The Truth About... Singing

This is a production of the World Bible School video to God be the glory When a person visits the Church of Christ one of the first things they notice is that our music is different from that found in most of the denominational world, e.g. , we don't we don't have a choir we don't have a choir we don't have instruments not even a piano and everyone sings in this lesson we want to talk about one of the five acts of worship specifically

singing

we are going to notice four points together in this lesson number one we must sing according to

truth

number two we must sing

truth

number three we must be sincere about what we sing and finally we are going to notice some arguments related to the use of instrumental music. let's study together now the truth about

singing

point number one we must sing according to the truth now exactly what we mean by that good to do anything according to the truth means that we do it in the right way means that we do it according to the will of God Word and when We are talking about singing according to the truth, we are talking about singing in the way that the truth tells us and that truth of course is the Bible, so what does the Bible tell us about singing according to the truth?

I want to start with John chapter four and verse 23 the Bible says but the hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and in truth because the father seeks such to worship him God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth now from this passage we learn three things first God wants us to worship him the verse says that the father is looking for such to worship him second we must worship God in spirit now what does it mean to worship God in spirit does it mean that you do it both with your heart As with your mind, it means that you are not just saying the words, but that you mean what you are saying.

Thirdly, from this text we learn that we must worship God in truth. What does it mean to truly worship God does it mean that we worship him as his word tells us to now think about this verse in the light of our singing, since singing is an act of worship, so whatever this verse teaches us about worship , then it also applies to our singing, well, let's make an application first. to the first part of the verse where we learn that God wants us to sing and not only does he want it, but he requires it. I hate to say that I hate to say that God requires us to sing because we should want to.

If we should be as David said I was glad when they told me let's go to the house of the Lord Psalm 122 and verse 1 I should want to sing everyone salute the power of the name of Jesus let the angels prostrate or fall our God, he is alive, my soul should want to do that, but I need to understand that God does require it. Ephesians 5:19 says speaking to one another in Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord Colossians 3:16 says let the word of Christ dwell in you richly with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms hymns and spiritual songs singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord requires it he expects it he commands that we do it but you know it despite This sometimes there are Christians who sometimes choose not to sing and I wonder what kind of message that sends to others, perhaps to non-Christians who might be visiting.

You know, Matthew 5:16 says let your light shine before men. so that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven and certainly that would apply to our worship and our singing well secondly if we are to worship in spirit then we must also sing in spirit that means we are to sing with our hearts and our mind means that we need to understand and mean what we say when we sing in 1 Corinthians 14 and verse 15 the Bible says: I will pray with the spirit and I will also pray with the understanding. I will sing with the spirit and I will also sing with understanding now I can say Amen to a prayer that I do not understand and in the same vein how can I sing a song that I do not understand?

You know, sometimes we point out a problem with Roman Catholics. Church because sometimes they speak in Latin even though most people there don't understand what is being said, but you know we could be guilty of similar things in our singing when we sing things we don't understand, you know there is a song that is commonly sung in the Church of the Lord entitled old man, fountain of all blessing and I think I sang that song for years before I understood what verse 2 meant, it says this here I raise my Ebenezer here with your help. I've come.

I don't know what he was talking about, I later learned that it is a reference to First Samuel 7 and verse 12, the children of Israel had won a great defeat against the Philistines and Samuel placed a stone as a monument saying that the Lord has helped us . God's help, so when I raise my Ebenezer it is a figurative way of saying God has helped me, he has gotten me this far. Another common song that some people have said they don't understand is Night with Evan Pinion. A phrase from that song says Night with. Evan melancholic piñon or the good veil, what is that talking about?

It is figurative language Evan means black pinion is a melancholic wing or the veil means hanging over the valley. It is a figurative way of expressing the darkness and great pain of the terrible things that happen to Christ, but sometimes. understanding is not the problem, sometimes concentrating is the problem, you know we are singing the lyrics, but we are not really thinking about what we are saying, have you ever done that?, you know, sometimes we get more interested in the notes of the song and in the beat and the hand movements of the leaders of the song than in the words with which we are actually talking to God and to each other, you know, sometimes we might be more interested in how pretty The song sounds like the message it really contains. you know, worship requires effort, our singing requires focusing on the words we speak, otherwise the words are vain and empty, we must give our all, now we are worshiping the god of the universe third, while applying John 4:24 In our singing we learned that we must sing not only in spirit but also in truth, that is, we must sing according to the truth, we must sing in the way that the truth directs us now, do you know why we don't use a piano or some another mechanical instrument in our worship in the Church of Christ it is not because we do not like instrumental music because we do but it is because the truth does not direct us to it it is because there is no authority for it in the Bible and everything to do In religion you have to have authority from God, you know?

Why don't we use peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and orange juice at the Lord's table again? It's because there is no authority for it. In reality, it would be contrary to authority. God said to use unleavened bread and fruit of the vine and to use anything else or to use something additional would simply lack biblical authority and the same is true regarding the instruments in our song service, that is not the way God said that we should worship him in songs. he said we should sing and put melody and our hearts to the Lord and then adding an instrument would be adding to his authority would be speaking where God has no Colossians 3:17 says whatever you do in word or deed do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus Now in the name of the Lord it means by the authority of the Lord you know if a police officer said stop in the name of the law, what does he mean by the authority of the law?

I am telling you to stop and in the same way everything we do in religion and worship of God has to be done with the authority of God, but you know that many people do not understand this very basic biblical principle and therefore, instead to do only what God has authorized they do what they want to do and their defense is well the Bible does not say no I want you to imagine for a moment the following scenario imagine that a man hires a contractor to remodel his kitchen and specifically wants new tiles and new paint, but let's say when you come home from vacation you get a bill for triple what you expected because in addition to tiling and painting the kitchen, the contractor also tore out the wall between the kitchen and dining room and also built a terrace at the back of the house and the client is furious and says I didn't authorize all this.

The contractor says I know, but you didn't say that we don't assume the case goes to court, how do you think? the judge is going to rule, you see, here we understand the principle of authority, but many people ignore it when it comes to the Bible, friends, when we ignore the principle of authority, then anything goes, that is the first point, we must worship God according to the truth. and if we don't do that then we are not true worshipers and this verse says that God is looking for true worshipers to worship him now someone says well if my worship is not true worship then what is good Matthew 15:9 talks about something called vain worship acts 17 :23 analyzes ignorant worship Colossians 2:23 analyzes vain worship, it may be one of these, but if it is not according to the truth, then it is not true worship.

Now our second main point is that not only should it be according to the truth but we should also sing the truth, you know, every time a Bible class teacher stands up to teach or a preacher stands up to preach, we expect him to teach. the truth and for him to stand up and teach something other than the truth, even without knowing it, is very serious and so James wrote brothers, do not let too many of you become teachers knowing that we will receive a stricter judgment James 3:1 now In light of that, did you realize that when we sing we are teaching listen again to Colossians 3:16 let the word of Christ dwell in you richly with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs say with grace in your hearts to the Lord now ask if singing is teaching, is it okay for us to sing false doctrine?

Can we prohibit certain doctrine from being preached from the pulpit but then sung as part of our worship. You know the song leader has a big responsibility here because not only does he need to know something about music and be able to lead, but he also needs to be educated in the truth. for he is leading us with words that should praise God but should also teach and admonish one another. Now you would like to think that all the songs in our songbook would be biblical, but unfortunately that is not the case in many of the songs in Our Book was written by people who are members of denominations.

You know there are songs in our book that are about premillennialism. There are songs that teach the sinner's prayer. There are songs that teach errors about the works of the Holy Spirit and some of them are blatant. So some of them are not so obvious. A song that appears in many Brotherhood songbooks is simply called A Little Talk with Jesus and part of it says this. I was once lost in sin, but Jesus took me in and then a little light from heaven filled me. my soul bathed my heart with love and wrote my name above and just a little talk with Jesus made me feel complete now that is the denominational concept called the sinner's prayer and it is not biblical now we could give many more examples but the point is that we are doing this it is important that we sing point of truth number one we must sing according to point of truth number two we must sing the truth and point number three we must be sincere about what we sing you know the Bible certainly teaches that it is this It is wrong to lie and in the same vein it is wrong to make promises that we have no intention of keeping, but you know, here lies a trap we can fall into regarding our singing.

I saw an ironic article in a newsletter. The time he talked about our songs was titled the way we would sing if we were honest and then he listed some of the songs, one of them was oh how I like it, instead of oh how I love Jesus, one of them was that it's all a bit to me instead of he's all to me one of them was I love talking about telling the story instead of I love telling the story now like I said it was a bit ironic but that's how it could be if We went very honest about the things we sing, you know, sometimes we say things and songs that we have no intention of following through on or maybe it's not that maybe we have a different problem, maybe it goes back to the issue of not worshiping in spirit. maybe we're just not paying much attention to what we say in our songs, you know, we sing songs like for work, for work, we're servants of God or working, working, but are we really working, you know, working is trying hard is working, are we doing that or are we just saying that?

You know, I always thought it was strange that people sang at work and then didn't come back on Sunday night or it's hard here. the song titled I Give It All Says Everything to Jesus I Give It All I Give It Freely Now Do you really mean that all my time all my money all my desires listen to some others every day I will do a work of gold? By helping those who are in need, my life on earth is just a span and so I will do the best I can or this father in the morning, I will pray to you, let yourloving kindness keep me during the day.

I will pray I will pray in the morning, noon and night to you I will pray or this wherever he takes me I will follow I will go with him with him all the way I wonder how many people who are unfaithful today ever sang that song I will go with him all the time we need to sing according to the truth we need to sing the truth and we need to be sincere about what we sing and now we want to do one more thing that I think is very important and that is I want to look at some of the arguments presented by people who seek to justify the use of instrumental music in the worship service and you could say, "Well, you know, we already dealt with that when we talked about singing according to the truth and that's true but at this point I want to give special attention to this because this seems to be a real obstacle for many people and it is something that sometimes new converts have a hard time understanding and so what I want to do is examine some of the arguments put forward by proponents of instrumental music and then we want to respond to those arguments.

Argument number one. Someone argued that God commanded the use of instrumental music in worship in the Old Testament, 2nd Chronicles 29, 25-29. You know it is true that God commanded instrumental music in the Old Testament. I have sometimes heard people argue that instrumental music was never approved by God and they turn to passages like chapter 5 of Amos to try to prove his point. Amos 5:23 God said to Israel, take away the noise of your songs from me because I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments but you see the reason why God rejected their music was not because of the instruments it was because of the hypocrisy in the previous verse that he rejected their offerings but not because he opposed the burnt offerings but because of his hypocrisy if we go down to Amos 6 and verse 5 again sometimes people argue that this verse condemned instrumental music in the Old Testament the Lord says there that they They themselves invent musical instruments. just like David and they are condemned for it, but that is not what the verse is doing, it is not condemning the instruments, it is discussing the life of luxury they were living.

Verse 1 says woe to you who are at ease in Zion! of ivory and lie on couches and eat lambs from their flock verse 5 they sing and make music and then some people think that condemns music in the Old Testament but you see, the idea is the luxurious life they were living now 2 chronicles 29 25 specifically states that instrumental music was ordained by the Lord through the prophets, but the problem is that that was the Old Testament and Colossians 2:14 says that it was nailed to the cross and that we could go back and select many things that applied. under the old law but they do not apply to us today, you know that the Lord commanded animal sacrifices under the old law, but that does not mean that it is okay for Christians today to participate in animal sacrifices.

Well, argument number two, someone says the New. The Testament does not specifically condemn the use of instrumental music in any way. We have already discussed this. You know, the Bible doesn't say not to argue. This is really the argument being made here. This is an argument that is based on a serious misunderstanding of how the Lord AUSA, you know, the New Testament does not specifically condemn peanut butter and jelly at the Lord's table, but when the Lord specifies what he wants, that solves the matter and the New Testament specifically tells us that when God is silent on a matter that means we cannot do it, that is, we have no authority for it now, let me give you an example of this principle in Hebrews chapter 7, the inspired writer presents the argument that Christ could not be a priest on this earth now, why? not because he was from the tribe of Judah now someone says well show me a verse that says someone from the tribe of Judah cannot be a priest and you know there is not one so why can't Christ be a priest listen to Hebrews 7 and verse 14 the The Bible says well it is evident that our Lord was resurrected from Judah of which tribe Moses did not speak anything regarding the priesthood, you see he did not say that it was wrong he simply did not say anything about it and without anything being said there was no authority for it and it would have been wrong to do it anyway those who argue that the Bible doesn't say no haven't really learned to respect the Silence of Scripture don't really understand Biblical Authority now argument number three someone says the word to make melody in Ephesians 5:19 comes from the Greek word Solow which includes the idea of ​​using stringed instruments in praise of God.

You know, this is an interesting argument, it is stated by those who defend the use of mechanical instruments that the Greek lexicons translate this verb with the meaning of contract, ring or pluck, so they say that this argument constitutes authority for the use of instrumental music , but first we are told what we should point to in the same verse and it is not a mechanical instrument, but rather the human heart, in a figurative sense it says: it touches the fibers of the heart and that is why the translators do it. They have translated to say make music or make melody in your heart.

Now it is significant that mechanical instruments are not mentioned here. Secondly, if this verse. referred to a stringed instrument, then all Christians would be required to play one since this verse is applicable to all Christians. Well, argument number 4 someone says Revelation 5:8 and 14 - and 15 - they all mentioned harps, stringed instruments in heaven and although the revelation is full of symbolic language, they would say: Would God use the symbol of an instrument if in Doesn't he actually approve of its use in worship? You know, I would point out that the book of Revelation also mentions an altar and golden incense and burning. of incense, all these things that are figures of the Old Testament, but that does not mean that they are authorized in New Testament worship.

You know, this argument could also be used to bring back incense burning into our worship just as easily as one could argue for instrumental music, ok, argument number 5, some have said that this is simply not a Salvation issue, music instrumental is not so important, it is not a Salvation problem. I wonder what caused a bicycle to be banned, would you say if I asked you how we can worship God is really a Salvation issue friends John 4:24 says that God is a spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and the truth must being an imperative and the one who thinks that how you worship God doesn't really matter is just being deceptive.

The same Lord said about the days of the Jews said in vain they worship me teaching as doctrines commandments of men Matthew 15:9 you know when we teach people to do something in worship that God has taught us not to do then ours worship becomes vain and vain means empty or worthless friends a man cannot go to heaven offering empty and worthless worship to God ok, argument number six, you could call this the natural talent argument, this argument suggests that playing an instrument It is a natural talent that some people have and therefore using instruments in worship gives them the opportunity to use this talent to serve the Lord, but you know that there are some people who have a natural talent for cooking, but that does not mean that they should bring it to worship if natural talent was not the basis and standard for our worship then God would not have given specific acts he would have simply said just act naturally.

Well, argument number seven could call this music in the home. The argument goes that if music is okay in my house, then it is okay in worship, but you know that such an argument assumes that everything that is acceptable in the home is also acceptable in the worship of God and that is simply not the point. case. You know that eating a common meal is acceptable in my home, but it is not acceptable as an act. In fact in 1 Corinthians 11 the Corinthian brothers were rebuked for treating the Lord's Supper as a common meal. You know, we could make a long list of things that are acceptable in the home but are not acceptable in the worship of God.

Argument number eight is The Help Argument Sometimes people try to say that the piano is no different from a songbook, it's just a help, but you see, there is a difference. The Bible gives us authority for songbooks and it is in the command to sing in order to accomplish that. command we have to have words and that is why a songbook helps us produce what God has asked, but you see, playing the piano is an addition, it creates a second type of music, not only do you have the type of music that is the music of the heart. is offered but piano music is also offered, you see that when you finish using the songbook, all you have done is sing, but when you finish playing the piano, you have sung and played, you have made two different types of music, one one that is authorized and one that is not, you know, we could go on and on with these arguments, but it really comes down to the question: what has God asked for?

What has God authorized us to do in New Testament worship? Now let me read. some verses and then let's summarize all this first Romans 15:9 therefore I will confess you among the Gentiles and I will sing in your name first Corinthians 14:15 what is the conclusion then I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the understanding I will sing with the spirit and I will also sing with understanding Ephesians 5:19 speaking to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord Colossians 3:16 let the word of Christ dwell in you richly with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another to others in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord Hebrews 2:12 I will declare your name to my brothers in the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to them now, let's summarize all this, what God has authorized us to do in our worship with respect to music, singing, speaking to ourselves in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, teaching and admonishing one another with songs, making melodies.

In our hearts and friends, if we offer God a different type of music than what we just read and covered, then we are not offering Him the type of music He asked for you.