. We sing of our blessed hope. We sing and we sing and we sing and we sing, because this is what it looks like when the
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Holy Spirit comes to church. Well, that gets us through verse 19. And we'll cover verse 20 and 21 next week.
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But what about you this morning? Friends, is the
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Holy Spirit in you? Are you filled in Him?
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Has this shown itself in your regular assembly and in your rejoicing all?
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If not, do not harden your heart.
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Come humbly to the throne of grace and look to our
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King of mercy. Repent of your sins and believe the gospel.
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Friends, what I want to know this morning, I'll make a statement and then a question.
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The statement is this. As we look at this text, what we are learning and what we've learned from Ephesians 5, what we are learning is the
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Bible's definition of Christianity. That's the statement.
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The question is, will we as individuals and as a church, as members and guests, will we embrace the
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Bible's definition of Christianity? Or will we allow the culture to corrupt it?
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Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that it ministers so sweetly to our souls.
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I pray for the Christians in this room. I pray that we are corrected and encouraged, equipped.
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If there's any part of our life or doctrine or mindset that needs to be corrected, we pray that even now we'd be convicted and we would repent and we'd repent in joy knowing what 1
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John 2 says that if we have, if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the
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Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. Let us then boldly and humbly take our sins to the
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Savior. Father, if there are those in this room, and we are confident that there are those in this room, whether they be children or whether they be adolescents or adults who are hard hearted and don't know
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Christ and to them thinking about singing and such is maybe boring or seems like something they don't really care about, would you even now pierce their hearts with Christ?
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Show them that Christ is their only suitable and all -sufficient Savior. And if they will but turn to Him in repentance and faith,
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He will be their Savior. I pray that you would work in all these ways and more, ways that we've asked for and ways that we haven't, ways that we can see and in ways that we cannot see, for the glory of Christ and His kingdom.