Now, we're going to talk a little bit about the definitions of these words, but as we do, I also want to address an issue that I think is important to consider as we consider all of these ideas, and that is that, and I said this last week, but I want to repeat it, there is not an issue in the church that I can think of that has caused more intra-church strife and division than the subject of what we sing, and nobody amended it, so you may not agree, but I'm going to say I'm pretty correct, and the reason, and I know this is only anecdotal, but in my experience over the last 20 years, I have seen churches divide, and not just churches divide, I've seen people who will go and find churches only based on a musical preference, whether it is a cultural preference, or whether it is a preference that they feel very convicted about biblically, because sometimes it's just, hey, I like the music, other times it's, hey, I think this is the right music, and there's a different argument there, and so all of this comes down to the question of what do we sing, and as is often the case, and I'm going to borrow again from Brother Andy as I have, as he uses this phrase often, and so I borrow it, and when you borrow it enough, it becomes yours, and we talk about the two ditches, you know, we often say that in just about every area, there are ditches on either side, and we talk about Calvinism, right, and we say there's hyper-Calvinism, that's the bad, that we don't want to be that, right, that's a ditch that's easy to fall into, right, and then you've got Pelagianism and Arminianism on the other side, don't necessarily want to be there either, we want to be right, we want to be right with God's word, and there's other subjects too, I mean, we could say that there are ditches in regard to how we understand the simplest of things, Paul talks about ditches in the scripture, he talks about what we eat, and he says some people believe you can only eat meat, or I'm sorry, only eat vegetables, and some people eat anything, and he says, well, he says both of you need to be convinced in your own mind, but what had happened in the church to bring about that entire conversation is ditches had formed, those who would say unless you are eating only vegetables, then you're not righteous, right, or unless you're doing this, you're not righteous, and so these ditches create these demands, which are not biblical demands, they're preferences that become doctrine, and what did Jesus say about preferences that become doctrine, he talked to the Pharisees, and he says, you have established as doctrine the traditions of men, and he didn't say it in a kind way, he didn't say it in a good way, he didn't say, hey, good job making up your own rules, no he said, your rules which you've created, your rules which you've established are not founded upon the scriptures, but they're founded upon your own preferences, and you've made your preference the word of God, beloved, that's dangerous, and I would say that not every church is divided over preference, there are churches where the division is necessary because it's divided over truth, you don't get to prefer whether or not to believe in the divinity of Christ, you believe in that truth or you don't, and if you don't, you're wrong and you need to repent, because that's not an issue of preference, you don't get to prefer whether or not God's word is true, because God's word is true whether you believe it or not, and it's not a mere preference, so there are certain things, and we talk about the bull's eye where the essentials lie, and then outside of that which we call secondary things that we can disagree on and still be brothers and sisters in Christ, things like our view of baptism can be different, you know we have our maybe differences on our view of eschatology and how Jesus is going to return and when he's going to return and all those things is different, and we can have differences there and still be brothers and sisters in Christ, and then there's something on the third circle which we call adiaphora, adiaphora are the disputed things, things that really, really nobody has certainty about and it's okay, there are certain things that we don't have to be certain about, if you want certainty in everything you're going to find yourself in a cult, because that's what cults provide, cults provide you an answer for everything, and they'll always be willing to tell you what they're supposed to do, because their preference becomes the rule, when preference becomes the demand, you're no longer in a church, you're in a cult, this is what it is, so be careful, but we look at this, we talk about the two ditches, what could the ditches be in regard to music, well on one side we would say that there is a ditch that says that only, only certain things apply, and we're going to talk about what some of those only things are in just a moment, they'd be only this and it's these things, maybe it'd help if I gave you more, because that maybe sounds confusing, there are those who'd say we only should sing old hymns, and I'm going to put the word old there, because they're modern hymns, but they would say we should only sing old hymns, and then you have to begin to define questions like what makes something old, everyone in here is a different age, I feel old, but there are those of you who think I'm a baby, because you're much older than me, so how do we define old hymns, does it have to come before you, and does your age matter, does it have to be written in the 1800's or before, and does that make it old, that's a question, old hymns, there's also something called psalms only, psalms only, and I'm going to address that in a moment, because I think that this position, which tends to only be in pretty conservative reform circles, so this is something that's found in reform circles, I don't agree with it at all, I'm going to show you why in a moment, but this is a popular view that is growing, and it's called exclusive psalmity, exclusive psalmity says we should only sing the canonical psalms, the 150 psalms that are in the Psalter, so this would be that group, and then you have the other ditch, and this is the ditch of everything goes, this ditch over here, it don't matter who wrote it, it don't matter what it says, it don't matter where it's sung, you can come in and sing highway to hell, and if you think I'm joking, there's churches that the call to worship is Ozzy Osbourne, now you might say that's a pretty wide variety of ditches, but it does exist, that's the everything goes ditch, and that's a dangerous ditch, wouldn't you say, I mean honestly if we don't have any standard for what we sing, then what's the difference between singing oh how great thou art, or you know crazy train, that's the logic that exists in some churches, we can worship God with Britney Spears the same way we worship God with amazing grace, so the logic is there's no standard, everything goes, beloved, there's two ditches, and I would say that both of them are not faithful to the text, because the text actually does give us some idea of what the standards are, and so we can begin with the text, right, and we can ask ourselves okay what does the text say, well the text says that we are to be singing psalms, so right away what's one type of song that we should sing, psalms, right, now I point that out only because many churches don't sing psalms anymore, how many songs did we sing this morning that were psalms brother, didn't we sing a couple, I thought we had two, I guess I made a mistake, no, no I'm sorry, I have this list here and thank you for helping me, these are all the songs we sang this morning, we sang immortal, invisible, God only wise, which is based on 1st Timothy 1.17, we sang behold our God, which is based on Isaiah 40.12-14, we sang oh worship the king, and that's the one I was thinking, because it is based upon Psalm 104, it's not the psalm, but it's based upon Psalm 104, and then we sang Psalm 16, and then of course later we're going to sing the glory of Patrick, so those are psalms, those are taken from or are in the canonical song book of Israel, that is what we call the Psalter or the psalm book, and so we sing those psalms, now a psalm comes from the word psalos, which means a song set to music, the word psalos refers to playing an instrument, it is important because there are some who would say our songs should not have instruments, how many of you have ever heard that argument, that we shouldn't have instruments in the church, right, if you have ever been a part of the church of Christ, the church of Christ is a movement that began in the 1800's, it began with Barton Stone, Alexander and Thomas Campbell, and Sir Walter Scott, I always think Willard Scott, but it's not him, it's Walter Scott, and those men began what was known as the restoration movement, and the restoration movement gave birth to the churches of Christ, the disciples of Christ, which is the liberal denomination that's associated with that, and several other small denominations all grew out of that, and they all believed that you shouldn't play instruments, now it changed over time, there are some who do and some who don't now, but they had a non-instrumental, in fact you'll see some churches of Christ, if you drive by their churches, some of their signs will say church of Christ, and in parenthesis non-instrumental, now non-instrumental that means we're not going to sing using instruments, now why in the world would a church say that we shouldn't use instruments, and by the way they're not the only ones, you know who else didn't believe in instruments, pretty highly respected name, one that might surprise you, a man by the name of Charles Spurgeon, Charles Spurgeon repudiated the use of instruments, and he said I would as soon pray with a piece of machinery as I would sing with a piece of machinery, that was his quote, I would just as soon pray with a machine as I would sing with a machine, so his idea was no instruments, but I think the prince of preachers was wrong, I would tell him but he's not here, I do think he was wrong, and I do think that it's based upon a wrong understanding of the regulative principle, now if you're not familiar with the regulative principle, the regulative principle simply says that God's word should regulate our worship, the RPW, regulative principle of worship, means that when we worship we should worship God's way and not our way, and all God's people said amen, we should all agree that when we worship we should worship God's way and not our way, so when we worship we do it the way God wants us to, we pray because God commands us to pray, we sing because God commands us to sing, we study the word because God commands us to study the word, we participate in communion because God's word commands that we participate in the supper, that's called the regulative principle of worship, that God regulates his worship, and there's really nothing wrong with that as far as it goes, but what happens is you get those who take the RPW, who take that regulative principle and begin to apply to it things that become preferences, and they'll say well it's not in the word of God, so we shouldn't do it, for instance in the New Testament you don't find commands to use instruments, in the New Testament you don't see an example of the use of instruments, so those who hold to a very rigid form of the regulative principle would say that the Old Testament doesn't count because we're New Testament Christians, now in a sense, hold on to your hat, in a sense I do agree in one sense that we are not under the old covenant, we're under the new covenant, so in that sense I agree that we're not old covenant saints, we're new covenant saints and therefore we do have new covenant standards that distinguish us from the old covenant, for instance the food that we eat and things like that, there are things that are different, but does that mean that the old covenant rules for worship which included instruments no longer have any application to today, I would say absolutely not and I base this upon our passage for today, because when the apostle Paul points to what we should sing, he points to the songs that had musical accompaniment, he says singing the Psalms and guess what you find when you read through the Psalms, lutes and lyres and tambourines and trumpets, stringed instruments and you know what's so funny about that, you go to some churches and they'll say, well we'll allow a violin but not a guitar, why is what is in my left hand more holy than what is in my right, preference, there's nothing, sorry, there's nothing more intrinsically valuable about this than there is this, there's nothing necessarily more intrinsically beautiful about this than there is this, they both are essentially the same instrument played differently, but we have those who would say this be holy and this be demonic, you see how we turn preference into doctrine, there's nothing godly about that, there's nothing godly about that, by the way Caleb I do thank you for joining the worship team and adding your talent and I wouldn't have been able to do that illustration three weeks ago, so praise the lord, so the question of should we have instruments, I really don't think is really a question because we have, and by the way we don't only have Colossians 3.16, we also have Ephesians 5.18 and 19 which is the parallel passage also mentions the Psalms and in that passage it says making melody in your hearts to God, it says sing with Psalms, hymns, spiritual songs making melody in your hearts to God, and the phrase making melody in the Greek language actually refers to the idea of a melody which is produced with an instrument, it actually does refer to instrumental worship, now one would say wait a minute it says with my heart not with an instrument, yeah but when you sing do you sing only on the inside or do you sing on the outside, because he says sing and make melody, sing and make melody, making melody is what we do with the device and with our voice, there's nothing wrong inherently with having an instrument, now if you're convicted about it and you think that you don't want to have an instrument in worship guess what, God allows for preferential things, but you are not allowed to take your preference and impose it upon someone else, that's a very issue that the early church dealt with, the taking of preferential things and demanding that other people share those same preferences, that's not how it works, that's not Christian liberty, so I believe that the use of instruments is not only fine within the church I think it's part of what we should do, but if a church says they shouldn't do it that's fine, I have no issue, but I do think that it is certainly allowed if not argue that it's commanded, again I can show you so many passages in the Old Testament where instruments were used to exalt the Lord, so again going back to Charles Spurgeon's argument, his argument would not have worked 700 years before Christ, it wouldn't have worked 1000 years before Christ, and if that argument that he's making doesn't work then it really doesn't work now either, so again the prince of preachers can be wrong and that's okay, so he says we are to sing with psalms, now he doesn't stop at the psalms, there are those who say we should only sing the canonical psalms, but Paul doesn't stop with the psalms, Paul says we are to sing with psalms and hymns, hymn simply means a song of praise, hymns are praise, psalms and hymns and then the word is odos where we get the word ode, song like an ode to this, you think of that, it's a song, odos, pneumocotos I think is how the Greek, the odes that are spiritual are spiritual songs, that's this last one, and it's the only one that receives that spiritual demarcation, a spiritual song, now there is thousands of pages devoted to the discussion of what distinguishes these three things, I don't think that it's really something that we can for certain make an argument about, well this absolutely only refers to this and this absolutely only refers to this and this absolutely refers to this, what I think that Paul is doing by giving us three different song titles, psalms, hymns and spiritual songs is he is expressing the variety in which we worship God or with which we worship God, now some would say but all of these are used in the Septuagint to describe the psalms, this is where the exclusive psalm of the argument comes in, they'll say that when you read the Septuagint which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible it always uses psalms or hymns or spiritual songs to refer to the canonical psalms, so it's still the psalms, here is my argument against that, I'm actually going to quote from T.