Sing the New Song--part 1 — John D. Martin

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Good morning. It's a blessing to be here. Every time we sing, I think these thoughts. This is the only activity in a typical church service that we're still going to be doing in eternity. Someday the preaching will all be over.

Someday the praying will all be over. No, we'll still be fellowshipping and we'll still be worshipping and that might include more than singing. But of the activities that we're used to in our typical congregational experience, this is the one we're going to do through all eternity.

And so we want to get it right while we're here. Would you turn to 280 in your hymnal? Just want to sing one verse and then I'd like to make a couple comments. This has a long time been a high on the favorite list of our family.

We love this song.

O soul, guide me, O thou great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land. I am weak, but thou art mighty. Hold me with thy powerful hand. Spread of heaven, fear and evermore, lead me now and ever.

Now if you look at the date on that song, it takes us back about 200 years to the country of Wales. And I don't know how much you know about what happened there. But if you would have gone out early in the morning, every morning, this went on for years.

And those miners were walking to work and women were walking to work. That was in the days before there were automobiles, people walked and they would be singing this song. And if you were at a public meeting, the public meeting probably would not be closed until this song was sung.

It practically became the national anthem of Wales. It was written by a man by the name of William Williams. Now we don't hear much about him, but he was about as notable in his own country at least, Wales, as John Wesley was in England.

He travelled about 95 ,000 miles by horse and he was a little different from Wesley. He was a great singer. He was known as the sweet singer of Wales and he wrote something like 900 songs, all of them in Welsh.

Only a few of them have been translated. So if you ever learn Welsh, please translate the rest. I'd like to know what they're like. I found a few more of them for the hymnal I've been compiling. But the interesting thing about that revival was he basically promoted it as a revival that was motivated and inspired by singing.

Very little preaching was done in that revival. And often if there was preaching done, in the middle of the sermon, someone would burst into song and they'd spend the rest of the evening singing. It was a singing revival and the spirit of God came down upon the country of Wales and changed the country for almost a century.

It was not the same. In fact, if you go there today, this song is still sung very, very frequently. It's been translated into something like 75 languages. It's a very popular song around the Christian world.

This man had a 40-year ministry and he was an extremely influential person. But the power of his ministry was mostly the power of song and the songs that he wrote. And so this is indeed a very important subject.

Music and the Supernatural Power of Worship

I would like for you to turn now back 2 ,500 years. Let's go back to 2 Chronicles, chapter 20. And here we have another story that tells us about the tremendous power of song. Now I'm going to state right up front my personal belief.

And that is, I think, that music brings us right up into the supernatural. That's what I believe. I believe the minute we start singing, we are on the verge of the supernatural world. Be it the right one or the wrong one.

And so that's why I think music is so terribly important. Because I think when people are singing, they are starting to commune with spirits. Either the Holy Spirit and all of the power that it represents.

Or the wrong kind of spirits and all the power that it represents. And I hope that maybe we can document that a little bit as we go along. You will recall that the nation of Judah was in terrible trouble.

Jehoshaphat was their king. The Moabites, the Ammonites and the Edomites had come up against them. And they were formidable enemies that the Israelites had not destroyed. God would not let the Israelites destroy these two nations.

Three nations. And so their thanks to Israel was when Judah was weak to come up and attack Judah. And so Jehoshaphat got an army together. The Syrians, the Israelites and the people of Judah. And he proclaimed a fast.

And he stood up in the congregation and prayed as we read in verse 6. And said, O Lord God of our fathers, art thou not God in heaven? And rulest thou not over all the kingdoms of the heathen? And in thine hand is there not power and might, so that none is able to withstand thee?

And then he reminded God of his promise. That if they ever got into trouble and they came and prayed in his sanctuary. That he would hear. And this is what he prayed. Art not thou our God who didst drive out the inhabitants of this land before thy people Israel?

I'm reading from verse 7. And gavest it to the seed of Abraham thy friend forever. And they dwelt therein and have built thee a sanctuary therein for thy name. Saying, if when evil cometh upon us as the sword, judgment or pestilence or famine.

We stand before this house and in thy presence. For thy name is in this house. And cry unto thee in our affliction, then thou wilt hear and help. Verse 12. O our God, wilt thou not judge them? For we have no might against this great company that cometh against us.

Neither know we what to do, but our eyes are upon thee. And then Jehaziel, one of the sons of Asaph. Who was a singer and a Levite. Stood up and said, don't you be dismayed about this great multitude.

The battle is not yours, it's the Lord's. And you shall not need to fight in this battle. It's my personal opinion. If Israel had always responded the way they should have to the Lord. They would never have needed to fight in any battle.

Now that's my personal belief. And this is a good example of how I think the Lord would have liked to have won their battles for them. Verse 17. Ye shall not need to fight in this battle. Set yourselves, stand ye still and see the salvation of the Lord with you.

O Judah and Jerusalem. Fear not, nor be dismayed. Tomorrow go out against them, for the Lord will be with you. And they all worshiped. Now, I want to define the word worship before we get very far. A lot of what goes on today, I don't think is worship.

Worship as a Whole-Life Response to God's Worth

Worship is not getting together and making a lot of exciting noises. That's not worship. It could be. But worship itself is not worship. Worship is not something we do primarily on Sunday morning. Worship is not even primarily something we do when we're singing.

Because the word worship comes from the old English word, worth-ship. We only worship whenever, by our entire life, we demonstrate that God is worth more to us than anything else. That's worship. And then if we come together and our singing is part and parcel of what we have demonstrated by word and deed throughout the week, then we worship.

But if this is disconnected from what you were doing over the past six days, then you were not worshiping this morning. We only worship whenever we have demonstrated that God is the highest thing on our list of priorities.

I heard a preacher say not too long ago that what everyone should do is list on a piece of paper the 50 things that are important to him. Then he should cross off the one that is the least important. And then he should cross off the next one that's least important.

He should finish, go on doing that until there's only one left. And for many people, that would not be God. If their neighbors and their friends and the people who know them best, their family, would have to confirm, yes, I can honestly tell you that God is number one in this person's life.

Now, if that is true, then you worship. You worship all week. And you do it here when you sing. So these people worship. And then the Levites stood up to praise the Lord with a loud voice. It's interesting, but God considered music very important.

And we're going to look at that in this message this morning. Are you aware that there were 4 ,000 paid musicians in Israel? It was a paid position. 4 ,000 people were paid to full-time worship the Lord in song.

That's how important it was to God. Out of those 4 ,000 people, you can read this in 1 Chronicles 23 .5 and 1 Chronicles 25 .1 and 7 if you want to jot down these references. Out of those 4 ,000 people, 288 of them were specially trained to go out and teach all of the people of the land to sing.

They were special music teachers. It was a paid position. 4 ,000 people stood before God day, I don't know if it was night, but day after day after day doing nothing but praising God in song. And 288 of those went out through the land and made sure that everybody else learned to sing.

This gives us some idea of how important music is to God. Now the next morning, now these Levites, they sang and I just sort of imagined that when they were doing that, it just became very evident that the most powerful thing they could do the next morning was to sing.

And so the next morning, Joshua was still so inspired by those Levites and their singing, those 4 ,000 people praising the Lord at the end of that stirring prophecy about Jehaziel, that he put those singers right in front of the army and they marched into battle singing.

And the Lord set ambushments against Moab, Edom and Ammon. And you know the story. They got confused and they started killing each other until they were all dead. That must have been an amazing sight for these people to just stand there and watch this battle being won without them lifting a sword.

And on they go with their song. And I think it got louder and louder. This was indeed an amazing experience. I wish I could have been there. But brothers and sisters, we've been there. I don't know what you do whenever the battle is hard.

I don't know what you do when you're sorely tempted. I don't know what you do when you're opposed and bitterly accused. And the devil is right there with discouragement. I'll tell you what I do. I sing.

And you'll see the same thing happen. You'll see ambushments. And you'll see the enemy defeat its own self and leave the field. This is a powerful weapon. This is a tremendous resource that God has given every one of us.

And that's why I think it is such a tragedy if there's somebody who cannot sing or if they can, they will not sing. There's nothing we have at our disposal that is more strategically powerful than song.

I remember John Risser, a godly bishop who used to preach in our community frequently, stood in one of our pulpits and very sadly said, Beware of the person who has no song. Beware of the person who has no song.

Now he didn't mean they had to sing beautifully or anything like that, but a person who doesn't have that song of praise welling up, even if they can't sing on tune, welling up out of their hearts and just there in every situation of life.

Well, this was quite a battle. All these people had to do was go gather up the spoil. It took them three days. And it tells you they couldn't even carry it all. Would you see what it says there in verse 25?

It says,. And when Jehoshaphat and his people came to take away the spoil of them, they found among them in abundance both riches with the dead bodies and precious jewels, which they stripped off for themselves more than they could carry away.

And they were three days in gathering of the spoil. It was so much. What a victory. All right. And then they returned to Jerusalem with joy. And they're still singing with harps and with trumpets. Verse 28.

And they came to Jerusalem with psalteries and harps and trumpets unto the house of the Lord. And the fear of God was on all the kingdoms of those countries when they had heard that the Lord fought against the enemies of Israel.

So the realm of Jehoshaphat was quiet, for his God gave him rest around about. What a story. And I just chose that to introduce the whole idea that in worship, in songs of worship, there is supernatural power.

I just want to emphasize that. That's my first point this morning. I want to spend a little bit of time with it. I want to convince you that the most powerful thing you can do through the next week and through your entire life is to sing in true worship.

Whether it's the revival in Wales or whether it's this deliverance we just read about in Israel, we find that there is supernatural power in true songs of worship. Especially in difficult situations. You remember Paul and Silas in the prison of Philippi?

And they were thrust into those inner stocks, the inner part of the prison and put in stocks with their backs bleeding. And they began to sing. I'm not going to spend much time with this. We all know the incident.

And the foundations of the prison shook. And all the doors were open. But there was something more amazing happened that day than that. Not one prisoner got up and left. Did you ever notice that? Because when the jailer came and was scared to death for his own life, Paul says, we're all here.

To me, that's the most amazing miracle. You have a prison with all the gates open and everybody's chains loose and everybody just sits there. Paul and Silas' song had that whole situation, even the human element, under complete control.

I told you there's supernatural power in song. Nehemiah 8, verse 10 says, the joy of the Lord is your... Psalm 22, verse 3 says, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. When you sing, I said, song puts you right on the verge, on the edge of the spiritual world.

And when you start to sing, Christ, or God, comes right into your song. And He's there. Are you ever in a situation of life where you don't feel like God's presence is very real? Here it is. It's never failed for me to make God's presence very real in my life.

My mother was one of the most cheerful people I ever met in my life. And she was one of the most victorious people that I knew in my life. And I think I know why. I didn't think about it so much when I was growing up, but I've thought a lot about it since I'm older.

She spent almost all her time singing. When my mother was not singing, she was sick. That's just simple. I know most of the hymns in our hymnal by heart because she sang them, and that's where I learned them.

She knew them by heart. I don't know how she learned so many hymns by heart. I think she must have had a very retentive mind and a very good memory. And it was a tremendous experience to grow up with a mother who spent all her time singing.

No wonder she was so happy. Everybody in the family will tell you that my mother was one of the most joyful and cheerful persons that our family ever knew. She was always happy. I shouldn't say always.

She had her times. But by and large, she was a happy person. And I think it had to do with the fact, I don't even know if she knew this, but she spent a lot of her life singing. She sang all day. We got up with mom singing and we went to bed with mom singing.

She was always singing. Of course, my dad was the musician. He was the one that knew music. My mother couldn't read a note. She couldn't sing a part. She was not a great musical person, but she loved to sing.

And I want to tell you something. If you're singing mothers, the best thing you can do for your children is to sing. And fathers too for that matter. It will bring God's presence right into your home.

It will bring God's presence and make it very real to your children. And they'll never know what it's like to grow up without a song. It's the best ear training, by the way, that you can give your children.

And they have to have that ear training if they're going to learn to sing. They come here to church and they hear us all singing parts and they're confused. But if you sing at home, they hear only the melody and they learn to sing because of your ear training that you've given them.

Elisha, Music, and Spiritual Direction

I want to show you another reason why I believe that the singing opens us up to the world of the spiritual. Just automatically that happens. I really believe that. I've already given you the verse that God inhabits the praises of Israel.

Now I'd like for you to turn to 2 Kings. The title of my message this morning is Sing the New Song. Sing it! And this afternoon, we'll talk about recognizing the new song. But this morning, it's Sing the New Song.

I want you to sing. I want everybody to leave this congregation this morning determined that song is going to be a prominent part of their everyday experience. 2 Kings 3. Now in this incident, Moab had come up to attack Judah.

And Judah had gotten Israel to eat them together. And they went out to fight Moab. And they ran out of water. And they were in dire trouble. Okay? And so somebody remembered to call on Elisha. And Elisha came.

And he said, if it weren't for Jehoshaphat, I wouldn't even talk to you people, but because of this godly man, I'll help you. Now I want to look at verse 15. But now bring me a minstrel. Now this is the great Elisha.

The prophet. How did he make contact with God? For the help that these people needed? Music. He said, bring me a minstrel. And it came to pass when the minstrel played that the hand of the Lord came upon him.

And he said, make this valley full of ditches. And you know what happened. They made the valley full of ditches. And it didn't even rain, but the next morning the ditches were full of water. They looked like blood.

And these Moabites got afraid. And so they fled. And these people ran after them and attacked them from behind and slew many of them. Again, a great victory. But the thing that I wanted to point out was even Elisha knew that the very best contact he could make with God was through music.

And he called for a minstrel. When I study this subject, I wonder why this resource is so neglected. So neglected. And I think I understand why when the church goes into apostasy, one of the first things the devil takes from them is their song.

He knows, if we don't know it, he does, that that's our most powerful weapon. And when churches are in apostasy, they're without a song. And the devil loves it because they have just thrown aside the most powerful weapon they have to fight against him.

Turn to 1 Chronicles 25 -1. I'm not quite sure what the people who don't believe in musical instruments do with these. I'm not necessarily promoting musical instruments, but this is interesting. 1 Chronicles 25 -1.

What I'm trying to establish here is music is closely associated with supernatural power. We're reading 1 Chronicles 25 -1. Moreover, David and the captains of the hosts separated to the service of the sons of Asaph and of Haman and of Judusan...

Now look at this. ...who should prophesy with harps and psalteries and cymbals. Isn't that interesting? We often talk about prophesying and saying... Paul says he would, that every person would prophesy.

Well, here is something maybe we should take into consideration. These people prophesied with music. It was their key to the best insight they could get into the will of God. No wonder it says in Psalm 89 -15, Blessed are the people that know the joyful sound.

They shall walk, O Lord, in the light of Thy countenance. See, music gives us direction. It gives us prophecy. It gives us direction. I'm going to read it again. Psalm 89 -15. Blessed are the people who know the joyful sound.

And the implication is that they're involved in this joyful sound, and because of that, they walk in the light of God's countenance. Isn't that tremendous? So the next time somebody comes to you and says, Brother, I'm having trouble finding direction in life, your answer should be, Sing, brother, sing!

Many is the time that I found myself confused and frustrated, and singing cleared it, and God's will became plain to me, and I was able to walk in the light of His countenance. Let's say it all together.

Blessed are the people that know the joyful sound. They shall walk, O Lord, in the light of Thy countenance. I'm going to have great confidence that the people of charity are going to have clear direction over the next years if I continue to understand that you're a singing people.

Songs of true worship are associated with power, and they always were associated afterward with the most powerful things that happened in the Bible. We have the song of Moses in Exodus 15, right after the Red Sea.

I mean, these people understood that music went along with all of these experiences. Deborah and Barak, after their victory over Hazor and Sisera in Judges 5, you find a song. In fact, that's a very interesting song.

You don't find out what happened in that battle until you read the song. And you just find out that Sisera was defeated and he came running and drove a tent peg through his head. That's all you find out.

But if you have the song, and I have a feeling that the song was maybe sung when this was all happening. You find out what happened. Sisera was up there on the mountain. He had chariots. Israel didn't have chariots.

They were foot soldiers. And they were there in the valley. And they were scared to death of chariots because these chariots were made of iron. And they usually had swords fastened to their axles. And someone could just come swooping down through a bunch of foot soldiers and just mow off their legs with those chariots.

And so Israel was, they were just terrified to death of chariots. But God had told them not to have chariots. So here they were, standing in the valley. Sisera says, this is a piece of cake. I think he had, I didn't go back and count it, but I think he had something like five or six hundred chariots.

We're just going to swoop down off this mountain. And they're all going to look like grass lying on the ground. But what he didn't calculate on is up the valley of the river. God sent a huge, this is all in the song.

God sent a huge thunderstorm. So by the time he got down off the mountain into the valley, the river had overflowed. And the valley was mud. And there he was. His chariots got stuck. The wheels came off.

The children of Israel pursued these people and killed them one after another. In fact, the Bible says the stars fought against this poor man. By the way, if you ever get into a battle with the stars, the stars always win.

But it was associated here with song. The last words of Moses are two beautiful songs. One, outlining the attributes of God and His wonders among them and ends with some pretty severe judgments. That was all in his song.

And the second one was a song basically of blessing upon these people, tribe by tribe. It was the end of his life. And they're long, by the way. Let me just put in a little comment. Those songs are more than five words projected on a wall sung 50 times.

7 -11 songs, I call them. Seven words sung 11 times. We have good examples in the Scripture as to what God calls songs. They have content.

They tell us something. Now we can sing, Hallelujah, Hallelujah.

And I'm sure we'll do a lot of that in Heaven too. But I'm sorry, I don't want to sing that all Sunday, every Sunday. Or any songs like that. It's okay occasionally. And we're just adoring Christ. But most of our singing should be instructing our minds and inspiring our hearts and saying something of worth about what we believe about God and understand about His will for our lives.

Some other incidents. Christ sang before going to Gethsemane. I want to tell you something. I think He did it for the same reason we've been talking. I think it was one of the weapons that He took in His grasp when He marched out to that dreadful death.

I think that's why He sang. He knew He needed this. We march right into trouble and difficulty without a song. And tragedy. Luther's enemy said he has done more harm by his songs than by any of his sermons.

The Anabaptists sang at the stake and it was so effective. The witness of those people singing in those most inhumane and unbelievable circumstances that they finally had to execute them secretly because it was so powerful and so effective.

The song of these people. And we all know that the Wesley revivals were carried along by song and so were the Moravian revivals. Well, my first point was that music is associated with supernatural power.

It's one of the most important and one of the most crucial weapons that you and I have. And it should be your purpose as parents to make sure that every one of your children sings. Right? And this congregation as well.

It should be a purpose and I think it is. I mean, I'm sort of preaching to the choir here for a little bit. This congregation should continue to do what you've been doing. Promote the singing of good music.

God's Delight in Singing and the Command to Sing

Well, the second point I'd like to make is music is important to God. Music is very important to God himself. I want you to turn to an interesting scripture in Zephaniah, verse 17. This verse maybe is familiar to you but it's an amazing verse.

Speaking to the future glorification of Israel, it says in 17, The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty. He will save. He will rejoice over thee with joy. He will rest in His love. He will joy over thee with singing.

I can't wait to hear that. Can you imagine what it must sound like when God sings? No wonder we are supposed to sing. No wonder it's so much a part of our experience. We are made in His image and He is a singer.

God is a singer. And He left us with a tremendous witness to that. There are over 300 references in the Bible to song urging us to sing. And almost all of those 300 references say something like this, Sing unto the Lord.

It doesn't say this is a suggestion. It's a command. But like all of God's commands, we love them. They are not grievous. Sing unto the Lord 300 times in the Bible. And of course we have a whole book of the Bible devoted to nothing but songs.

These songs, let's turn to a few of them. We'll just do it real quickly. Psalm 33. Sing unto Him a new song. Play skillfully with a loud noise. Now the Bible talks repeatedly about this new song. That tells me something about music.

Music is not amoral. Before people are converted, they sing a song. And then when they are converted, they sing a different song. He says sing a new song. Alright? Psalm 40 verse 3. This one of course is a very familiar one.

I waited patiently for the Lord and He inclined unto me and heard my cry. He brought me also up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry place, set my feet upon a rock and established my goings. And He put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God.

I told you it has power. Look what it says. Many shall see it and fear just like they did in the days of Jehoshaphat and shall trust in the Lord. You want to evangelize? Here it is. Psalm 96 verse 1. God didn't want us to make any mistake on this one.

Three times it tells us to sing here. Oh, sing unto the Lord a new song. Sing unto the Lord all the earth. Sing unto the Lord, bless His name. Show forth His salvation from day to day. I want to make some comments about that just directly.

Psalm 98 verse 1. Oh, sing unto the Lord a new song for He hath done marvelous things. His right hand and His holy arm hath gotten Him the victory. One more. 144 verse 1. I think I must have said the wrong reference.

It doesn't look right. Verse 9. I will sing a new song unto thee, O God, upon a psaltery and an instrument of ten strings. Now, what is this new song about? We want to talk a little bit about the content of the new song.

I told you that my message is sing the new song. What is the message of this new song? Well, if you look at all these references, it's always about God's mighty works, especially His work of salvation.

Deliverance. The word salvation means to salvage, to bring a person out of a bad situation into a good situation. In fact, that's what most of the psalms is about. If you look at them, when I was a boy, I didn't read them very much because it seemed like the psalmist was complaining a lot of the time and that wasn't really...

When I was young, I didn't have much to complain about. I got more to complain about later. And then the psalms became precious to me. And then I realized that the psalms follow a pattern. They don't all start this way, but many of them do.

They start out with a problem and they end up with praise. What's in between? Does anybody know? Okay, what did you say? Uh oh, sorry. I'm sorry, I have this wrong. They end up with prayer. No, I'm sorry.

They end up with praise. I had it right. That's sort of the pattern of many of the psalms. So the psalmist starts out saying, you have ransacked me. You have searched me. I can't handle this, Lord. I can't get away.

I can't do anything about it. This is terrible. You know everything I'm thinking. You know everything I'm doing. You know my words before I say them and I can't handle this kind of scrutiny. And then in the middle of the psalm, he starts to contemplate God and here's the worship and who God really is and he realizes that when God sees a problem, He begins to salvage.

And so if He sees a mistake in your life, He doesn't clobber you. He just starts to redeem. And when the psalmist realizes that, did you ever notice how he ends the psalm? Ransack me, O God, and know my heart and see if there be any wicked way in me.

But at the beginning, he didn't want the Lord to see that. At the end, he says, please ransack me and see if there's any wicked way in my life and lead me in the way everlasting. But it's praise. Praise the whole way through for God's salvation.

Let's turn back to Psalm 96 and just look a little bit at what he has to say there. We'll just read down through it. I've already read the first part. It was singing to the Lord a new song, singing to the Lord all the earth, singing to the Lord, bless His name, show forth His salvation from day to day.

So that's what we're going to do. We're going to sing the mighty delivering power of God in our lives. Verse 3 says, declare His glory among the heathen. So what else is going to be the content of our songs?

It's going to be a description of God's magnificent character. Glory, as I understand it, is an expression of excellence. We talk about the glory of a sunset. We mean you couldn't add anything to it. It's absolutely perfect.

We talk about the glory of youth. Here's a young man. That's everything a young man is supposed to be. That's glory. And that's what we sing about. We sing about the excellence of God's characteristics.

Because one of the reasons that's so necessary in our day is because most people have a very, very pitiful concept of God. Most of them have a negative concept of God. In fact, most of my life I had a negative concept of God.

And we need to tell the world about His magnificent character. The excellence of His characteristics. They need to hear that. Declare His glory. Then he goes on to say, For the Lord is great, and greatly to be praised.

He is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. And people are going to look at the heavens and get some clue as to what kind of God He is.