Psalm 95 and we are talking about principles of music and I
didn't quite finish up last week, so I want to finish up
this week. We really got to the meat of a
lot of it last week. But let me jump back and just
kind of review some of the principles that I gave you
already. Number one, I said music must be
overseen by the pastor. It's my job as the pastor to to
find the direction that our church ought to go in music and
then to follow that direction. I'm going to be the one that
stands before God and answers to him for what happened in our
church. And so it's my responsibility to
oversee that. But we said #2 church music must
be sung and played by spirit filled Saints who are indwelt
with God's word. That's important.
We're not just, you know, if, if
I had a dime for everybody that I've met who said, oh, you guys
have instruments and you have choir, I can sing, I can play,
I'd love to jump in. And I, I, I played the electric
guitar for a long time. I can come play with you guys,
right? Number one, I have no idea who
you are #2 it's, it's a privilege to be able to play
music in church and it ought to be sung and played by spirit
filled Saints or who are in dwelt with God's word.
That's what's going to bring the most glory to the Lord #3 the
music must be sound in doctrine. And that is so important.
You know, I think Brother Jim mentioned it to me last week.
You know, you can go into Wawa and hear a song that you heard
40 years ago and you can come out singing every word of it.
You know, music is, is powerful. It's a powerful thing that just
sticks with you, which is why it's a great thing to do to sing
the, the songs. You memorize God's Word by
singing them. And how many of you, let me ask
you this, how many of you know a Scripture song?
All right, that's just about everybody.
Why is it it's easy to memorize Scripture if it's put to music,
right? And the more you put those songs
to music, the more you put the verses to music, the easier it
is to memorize. And what we're saying then is
the music must be sound and doctrine because you're going to
remember that it's going to stick with you.
And if there's songs that are not sound in doctrine and you're
singing them, you're going to get wrong doctrine from those
songs. And it's, it's just a fact of,
of life and a fact of music #4 We said that the music must
emphasize the melody. And obviously then that that
really pretty much eliminates everything that has to do with
rock music. Because the rock music, the rock
beat is what is driving the song, not the melody when you
have that rock beat in it. We talked a lot about that
number six. We said that the music must be
spiritual and non worldly in sound again, eliminates all of
your rock music. It eliminates all your Christian
rock and most if not all of your CCM music because all of it is
mimicking the world sound. All of it is trying to sound
like the world. The breathiness and many times
not even just the sound, the look of everybody that's on the
stage that's singing these songs and, and the the drum set and
the, you know, the the electric guitars hung down at your knees
and all of those other things. Those are all things that are
imitating and and modeling after the world.
And so Christian music, church music must be spiritual and non
worldly in sound #7 we said that the music must edify.
Edify means to build up in the faith.
If you're not edified by the song, if you're not edified by
the music, then there is no point in doing that music right?
We are a body and your job is as, as a musician in any, in any
aspect of that is to edify the body of Christ.
And so obviously then all of our hymns should be edifying.
All of our special music should be edifying.
All of it should point us to Christ #8 We said that church
music must not produce a charismatic style, mystical
experience, which again, is what contemporary worship is designed
to do. It's designed to take you on
this emotional roller coaster up and down and, and, and, and take
you through all of those emotional experiences.
And people come out of those services saying, wow, we really
worshiped today because of the way it made me feel, right?
It's not, it's not about this, this mystical experience.
It's about strong doctrine. It's about edification.
How did that music point me to Christ number #9?
Then this is what we're going to jump into tonight.
Church music should be joyful. Psalm 95 verse #1 and boy, there
is, there's 100 verses that we could pick out of the book of
Psalms that really, that really goes right along with this same
thing. But Psalm 9510, Come, let us
sing unto the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to
the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence
with Thanksgiving and make a joyful noise unto Him with
Psalms. For the Lord is a great God and
a great King above all gods. Again, congregational singing
then should be enthusiastic. It should be, it should be
cheerful, which again, you know, a lot of these charismatic style
churches that, that like to do the CCM and everything else, the
congregation is not involved in it at all, right?
They're, they're either sitting there listening to a concert or
they're standing there kind of swaying back and forth with it,
but they don't know the words most of the time.
They Can't Sing along with it. It's somebody up here just
singing to them, right? The, the whole purpose of
congregational singing is for all of us to sing this together.
And, and, and you see that throughout the entire Bible,
God's people are coming into his presence.
The great King of kings is listening and he requires A
joyful noise. There's that you don't.
Most of you are standing out there looking this way, right?
But when you're standing up here and looking out at the
congregation and everybody's just mumbling the words and
barely singing and barely mouthing the words, it's, it's
not encouraging, right? And, and, and who are you
singing to? You're not just singing to the
person next to you. You're not just singing to the
song leader, you're singing to the Lord.
It ought to be a joyful noise. It ought to be a cheerful thing
that you're doing. You ought to be excited to do it
right. You ought to have a hymn book
out. And even if, even if it's a song
that you've sung 1000 times, you ought to be looking at the words
and thinking about those words as you sing them, right?
It's it ought not to be every time we come to sing.
You know, the whole purpose is to teach and to admonish one
another in song and to sing unto the Lord.
And that's not half hearted singing.
It shouldn't be done that way since Christ, the Bible makes it
very clear in Revelation chapter 3, he hates the lukewarmness,
right? We shouldn't be lukewarm in our
singing either. They should be something that's
done cheerfully, joyfully. And those in the choir know this
because I say it all the time, but not only should you enjoy
yourselves, but you should look like you're enjoying yourself,
right? I can't tell you how many
churches I've been in, and I've been in hundreds and hundreds of
churches. And the choir doesn't sound bad,
but they all look like they sucked on sour grapes the
afternoon before they got up to sing, right?
Everybody's just grumpy, man. If, if you're excited about it,
tell your face and let it be excited too, right?
You ought to have a pleasant expression on your face if
you're thinking about the words and you're thinking about who
you're singing to and you're thinking about that worship.
It should be an easy thing to have a pleasant expression on
your face while you're singing the song, right?
We don't always feel like singing unto the Lord, but we
have to be in control of our fear feelings and we have to
stir up ourselves with the truth of God's Word.
When I come to, when I come to the song service in the church,
I have to say to myself, it's time to worship God.
I know that I'm, I'm dealing with a lot of things at home.
I'm dealing with a lot of things at work, but it's time to set
all of those things aside and sing to the one who really cares
about me. And it's time to, it's time to
forget about my problems and focus on the, on the great
Redeemer and on your work for him.
You should sing out when it's time to sing.
Boy, I tell you what, especially in an auditorium this size.
And I think we do pretty well with it, but I think we could do
better. I think we ought to fill this
place up with, with music, fill it up with sound, all right, Not
just because we have the instruments and all of those
things, but because the voices are just filling the auditorium,
because everybody's just singing out because you're singing to
the Lord #10 Turn over to 1st Corinthians chapter 10.
First Corinthians chapter 10. We kind of talked about this a
little bit, but this is a little bit digging maybe a little bit
deeper into some of the actual principles of of contemporary
Christian music and why we don't do it.
Because #10 church music must not borrow from and thus build
bridges to the world of contemporary Christian music.
Church music must not borrow from and thus build bridges to
the world of CCM. First Corinthians chapter 10 and
verse #21 you cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of
devils. You cannot be partakers of the
Lord's table and of the table of devils.
You can't have it both ways. Look at First Corinthians
chapter 15 and see that's what the world of CCM is trying to
do. You're trying to take a church
song, church words, and mix it with the devil's music.
God's very plain about that. You can't drink the cup of the
Lord and the cup of devils. First Corinthians chapter 15 and
verse 33. This is talking about building a
bridge. Be not deceived.
Evil communications corrupt good manners.
All right, let's go over to 2nd Corinthians chapter 6 again.
Lots of verses that that back up this principle, but here's just
a few of them. Second Corinthians chapter 6,
verse #14 B. You're not unequally yoked
together with unbelievers. For what fellowship hath
righteousness with unrighteousness?
And what communion hath light with darkness?
And what concord hath Christ with Belial?
Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?
And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?
For ye are the temple of the living God, as God has said.
I will dwell in them and walk in them, and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among
them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the
unclean thing, and I will receive you, and will be a
father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the
Lord Almighty. That's pretty plain.
You cannot take the world's music and try to mix it with
Christian words and pretend that God is pleased with that type of
music. You just cannot do it.
We should be separating as far away from that music as we can,
not trying to see how we can blend it with church music.
I talked about this already, but rock music was designed to be as
sensual and worldly as it possibly could be.
And all of those who are in that rock music world, especially
those who were at the beginning of it, and, and the founders of
rock, if you will, some of them are still alive and they have no
problem telling you exactly what rock music was designed for.
It was sex music. That's exactly what it was
designed to be. And now you're going to take
that music and mix it with some Christian words and expect that
God's going to be OK with that and expect that, that, that I'm
going to try to get close to that music and say, well, we
can't, we Can't Sing that music, but we can get as close to it as
we can, right? And God's pleased with that.
No, God's not pleased with those things.
Church music should not borrow from and thus not build bridges
to contemporary Christian music. Contemporary Christian music is,
is, is a major element of building the apostate one world
church. Look at the CCM industry and
look who is involved in the CCM industry.
You have people from every denomination that sing it, that
write it, that play it, that promote it, that come together
to sing it and promote it, right?
You have Catholics who come together with Presbyterians and
Methodists who come together with Charismatics and Baptists
who come together with Catholics.
And everybody's all one because we're just worshiping under this
huge umbrella of contemporary Christian music, right?
That's a one world apostate church.
And the devil has gotten so many people hoodwinked into thinking
that this is all OK because it's just it fits with everybody.
All this music just works together with all of us.
No, it doesn't because most of it is not doctrinal.
Most of it is very worldly and most of it is, is, is building
that bridge to other denominations and other
religions that are completely anti Bible, right?
You have, you have so much of that.
And in, in, in, in former times, God's people were not in much
danger of being influenced by the authors of songs and hymns,
right? Because you, in order for that
to happen, you, you know, you would have to, you'd have to go
find a songbook and you would have to go, go to a concert and
find out who this person was. The Internet has changed all of
that. And that's why, OK, it might
have been OK 40 years ago to go sing a song that was written by
a contemporary artist and sing it the right way and do it with
the right music and sing it with the right everything.
And it would be OK. Because how is anybody going to
find out what that person sounds like or what that person is
writing or anything else? Because it was very difficult to
find those things. Now all you have to do is get on
YouTube, right? And we're singing this song and,
and oh, wow, that was a really nice song.
Oh, this group is the one that did that one.
And they were rocking out to it. And they're, you know, they're
the ones who wrote it and they're the ones who are
promoting it and everything else.
And now you just, you just, you just whetted the appetite for
that type of music. You just said that that's OK.
And, and #1 all right. If, if we're going to sing
contemporary Christian music, somebody's got to be fishing in
that pond to find the songs that we're going to tone down and
sing anyway. And I'm not going to be the one
fishing in that pond. Why?
Why would I? Why would I dig through the
trash to find one bone that has a little bit of meat on it?
Why would I do that? Right?
Is there is can you find some bones with a little bit of meat
on it? Probably.
But do you want to find it in the trash or would you rather
just go get it from, you know, someplace fresh, right?
That that's, that's the way that that's what this building this
bridge is. All right.
There are probably some songs within the contemporary
Christian music world that are OK Keith and Kristen Getty are,
are a popular one. They, they do all kinds of
songs. And there's some of Keith and
Kristen Getty's songs that I, that I think are OK.
But you know what the problem with them is?
They're a bridge to everything else.
Read some of the quotes by the Getty's.
Read some of the quotes by Stuart Town.
And they, they, they work together very closely in a lot
of things. They have no problem accepting
Catholics and everybody else. They have no problem bringing
this whole church together. And when they say church,
they're not talking about a good, sound, fundamentally Bible
preaching church. They're talking about the
church. That's who they want to bring
together. And that's why the building
these bridges are so dangerous, because you're bringing all of
these things together under one big tent.
And it's not, it's not OK. I don't want to have the
apostate one world church involved in this church.
I wanted to be a pure church. I wanted to be without spot or
wrinkle, as he says, right? We, we reject any of the music
that's written by the contemporary musicians in order
to avoid building bridges to those people and to their
associates and to the dangerous ecumenical world that they
represent. And that is what they represent.
And not only that, but I've, I've read quotes to you before
by many of these people in one Corey Asbury that I just read
and I and I know that he's a popular musician.
I don't, I can't tell you any songs that he's written, but I
know he's popular. And one of the things that he
said is it's not genuine. They're not doing it because
they're trying to lead you closer to Christ.
They're doing it because they're trying to make millions of
dollars and he's, he's one of them.
So he's, he's being, he's, he's actually being honest about his
motivation. It's about writing.
He said the next worship banger so that it, that it gets really
popular. And he said, I myself
personally, I've made millions of dollars off of the songs that
I've written. That's why they're writing them.
They want to be, they want to be popular.
They want to make millions of dollars off their music.
And then why, why would we, when there are thousands of of
doctrinally sound good hymns available to us, would we go
fishing in that world that's going to even make us think
about stepping closer in that direction?
Be separate, saith the Lord. And that, I mean, touched out
the unclean thing, come out from among them and be separate.
Yeah, let's do it. Accept the music.
Let's let's see how close we can get to the world and still be
OK. It doesn't make any sense if
we're trying to be separate. And I like some of the songs
that, that that you hear every now and then and, and again.
I, I don't, I don't listen to contemporary Christian music.
So I don't know but what kind of music is out there, but there's
some that are even written in hymn style that are being put in
some of these song books, you know, and it's they're mostly
OK. But the problem is who they
represent and what world they're opening up to you and what
bridge they're building to that contemporary Christian Church
movement and all the apostate one world church and everything
else that comes along with it. So I'm not going to borrow from
contemporary Christian music. I'm not going to build a bridge
to contemporary Christian music. I'm going to try to stay as far
away from those things as I possibly can because my job is
to keep you on the path that God wants you on.
And if I say, well, I'm not going to go jump off into the
contemporary Christian music world because of one song.
I, I, you know, I'm not going to go onto YouTube and start
watching these groups play these and rock out to all the other
music that they do, right? Because even if they have one,
they usually have 15 others that are not OK, right?
But I LED you to their YouTube channel because you like the
song that we did in church. And now you're hooked on music
that you can't get away from because we built that bridge and
said, just walk across that bridge for this song, but make
sure you come back. What happens is a lot of people
walk across that bridge and never come back.
And I built it. So we're not going to have that.
We're not going to do that. Those those songs here is even
though they're, well, what's wrong with this?
Doctrinally correct? It's got good words to it.
Understand there's, there's a few songs out there that are
like that, but it's building a dangerous bridge that we're not
going to build because we don't want anything to do with the
contemporary Christian music world #11.
Let me tell you this, Church music must aim for excellence.
Church music must aim for excellence.
First Corinthians chapter 10. You're not too far from there.
First Corinthians chapter 10, verse #31 Whether therefore, you
eat or drink or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God.
Philippians chapter 1 turn over there Philippians chapter 1
verse #10 Philippians one verse 10 that she may approve things
that are excellent, that she may be sincere and without offense
till the day of Christ. See everything about church
music must be done on purpose. I've said this many times when
it comes to to raising your family for the Lord, it's not
going to happen on accident. You have to be intentional about
doing it. And that's exactly what we're
talking about with this. If we're going to aim for
excellence, then we have to do it on purpose.
It's not just going to accidentally show up and be
good, right? Church music must be done on
purpose. Everything about it and, and
with biblical and spiritual wisdom, always aiming for the
very best, very highest, never satisfied with mediocrity,
constantly progressing in excellence.
What we're doing is not for the glory of man, it's for the glory
of God. That's why I said it last week.
You know, that's, that's one of the reasons we don't clap when
everybody, when somebody finishes.
And I really appreciate you working on that today.
I didn't say anything about it, but I noticed a couple times
people went oops, shouldn't have done that.
Right. But but if we're going to
replace it, we need to replace it with Amen, right?
There ought to be a strong Amen when we finish up singing, when
somebody finishes up playing Amen, glory to God, praise the
Lord. That's what we're doing, right?
Those are the appropriate responses to somebody finishing
a a special. Praise the Lord.
That's what we're doing anyway, right?
And if you're thinking about the words that they're singing or
you're thinking about the words that they're playing, then it's
all for the glory of God anyway. And so if we're doing it for God
#1 it's not for man's applause, but #2 we should do it to the
best of our ability, right? What if, what if you had the
opportunity to play or sing for the President of the United
States? Do you think that you'd be like,
well, I've done this song a bunch of times, It'll be fine.
Let's just run through it right before we get there and we'll be
good. You think that's what you would
do if you were going to play for the president that was going to
be televised on national TV and everything else?
Probably not. You'd practice and practice and
practice and practice till you could sing it in your sleep if
you needed to, right? Because you're aiming for
excellence. Because the office of the
President of the United States deserves excellence.
And we want to represent ourselves and we want to
represent Christ well, and we want to represent this nation
well. And we want to have a good
showing before the President of the United States.
And yet we're getting ready to sing before the Lord of heaven.
We say, well, brother, praise the Lord.
We didn't get to really practice much this week, but we'll see
what comes out right. Hope it comes out all right.
Right. Who are you singing for?
The brethren that don't care what you sound like?
Or are you singing for the Lord? All right, I get it.
I've been in many churches where the people Can't Sing, where the
song leader Can't Sing, where the choir can't carry a tune in
a bucket, right? It's not because they didn't
practice, it's just because they don't know how to sing.
They're making a joyful noise unto the Lord.
They are doing it to the best of their ability, right?
And that's all that he's asking from us.
Do it to the best of your ability.
And if the best of your ability is I don't have to hack my way
through a song, then you shouldn't do that.
It should be done with no mistakes.
It should be done without messing up if, if that's your if
that's the ability that you have, right?
So we have to aim for excellence in the standards for for singers
and for musicians and in the selection of every song in hymn,
right? If we're aiming for excellence,
it's not just in the performance of it, it's in the choosing of
that song. Is this song excellent?
Is it going to edify? Is it going to be pleasing to
the Lord? Is it going to be building a
bridge to somewhere we don't want to go?
Everything about it has to be excellent.
The conducting of it, every aspect of the song service, the
quality of the singing and the playing, right?
There are just some people who who are not cut out to sing in
church. You can join the congregational
chorus, all right. You can join the congregational
choir. But everything that we do, if we
have the ability to do it, should be done with excellence
and for the Lord. So that standard then requires
continual education, which is why we're going through this in
the 1st place. This is why we are are are
discussing the principles of music.
We have to do everything in an excellent way because of who we
are doing it for. The goal in our music should not
just be to hold the line, right? And I think that's a mistake
that a lot of that a lot of people make.
We're holding the line and it gets, gets harder and harder and
harder and it's not joyful. It's not, it's not exciting,
it's not wonderful because you're just, you're just hanging
on for dear life, hoping that that line doesn't break and you
fall into the water, right? What we're trying to grow in
wisdom and knowledge and discernment in order to please
the Lord at an even higher level.
We want to take our music up and to the right.
We don't want to just hold the line.
We don't want to just not fall into contemporary Christian
music. We want to take it up and to the
right. Look, anything that we can.
That's that's part of the reason why we added the orchestra and
that you look at, you look all the way throughout the Old
Testament especially, they filled the temple with music.
They filled the temple with playing instruments, right?
That that's why I'm saying if you have the ability to play an
instrument, you ought to be playing it, right?
Well, I haven't played in 10 years.
Then get it out and practice and start playing it again.
Use it for the Lord. He gave you the ability for a
reason. Use it for him and get good at
it. Don't just show up and oh, I've
never seen this music before, right?
All over the place, right? I don't, I don't know where my
place is at in the in the music. I get it.
Sometimes people get nervous and you mess up, right?
I've done it. I get I get when I play my
trumpet, I get nervous. Don't know why I don't.
I'm fine down here. When I play my trumpet as a
solo, part of it is because it's so loud that if you make a
mistake, everybody knows you made a mistake, right?
I can make a mistake and preach and I can say actually, no,
that's not what I meant. What I meant was you can't do
that on the trumpet. Oops, I didn't mean that.
Let's back up and start again, right?
You can't do that. So it takes more practice, it
takes more effort, right? And, and, and everything that we
do should be excellent when it comes to our music.
Let's go over to First Chronicles 15.
Here's number 12. And this kind of goes right
along with this. But I want to say, say this in a
little bit different way #12 church music should be skillful.
Church music should be skillful. And it goes along with exactly
what we've been saying. Jesus Christ is worthy of our
very best First Chronicles, chapter 15 and verse #21 and
Mattathiah and Elephila and Miknaia and Obeditum and jail,
and Aziziah with harps on the Sheminith to excel.
And Shenaniah, chief of the Levites, was for song.
He instructed about the song because he was skillful.
Psalm 33. Psalm 33, I'll just read this
verse to you. And verse #3 the Bible says,
sing unto him a new song. Play skillfully with a loud
noise. See the hymn says, give of your
best to the master. And that's what we want to do
with sacred music. We want to lead it.
We want to play it. We want to sing it with the
highest level of expertise and prep, preparation that we can
produce not for our glory, but for God's glory.
We want to be better educated about music.
We want to understand what is right and how it's right and
what is wrong and how it's wrong when it comes to our church
music because we we want to play skillfully and for the Lord.
That's why we're doing it. We need to be better, better
prepared. We need to be stronger in every
area of our music. That's the that's the path of
spiritual victory and revival. And our music should reflect the
excellence should reflect excellence, because our God is
excellent in everything that he does, right?
That's, that's we ought, to, we ought to refuse and resist the
casual look, the casual feel, right?
That's, that's one of the things that characterizes contemporary
Christian music and everything about it, right from the pastor
on down. Everybody shows up in jeans and
AT shirt with their, you know, $500 tennis shoes that they have
their pants tucked into them. And everybody's got to, they got
to walk like this because you can't crease them.
You know, that's what that produces, right?
It's all a production. It's all about what everything
looks like up here, right? And we want it to be excellent,
but I could care less about what everything looks like on a
video. Be here.
If you want to see it and hear it and experience it, then be
here. Be in church.
That's what it's for. The video is there in case you
can't be here because you're sick, right?
It's not about a production. We're not trying to produce a
wonderful product. Everything should be done to the
highest level of excellence. But it's not a production.
We don't have TV, you know, I mean, video cameras all over the
place and, and, and catching people from every angle and all
of that kind of stuff. But but when your musicians are
up there wearing their beanies that are hanging off the back of
their head and they got their skin tight jeans and their and
their tennis shoes and their T-shirts that that say Jesus on
the front of them, they're leading the worship.
What do you think? Everybody else is going to show
up like right. I think it's so funny.
We, we just and miss Tawana was there too.
We just we went to the governor's mansion last week or
earlier this week, I guess, and the government had a reception
for the faith leaders, right? And all of these people that I
see all over the place, they're all, they're all people in this
area show up in church T-shirt, you know, maybe mostly in the
pastors and mostly not wearing shorts up there, but T-shirt,
you know, just just very casual, very relaxed.
They show up at this thing in a suit.
So that's probably the first time they've worn a suit all
year long. But you're going to wear a suit
to meet the governor. But then when it's time to
worship the Lord, let's have the most casual attitude that we can
have about this. Something's backwards here.
But that's what the music is producing.
It's designed to be casual because have you ever seen
somebody wear a suit to a concert, right?
A rock concert especially. You're not going to wear a suit
to a rock concert because you got to be able to bang out with
the music, right? And it produces that casual
attitude because that's not what you wear to a concert.
And then you take that same attitude and you bring it over
into the church and the only thing you change is a couple of
words to make it sound like it's church music and you have the
same casual attitude. And it's not excellent.
It's not we're doing this for God's glory.
It's we're doing this for the production.
And well, of course, I have to wear $500 shoes.
I'm going to be on TV in front of the entire nation, all right?
Of course I got to have designer clothes.
Everybody's going to be watching me.
All right? Of course we have to have this
production with the smoke and all of this other stuff going on
because people are going to be watching this and it has to be,
it has to keep their attention, right?
Who you doing it for? If you're doing it for the Lord,
you're going to deal with excellence anyway.
But that's why we resist the casual look, the casual feel.
That's why we dress up for church.
It's not because I love wearing a tie and I want everybody else
to wear it too. I hate wearing a tie.
If I didn't have to wear a tie the rest of my life, there would
be nobody happier than me. But in our culture, wearing a
suit is still the way that you show the most respect that you
can show for somebody else. That might change.
Maybe one of these days we'll be wearing kimonos or something, I
don't know. But right now it's a suit.
So I'm going to wear a suit and I'm going to dress up because of
who I'm representing and who I'm singing to and who I'm
worshipping when I'm here. We're going to implement some
things for our young people that that that sing and play to make
sure that we're holding that line.
I'm not going to make the adults do it, but for our young people
especially because we want things to be excellent, right?
We're going to have them sing for, for somebody and let, let
somebody listen to them sing it before they just get up there
and hack their way through a song, right?
They're, they're working on things, they're practicing and
it's great. It's, it's, it's a wonderful
thing that our young people are involved in the service and they
can sing and play and do all of those other things.
But we don't need the young people to be involved just for
the sake of having an extra person sitting up here or an
extra person standing up here to sing.
It's that's not why we do it. We're doing it because it can
fill it up more and it gives them an opportunity to sing for
the Lord and be excellent for him.
So if that's our goal, then even our young people should do
everything at an excellent level, right?
I'm not going to make Brother George sing it for me before he
gets up there. You messed up too many times.
You Can't Sing tonight, sorry, brother George, you're going to
have to, you're going to have to take that home and practice a
little bit more, right? I expect that the adults will,
will do that themselves. And I and I trust that that
you're practicing and that you're working on those songs
and everything else so that they are excellent.
But church music should be skillful.
It should be excellent #13 and we're almost done here.
Number 13. Church music should be
unquestionably right and safe. Turn over to 1st Thessalonians,
Chapter 5. Church music should be
unquestionably right and safe. First Thessalonians chapter 5
and verse #21 The Bible says, prove all things, hold fast that
which is good. Verse 22.
Abstain from all appearance of evil.
All appearance of evil. I'll, I'll pick on on these
because it's, it's a glaring example, but you ever, you ever
gone on to Hillsong, their website or their YouTube and
looked at just a video of their church service.
If you didn't purposely go to Hillsong's service, you would
have to sit there for a while and try to figure out if you
were watching a rock concert or if you were watching a church
service because you cannot tell the difference.
You cannot tell the difference is that abstaining from all
appearance of evil, it's not because it looks exactly like
the evil of the world, right? Brother Cloud actually just
wrote an article that he sent out in an e-mail and it was it
was called The Sexuality of the Contemporary Christian Movement.
And he had about 40 examples of people that are in the last 20
or 30 years, very popular contemporary Christian musicians
who have had affairs, who have, who have been convicted of, of
child pornography, who have done all kinds of heinous things,
cheating on their wives, you know, all, all kinds of stuff,
all kinds of stuff that all of these contemporary musicians.
And, and it's not to say that, oh, you're a Baptist in a, in a
good church. And so you're immune to those
things. There's plenty of those things
too, but it's very prevalent because that's the kind of
lifestyle that happens when people are travelling in music
groups on the road. And, and some of the ones, some
of the contemporary Christian musicians who are actually the
most honest will tell you it's all about drugs, women.
It's no different than the lifestyle of a rock musician
other than you're getting up and leading worship and you're
getting up and you're, you're singing songs about Jesus and
you and, and OK, here's the argument.
Well, that's, we don't do that in our church, but you're
singing their songs and you are promoting that group and you
are, you are promoting their music.
And there's obviously zero of the Holy Spirit in that music.
God's not giving him those words when they write it.
You can't live like that and expect that the Holy Spirit's
giving you a worship song to give to everybody else, right?
So what we're trying to do here, as the Bible says, is abstain
from all appearance of evil, to hold fast only that which is
good, avoiding every, even the appearance of evil.
That's the highest possible standard for music, right?
And if we're trying to be excellent, and if we're trying
to be skillful, then we should be trying to reach the highest
standard for of music that we possibly can.
The standard is not just the bare minimum.
It's not mediocrity, it's not borderline, it's not
questionable in any way. And again, that's the reason why
we don't have drums. It's the reason why we don't
have a trap set, It's the reason why we don't have the electric
guitars and all of those things, right?
Obviously you can play any musical instrument in a wrong
way, but there are some that are associated with the music of the
world. That's why we don't do them,
right. How many times I've had people
I'm playing, play the electric guitar, I can shred an electric
guitar. I'll play in your church, right?
No, thank you. I appreciate the offer.
Right. We don't, we don't do that here
because we're trying to hold that standard as high as we can.
We're trying to avoid all appearance of evil.
That's our fundamental music standard.
If a song or hymn is questionable, then we want to
avoid it. If we weren't, if we aren't sure
if it's right or sound or healthy, we want to avoid it.
There is there is a wealth I have, I have probably 3 or 4
books at home that make up that take up about this much room on
my shelf of all old hymns that have been written over the past
100 and 5200 years. Some of them even, you know,
fairly new. But thousands of hymns that are
just old good hymns that because they don't fit in the song.
But you can only put us so many songs in a song book that they
end up getting moved out of print.
And you come along and you finally say, wow, how did this
song ever stop getting printed? This is a wonderful song about
Christ or it's a wonderful song about a doctrine that we find in
the Bible. There's a wealth of
unquestionably sound, doctrinally correct, spiritual,
non worldly, non charismatic music.
So to avoid a piece of questionable music never harms a
church, but using questionable music can definitely harm a
church. And the first thing to go in a
church when a church starts moving in the wrong direction is
always the music. The standards in music drop and
then the standards in everything else comes right behind it.
And the next thing you know, it's a full blown contemporary
church that has nothing to do with what it used to be.
That requires constant testing of the church music, but that's
the standard of wisdom and safety.
Let me give you this number 14. God's people should aim to learn
to sing and play music. God's people should aim to to
learn to sing and play music. We're commanded to praise God
with trumpets, with sultries, with harps, with timbrels, with
stringed instruments, with organs, with loud cymbals, high
sounding cymbals. I'm summarizing Psalm 150.
That's an orchestra, right? And, and, and, and born again
Christians. The Bible tells us in first
Peter are priests, right? And the priests in the former
dispensation were singers and players of instruments.
As we've seen, children and young people should be learning
to play instruments. That's why we put such a strong
emphasis on it. My, my parents did a lot for us
growing up. We, we went to a Christian
School. I, I, I started playing the
piano when I was in second grade.
And the one mistake that I wish my parents had not made was that
when I got into 7th grade, they gave me the option to stop
taking piano lessons if I wanted to because I was playing sports.
And as a 7th grader, the first thing I said was goodbye, No
more piano lessons. And I wish I'd kept playing
because you know what, my body's old and broken.
I can't play sports the way that I used to play sports.
But you know what I could play if I knew how to play it?
The piano. I'm thankful that I started
playing the trumpet in the 4th grade.
And I played that all the way till I graduated college and
after. And I still play it now.
That's a skill that I have that hopefully I'll be able to do
till I'm old, right? You can't do that with sports is
important, right? It's, it's, it's necessary,
teaches you discipline and all of those other things.
But nobody in this room or anywhere close to it is going to
go pro in sports. You're not going to make
$1,000,000 in it, right? It's, it's a good thing to have,
but it's going to be gone, right?
If you find a place to play somewhere, it's going to be once
a week, once a month, once a year that you play sports.
But you can use the ability on an instrument for the rest of
your life, right? Get your kids music lessons.
Pay for it. Don't just say, hey, I got this
beginner book for you. Go learn how to play the
trumpet. All right, Give them some
lessons. Pay for it.
It's a it's an investment that's worth it.
All right. How many parents are willing to
go buy their kids $200 pair of basketball shoes and they won't
spend a dime for them to play music?
Those basketball shoes are going to be long gone and they're not
going to remember that. You know what?
They will remember how to play the musical instrument that you
spent a little bit of money for them to learn.
Right, the, the, the Internet is an amazing thing.
You can find a good teacher in a good church who's willing to
teach your kids music on Zoom. It happened.
There's there's a lot of people that are doing it and it works
really well. Get your kids some music
lessons. Let them learn how to play the
piano. Let them learn how to play the,
the trumpet and the violin or some other brass instrument.
All right, Let them learn how to play those things.
Those are skills that they're going to take with them for a
very, very long time. And, and by the way, it's a good
incentive to holiness into the wholesome use of time because
practicing an instrument sure beats watching TV or playing
video games, right? Which is what most kids are
sitting around doing. Even basketball and sports.
I mean, it's again, it's good to practice those things.
It's good to to have some of those skills and some of those
abilities. God can use those too, right?
It's a great way to help stay in shape and everything else.
But at the same time, you practicing an instrument, you
learning an instrument is going to go way farther than anything
else that you can do. In fact, you have to take your
kids out of school and teach them how to play an instrument.
I'm just kidding, don't. But I've used my instrument way
more than I've used math. I can tell you that much #15 the
last one here. Let's turn to 1st Corinthians
chapter 5 and we'll be done because I don't even have to use
math anymore. I just go to the computer and I
say, hey, Google, how do you, what is what's 55 * 55?
You know, Google tells me the answer to it, but Google can't
play an instrument for me. I'll tell you that much.
First Corinthians chapter 5 #15 And this is the last thing.
And very quickly, church music must avoid incrementalism.
Your glorying is not good. Paul says in verse number six,
No, you're not that A little Levin leaveneth the whole lump.
Relation chapter 5 and verse 9 says the same thing, a little
leaven leaveneth the whole lump. When it comes to church music,
little can be big. Meaning this the wrong music
usually enters a church gradually out overnight.
One way that enters is through specials, through courses,
through youth ministries. When that happens, the church is
is doomed to continue moving away from the spiritual and
toward the contemporary unless there's a dramatic move to stop
the progression. And that very rarely happens
because the reason many times that it happens is the pastor
is, is 100% on board with moving in that direction in the 1st
place. Right?
But that's why it's so important that we hold the line.
That's why it's so important that we don't just hold the
line, but that we continue to move up and we continue to move
forward in excellence with our music.
Because it rarely happens that once music starts sliding in the
wrong direction, it's very hard to grab the rope and pull it
back in the other direction. It almost never happens, in
fact. And the next thing you know,
that church is a contemporary church that doesn't hold to the
King James Bible, has 0 standards of dress and
everything else. But that's why we test every
song. That's why, that's why we ask
you to turn the music in before you sing it.
We got to test it. I've got, I've, I have the
responsibility of testing the music and making sure that it
lines up with the principles of the word of God, that it lines
up with these principles of music that we've been going
through. That's, that's why you turn the
music in. That's why it's not just, well,
I, I was able to put this together last night.
This is a song that I found and, you know, I found it on the
Internet. I think it's pretty good, right?
It might be, it might be OK. It might be a decent song, but
it might lead us in a direction that we don't want to go.
And here's the problem. Brother George gets up and sings
a song that is a contemporary song that he toned down.
Now I'm in a position that either got to get up and correct
Brother George in front of the whole church, which I'm not
going to do more than likely, or, well, Brother George saying
that. So I guess the music's OK.
I guess we have to let that go because I let him do it.
I can't say no to this person, right?
If you turn the music ahead of time and we look at the song and
we evaluate the song and we look at it through the eyes of, of,
of the word of God and all these principles of music that I can
say, hey, brother George, that's not a bad song.
But here's why we're not going to do that one.
And now there's no embarrassment, Brother George.
And I know his attitude toward it.
All right, fine. I'll find another song.
Plenty of them out there. All right.
That's why we do it. It's my job to make sure that
the music stays on the path that it should stay on and that we
don't veer to the left and we don't move toward that
contemporary compromise that comes with all of those things.
But my job as the pastor is to test the music and make
judgments regarding the music that we have in our church.
And it's a difficult, it's a difficult spot because I don't
want to tell you, no, that's not a good song to sing or no, you
can't do that song. I don't, I don't like doing
that. But if you can evaluate the
music in light of these principles of the word from the
word of God, then it'll help you to pick out songs that are
pleasing to the Lord. And it makes the process very
easy. And that's why it's my job to
teach you what music is acceptable and what music is not
acceptable. Some, some genres of music, some
authors, some types of music have very slippery slopes.
And we want to be as far away from that slippery slope as we
possibly can be. There may be a couple songs on
the edge that are OK that, that we just have to say we can't do
that because it it leads us to the edge of that slope that's so
close that if we take one more step over, we're sliding down in
a in a very fast direction, very, very the wrong direction
in a very fast way. We just, we can't do it.
We don't want to do it because we want to be as as excellent in
our music as possible because of who we're doing the music for.
It's not about production. It's not about what you sound
like, not about how good you sound or how bad you sound.
If you can't really sing, and I know we joke about that, but
that's what the Bible says, make a joyful noise, right?
I would rather have somebody get up here and sing.
I'd rather have Jesus off tune than somebody who gets up here
and sings. What a beautiful name it is,
right? Nothing wrong with either one of
those songs, really, right? But what a beautiful name it is.
Was the number one contemporary Christian music song a couple
years ago and everybody saying it came from Hillsong.
Their their music is taking everybody in the wrong direction
because it's all about them and all about the production and not
about Christ as much as they want to say that it is right.
So these principles will help us in our music and, and hopefully
it'll help you and your music, even the music that you listen
to, right? Not every single song that you
listen to in the car has to be a hymn, right?
There are some, there's some music that's not sacred music
that we're not going to sing in church, but that's probably OK
for you to listen to in your car, right?
Take Me Home, Country roads. Go listen to it if you want to,
right? Roy Rogers, go listen to it.
Not, not all music is bad music, but these are all principles
that you should apply, right? What?
What, what, what about that music is right or wrong?
Those are the things that you need to evaluate, right?
Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
We're not going to sing it in church.
But it's not nothing wrong with singing that or listening to
that in your car, right? There's some music that that
that we just wouldn't sing in church because it's not sacred.
But it's not wrong either, right?
You have to evaluate all of these things as principles of
music by the word of God. And there's a lot of there's a
lot of things that we could look at.
I mean, I told you this before we spent 15 weeks a couple years
ago going through music and these principles of music.
This was 3. So it's, it's really, you know,
zoomed down. You can go, you can go on
YouTube and find the entire series and, and, and listen
through it. But the important thing is,
especially when it comes to our church music, we want everything
in our church to be as excellent as it can possibly be, because
we're not doing it for our glory.
We're doing it for the glory of God.
And he's the one that I want to please.
I don't care if everybody else in this church is pleased.
If God's not, it doesn't matter. And if God is pleased, it
doesn't matter who else is displeased, right?
I, I, I am not a confrontational person.
I do not like to be the bad guy. But when it comes to these kind
of things, I will be because I have to be.
I'm going to answer to God for it, not you.
I want to be able to say I did what was what was needed when it
came to music. I was faithful to do what God
wanted us to do in music. That's what I want to be able to
say and I hope you'll help me with it.
You don't want me to look bad in the judgment seat, do you?
Let's pray. Father, again, we thank you so
much for your goodness to us. I thank you for the opportunity
that we have to discuss these things and look at them from the
Word of God and to see these principles from from the
biblical perspective. God, I know that in many
churches, these are not things that are being preached and it
doesn't make us better than anybody else, but we want to
hold our standard as high as we can so that you can be pleased.
And God way, I, I pray that you'd help us in our church to
have music that is, that is 100% pleasing to you, that is
excellent, that is well practiced and skillful because
we're doing it for, for you, God.
May that be our motivation for everything that we do in this
church. May it be done for your honor
and your glory. And may you be pleased by
everything that happens here. Again, we thank you so much for
all that you do for us in Jesus name, Amen.
Go ahead and stand at your seats.
We're going to have a short time of invitation.
Maybe there is a decision that you need to make when it comes
to your music. And again, you're not, you're
not making the decisions in our church necessarily for the
direction of the music. But maybe you, maybe you need to
raise the standard in your own home.
Maybe you need to raise the standard and the things that you
listen to personally, maybe you need to take that, that up a
notch. You know, the reason why people
are so drawn to contemporary Christian music is because
you're listening to the wrong things.
I, I'll be honest with you, I'm not even tempted by contemporary
Christian music. It's not like I'm thinking, oh
man, I wish we could do that song because I really would like
to. I'm not tempted by it because
I'm not listening to it. I'm not fishing in that pond and
I'm not trying to hold myself up as some great standard bearer or
something like that. But all I'm saying is it works.
If you don't want to be tempted by those things and don't, then
don't put yourselves in a, in a, in a place where you're going to
be tempted by it. And maybe you need to make a
decision to raise your own personal standard of music so
that you're not dropping it in the church, so that you're not a
hindrance to the music of God's church going forward.
I don't know, but I want to give you an opportunity to respond if
God spoke to your heart about something.
So as the piano plays the invitations open, you come.