Singing Songs of War to God - AD on FLF Network

Hello there, this is A .D. Robles, and you're listening to A .D. on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network. Right, well today I wanted to start off with a Bible verse. That's a good way to start, always, right?

Ephesians 5 and the Case for Singing Psalms

Today's Bible verse is Ephesians chapter 5, starting at verse 18. Let's start at verse 18. This is what the Word of God says. And be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit.

Speak unto yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. I love that verse. I really do. There's a lot of reasons why I love this verse, but one of the reasons is a little bit of a, I don't know, snarky reason, you might say.

Because this verse is quite often quoted by people when they're arguing against those of us in the Reform camps that would say that the only songs that the Christian church should be singing during worship are psalms, you know, from the Psalter.

And there are some, you may or may not know this, but there are people that hold that position that say, Look, in the worship service, the only appropriate song for a Christian to sing in order for it to be valid worship is a psalm.

And so people will point to this verse and they'll say, well, clearly that's not correct because this verse says that you should sing and make melody with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Now, of course, the people that believe in psalm singing and only psalm singing have a reason, have a response to this.

But I don't even go there, to be perfectly honest with you, because I'm not one of those that thinks that psalms are the only appropriate songs to sing. I do get their points and they do make a lot of sense to me.

And I'm like, I'm almost there. You know what I mean? I'm almost there, but I'm not there. But what I find so interesting about using this verse to argue against those of us who would say that psalms are the only appropriate songs to sing is that what this verse definitely proves is that you should include psalms in your singing.

And if we're just going to go by, you know, the different words here, probably a third of the songs that you sing at church should be directly from the Psalter. And yet, many, many churches out there completely exclude psalms.

And I don't mean that they don't read the book of psalms. That's not what I mean. But ask yourself, if you're listening to this podcast, how many psalms did you sing with your church last Sunday? I'm willing to bet that for a good majority of you, the answer is zero.

And I'm willing to bet even further that if you even think about the last year or maybe even your entire church career, the number of psalms that you have sung with the congregation on the Lord's day, on a Sunday, is probably pretty close to zero.

And the reason I know this is because I know that that was true for me for a very long time and people that I've talked to. It seems that there is an exclusion of psalm singing. And so I'm not making the argument here that we should only sing psalms and that psalms are the only legitimate form of song that we should sing in the worship service.

That's not the case I am making. That case can be made though. You know what I mean? That case can be made and actually my brother has thought a lot about this. I don't think he holds an exclusive psalmody position, but he knows the arguments inside and out.

He knows the arguments inside and out and they sound pretty convincing. But what I am arguing though is that there is a problem that we have excluded the psalms in our singing worship. I've often said on my YouTube channel that I find it so interesting when Christians pretty much disregard the law of God when it comes to civil government.

They say that there is really no place for the law of God in civil government. Now reformed people don't say this typically because reformed people understand that their standards say that there is a place for the civil law of God.

They say that the civil law of God expired with the nation of Israel, but there is still a general equity. There is still a principle that we can apply that we ought to apply today for our nations even though we are not Israel.

So reformed people typically don't say this, but a lot of Christians do say that that was a law for Israel that has nothing to do with us today. And so I always find it so interesting that God put this big book of law in his scripture that he gave to us.

He didn't put everything he could have put in this. He didn't give us the theory of relativity in the Bible. He didn't tell us the shape of the universe in the Bible. He didn't give us all the information he could have given.

So what's in there, you would think, is pretty important. But he did give us a big book of law and we pretty much ignore it in general. That's a problem, I think. And likewise, the biggest book in the Bible is a big book of songs that we don't sing typically.

We just simply don't. And we've really got to ask ourselves, I really want to know, why do we ignore a big book of songs that Jesus Christ gave to us? He inspired David to write a bunch of these. He inspired others to write a bunch of these.

There's 150 songs in this book that he gives his church. The Word of God, inspired songs, perfect theology. Perfect theology in the book of Psalms. And we pretty much say, you know what? I know you gave me 150 songs, but I really want to sing Oceans.

I really want to sing Heaven Meets Earth like a sloppy wet kiss. That's what I want to sing. And you've got to wonder, why is that? Why are we okay with excluding the Psalms? Again, I'm not making the argument for exclusive psalmody.

That's what it's called, exclusive psalmody. Those are the people that think we should only sing psalms. I'm not making that case. What I am saying, though, is that we should definitely include psalms.

And if we exclude psalms, then clearly our worship is inadequate. I think we're sinning if we exclude psalms. Let's put it that way. I think we're sinning if we do not sing psalms with the gathered body of Christ.

Singing Songs of Judgment and Imprecation

Now, the other day, I was on Twitter. You might argue, probably not the place to have a complicated conversation. But I was feeling a little spicy. You know, I'm Latino. I'm sure you can excuse me for feeling a little spicy from time to time.

You know what I mean. And I tweeted out this. It's okay to hope that your enemies perish in disgrace. In fact, it's good to sing about it to the Lord. And then I used a couple of emojis. I used a music emoji and a microphone emoji.

I'll admit, I was being a little provocative with that. Because it's actually a very serious and solemn thing to think about singing songs about the destruction of your enemies to God. And so, the little cutesy emojis that I used, I could understand people being a little bit triggered by that.

I get it. It was intentional. Anyway, people were certainly triggered by this. Now, I will say, though, I was very pleasantly surprised that most people were like, yeah, right on. We need to do that. We need to do that.

And so, I'm very happy to see that. And I hope that a lot of those people really do sing psalms with their church and with their families. Because it's awesome to sing psalms. It really is. But that's what I was getting at.

Because there are psalms, if you think about the Psalter, right? And the different songs that God gives his people in his songbook. In the songbook of the Bible. When you think about those psalms, those psalms have a whole range of different topics, right?

They address all kinds of different things. And some of those things, they're just not very nice. There are psalms that talk about how the Lord breaks the teeth of the wicked. I mean, that sounds bad enough.

But what you've got to understand is, though, in those days, back before modern dentistry and modern medicine, if you lost your teeth, you were pretty much a dead man walking. I mean, it's just that simple.

People died from their problems with their teeth very often. So, we're saying and we're rejoicing that our God, the God we worship, Christ, breaks the teeth of the wicked. That's a death sentence for them.

That's a death sentence for them. But there are some verses that make it even more explicit. One of my favorite psalms is Psalm 2. Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed.

And it says what? About God he says, he who sits in the heaven laughs, he holds them in derision, he speaks to them in his wrath and his fury. And it says he breaks them with a rod of iron and dashes them to pieces like a potter's vessel.

There are some verses that make this even more explicit. You know the psalm where it says, his steadfast love endures forever? And it just keeps saying that. It says a line that proves God's steadfast love and then it says his steadfast love endures forever.

And it just keeps going back and forth between that. It's a very beautiful song. And I remember singing that psalm for the first time. That psalm, let me sing a few lines for you. For that psalm, because I think it's beautiful and excuse my singing voice.

I hope this doesn't offend you. But it's, thank the Lord for good is he, for his steadfast love endures. You know that tune, right? I have a psalter that puts songs to tunes that you know. So it's a little easier to sing them.

But if you read that psalm, that's Psalm 136, right? There's some very interesting and I'll be honest, things that are uncomfortable for me to sing to the Lord that this psalm says proves God's steadfast love.

His steadfast love endures forever. Listen to this one, listen to this one. Egypt's first born, he did smite for his steadfast love endures. That's talking about when God struck down the children, the first born child of every Egyptian.

And we're singing that to the Lord, worshiping God for doing that. And not only that, but saying that that demonstrates his steadfast love. How about this one? He drowned Pharaoh and his men for his steadfast love endures.

Now we're worshiping God and singing in beautiful tones. I mean, arguably beautiful, but we're singing to God and we're worshiping God and we're singing songs and we're saying, God, your steadfast love is proven by number one, you struck down the first born children of every Egyptian.

And then after you did that, you drowned a lot of their fathers in the Red Sea. You drowned the Pharaoh and a lot of the soldiers. So that was death and destruction. That's not a very nice thing to think about.

That's a difficult thing to think about. Even just think about it, it's hard. But then just to sing it to God and to worship God and to praise God that he killed those enemies. He killed those enemies.

He destroyed them. Utterly, utter destruction. I think we're kind of disconnected from this a little bit because we read it in this Bible, we read it so many times and it happened so long ago on the other side of the world.

I don't know if you've ever been to Egypt. I've been to Egypt. Egypt's a cool place. But let's just think about what that scene was like. Let me paint the picture for you a little bit. God strikes down the first born.

And house after house, they find out that their first born is dead. And granted, some of them are older, you know. They've lived a good life. They were the first born so they were struck. Some of them were babies.

Some of them were children. Toddlers. And God struck them dead. Think of the house after house after house. They find out that their child is dead. Think of the weeping. Think of the wailing. Think of the mothers that just couldn't contain their emotions.

Obviously, your child is dead. Think of the fathers too. There's probably a lot of men wailing and weeping as well. Probably fury at what had happened. Probably a lot of fear. What had just happened? Everyone has had someone in their family that's dead.

Everyone. This is not like an easy thing to sing about. And yet, it's there in our songbook. It's there in our songbook. And then, a couple sentences later, we're praising God again for more death because he killed a lot of these fathers that their sons had died a few weeks before.

I don't know how long ago before it was. But they went to chase the Israelites through the Red Sea. We know the story. Moses was part of the Red Sea. They followed them. And then, God drowned them. Drowning is not an easy way to go.

He drowned the fathers that had just gotten over weeping and mourning for their firstborn. And we're singing that song to God because he put it in his songbook for us to sing. Now, it's not surprising to me that modern worship songs don't include stuff like that.

Because it's not comfortable. I remember singing about this for the first time. I was very uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. And yet, there it is. It's in our songbook. So what do we do with that, right?

God's Judgment, Our Enemies, and the Church's Songbook

Well, I'll tell you what some people do with it. They say, well, it's not really appropriate to sing about that stuff. I don't know how they square this with the fact that it's in God's songbook that he gave us.

I know how they attempt to do it. But obviously, it's wrong. And if you think about it for two seconds, you know that it's not wrong. I had somebody, a guy that I respect very greatly. I think in many ways he's courageous.

Probably one of the most courageous people that I know. But he said this. He said this to my little tweet. He said, AD, there's a huge difference between the Lord's enemies and my enemies. You're making a serious error.

And I agree with that. I think, yeah, there is a difference between the Lord's enemies and my enemies. But I don't think anyone read that tweet and thought I was referring to my rival at work or something like that.

Like the guy at work who I'm competing with and he tries to undermine me and stuff like that. I don't think anybody read that tweet and said, oh yeah, that's who he's talking about. That he wants God to make him perish in disgrace.

Obviously not. There should be, at least I hope so, significant overlap between God's enemies and my enemies. Right? Like there should be some overlap there. I mean, you think. Because here's the thing.

The reality is the church has enemies today. It's not just... Here's the other thing this guy said. He said, you know, the Psalms don't function in the same way for us. Because we're in a different part of a redemptive history.

We're not a Hebrew monarchy. We're not Israel. The Psalms are about Israel's enemies. And I'm like, true. Obviously that's true. I don't think that I'm in the civil nation of Israel. I am in Israel, of course, but not the civil nation.

I get that. The confessions say that. Expired with the nation, the law of God. I get that stuff. But, even if the Psalms don't function in the exact same way, they still have meaning for us today. This guy would agree with that.

And we can still sing them because the church still has enemies the way it used to. It still has enemies. We're not political or ethnic Israel. Granted. We're not fighting the literal Canaanites and Philistines.

Granted. Yet, we still have enemies. And the message of the Psalms, where God destroys the enemies of his church, utterly, physically, otherwise, is still valid. And we can still sing it. I'm not David.

I'm not King David. I'm not King David. Everybody knows that you're not King David. Yet, we can sing like David. We can sing songs of how glorious God's creation is. We can sing songs about how he's our shepherd.

And that's beautiful. And we do sing Psalms like that. And we sing songs like that, too. But yet, there's something we're missing when we do not and we refuse and we actually create theologies in our mind that say it's inappropriate to acknowledge and to worship and to have joy with the knowledge that God will come in judgment and wrath and fury and put all his enemies under his feet.

Destroy them utterly. Utterly. Be grateful to God for that. The last night on Reform Jellicle, I was talking to Matt Williams about this and I said, look, Jeffrey Epstein. Let's just take him for a second.

A monster. He was a monster. And the fact that he's dead, I'm glad he's dead. I'm glad he can't hurt any more people. Assuming that he was guilty of all this stuff. Because, again, we're assuming some stuff here.

He's not going to go to trial because he's dead. But let's just say he's guilty of all of it. There's nothing wrong with worshiping God and being thankful to God that he took that monster out. And likewise, there's nothing contradictory with that and also hoping that people like him would stop doing what they're doing and turn to Christ.

Because I think it's valid to say God changed these men, these monsters, changed them, changed their hearts, or take them out. One or the other, God, please. There's nothing inappropriate or contradictory about that.

Why the Psalms Are Needed Instead of Modern Worship Songs

Nothing. And so what's the point of this podcast? Because there's a point to this, right? I think that when we exclude psalm singing, look, Kerry Jobe is not going to write a song about how God smited all these people and how that's a demonstration of a steadfast love and he drowned their fathers after he did it, he breaks the teeth of the wicked, he smashes their little ones on the rocks, stuff like that.

We can excuse Crowder for not writing a song about that, right? It's not comfortable to write songs about that. That's why we have the Psalms, right? We have the Psalter. We don't have to write any songs about that.

We can write songs about whatever we want, and we can sing the Psalms, and we won't be missing that about God. We won't be missing that part of our message. You know, Paul, the apostle, Paul the apostle, he's in the church age, right?

This is someone like, we can't use the weaselly, kind of slippery excuse, oh, that was the Old Testament. Paul was in the New Covenant, right? Here's what Paul said at the end of his book, 1 Corinthians.

He says this, if any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema. And then he says, maranatha. If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema, maranatha. Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus.

Come and do this. Come in and make those people anathema. That's Paul calling a curse on the enemies of Christ. Anathema is not just this thing. It's not just this word or whatever. He's calling down destruction on the enemies of the church.

Paul did it. He wasn't David either. Oh, but he was an apostle. Okay, fine. He was an apostle. But you're going to have to make a very strange argument to say that I can't follow Paul as Paul follows Christ because Christ sang the psalms too.

Paul commands us to sing the psalms. He then does very similar things and precatory things like the psalms do. You're going to have to come up with some weird thing where I can follow some of Paul, but not all of it.

Okay? It's just that simple. It's just that simple. We're missing something if we don't sing about all of what God wants us to sing about. We're missing something. Here's a quote from Doug Wilson. Marcus Pittman put this out, and it had nothing to do with my tweet, but it was completely related.

This is a quote from Doug Wilson. He says, Brothers and sisters, I think that the exclusion of psalms that we currently are experiencing, look, not every church excludes psalms, but many do. The exclusion of psalms has everything to do with us letting social justice warriors, feminists, sexual deviants, perverts, and things like that run roughshod in our churches because we don't want God to destroy his enemies.

We don't want God to put his enemies under his feet for real. We want him to do it in this kind of a spiritual kind of esoteric way that nobody can really identify. We don't want to see him do it in real time in this world here in our churches everywhere because here's the reality.

Paul said that wolves would come into the churches. I want those wolves defeated. Do you? Or do you want this kind of esoteric victory that nobody can even identify what it is? You see, the psalms are so great because it talks about spiritual victory and spiritual things and spiritual battles and spiritual destruction, but it also talks about how God saves our skins here on earth in a way that you can clearly identify him drowning Pharaoh's men in the sea.

That was something that everybody saw. Everyone talked about, and there was weeping and wailing from the enemies of God. It was real. God does that for his people today, too. Let's not turn the Old Testament into this thing that we read about it, nice stories to tell your Sunday school class, but it doesn't really have any bearing on us.

That was my people, man. That was my people that he demonstrated his steadfast love by drowning their enemies in the sea. That was my people that he demonstrated his steadfast love by saving them but killing the firstborn of their enemy.

That was my people. That was your people, too. Anyway, I hope this was helpful. God bless. Tune in next week on Thursday for AD on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network.