Please open your Bibles to Romans chapter 12. Find verse one, Romans 12, verse one. This is the inerrant, all-sufficient, sweeter than honey word of God. Romans 12.1. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

And now, please turn to Ephesians chapter 5 and find verse 17. These two are the texts I want to build this message. Ephesians 5 verse 17 and I'll be reading from verses 17 to 20. Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not be drunk with wine, which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all good things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Let's pray. Lord, I pray that you would give us great understanding, increase our joy in the ordinary means of grace that are spoken of here. I pray, oh Lord, that these things would live in our hearts day to day, Lord's day to Lord's day, until the day we die, amen. Romans 12, one is an extremely practical verse of scripture because it actually addresses every moment of your life And the apostle is delivering a strong appeal.

I beseech you therefore brethren to present your bodies a living sacrifice. And of course we do that in two ways. And the passage, the language of the passage really makes this very clear. You present your bodies as a living sacrifice as a believer from the rising of the Sun till the time of that it goes down. And you also present your bodies as a living sacrifice when you come on the Lord's day to worship God.

And you think about the blessing of a command like this, because all of God's commands are blessings. But think of a life where when you first open your eyes in the morning, the first thing that comes to your mind is, oh, Lord, I give my body to you. I belong to you. I want to walk with you today. There's so much blessing in that.

To declare to the Lord, I give my hands to you. I give my mind to you. I give my feet to you. I give my mouth to you. I give everything to you because you made me and I belong to you.

That's what this really speaks about. I love the way that David says it in Psalm 5 3. He said, My voice you shall hear in the morning. Oh Lord in the morning will I lift up my prayer to thee. And then he says, and I will look up.

I love that language. It's so beautiful. And what if every Lord's Day you got up in the morning to make your way to the worship of God and you said, oh Lord, here's my body, I'm a living sacrifice, I am the sacrifice on the altar today. So there really are two ways that you present your bodies as living sacrifices. First, just daily as a believer, and then secondly, corporately, as we gather on the Lord's Day.

And I want to title this message, present your bodies a living sacrifice through singing in your local church because Paul uses the language of temple worship in the Old Testament in this verse. And the worshipper would bring an acceptable sacrifice without blemish and then the priest would lay it on the altar. And of course, the New Testament priest is the sacrifice who is on the altar. Now, What's very plain in the Bible is that the worship of God. Can only be conducted in the way that God has designed it.

In other words. If you want to worship God, you must worship his way and- this is called in a summary statement the regulative principle of worship. In other words, only God has the authority and the wisdom to regulate worship. Anything that happens in the worship of God that's outside of what God commanded is unlawful. That's the regulative principle of worship.

And this morning I want to address one single element of the regulative principle of worship, and that is singing. And of course, you are, I'm sure, aware, the elements of worship that God has prescribed are prayer, scripture reading, preaching, the Lord's Supper, and singing. And all of those are prescribed by God. And That's why the regulator principle of worship teaches that only what is explicitly commanded in scripture is permitted in worship. And God doesn't, the Bible does not authorize a particular practice that is outside of what he has prescribed.

This is spoken of in lots of places. I'll just quote one place, Deuteronomy 1232, everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it. I think that explains the heart of the regulative principle of worship. One year, Derard, I went to Scotland to study the Scottish Reformation.

The Scottish Reformation, the people who died, the martyrs who suffered there, they suffered over the doctrine of worship, the Scottish Reformation was about the doctrine of worship, the Anglican and Catholic churches were telling you, you have to kneel, you have to do all, you have to kneel in worship, in prayer, you have to do this, you have to do that. All of that outside of the scope of scripture. And people died for the regular principle of worship in Scotland. And that's why John Knox said, when I went to Scotland, I was reading John Knox the whole time on buses and planes and in hotel rooms. He said this, all worshiping, honoring, or service invented by the brain of man in the religion of God without his express commandment is idolatry.

But singing isn't idolatry because singing is commanded by God. And it's very important that individual Christians and local churches cultivate a biblically defined and really vibrant culture of singing in their churches. To fulfill the command of God, to create a culture and an atmosphere of singing in keeping with God's desire. Now, just a side comment. There's nothing that you do that's more important than when you gather to worship God with God's people.

There isn't anything more important than that. And I wanna make two points, and the first is why we sing. I'm gonna give you four reasons why we sing. And then I wanna talk about how to sing. Because the apostles, David, the prophets, they actually taught people how to sing.

You're gonna get some singing lessons today from the word of God. But before we get into the why and the how, I just want to make a brief comment about the gift of singing, because it really is a wonderful gift. Singing is an expression of God's love toward his people. Martin Luther said, he said that that singing is that divine and most precious gift next to the Word of God. Only music deserves being extolled as, and listen to this, as the mistress and governess of the feelings of the human heart, that's what singing does.

It's just so remarkable. So you have this tremendous blessing. You know, Luther, Luther was kind of a singing Nazi in a way, okay? I mean, he loved singing, he so promoted it. And Luther said that a person that doesn't see the wisdom of God in music and the gift that it is, he says, that kind of person who doesn't see it and I'm quoting from him He must be a clod hopper indeed He does not deserve to be called a human being He should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of asses and the grunting of hogs.

Singing really is important. We need, actually we need more than preaching. Yeah, we do need preaching, and we do need fellowship, and we do need the reading of the word of God, and we do need prayer, but we don't only need those things, we also need singing. And so let's talk about four reasons why we should sing. First of all, we sing because we must sing.

We must. God has commanded to his people to be a singing family. He commands over 400 times for his people to sing. God prioritizes corporate singing as a means of sanctifying his people. It's simply a matter of the regulated principle of worship.

We don't sing because it's interesting, we sing because it's commanded by God. There are so many places in the Bible I could read. I'm just gonna read you one verse. Psalm 96, oh sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord all the earth. Three times in three verses there's a commandment to sing but you find this all over the Bible.

And that's why we sing in church, because God commanded it. We sing because we must sing when we get together. You know, in our church, if you come to our church, to our services Sunday morning, and if you come to our Wednesday night prayer meeting, we're gonna sing well over 500 songs in a year. And the kids actually sing more than that. I get together with them once a month, and we sing at least 10 songs, that's a lot of songs times 12 months.

So the church sings, it's great. I love it when the church lingers to sing. You know last night when we were singing, oh I didn't want to stop. I just, I should have just said, Chris let's keep going man. But that was so beautiful to me.

And the sounds of those voices, you know over the years, they've actually become my favorite sound in the whole world. I'd rather hear the sound of a congregation like we did this morning. It was so beautiful to me. It's the people of God, you know, pulsating together. Okay, so the second reason we should sing.

Well, we must sing. Secondly, we sing because God made our bodies like a musical instrument. And there are many places to illustrate this. Psalm 100, one through five, Zephaniah 3, 14, Psalm 47, one, Psalm 64, four, I'll stop right there. But the first musical instrument that God made was the human body.

You were made to sing. Your body is like a musical instrument. And after the human body was created, then musical instruments were created later, but the human body was the first. A Singing engages your whole body, your mental, your physical, your spiritual. In Psalm 100, it includes raising your voice.

In Zephaniah 3, it's shouting. In Psalm 47, It's lifting hands, it's clapping hands, it's spreading out hands, it's kneeling, it's bowing down. In fact, the Hebrew word for worship actually means to bow down. And singing engages your whole body and you know consider the simplest musical instrument in your body that's your voice your vocal cords are actually they're kind of like strings on a guitar they vibrate and they they produce sounds that they vibrate when you talk they vibrate when you sing And then you have these resonance chambers, your throat and your mouth and your nasal cavities are resonance chambers. And Then you have your percussion instruments.

You have clapping and foot tapping and you might even be a sway or you might be swaying. You might lift up your hands to God. You think about all the different kinds of voices that mingle together. It's just so beautiful. You have these voice patterns such as bass, basso profundo, bass baritone, lyric baritone, dramatic baritone, the tenor, the contralto, the mezzo soprano, you get the idea.

God has given voices in a diversity in the church. And the voices in a church are like an orchestra in a church as all of the different voices are mingled together. So why sing? Because your body's a musical instrument. Here's a third reason why to sing.

It's all part of presenting your body, your physical body as a living sacrifice. Singing helps us respond emotionally. We are emotional beings and the Psalms make this so plain. Remember Saul, you know, he was getting ready to chuck a spear at David, but David's playing had a calming effect on his distressed and angry soul. The Psalms address every human emotion.

Sadness and lament, Psalm 13. Joy and praise, Psalm 8. Peace and trust, Psalm 23. Repentance and guilt and forgiveness, Psalm 32. Hope and encouragement, Psalm 27.

Music just provides the language to express emotion and it actually doesn't allow you to express it. It actually activates emotions. It brings you into emotions. You need to be brought into emotions. And that's why God gave you singing.

Jonathan Edwards during the Great Awakening, he recognized, there are two ways of the great awakening. And in 1740, he wrote about what happened to the singing. When the conversions were rolling when the conversions were rolling hard on the land. And he said this, it seems to excite and express religious affections. He talks about how beautiful the singing was during the Great Awakening.

You know, awakenings don't last very long. The Great Awakening in 1840 only lasted 18 months. And there's a tremendous intensity. But those intensities tend to live on in the hearts of people. But music tells you what to feel as well.

And music doesn't just tell you what to feel, and this is really super important, because we just shouldn't be a ball of emotions. You know, just random emotions bouncing off of whatever going on. Seeing actually tells you why you should feel the way you feel. And it's because of God and who he is and what he's done and his promises toward you. This is all about presenting your bodies a living sacrifice.

Here's the fourth reason why we sing. Singing is a critical tool of God to make disciples. Singing is a discipleship tool. If you read Colossians three, we don't have time to do this, but if you read from Colossians three, one through 17, it's very clear that, well in 17, singing is mentioned. But before that, it's very clear that in sanctification, you set your mind on things above, earthly passions are killed, verse five.

You put on hearts of compassion, in verse 13 and 14, you live in harmony with one another, and then you let the word of Christ dwell richly, and you sing to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. It's all part of a discipleship formula that Colossians three speaks of. It begins with setting your mind on things above and it rolls down and includes the discipleship wisdom of God to shepherd your soul through singing. And actually, I'll get to this in a minute, but we actually disciple one another through singing because we're singing to one another. We are admonishing one another.

We are discipling one another when we sing. But this whole idea that you sing before an audience of one, that is not biblical at all. It's maybe one fourth biblical because you do sing to God, but you're also singing to one another, you're admonishing one another, and you're also singing to the unbelievers. That's, Paul says that in the book of Romans. Singing does things for our discipleship that nothing else can do because it connects our whole being in the process of discipleship.

Okay, now let's have some singing lessons. That's why we sing. The Apostle Paul was a singing teacher and I'll start with Colossians 3.16 where the apostle teaches the church to sing to one another, let 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 hearts to the Lord. So in this passage, we're told that our singing is to teach and admonish one another. The word that he uses is didasco.

It has to do with formal teaching from God. We're reminding one another our souls need correction. Our souls need correction in our feeling, and in our thinking, and in our living. And singing, singing is designed for all of us to teach one another. So you're not just singing to teach yourself.

And you'll notice that songs are written in different voices. Some songs are written personally. Oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Some songs declare the truth about God, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. That is the whole church saying, God, you are holy.

We're saying that altogether. Songs are written in different voices. And you should recognize what voice the song is being sung in, because the hymn writers understood this. And they wrote songs in different voices. Martin Luther said, God doesn't need your good works, but your neighbor does.

And we do good works to one another by singing with all of our hearts to our brothers and sisters. So sing to your wife, sing to your children, sing to your brothers and sisters. You know, direct your voice to them for their discipleship and for their sanctification. And you know, be very intentional, be very relational in it. One more thing about this, in pagan worship, you lose yourself in ecstasy, in some altered emotional state.

That's not Christian worship. You don't lose yourself in Christian worship. You're actually doing something with one another and you're not emptying your mind. You're filling your mind and you're blessing your brothers and sisters when you sing. The next, how to sing.

Sing to admonish. Many of the songs are actually written as admonitions. Maybe some of them come to mind. Take time to be holy. That's an admonition.

The word that he uses for admonishing is newthet- or what we get our word newthetic. You know the biblical counseling movement picked up this term newthetic counseling and it means to warrant, to advise someone of danger, to inform them of consequences, to correct one another. And what singing is meant to do is that the singer, the one who is singing, is singing so that he might move his brother from one position to another, to admonish, to move in another direction. You know, sing the wondrous love of Jesus. That's an admonition song.

Stand up, stand up for Jesus. We're admonishing one another to stand up for Jesus Christ. It's all about presenting your bodies a living sacrifice. Here's a third lesson in these apostolic singing lessons. Sing to help you remember the words.

Colossians 3.16 implies this. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Singing helps you remember the words. You know, you know many of you children you were taught the alphabet by a song. Some of you were taught the the books of the Bible in sequence by a song.

Singing helps you remember the words. This is so important. Because what you sing, you will remember the words of what you sang. And that is both good and bad. I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s in Southern California, you know, at the rise of the rock and roll revolution.

And everywhere you went, it was the Rolling Stones and the Beatles and The Cream and it was Led Zeppelin and all these songs and I know those songs. They were actually written by demonized musicians. They were all demon possessed by the way, just so you know it. And all these years, those songs still come to my mind. And it grieves me.

And I'll wake up in the middle of the night and I'll cry out to God, oh God please stop this song in my head. You should be very careful what you sing. If you're singing corrupt worldly songs they will live with you for the rest of your life. And you'll be as old as I and older than I, and they will follow you to your grave. What songs do you want to live in your heart?

They will come back to you. You know, Moses, at the end of his life, he taught the children of Israel to sing a song. The Bible says why he did it. He taught them the song so they would remember the words. He says, then it shall be when many evils and troubles come upon them, that this song will testify against them as a witness, for it will not be forgotten in the mouths of their descendants.

What you sing, you don't forget those words. Not completely. I read in a book that Bob Coughlin wrote, or it might have been an article where he said this, and I really don't want us to forget this. Sing the words that God wants us to remember. Don't just sing every song that you like the tune, because those words will never leave you or forsake you.

So sing to help you remember the words. And then the next, sing strong with gusto. Psalm 81, one, sing aloud to God our strength. Make a joyful shout to the God of Jacob. In Nehemiah 12 you have this line, the singers sang loudly with Jazariah the director.

In Psalm 98 we're actually directed to shout joyfully to the Lord, All the earth break forth in song, rejoice, sing praises, sing to the Lord. There are many many places where we are urged to sing loud, so sing out, blast it out, lift off the roof when you gather together to sing. Edwards said, singing in the congregation is a means of expressing the joy of the heart. The next lesson, sing to proclaim truth. That's Psalm 105 verse 2.

I will sing of mercy and justice. These are matters of truth. To you, O Lord, I will sing praises. When we sing, we're making truth claims. When we sing, we are proclaiming Bible doctrine.

All the songs that we sing ought to be sound doctrine. The ones we sang today were beautiful doctrine. They really brought us into the kingdom of God. But singing helps us to verbalize what we think and what we feel about God, and what we think about the world, and what we think about ourselves. Songs do all of those things.

They're so rich and diverse. When you were first saved, and you weren't part of the church, and you came and you probably sang for the first time, But if you grew up in church singing those songs and you were an unbeliever, let's just say you remain an unbeliever till you're 20 years old, but your parents took you to church your whole life long, You kept going to church and you know all the songs, you know all the great hymns of the faith. And your heart changes and your heart of stone turns into heart of flesh. And even though you've sang those songs a thousand times, when you walk into that church, the singing is different. It's so different.

I talked to a young girl at this conference who was just recently converted. And she said, oh, this conference is so different to me now. And she talked about the singing. But she knew all those songs. I've known her since She was a little kid.

But now, those songs thrill her heart when she sings them. Before, she was just babbling, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, okay, let's get this over with. No more. She loves it. When people are converted, they sing.

Well, okay, what am I saying? When we sing, we're declaring what kind of God we worship. Well, this morning, holy, holy, holy, that's the God that we worship. We proclaim what kind of gospel we preach and we believe. Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that is greater than all my sin.

We sing about what the basis of our unity is. It's Jesus Christ. Blessed be the tie that binds. We sing about what kind of people we wanna be. We sing, oh come, oh come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel.

That's the kind of people we want to be expectantly waiting for the return of Jesus Christ. We sing about the kind of feelings we want to have. We sing Jesus' joy of loving hearts. We sing about the kind of messages we want to proclaim to one another. Like, praise him, praise him.

Jesus, our blessed Redeemer. And when we sing, we are saying things to each other, like a mighty fortress is our God. We're all saying that together. It's like a whole big, like your family, your church family is saying, the mighty fortress is our God. It's all, he's our God.

This is all about presenting our bodies a living sacrifice. Here's another lesson. Sing for the unity of the church. When we sing, we are all singing off the same page. We're singing the exact same words.

We're singing them in the same tune. We're not doing our own thing. We're doing what everybody else is doing as one body. Singing promotes the unity of the church. And by the way, it's more than just that.

Singing researchers tell us that when we sing the same tune with the same meter, that there's a literal physical unity among those people who sing. And if the people are singing the same beat, very often their hearts all start to beat in the same rhythm. How about that? Bjorn Wyckoff, a Swedish singing researcher, wrote about that in a 2013 study that music structure determines the heart rate variability of the singers. Isn't that interesting?

It unifies the church. Singing is so wonderful. Minds, emotions, even the heartbeats of the church are beating together as one. Here's another. Sing songs to carry you through.

Sing songs to carry you through everything. If you've been a believer for a little while, you understand this. There are certain things that happen in your life, and there's a song that carried you through. You know, I mean, even here at this conference, I had this flashback when we were singing right at the beginning, and we were singing How Great Thou Art. And I hadn't thought about this in so long.

I don't even know when I last recognized this, but it took me back probably to 1964, under the stars at a Christian conference center at a time when God was really moving on our whole family. And we were singing How great thou art. And when we sang that song that night under the stars, God had been working in my heart, and it just sealed my recognition that I was a child of God. I don't think I was saved in that song, because I think God was saving me before that. But there was this moment in that song where I just realized, You are great.

And I love you, I wanna walk with you. So songs carry you through. You know, you think about Paul and Silas singing in the Philippian jail, carried along by the songs. You think of Miriam after the rescue from the Egyptian army in the Red Sea you you think about David and the song he wrote when he fled into a cave you well there's so many people that that testified to this think about Horatius Spafford that Chicago attorney who was financially devastated by the Chicago fire and his wife and children were on a ship across the Atlantic and the ship sank and his four daughters were lost. In the darkness and the sorrow of that loss he wrote, when peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot that has taught me to say, it is well, It is well with my soul.

How many people do you think that has carried through their sorrows? Carried him. We could go on and on. Anne Steele, a young woman, a songwriter and poet in the Puritan era. She had very poor health and lost her fiance and she wrote many hymns.

One we sing in our church, come all ye hungry, pining, poor, Lord we adore thy boundless grace, the heights and depths unknown. I love that song. It was written by a single girl who has suffered tremendous loss. Sing through all the seasons of your life. There should be a song in your pilgrimage, wherever you go.

Next, the Bible says, sing to be changed. Psalm 3, Psalm 22, Psalm 31, verses 9 through 24. What you find is that songs actually change people and they carry people through all the different types of experiences of their life. In Psalm 59 we sing to do battle. In Psalm 104, we sing praises to our God while I have my being.

We sing songs of lamentation. Singing helps the church deal with the complexities of life and particularly the greatest sorrows of life. Many of the Psalms are Psalms of lamentation. What lamentation does is it brings you into a sense of reality about how you're really doing. It's very interesting, evangelicalism doesn't like laments.

It's really hard, it's almost impossible to find a modern song that takes you into lamentation because we have this ridiculous, happy, clappy, unreal kind of evangelicalism, But the Bible takes you into reality and the lamentations do that. Psalm 130, out of the depths I've cried to you, O Lord, Lord hear my voice, let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. Now, here's another matter of the singing lessons from the Bible. In the Bible, Men sing. Moses, David, Isaiah, they all sang and they wrote songs.

What we have going on today is, you have men that don't wanna sing. And one of the reasons men don't wanna sing is there's so many breathy, feminized songs. It's like Jesus is your boyfriend kind of songs. And so you have all these soft, I'm just gonna call them breathy feminine songs in the church. I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong to sing a song like that, but somebody did some research about why men don't sing in the church.

And the answer to the question was because the songs are so feminized. And so these researchers in their study came up with the top 10 male-friendly songs. They're strong songs. We should sing strong songs in the church. Onward Christian soldiers, and can it be that I should gain?

Guide me, oh thou great Jehovah, be thou my vision, how great thou art. Those are strong songs, and I'm just here to encourage you to sing strong songs. When we design this conference, you might have noticed there are not a lot of breathy, feminine songs in this conference. And then finally, sing to be saved. You know, really every song that we have sung and will sing, just this morning, these are songs that you can be saved singing.

When you finally come to the place where you say, oh Lord how great thou art. Think about the lyrics we've sung. Oh Lord my rock and my Redeemer, gracious Savior my ruined life. You can get saved in a song. And maybe when we sing our last song, maybe it will be the song of your salvation.

You will sing God's power to save, because you can get saved in a song. So there are many reasons the Church of Jesus Christ should sing. It really is a matter of the regulative principle. Sing because you must, sing because God made you an musical instrument, sing because you need to respond to God emotionally, and then sing to teach one another, sing to admonish one another, Sing to help you remember the words. Sing strong with gusto.

Sing to proclaim the truth. Sing for the unity of the church. Sing to carry you through everything. Sing to be changed. Sing to do battle.

Sing in every season of your life, sing when you need to lament, sing you men. And I guess I should add, you really should teach your children to sing. Don't let your children just mumble the words. Teach them, most children won't sing unless you teach them. You've got to teach them.

Teach them to stand up straight, open their mouths, and project, okay? Teach them how to do it. By the way, you saw that happen, the conference. In our church, last year we had a singing camp because we really wanted to raise the intensity and the beauty of the singing in our church from the ground up. So we gathered all these kids together and we had a singing camp.

We sang, we taught them certain songs and taught them how to sing. And you know what? They are ringing it out in the church. It's such a joy, such a blessing to hear it. I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

Let's pray. Lord we thank you for the gift of singing. It really is such a help. You've cared for us through these songs. You've taught us doctrine.

You've shown us the glory of Jesus Christ and his intercession. For us his death, his. Resurrection. His exaltation. All of these things Lord, we sing about.

We're so thrilled to be able to sing, Lord. And I pray that what we have just heard would help all of us for the next 52 days of the coming year when we gather together to worship you in spirit and in truth the way that you have designed through singing. Amen.