The National Center for Family Integrated Churches welcomes Kevin Swanson with the following message entitled Music in worship. As we sing these songs I am thinking, who is sufficient for these things? Sometimes we sing the words mindlessly, sometimes we hardly understand the doctrines, the concepts, the glory of God and His grace. What has He done for us? We know something about it, but as the years go by, I trust we will learn more, and we will worship in spirit and in truth.
Well, today my topic is going to be on singing. And singing is so important in the family and in the church. A couple of years ago, I did a series of programs on my radio show called Will the Circle Be Unbroken? And I tried to find people who had raised children in the 1960s and 1970s whose children were all walking with the Lord. And that was difficult to do.
That was really hard to find somebody out there whose children were following the Lord and engaged in ministry and raising their own children in the fear of the Lord. And I found three men, one of whom is here this weekend. I just met him, older man, probably in his 70s. But I interviewed these three men. One of the things that I noted from all of these interviews was that all of the men said that their families were singing families.
They sang in the car, they sang in the shower, They sang before they went to bed. They sang before they partook of meals. They just were singing families. And I think that music is vitally important in that it seals a commitment to our God. Now the commitment again must be set by propositions, by truth, by the preaching of the Word of God.
This is how we get it. Paul says in Romans 10, so we get it by preaching, But it seals, it solidifies, it worms its way into the hearts of our children by way of music. Music is powerful. It has a means of solidifying that commitment, so to speak. When I married my wife, we were one flesh, but that relationship has been solidified again and again by our hugs and kisses.
And if I was to marry my wife and then never show any affection or never affirm my love for her over 20-25 years it wouldn't be much of a marriage would it now well that's that's what music does music seals the commitment so to speak but let's let's open in prayer and then we'll begin with what God's Word has to say about psalmity and singing. Father in heaven, we pray that your blessing would be upon us this day. Open our minds and our hearts to understand what your word says. And Father, we know that we have been taken often by the deceitfulness of the world, by false prophets and by our culture that is not there to glorify you and to stand in fear and awe and reverence of the true and living God. But Father, we pray that today, you would open our hearts and our minds to know the sort of worship that you require of us that we might give it to you.
And Father, that our worship might be acceptable and might be beautiful and a wonderful, wonderful sacrifice of joy and praise. We pray this In Jesus' name, amen. As I said yesterday, I do believe that the form of music really matters. And let me quote somebody who, by the way, I do respect, a man who's been helpful. He's a seminary professor, been helpful in many, many ways.
But this man, John Frame, has written a book on worship. And he says, it's hundreds of years from now, some people may find in heavy metal music precisely the musical language best suited to their praise. Of course, much would have to change in the cultural connotations of that music before the church should consider its use in worship. Now I submit to you that there are some forms of music that are better than others. And I'm not sure this is accepted by many who think about music these days.
Music is a matter of the heart, and ultimately, it is a reflection of our passions and our love for God or for something else. And what we have seen in the development of musical genres over the last 40 to 50 years, we've seen a development of what I've said last night to be the cultural revolutions of the last 40 years, but more than that, the last 100 years dating back to Richard Wagner, who is well known to be a revolutionary in the area of classical music or the higher art form. What we've seen since the 1960s has been revolution on the mass scale, revolution in mass culture, but also within the Christian church, we have seen an abandonment of the old traditions. And one of the reasons for this is that in the 1950s and 1960s, the youth began to realize that the church in America was apostate and had abandoned the heart but retained the forms. So they rejected the forms and developed new forms, the revolutionary forms, to replace the old forms in worship.
Now here's one of the problems. One of the problems is that formality in worship, lacking heart, is ultimately a heart problem. It's not a problem with the form, it's a problem with the heart. So the response to what was going on in the apostasy of the Western world was not to reject everything we had ever received in terms of form and heart and to develop our own religion. The thing that we should have done was to repent of abandoning the heart of the faith in the early part of the 20th century the opposite of formalism is not informalism See the reason why I believe the modern church has taken on the wearing of tennis shoes and t-shirts in the worship is because they have rejected the formalism of previous generations.
And they said, well, we don't want to be formalistic, so we are going to be informal in our worship, and maybe that will satisfy God and show God that we are authentic to the core. But in the end, they abandoned the fear of God in the heart, they abandoned true faith in the heart, true love for God in the heart, and became informal in their presentation. The opposite of formalism is not informalism. The opposite of formalism in worship is a true heart deep commitment to God that will manifest itself in various forms that are God-honoring. So this I believe to be the problem of the previous generation.
If you look at what's happened in music in the Christian contemporary scene, it is not a demonstration of the Spirit of God working in a movement and sanctifying the Church of Jesus Christ. Now I say that because I watch the lives of the people that have developed the form. The Bible says something important. Jesus gives us this very important clue as to whether or not we're on the right track or we're following people on the right track when he says, by their fruits ye shall know them. That's to me really significant, really important.
In fact it becomes one of the most important elements of my book Apostate. In order to understand the ideas that are expressed by the great influencers of modern society, you need to watch their lives. I think it's important to know that Marx, Karl Marx, starved four of his children to death and his last two daughters who survived him committed suicide. I think that's important. I think that's the data point.
I think even if you couldn't understand everything that Karl Marx wrote, and it's very, very difficult sometimes to follow his dialectic, at the very least, you can follow the words of the carpenter from Nazareth when he said Very simply by their fruits ye shall know the prophets The same thing applies to John Jacques Rousseau Who abandoned his five children in the steps of an orphanage and then went forward and told the entire Western world how to set up their social systems. That's just the biggest irony that ever existed. The grandfather of all psychology, every psychological department in every university in America traces their idea of man, their anthropology and their psychology to Frederick Nietzsche who wrote a book called The Antichrist setting himself against Jesus Christ calling himself the Antichrist. Three months later, he went insane. He was insane for the last 11 years of his life, and that to me is one of the greatest ironies in all of human history, that the grandfather of all of the psychology departments in every university in America went totally stark raving insane the last 11 years of his life.
That's gonna be one we're going to laugh about into eternity. Okay. So here's my point. When it comes to the history of the contemporary Christian music scene, remember it began with Larry Norman, Randy Stonehill, and Marsha Stevens. That's where it began.
And I think it's it's instructive to us that Larry Norman married Randy Stonehill's wife. I think that's instructive. I think it's instructive that Larry Norman had two divorces and a child out of wedlock in the 1980s. I think that's instructive. I think it's instructive that Marsha Stevens, one of the most important founders of the CCM movement in the 1970s, Came out of the closet in 1979.
I think that's important. I think that's a data point And I don't need to tell you all of the CCM artists who have had a divorce The fruits brothers and sisters the fruits of American Christianity stinks to high heaven! God help us! And three years before Larry Norman died, I followed his blog to the end of his life, partially because I was part of the CCM scene in the 1980s. I was a disc jockey.
I sponsored concerts in San Luis Obispo, California, Cal Poly in the 1980s. So I followed these men all the way to the end. Some cases, Larry Norman, two years before he died, I was reading his blog and he said, I think it's time to throw all of the music out of the church for the next several decades and just teach the Word of God. The father of contemporary Christian music towards the end of his life. Finally understanding there is something very very wrong with what we're doing And maybe it's time to just get into the word of God and understand the word of God, get it into us, get our worldview and our theology down first so that 10, 15 or 20 years from now we might be able to develop forms that have some resemblance to the theology or the worldview contained in the Word of God.
Does contemporary Christian music represent a powerful reformation of culture and theology in the 21st century? We have to ask ourselves these questions. We should. We should honestly assess whether or not our cultural emanations are really producing the things we thought they would produce. Does a Christian homeschooling girl that wins the Miss America contest in 2011, including the bikini contest, really constitute a mighty influence of Reformational thought in the 21st century.
Will this do something to establish biblical womanhood against whatever the world is doing in the 21st century? What kind of an impact? Remember, everybody's after impact here. Everybody wants to glorify God, wants to seek his King. I'm assuming.
I'm assuming the motives are there. Now, again, let's get back to the question, really, is it accomplishing what we're saying it accomplishes? If we begin to ask these questions and answer them honestly, I think we're going to understand the state of the hearts of modern Christianity. These are vitally important questions, especially in an age of apostasy. So what can we say about the modern music forms?
Several things I'd like to mention. First of which is that it's very hard to trust forms that have been created during the very lowest point in all of Western Christian history. Now, hopefully, some of the things I'm saying here are fairly obvious and not super controversial. I try very hard not to jump into the middle of the controversy immediately, you know, and say something like, all rock and roll is of the devil. D-I-V-E-L, spell it wrong, that helps.
And then everybody says, okay, all rock and roll, those of the devil, and we're done. I try not to make it that easy for all of us. I try to bring what I believe to be obvious points concerning the zeitgeist, concerning the spirit of the age, obvious points concerning the truths of God's word to bear, and then I leave the decisions up to those who are listening. That's what I do. I try not to narrow the applications.
Anybody who's listening to this form of music is in sion and you ought to repent right now. I don't say that. I rather, I lay out the principles, I lay out the zeitgeist And then I say, moms, dads, you are the jurisdictional heads in your homes, and you are responsible before almighty God to choose your forms and to lead your family. And ultimately it will be the fathers and the elders and those who lead their families who will lead the church of God and hopefully make wise decisions to set the direction for the church in the 21st century. So my first point when it comes to choosing music forms is this, it's hard to trust forms that have been created during the lowest point of all of Western Christian history.
Now some will come back to us and say, yeah, but Amazing Grace and A Mighty Fortress is our God were set to bar tunes. And some will come back and say that. My first response to that is actually they were set to music that had been developed in folk forms over multiple generations during the rise of Western Christianity over a thousand years. Okay, so look at the bigger picture here. They were folk forms that developed over a thousand years.
They were not pop forms, and I think it's helpful to distinguish between three forms in music. Folk form, pop form, and high art form. And the pop form has developed out of a social context that does not involve much in terms of family or church. Now it is true that there are some folk forms that made its way into Christian music by way of the African-American, the Negro spiritual and such that really had developed in the folk form, in the communities, and they were halfway decent forms. They had developed into decent forms, and yet twisted into more of a pop form by way of men like Sam Cooke.
One of the things I like to do is follow certain musicians. I find that Sam Cooke started as a preacher's son and one of the very first songs on his anthology is The hem of his garment a fairly decent Church song that obviously had learned in the church choir and he had brought into the pop form, but as you follow his career, eventually he's singing the songs that are developed in the single scene in a downtown city district. There is no family, there is no church, there is no context in the Word of God, there is no context in community. It is purely another Saturday night, ain't got nobody coming down, and I'm trying to find a girl down at the bar. Okay, that's that's where we go with Sam Cook's singing career as he moves out of the folk form into the pop form and his music becomes more and more rooted in the social context of the popular media form of the last 40 to 50 years.
And be aware that this form developed out of, not family and church, but out of a desire for men to be famous, out of a desire for men to be at the very pinnacle of a gigantic popular music system, and it's a babble system of sorts, and it certainly, for the most part, does not have any Reflection of a biblical world and life view or a social contacts that would include family and church and to me That's that's the development of the pop form So my first point is it's hard to trust forms that have been created during the lowest point in all of Western Christian history. Secondly, be aware that there are forms that are more mature than others. There are forms that are more advanced. There are certainly forms that are better equipped or better developed to handle the doctrines of the word of God. I made that point yesterday as best as I could.
But there are also some forms that are more mature than others. It is true there are some songs that are probably best fitted for two-year-olds or three-year-olds or four-year-olds, but not so much for those who are mature in their understanding of the Word of God. There are art forms that can be honed, but the form themselves are rather immature and perhaps not very suited to to develop the ideas that that we would express as Christians. Let me take for example, and this would be an obvious example, let's say somebody developed a very fine form of art or sculpture using cow dung. Cow pies.
Everybody understand what a cow pie is, right? So what he does, and by the way I used this illustration a couple of months ago at a camp and someone said actually there is somebody who's developed this. So, but here he is, he's taken cow dung and he sculptures cow dung and he's actually become very, very good at it. I mean, he's the best in the world. He's the best cow dung sculptor in the world.
But as it turns out, the form itself really stinks. He could have used something else and done even better, work with it. The same thing can be applied to music. There are some forms of music that people become very good at Very accomplished at developing the form and people buy their albums. They're the best in the world there's nobody who does as good a job at at this somewhat degraded form as This one person and and and because the society itself the culture itself is becoming increasingly immature that the culture Embraces the form and everybody runs out and buys this guy's albums that are made out of cow dung.
I'm sorry, I'm mixing metaphors here for a second. But you get the idea, don't you? They're very good at what they do, and there's no denying that we have somebody who has hound a form to the umpteenth degree, but the form itself is immature. Now, what are we doing as we disciple our children or disciple the Church of Jesus Christ, but our objective is to mature the body of Christ. It is to take people where they are and bring them up.
See it's not as if we're always working the lowest common denominator, and it's not as if we're always working the highest standard of music or cultural expression or the preaching of the Word of God, but in the preaching, in the method of the music, I think we are attempting to come down and bring people up to a higher standard. This, I think, is the way in which maturation occurs in the music form and everything else. So before we talk about music, I need to say one more thing, and that is in the worship of God, remember, the Singing is not the most important thing. The singing is not the most important thing. The most important thing is not the lighting.
In fact, today, there's so many things you can get to encourage your church growth and to set your church on the right track and help with the presentation and develop a great show in order that the hundreds and the thousands will come in and watch and partake of this great demonstration, this big show that's coming from the front of the building. But in the end, my friends, the worship of God is not a show. The lighting really doesn't matter. As Ligon Duncan says, the best thing to do when you're analyzing the various aspects of worship is run it through the catacomb test. Was it essential for worship in the catacombs when the people of God were pressed into the caves under the city of Rome in the days of the persecutions.
Lighting was not important in the catacombs. The sound system didn't matter. The form of music was not the primary issue. Ultimately, of course, it was the preaching of the Word of God. You know, even to this day, you might even give it the van test.
And I just saw the story in Voice of the Martyrs, very interesting story about a church. I think it was somewhere in Vietnam, communist Vietnam, somewhere. And the church will gather in a van and travel the city in the van. Because nobody knows they're worshiping in a van. So all they have to do is pay for gas.
They don't have to pay for rent. He knows it's gas. Isn't that cool? I don't think they're too concerned about the sound system. Okay.
What does God require in worship? And again, I believe this is the best way to establish your form of music in the church. Always get back to what God says. What does God say in his word concerning singing and worship. I said it's not the most important thing but it is still important.
Singing is required by God at least fifty times as a command to the people of God in Old and New Testaments both. We are commanded to sing. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. We aren't commanded to any other art form. Thank God we're not commanded to stick figures or sculpturing.
If so, I'd be in trouble. I don't do good in stick figures. We're not to draw stick figures to the glory of God. We are to sing to the glory of God. It's only our form required by God is to sing.
And as I present my messages on education around the United States, I encourage people to teach their children reading, writing, and singing, all three required by God. I don't find where arithmetic is required by God. Now I think it's good, and I think it's helpful for dominion, and I'm glad that we add that to the mix later on, but families that teach their children eight years of Saxon mat, eight years. I mean, think about it, 42, 000 hours for some boys, some probably a little less than that, but 42, 000 hours of sitting there and learning their arithmetic day in and day out, and it's not even required in the Word of God singing is and How many hours does the average family spend teaching their children to sing? Something that is required by God in his worship in our lives, singing more basic, more fundamental to the establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ that yes, is far more organic than the great empires built by man, that does require a fair amount of geometry and math in order to pull these buildings together.
But friends, we're more than buildings in the church of Jesus Christ, we are about building an organic, praising, worshipping, organic body of Christ and evidently singing is important to that end. Now, some have told me that singing and music is fundamental to math and may be more fundamental to math, and those that learn to sing and those that learn music are sometimes better equipped for their math class because of their understanding of music. So God requires singing as an art form that again is required for everybody. And if anybody says, I just can't sing, my question is this, have you worked at singing as long as you've worked on your math from the time you were six years old learning to add and subtract? And the average person would say, I've put all of an hour and a half into it.
I've worked at singing for an hour and a half of my life and I cannot figure this thing out. Please put a little more time into it. Very few people are tone-deaf and are capable of singing the Psalms of God. So I encourage you to include singing in the educational programs for your children. Okay, Here's the first requirement in the development of godly music in the church, and that is the fear of God.
The fear of God. We are to worship in fear. Ecclesiastes 5, 1, keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God and be more ready to hear than to give the sacrifice of fools. For they consider not that they do evil. Be not rash with thy mouth and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God, for God is in heaven and thou upon earth, Therefore, let thy words be few." Hebrews 12 and verse 28, wherefore, we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.
So, fundamentally, again, fundamentally, what is the most important requirement in the development of music or worship within the church of Jesus Christ? What does God say specifically? What he says is if you are going to worship me, you do it in fear. I gave several illustrations last night about the music director trying to find ways in which to express fear and reverence in the worship of God. And he was largely incapable of doing it last night.
But he was incapable of doing it because He didn't understand it very well. You see, the fear of God is something that needs to be learned. We read this in the Psalms. Teach your children the fear of God. And I don't know about you, but I don't automatically fear God.
It just doesn't come just like that. It comes by years and years of consideration of God's works, of God's judgments upon the earth, of God's words, his warnings, his redemption in Jesus Christ. It comes from meditating on what exactly was going on at the cross of Christ. See, and this is of course why the atonement and the propitiatory work of Christ has been so terribly denigrated. Certainly beginning in the 19th century with men like George McDonald who did everything he could to minimize the atonement of Jesus saying this ugly bloody thing that is expressed in the Christian doctrine concerning the atonement ought to be rejected because it's just so ugly.
We can't even imagine the possibility of a father purposefully having his son on a cross and taking this terrible death in order to pay for our sins, atone and propitiate for the sins of his people. But friends, this is really what ought to drive our fear as we prepare for music in the church. There's no difference between Old Testament and New Testament on this matter either. I just read something from Ecclesiastes and something from Hebrews. I don't see any difference either way.
One of the ways we like to look at the worship of God is to run the bases. We begin with the fear of God. First base is the fear of God. And if we've arrived at first base, if we fear God, if we understand His law, if we understand what happened at the cross because of our sins, then we make it to second base and receive the forgiveness of Christ, and we're overwhelmed at the goodness of God. And we've been forgiven much, and we're embracing Christ because of everything He did for us at the cross.
And so all of the comprehension of this great gift and this great forgiveness and all the relief that sweeps over our souls to realize we're not condemned. We're not gonna be in hell forever because we're accepted as sons of God because of the sacrifice of Jesus, we receive that in faith, and then we love him. Because he who has been forgiven much will love much, as Jesus says, concerning the sinner woman at his feet. And so we make it the third base which is love. And then if it's a home run it's joy.
We respond, we come out of the worship service and joy. If the worship service was a home run it happened because we ran the bases. We began with fear, moved to love, faith, then on to love, and then on to joy. And the problem with most worship is there is no fear to begin with, so where is the love? If we haven't sinned much, then we haven't been forgiven much.
If we haven't been forgiven much, We don't love much. If we don't love much, then what kind of stinking service and worship are we gonna give Jesus? So it's all connected. But the problem for most of the church Today is they don't even make it to first base. They're playing T-balls with three year olds.
They're running to second base first. With no fear, no fear. No fear of God. And their worship is incredibly impoverished. Their faith is insipid, weak or nonexistent.
And of course, you're never gonna get love out of that. Self-service may be not love. Secondly, we worship in spirit and in truth. The place doesn't matter anymore. It doesn't matter if we're in Gerizim or Jerusalem.
What matters now is that we are worshiping God in spirit and in truth. Truth refers to two different things. One is the truth of God's word, the true understanding of who God is, the God with whom we have to do, but also an internalization of that, an understanding of it, a faith in it, a reception of it in our own hearts. Not just propositions floating out there, but propositions that are within ourselves. Where we know that we know we're dealing with a God who is great, a God who is powerful, a God who has created the universe, a God who has created a galaxy and thrown a number of galaxies over here 40 million light years this way, another 60 billion light years over there, and another 20 trillion light years over there.
A God who has put the universe in place, a God who has established man and created him in his image, and set his love upon him in Jesus Christ. These things have to be believed in order that it may be acceptable worship to God. Secondly, it's a worship in spirit. Now is that a worship in our spirit or a worship in the spirit of God? And my answer to that is yes, it is.
It is the Spirit of God speaking to our spirit that we are the children of God It is us walking in the spirit in the worship rather than in the flesh Have you ever been in a worship service and you showed up grumpy? No joy. No faith to speak of no love You're looking around you're grumpy towards your family. You're grumpy towards the pastor. You're grumpy towards all the elders You're you're irritated towards 16 members in the church.
How's the worship going for you this morning? The fruits of the Spirit are the greatest indicators that the Spirit of God is working in you in the worship service in order that you bring to God the acceptable worship. So as we present the music, as we sing the songs, as we write the songs, here's the question. Are we writing in the Spirit? Are we exhibiting, and again, how do you know you're in the Spirit?
Are you exhibiting the fruits of the Spirit Before you approach the pulpit, before you approach to lead the people in the singing in the church, are you in the spirit? And friends, I will tell you that on any given Sunday, it can be a struggle for me. This in the spirit bit is not, again, an automatic thing where immediately, first thing in the morning, I am exhibiting love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith. Last Sunday was kind of a doggy Sunday, I think, for all of us. We all show up and the elders just, we pray beforehand and it's just this grumpiness about everybody.
I look at everybody and everybody's under the weather. Just, you know, I just don't sense the spirit of God is coming upon us and there's all the love of God flowing and the guy who leads the songs stands up and just before he leads the songs he looks back in the back and he talks to the sound guy, hey Johnny I'm sorry I was such a grump to you this morning will you forgive me? Everybody's going, oh boy. You know So there he is getting things right with his brother. And so there's a little humility, a little meekness here, and then the love starts to flow and then the faith comes into play and before you know it, the fruits of the Spirit are operating, and we have a worship service on our hands.
I was just telling Pastor Beekie that every Sunday is a test of faith for me. As I approach the pulpit, it can be a crisis of faith for me as I'm again speaking of things that I should believe. And I ask myself, do I believe these things? How will they believe them? How they would believe that I believe them if I don't believe them.
So it's a test of faith for me as I enter the pulpit and preach the Word of God to God's people. Thirdly, genuine worship occurs in sincerity. 1 Corinthians 5 and verse 8, therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. This speaks, I believe, of the Lord's Supper, which plays a part in the Congregation of the Saints and the worship of God's people and what he's saying here in this chapter on church disciplines when you come together Be careful that you're not coming together as people are insincere as Scott Brown said last night Sincerity is marked not by the worship just there and then what's happening in your heart right now, right here, but it also ties into who you are. Are you a genuine sincere believer in Jesus Christ or are you dragging your fornication habit into the church service on a Sunday and you are a different person on Sunday than you are on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
So much of worship today is insincere because people want to pretend like they have something of a worship to give God and yet their lives are corrupt And there isn't that honest confession of faith. There isn't a true, blue, sincere and honest repentance going on in the body of Christ. And for this reason, I think much of the worship that is wrought in our modern music forms is insincere. Again, pulling in the lives of those who have written the music. Pulling in the lives of those who perform the music.
How many times have we heard that members of the worship band are living in fornication with their boyfriends and girlfriends? I've heard this a number of times. Concerning evangelical churches. I could give you the names, but I won't. This is unacceptable worship.
God wants sincerity in his worship, and he demands it. Now let me say this, God demands it of us too. And some of you know that there has been a shakeup of some of the ministries whom we love, with whom we've had something to do. And the news broke, I think, just yesterday. That there has been some insincerity.
Jesus is shaking his church right now. You understand? Jesus Christ is coming to the church in America. I'm saying every denomination. I'm saying every little community, every ghetto of Christianity in the present day and he is going to seek out every little piece of leaveness in sincerity and he is going to be dealing with it.
He's not going to let it go. Understand that yes, we're dealing with a church and apostasy. Yes, we're dealing with a world that is massively destructive and is influencing the church of Jesus Christ in a very negative way, especially in the area of sexuality. And where there is sexual sin, Jesus will hunt it out. He will send the hounds of heaven after it.
He will find it, he will manifest it, he will bring it out for everybody to see and yes, he will humble his church, including me where he needs to. And praise God for that because he loves his church, he will have a church, he will shine up and polish up his church that he will have a bride fit for that wedding at the end. And I thank Jesus for that. The last couple of years in my life has been a hunt after the little pieces of lust and idolatry that have lurked in the nooks and crannies of my own heart and my own life, and I'm here to tell you, it has not been a comfortable process, but I thank God that through trial, through conviction of sin, through the word of God, through brothers in Christ, through good accountability, We are finding this sin by God's grace and finding ways in which to purge some things we didn't even know existed prior to two, three years ago. Sincerity.
Absolutely essential in God's worship. Jesus will have nothing less than sincere worship. Fourthly, Jesus wants Psalm 103 worship. I don't know how else to refer to this, But in Psalm 103, David says, bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Worship involves everything that is within us.
So in the presentation of the music, we are to worship God with whatever is within us, anything that is within us, and it's been broken down in different ways, but one of the most helpful ways, I believe this biblical way, is to break out the mind, the affections, and the will. God wants all of these things brought to bear in the preaching, in the singing of his Psalms. He wants us worshiping with the understanding. Yes, with the understanding. In 1 Corinthians chapter 12, we're told to worship God with the understanding and with the Spirit.
It is essential that we bring the understanding to the singing of God's songs. And one of the reasons why the 7-11 choruses are unacceptable for God's people is because if you repeat something over and over again as a mantra, eventually you begin to forget what you're saying and the mantra itself is not helpful and we disconnect the mind from the worship, something the pagans do in their vain repetitions as Jesus says, we're not to pray as the pagans do with their vain repetitions. In hypnosis, in the repetition of statements over and over and over again, we wind up not worshiping God in the understanding. We wind up with the emotions active but not the understanding. It is important that we bring God our worship with the understanding, with the emotions.
Now, because so much of Worship today has been what we call Dionysios rising. That is the Greek God who is all emotion. All emotion, exploded onto the scene. And when he does his presentations, you know, he is just throwing everything into it. It's everything is emotion, everything is unrestained emotion, everything is streaming at the top of your lungs, everything is just pouring emotion out with everything you have.
This is sort of the rock and roll generation came out of Richard Wagner of the 1800s, who said, forget about order, forget about anything else, all that matters is emotion. It was the concept of dynasty is rising. In the present day where emotion is pretty much what governs the day, sometimes the reformed elements will abandon emotion altogether. And this to me is likewise unacceptable. Worship must include both.
The worship of the understanding. We ought to be able to sing the complex psalms. We shouldn't have to sing the same seven words 11 times over and over and over again in order to create some kind of emotional feel. We ought to be able to sing the entire psalm and do so with emotion as well. I attended a psalm singing church that did nothing but psalms in Canada a number of years ago.
I've never ever heard people sing the emotion filled psalms of the Bible with so much of a lack of emotion, with such a straight face, with such a, as if they've been doing this for 500 years because they're supposed to. This is what we do. We sing the Psalms because we're supposed to sing the Psalm, so sing the Psalms and we're singing it now and we will not sing it with emotion because all those charismatic sing things with emotions and we don't want to be emotional it was just odd to hear people singing with emotion David expressed his joy as he danced and shouted and leaped for joy before the altar as it came into, or the Ark of the Covenant as it came into the walls of Jerusalem. And remember what Michael did. Michael, his wife, looked down and despised him in his exuberance and God cursed that woman for the rest of her life because of her spite for somebody in the worship service who was into it.
And you've ever seen a pastor who's into what he's saying, and you're sitting back and saying, well, there's an oddball, there's a weirdo, what's wrong with him? He's looking a little too charismatic for me. You watch out. You watch out. God cursed Michael for that.
Yes, emotion plays a vitally important role. In the Psalms, you can't read the Psalms without feeling the emotions of the Psalms. You don't feel the emotions, you don't understand the Psalms. You're not getting it. You don't understand what he's up against.
You don't understand the desire and the yearning for God in this man's life and heart. The Psalms are just chock full of emotion, biblical emotion, yes, but emotion. Also, we ought to be worshiping God with our wills. Our wills. Psalm 119 to 106, I have sworn an oath to keep your commandments.
I have inclined my heart to keep your statutes even unto the end. This is a man who's singing this. By the way, you hardly ever hear people singing about the law of God, about singing about obedience and singing about God, I will obey your commandments all the way to the end, I am committed to this. By the way, as I'm going through the will and the mind and the emotions, I think sometimes the Spirit of God has blessed various aspects of the Church of Jesus Christ in these areas. And anybody who comes to me and says, I don't think the Spirit of God has ever visited any charismatic in the history of the charismatic church, friends, there's something wrong with that man.
Because God, the Holy Spirit is all around the world and he shows up in other denominations besides your own. He does. And it seems to me that in general, in general, The gift of the Reformed group tends to be in the area of the mind, the understanding, the search in the Word of God. They write all the big books, usually 700 pages and more. The big theologies, If there's a big theology with more than 400 pages written by a reformed Baptist or Presbyterian, okay, it's just the way they are.
The big heads, they know a lot of stuff and they really express themselves well in their theological manuals. Meanwhile, you have the charismatics and they seem to be very expressive of their emotions. It seems to me their heart is in it. Now sometimes maybe they don't know as much as they should know and Sometimes their fervency isn't measured by understanding and sometimes they might go overboard and sometimes they may need to be corrected in this area or that area by Brother MacArthur. God bless John MacArthur.
But this is a gift. There's a heart there. There's affection there. There's emotion there. Praise God.
Amen. If there's any heart, if there's any emotion for God, and it shows up in a charismatic church, can anybody say amen? Praise God. Praise God. Now, what about the Baptists?
The Baptists and sometimes more the fundamentalists, their will. It seems to me you can't make it through a church service without a commitment of the will, without somebody raising their hand, without somebody coming forward saying, okay I'm in it, I mean I'm all in, I'm joining, I'm signing up, where do I sign up? Okay, I've been to these churches, I was raised a Baptist, so I can tell you that. Just, you know, and when you hear the preaching, there's this insistence that people say amen. You ever hear that from a Baptist?
I mean, you gotta get everybody to commit to it. You know, you can't just let everybody sit there and gawk at you. You have to say, amen. You gotta get them to say amen. Why?
Because the Baptists understand the vital importance of getting out there and following up on the sermon. Whenever I preach, I tell people, don't you dare come up to me and say, great sermon, pastor, because when these kids do it in my worship service, I say, well, how do you know it's a good sermon? It ain't over yet. The sermon's not over until you render application to it. You follow me?
It's because what good is all this hearing of the word of God if there's no doing of it? All right. So in the worship of God, God wants us all in. God wants all of these emotions. And I've learned something of the will from the Baptist.
I've learned something of the emotions from the Charismatics. Have you noticed? I've learned, Brother Beekie was telling me, man you get into it. Some fervency going there. But I've learned these things from brothers and sisters in Christ, from other aspects.
And I sat around reading Reformed manuals and Reformed doctrine, Reformed theological treatises from the time I was 13 or 14 years of age, because that's what reformed little boys do. But all of this is intended to give it all to God in worship. So here's an application. As you come into worship, are you giving to God all your mind, all your affections, and all your will? You might even sort of say, well, I think I'm about 40% in with my mind, 80% in emotions, and about 20% in with will.
You know, you might just kind of get a feel for how you're doing. How is your worship? Are you in? How's the emotions? How's the will?
How's the mind in the worship of God? Okay, several other points to be made. We need to be God-centered in our worship. Romans 11 36, I said that last night. We need all things done in good order.
We need all things done for edification. In the singing of God's Psalms, we find in Colossians 3 16, let the Word of God or the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your heart to the Lord. Here we get several things. One is we get the idea of teaching and admonishing has to be part of the singing. This is one reason why sometimes I will stop a song in the middle and say what did we just sing.
If nobody knows then I want to admonish, I want to exhort. One of the purposes for songs is not just to worship God according to this, it's to teach each other. It's to constantly set before each other the truths of God's word, and one of the ways we do that is by singing. Worship is also both individual and corporate. As we get into the Psalms, we find about a third of the Psalms are me Psalms, and two thirds of the Psalms are we Psalms, we have me and we's.
Me's and we's. So whenever you hear evangelical worship, I would say the ratio tends to be mostly me, me, me. You get into corporate worship, it's a lot of me, me, me stuff. Very little we, why? Because corporate worship for the average evangelical is individualistic.
It's still me and Jesus. We're coming together, we're not really the Church of Jesus Christ, we're not really a corporate body who needs corporate bodies. It's highly individualized form of worship. It's not covenantal, it's not corporate, It's not we Psalms, it's all me, me, me Psalms. Ask yourself whether or not when we sing this is the day the Lord has made, I will rejoice to be glad in it or we will rejoice to be glad in it.
Which is it? Anybody know? It's we. But the majority of American evangelicals say what? I.
Why do they say why? Because evangelicals are ignoring the importance of the church as a body, as a covenant body coming in corporate worship to God. Psalms intended this to be sung in the corporate worship of God, need to be corporate, not exclusively, but there needs to be something of corporate worship, certainly in corporate worship. You know I had almost given up on corporate amens, almost given up on it until I Made it to the Rockies game on the final playoff about three to four years ago where they made it into the the World Series and I was there on the final game and As somebody hit the ball and made a double. The minute he cracked that thing into center field, everybody rose and said hallelujah at the same time.
Seriously. It was all at once. It was all at once. It was corporate worship. So if they can do corporate worship, can we?
Huh? Huh? We'll work on it. We'll work on it. It's so hard in American individualism to create corporate worship.
Let me end with this. You've got to sing the Psalms, and I know I'm supposed to say speak a little more in the Psalms But I don't have much time left. We're to sing the Psalms were commanded to do it Seeing Psalms unto him sing unto him first chronicle 69 Psalm 105 verse 2 the Word of God says you've got to sing the Psalms. It's a command. Much of hymnody does not really reflect the music of the Psalms.
The Psalms are wonderful in that they present the basic biblical emotional fabric for the way things ought to be. Most of the motion that's happening in the Christian church today is not biblical emotion. Why? Most of the hymnody created in the 19th century is not really biblical emotion. Why?
Because over the last 200 years, the church in America has gotten away from singing the Psalms. Not so for 1800 years of church history. As my study of church history goes, I find that psalmody is not exclusive in history, but it is predominant. I'm not an exclusive psalmist, but if any of you care a little tiny bit about what 1, 800 years of wise Christians who weren't living in the greatest apostasy in the history of the world, but Christians who have lived for 1800 years were doing, you should be at least mildly curious concerning the fact that they did sing the Psalms predominantly, predominantly for 1800 years. The Psalms give you a sense of the fabric of all of human emotion and how we take one particular human emotion as we come into the worship and yes it's not completely honed it's not exactly where it is we're cast down our soul but eventually we're gonna hope in God for he is the hope of help of our countenance and our God.
Critical that we teach our children the Psalms. The Psalms prepare us for battle. The Psalms prepare us for where we're going to be fighting the great battles. Christ had the Psalms on his lips when he was at the cross. William Wallace, the great brave heart of Scotland, as he lived his life, as he fought his battles, trying to fight for freedom for Scotland at the very, very beginning of trying to keep these empires at bay, he had the Psalms with him all the time.
When he was being disemboweled at the very, very end in London, He had somebody holding the Psalm Psalter in front of him and he was reading the Psalms as he was being disemboweled. The Psalms are for those young men and young women who will face the battles that we are to see in the years to come, friends. If you think that there's going to be a spiritual battle right now for you or a battle for your children in the years to come, you've got to give your children the Psalms. That's why I put together the Psalm study guides. I'm not quite done yet.
I'm almost there. But these Psalm study guides will prepare your children to understand battle. It will prepare your children for worship. One of the reasons we're such terrible worshippers is we don't have the Psalms memorized. Honestly I think our children need to know all 150 Psalms eventually.
My children right now probably know forty-five or so. So if I was to ask what is Psalm 71 about? What is Psalm 133 about? What is Psalm 137 about? What's Psalm 125 about?
What's Psalm 19 about? What's Psalm 24 about? They wouldn't know every one of those. They wouldn't know at least forty-five of the Psalms. How many Psalms do your children know by heart?
How many Psalms your children know in terms of the general content of those Psalms? The Psalm tree is the basic worship manual. It's the basic comfort manual that Christians, I mean real Christians, real Christians, not fake Christians, real Christians have absolutely needed as much as they have needed the blood running in their brains their veins and oxygen in their lungs. They have needed the Psalms. They have lived by the Psalms, they have died by the Psalms and we can say the same thing of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Teach your children the Psalms, and I've presented some fairly simple family Bible study guides. If you want to go a little bit more in depth, read Calvin on the Psalms or the Treasury of David by Charles Spurgeon. They're way more in depth than mine. Mine are a lot more simple. I have a lot of study questions in order that your children learn the Psalms and know them inside and out.
I would recommend the Psalms if you're at all interested in worship and teaching your children the most important reason for all of human life on planet earth and that is the worship of God. Teach your children the Psalms. Make sure that they know the Psalms. And I know I'm way out of time, so let's close in prayer. Father in heaven, we pray that you would bless us.
Father, open our eyes. Show us our need for your word, for the Psalms. And Father, as we learn the Psalms, God teach us to write more music. But we know that we have ignored the Psalms and so forth, therefore much of American hymnody is not very biblical because it's not rooted in the sentiments and the thoughts and the doctrines of your inspired songbook, the Psalms. Forgive us, O Father, for in any way despising or ignoring your inspired songbook, Father, Jesus sang the Psalms.
Jesus read the Psalms Jesus recited the Psalms May we live the Psalms praise the Psalms and sing the Psalms ourselves in Jesus name. Amen For more messages articles and videos on the subject of Amen. And for more information about the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, where you can search our online network to find family integrated churches in your area, log on to our website, ncfic.org.