Music and Legalism

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle

Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'"

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

King. We're here to take your calls as well. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. My name is

Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Neville Radio. No Neville Chamberlain Radio.

We don't want compromising. We want spiritual Winston Churchill's to stand up and say, we will fight against error.

We will fight against tyranny. We will fight and wage war. And today, my comrade in arms is

Pastor Steve Sargent Cooley. Aye, Captain. Oh, that's not right, is it?

I should say, yes, sir, no, sir. Number one, engage. Make it so. This is

No Compromise Radio, and on Tuesdays, we have in the studio audience, or in the studio microphone, we have

Steve Cooley, and Pastor Steve serves at Bethlehem Bible Church. Why don't you come someday, if you don't have a home church especially, and come to hear him go through his

Sunday school series. Right now, he's talking about heaven and hell and everything in between.

I think it's a baker's dozen regarding eschatology and immorality. Immortality?

Not quite a baker's dozen, but we're going through a lot of different things. Annihilationism, purgatory, a number of interesting topics.

I believe purgatory's in the Bible. Purgatory, where Jesus purged our sin, Hebrew was one, you don't believe that?

Once for all, yes, I do. I like it. When he died, he said, it is finished, except for those sins you have to pay for yourself.

Steve, I'm drinking out of this Polar Springs Aquapod. It says natural spring water, this kind of funny, it's like a baseball -shaped water thing, and it says, a blast of fun.

And I don't know if I need Polar Springs as a sponsor here for No Compromise Radio, but when

I drink water, I usually don't have a blast of fun. Not at all. So this would be a good throwing instrument.

It would be a good projectile. It's like a hand grenade. But not while we're doing the show. All right, well, I'll put that to the side.

Thank you. On Tuesdays, we've been looking at, thank you. On Tuesdays, I've been putting aside, on Tuesdays, we've been looking at ecclesiological issues, and that is to say, what about things in the local church?

How can we talk about a local church? We want your church to be strong and stable and fortified, built on the words of Christ Jesus, according to Matthew 7.

And so as we look at the church, we want to also warn against things that might sneak in and make your church less than biblical.

Is that why we're doing this series? Yeah, and one of the things that we've been talking about for a few weeks now is the idea of legalism.

That is, setting a standard that the Bible never sets. Trying to live to some kind of perceived level of holiness that God does not require.

And if you want to have preferences in your life, things that you like to eat or things that you don't like to eat, certain things you want to wear or not wear or have your hair certain ways, we're not against preferences, but we are against elevating preferences to equal the

Bible in their authority or elevating preferences over the Bible. And so we are all pro -preferences here, but we just don't want to have anything impede or impinge upon God's authoritative standard.

And that's what people do. People are looking for ways to make themselves feel good about themselves or to feel bad about somebody else and to get involved in their lives.

And so they establish these extra -biblical standards. Actually, it's like this aqua pod from Polar Springs.

It's a blast of fun to be a legalist. Sadly, it's wrong. It's fun, it's interesting. You get to play

God a little bit and say, you know, I'm doing God's will, yet we're not. And so we're not after fun, we're after what does the

Bible teach? And especially with No Compromise Radio, we want to be biblical and provocative, but we want it to be in that order.

If we were provocative before biblical, then we would undo ourselves. And so Steve, give us what's on the docket for today.

Today we have another of our baker's dozen of extra -biblical standards. It is a sin to listen to rock and roll, hip hop, rap, or heavy metal music.

Uh -oh. Well, I don't know if the listeners out there realize that the intro to No Compromise Radio is a secular song.

Did you know that? I'm shocked and appalled in equal measure. If anyone knows what song that is, write us at info at No Compromise Radio and I'll give you a free -

Let me give you a hint, you have no idea. No. Wouldn't it be easy though,

Steve, if we just had some kind of papal bull, some kind of ex -cathedral declaration that we said, just don't listen to any rock music or any unbelievers music and you'll be okay.

Wouldn't that make it easier? It wouldn't make it easier. It would actually make it easier if it was just in the Bible. Well, I think we'd probably have to throw out lots of classical music as well, because there's plenty of classical music that is written by unbelievers and even has some probably themes that have perpetuated lots of bad things in the world.

Well, can I just say about classical music, I am confident that if we could go back a couple of hundred years and talk to the legalists of those days, they would say, you gotta watch out for that Beethoven fella.

You listen to him and your kids will be going to, you know, I mean, it just goes on. You're right, and Steve, I don't know if you remember this or not, but when

Handel's Messiah first came out, the fundamentalists of the day - I wasn't around then.

The King James -only mentality of the day were, they were appalled, they were shocked.

Frankly, they were shocked and appalled. In equal measure. Yes, it was something new, it was different, and now the same kind of mentality has accepted that, of course, in the mainstream

Christianity. But we want to be careful that we just don't say, for instance, new is bad, rock is bad.

I guess we would have most churches not have any kind of music in the church today, because frankly, most churches have some kind of wall of sound on Sunday morning, but that's another topic.

And wouldn't it be nice if we could all just sing a cappella all the time and no instruments and no -

Oh, wait a minute, though. Is that biblical? It's interesting. Some churches that pride themselves on only singing a cappella because any instruments are sinful,

I think they have that mentality, which also creates not very many people going to the church, and so they have no one gifted on the piano, and so they end up perpetuating their no instruments because they have no one able to play the instrument because they're so inclusive.

Christianity, one man said, is a singing religion. You think about all the world religions,

Pastor Steve, whether it's Hinduism or Buddhism or these other isms, I'm not saying they don't sing, but this is a unique Christian thing to sing,

Judaism as well. It's one of the, as one person said, the singingest of all religions. We love to sing.

The Pietist of Germany alone produced over 200 ,000 hymns. Well, and when you think about what

God has done, why would you not want to sing? Why would you not want to rejoice? And music is one of those things that really brings joy to us.

We listen, music affects the mind. It affects our mood. So certainly when we're in a certain mood, it's probably reinforcing to that mood to listen songs that are in keeping with that kind of thinking.

So when we are in worship mode, we want to sing songs of praise to God.

That's what we want to do. Well, and it is fair, and I know Steve believes this as well. It's fair to ask the question, what kind of music should we listen to?

Are there boundaries for Christian music? Should we fill our minds with a style of music that is associated with street talk and malt liquor?

There are questions that we should ask ourselves, but we want to make sure we're careful, A, not to go above Scripture, and B, not to impose our preferences on others like they were

Scripture. Yeah, and I really have kind of tuned out of much of the popular music these days, because whenever I listen to any of it,

I find myself just frankly offended. I mean, when I pull up to some kid at an intersection and his car is bouncing up and down, and I start listening to the words,

I just go, why would anybody want to listen to that? So that's, I do find it, maybe

I'm just getting old. Well, you are getting old, but it's not a necessary consequence of getting old to not like some of that music.

Music does affect, and Arian, the heretic, the non -Trinitarian heretic, knew that if you wrote short,

I was gonna say poppy, but short, catchy songs for different kind of people,

Arius knew that if you had simple songs, singable songs, full of damning doctrine, that people would gulp it down like they gulp down aquapods.

Well, you know, it's funny, because Sunday morning I got up, and here I'm teaching Sunday school, and I'm getting ready to preach that night, and I had a little jingle, short poppy song just popping in my head, and I'm going,

I bet I haven't heard that song for 30 years. It was about lifesavers. Oh, I thought you were gonna say you've got spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle.

No. Well, you know, you have these songs like McDonald's, two all -beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.

Those things are effective. Oh, they're very effective. And so we want to make sure when it comes to Christianity and singing and music that we think biblically, and we'll probably have to talk about that this week and next week.

So in the context of legalism, we would both agree that we can't just say when it comes to all rock music that rock music, if you play it to a plant, it kills the plant, and therefore it's all bad.

We're not going to say all rock music is bad. I might think all, you know, acid rock is bad, but let's just start from the big picture first.

We want to make sure that we say God wants you to use your mind. God wants you to engage and discern and to think and to work through these issues.

There is a reason, Pastor Steve, God didn't tell you what music not to listen to.

What would those reasons be, or what would the reason be? Well, I think the primary reason is exactly what you're saying.

We're to evaluate all things. We're to evaluate the worth and the godliness, the mindset that everything that surrounds us brings to us, whether it be literature or what we watch on TV or what we listen to.

I remember years ago, and I won't give away this person's identity, but years ago,

I remember telling someone that certain music was not okay to listen to because it had lyrics about rape and other violent accidents.

And they said, well, I don't really listen to the lyrics. And then come to find out that one day that person was singing along with one of those songs when they came on the radio.

And I'm going, hmm, don't listen to the lyrics. Those lyrics penetrate our minds.

Just to give another example, the way I memorize the name of the Old Testament books,

I memorized it in high school when I wasn't even a Christian, because of a song. And I can remember that song to this day.

Numbers, Deuteronomy. It's a different tune. Oh, you've got the Mormon tune. It's a much better tune. I can't sing, I know that, but it's still a good tune.

I gotta give him props for the tune, because it's very good. The Mormon tune. It's a good tune.

To memorize the Bible. It's a very good tune. First and second, Tobet. Third and fourth, Nephi.

Oh. Let's use Bach. J .S. Bach said this, quote, all music should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the soul's refreshment.

Where this is not remembered, there is no real music, but only a devilish hubbub.

And therefore you have Bach, who gives us a good umbrella statement, basically echoing the

Pauline truth found in 1 Corinthians 10, verse 31, whether you eat or drink or listen to music, do it all to the glory of God.

And so Bach would put the heading on his composition, J, the heading was

JJ, Jesus Juva, which means Jesus help me. And he ended his compositions with?

SDG. Solo Deo Gloria. That's right, solely to God alone be the praise or glory.

And so I think that's what we're after. If you wanna have a step -by -step format to pick songs, put everything, if you would, under the rubric or umbrella of this should be for the glory of God and my soul's refreshment.

And can I just say something? Yes, you can. Thank you. You have 12 and a half minutes to say it. There's this concept out there that somehow adults in a home, the parents in the home have their music and the kids have their music and never the twain shall meet.

And you can't really impose your views of music on your kids. And my response to that would be, are you kidding?

You need to at least know what your kids are listening to. And if you think, and I can't have that in my house, then don't have it in your house.

Well, this is an unparenting and I agree, Steve. What our kids like is what we've made them like.

We've taught them what's good. And of course, they have rebellious hearts like anyone else and they probably like things that we probably say, you ought not listen to.

But I look on what's on my kids' Facebook, what's on their iPod. I look over their shoulder on the computer.

I want to be involved and I tell them - But isn't that snooping? That is real snooping.

And that is being a parent. That's Deuteronomy 6. So when we're talking about music today, this is nocompromisedradio .com.

You can always write us at info at nocompromisedradio .com. Is that nocompromisedradio?

Yeah, nocompromisedradio .com. We're talking about music and legalism when it comes to music.

Some will say you can't listen to any rock and roll. And so that would throw out any kind of Christian rock.

Someone came here once and said, do you listen to any of that new kind of Christian music? And I thought, well, like what?

You know, some Christian equivalent to the Beastie Boys or something? I mean, I have no idea what you're talking about. And they said, you know, songs like Steve Green's, that kind of satanic rock.

I thought, I couldn't believe it. Now you may or may not like Steve Green and his style of music, but everyone has to come across that song.

You know, it is good. I especially like, you can't say that this is, in your right mind, you can't say

Steve Green's music is satanic. No, you can't. And ultimately, again,

I think it just comes back to not just the lyrics, but also the style of music and where it puts an individual.

And that's why I think to a certain extent, it's an individual's, it's a preference, it's a matter of conscience.

What you cannot say is that, for example, anything with a drum in it is sin. Thank you,

Mr. Drummer. Well, all you have to do is look at the Old Testament. Did they use any kind of percussion instruments, you know, in their worship?

And the answer is yes. And then did God strike them down because they did it? And the answer is no.

You know, did he condemn them because they did it? No. So there's a variety of instruments referred to in the

Old Testament, and God didn't condemn them for those instruments. Well, before we talk about can you use those instruments in the

New Testament, I like what Pastor Steve said about style of music and lyrics. You can have good lyrics, but destroy those lyrics with an improper style.

And to steal from John MacArthur, try singing holy, holy, holy to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Now, the other day I was online and I listened to some blind pastor sing a song about amazing grace, but it had a different tune, but it was a fine tune.

It wasn't some kind of, you know, Alice Cooper tune or something. And so I'm not saying you can't change a tune to make it different, but I'm saying can you have some kind of, you know, some

Miley Cyrus tune and put some kind of, you know, great as I faithfulness lyrics to it?

I think form and function and substance matter. Yeah, and I was at a,

I guess I'll call it a crusade years ago, you know, and they had a few popular groups there.

And one of them kind of redid one of his old songs, just sort of redid the lyrics and kept the same tune.

And I'm going, I just, it really wasn't very comfortable. Because once you have a song in your head, it's hard to just kind of tweak it a little bit and somehow make it holy.

You know, it's either secular or it's not, but you can't -

Okay, so it was more a sacred song and people were trying to secularize it. No, it was a secular song.

He was trying to holyize it. Oh, well, I'm glad you said that because you almost sounded like a legalist there for a minute,

Steve, but I didn't understand the context. No, it was just a matter of listening to it and going, okay, you can't just tweak a love song just about, you know, two degrees and suddenly turn it into a praise song.

Well, don't tell that to Debbie Boone, you light up my life. We want songs that glorify

God. And we haven't distinguished between songs in your car and songs in the local church yet. We'll do that soon enough.

We're just talking about songs should be glorified, that should glorify the Lord and they should have good lyrics.

And now we're tilting a little bit more to inside a church. When songs talk about the man upstairs or my higher power,

I read one place, Steve, our family values expert talking about God.

That is just illiteracy. And that is just the dumbing down. And when we speak of God in a song, we,

I think we should speak of him properly and biblically and we shouldn't fall into the world dumbing down thing.

And so we want, if you're going to sing a Christian song, let me put it this way, and I know you're waiting to jump in. I would rather listen to a secular song that has nothing to do with God or his creation.

I'd rather listen to a secular song that I know isn't claiming to be Christian than a Christian song on some kind of K -love type of channel.

And then it has bad lyrics. I don't want bad lyrics. Yeah, we have plenty of bad theology in our churches without dragging it in in the songs as well.

I once heard a song where they went, this was in church, where they kind of changed the words from the eagles, peaceful, easy feeling, and then went from that to a hymn, kind of transition, made it a medley.

And I just thought that is horrifying. That is horrible. You can't just, again, the idea of just some kind of inserting

Jesus into secular songs just is not the way to go. Steve, do you remember the time

I dragged you to Saddleback Church where Rick Warren is pastoring, shepherding, whatever you call it,

CEOing, administrating, and they were talking about having your house clean and being cleanly, and it's good to be good, and it's nice to be nice.

And then at the very end, they said, well, next week we're gonna talk about how you need to keep your garage clean and your car clean and all that.

And then we walked out to the final hymn song, Car Wash. At the

Car Wash. Looking at the Car Wash, yeah, from that old Bad 70s song. People are just blatant these days.

They sing Celine Dion. We were there, remember that one time? Celine Dion was, they did a special music song, a song written by Celine Dion, and it wasn't godly at all.

Terrible. I mean, I happen to like a song called Long Black Train. It's a country song, and it has some religious overtones to it, but churches actually sing it as a worship song, and I'm going, no.

Just no. No. Well, if you go through this life and use this little paradigm, you're gonna be helped a lot.

And I was taught it, so it's nothing original. Good, better, and best. So you have some decisions are good, some are better, and then you make the best decisions.

And so certainly in corporate worship, wouldn't you agree, listening audience and congregation, that we should try to pick the best things?

And so if we ever wonder, should I or should I not pick that song for special music? It is, you know, run

DMC and Aerosmith, walk this way combo. Then you need to say, you know, asking the question is to answer it.

We ought not to do it. At our church on Sunday, last Sunday, we had special music as our hearts are being prepared to hear the word of God from the pulpit.

We had a man named Tom, and Tom sang a song on the acoustic guitar with the lyrics by John Newton.

Wasn't that a stunning song? Yes, it was. God -centered? Yep, very God -centered. And so that's what we want. If you've got good, better, best, let's go for the best.

And when it comes to music in the church, we wanna make sure that we go for the best that's out there.

And I think of Philippians 4 .8. Whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, good repute, if anything of excellence is worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things.

And so speaking of that, and speaking of what's honorable and good and pure, is it okay for a

Christian to listen to country music? Well, I think it is, personally. Oh, I wonder why.

Well, you know, being originally from the South, I have an affinity for country music. Oh, really? Yeah, the

South of what? South LA, Southern California? Yeah, South California, SoCal. Once in a while,

Pastor Steve will send me some link to a song, or he'll send me some, it's a wonderfully sentimental song with country music and country lyrics.

And, you know, at least they have sometimes a spin on it where they at least talk about church and talk about God.

It might be a non -Trinitarian church, and it might be the big man upstairs. Well, yeah, but I think the point is, you know, ultimately, if you're listening to secular music, you said earlier that you at least want it to be quality secular music.

And I think, again, where does the song take you? You know, if you struggle, let's say, with alcohol, and you listen to a particular song and it makes you wanna drink, well, then don't listen to that song.

If you struggle with sexual sin and certain styles of song make you think about sexual sin, then don't listen to that music.

That's not legalism, that's just sense. If you struggle with pornography, then don't walk by a pornography store.

It's the same thing. You just need to know, okay, these are my weaknesses, these are areas where I struggle, and I'm not going to kind of pave the way for my sin.

Good, I like that. Let me throw something from a different angle. What about, Steve, Christians who say,

I don't go for any secular music, I don't listen to any of that stuff in the car, and I want only pure, good music in the church, and I love songs like Great is

Thy Faithfulness and It is Well with My Soul. But then when they leave, instead of thinking God is great, they walk out fretting and worrying over every little minor detail in their life, and when it comes to It is

Well with My Soul, they run around with a faith that flounders over and over and over.

So this gets complicated. They've missed the whole point. You know, if you're gonna sing It is

Well with My Soul, then keep singing it. You know, every time you start to struggle with worry and doubt and concern, then break that song out.

These are the kind of things that we do to remind ourselves that God is on His throne, and I don't have to worry.

Steve just had his arm up while he was doing that. Next show, we're gonna talk about why don't Christians sing with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength?

That is a craw in Steve's esophagus. We're gonna talk about that next time. It's stuck in my craw. Well, yeah,

I hate when people just kind of, ♪ Amen ♪ They don't want anybody to hear them. We sing for the

Lord. I absolutely, No Compromise Radio, Pastor Mike Abendroth and Pastor Steve Cooley. Tune in again next

Tuesday as we talk about music. Music, No Compromise Radio. God bless. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

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