Acts 16
We’ve been talking about worship that last couple of weeks. Two weeks ago I talked about how worship is, “More than just singing.” Last week I discussed, “Enthusiastic worship.” This week I’m discussing, “The benefit of music.”
Now I haven’t heard one negative thing about the worship, but I had a couple people mention how it was hard to focus because we mixed up the order of the service last week. Please understand a couple of things, we did it to make a point that it doesn’t matter to God what order the service is in, as long as we do it for Him. I personally want the sermon at the end so you walk away challenged by it. But remember if there is something you don’t like about the service, unless it goes against scripture remember that God is the audience not us.
I told you a couple of weeks ago that I was blessed to be in a church that loves God and loves people. You’re not a people, who care if it is a hymn or a chorus you just love to sing to the Lord I have received several emails from people saying how good the praise team is doing, and how they really feel they are learning how to truly worship the Lord in the biblical sense. SO, lets give everyone who is on the praise team a HAND.
Music in and of itself is not worship. Worship is what you do with the music.
There is power within music, both positively and negatively. Music drives things more deeply inside of us. For Example: 648-8888:
1. If I am not hungry for pizza and I start to sing that I get hungry for pizza.
2. If I am hungry for pizza and I need the number I know where to go.
These same principles apply to our relationship with God.
When a person listens to music there will be results in that persons life. If the music is righteous then the fruit of the listener will be righteousness. If the music is not righteous then the fruit of the listener of course is obvious.
When I was 20 years old I made a commitment to God to not listen to music that doesn’t glorify God. Notice I didn’t say, I wouldn’t listen to any secular music. The reason why is I believe that there are some songs out there by some secular bands that are pretty good. But in that same thought there are a lot that are real bad. I simply made the commitment to not listen to music that doesn’t glorify God.
I made this commitment because I know what kind of impact music has on people. I will not allow my kids to listen to music that doesn’t draw them closer to the Lord, but more importantly I am trying to raise my children in such a way so that they won’t want to listen to music that’s not going to help them.
Parents, please, I am begging you to sit down with your child and go through there music. I think you will be shocked to see that it’s promoting, Brutal and senseless violence, illicit and perverted sex, drug and alcohol abuse, gang activity, suicide and rape. Everything that we are trying to teach them is wrong. But at the same time parents I think we need to set the example and go through and evaluate the messages of the songs that we listen to.
Oh, you might say that music really doesn’t affect peoples behavior. Say that to the number of young people that are in prison now who have admitted to having been influence by their music to rape young girls, kill their parents, steel from people at gun point and sell drugs to make an extra buck.
If you want information on the music your kids are listening to then hit me up after the service for a book I have written by Phil Chalmers called: I don’t listen to the Lyrics.
Now we’ve discussed how music influences people negatively now lets look at how it influences us positively.
It draws us closer to the Lord. It helps us memorize. For example:
The 12 Apostle
The New Testament
Psalms
They say one reason why music is so powerful is because we use both sides of brain one side for music and the other for the words.
God knows that what goes in, comes out. That’s why we are encouraged to read the bible, pray, fast sing. We are told, “what-ever is pure holy just of good cheer, if anything is excellent or praise worthy think on such things.
One of the points that I have tried to make of the last couple of weeks music is important. It is more than just singing. You as a person need to take the song and sing it to the Lord, that is worship. I also want us as a church to see the importance of instruments. God loves instruments and he loves the people who want to serve Him by playing them.
Illustration: Someone came to an Elder one time to complain about the instruments and the songs that were being sung. The Elder said, “Oh, what was it that you don’t think the Lord enjoyed?”
The most important thing about Christian music is that Jesus Christ is praised. It doesn’t matter if the song is rock. Or Bach. If Jesus Christ is glorified in the lyrics, then the song is good.
So I sing Sunday morning…what about Tuesday afternoon?
Psalm 150 tells us
Where to praise (v 1)
Why to praise (v 2)
How to praise (v 3-5)
God doesn’t limit it and say only those of you who sing well praise the Lord. He said EVERYTHING that has BREATH…
But, how can music help us as Christians?
1st – Music can change my attitudes
In the Old Testament we’re told that, in the latter years of his reign, King Saul turned away from God. And so God left Saul and an evil spirit moved in. The result was that King Saul was driven nearly to the point of madness. One of his counselors told him that he knew of young man who’s singing might just help relieve his burden. That was how David came to sing in King Saul’s courts. And we’re told that when “…David would take his harp and play. Then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him.” 1 Samuel 16:23
Music can change our attitudes.
ILLUS: I remember hearing a testimony from a lady one time, I think it might have been Brenna’s mom I’m not sure. But I remember her telling me she heard a message like this. Went to work where she hated going and always felt depressed and she simply turned her radio station to a Christian station and everything changed. She said, she didn’t feel depressed anymore, she was able to get more work done, and she actually started to enjoy going to work.
It had changed her attitude. By singing and praying and praising God she had risen above her circumstances and allowed God’s Spirit to work IN her.
That brings me to my 2nd point: Music not only changes you... Music can give you the power to take control of your circumstances.
Ordinarily we don’t control our circumstances… they control us. Life can get us down. People can be cruel.
We can end up being imprisoned by circumstances.
But we don’t have to be.
In Acts 16 we read that Paul and Silas were in the city of Philippi. They had been preaching and healing and casting out demons. Something about what they were doing upset the authorities, and the town magistrate had them beaten with rods, thrown into the inner part of the prison and placed in stocks. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t fair. This was unjustified cruelty…
And yet, Acts 16:25-26 tells us that “…at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were loosed.”
What had happened to Paul and Silas wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. If this type of thing had happened to us I dare say we would have been filled with despair, frustration, OR rage. How dare anyone treat us like this???
In short: conditions like these could have overwhelmed people like you and me. But Paul and Silas were NOT overwhelmed… beaten down… or defeated. What had happened to them wasn’t right and yet they refused to be controlled by those circumstances. They faced the unfairness of what they’d experienced and focused on God. They used SINGING and prayer as tools to escape THE CONTROL of their captors.
They may have been PHYSICALLY inside a prison… but they chose to be MENTALLY in the presence of their savior.
Those who had mistreated them could chain their bodies… but not their souls.
Their singing and prayers gave them the power to rise above their circumstances.
When you & I SING to God…when we SURROUND OURSELVES with music that glorifies God we are actively putting ourselves into the very presence of God. And God literally lifts us up and changes both US and OUR CIRCUMSTANCES.
It all starts when we surrender. I have had a couple people tell me that they have always felt like raising their hands to the Lord when their worshiping and over the last couple of weeks they have and it was great. Then they asked why.
I told them a couple of reasons:
1. What is the universal sign of a person surrendering?
2. What does a child do when he wants his daddy to pick him up?
3rd – Singing gives us a tool to teach and witness with
Colossians 3:16 says: “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.”
One of the most overlooked aspects of Paul and Silas’ experience in prison was that “as they were praying and singing hymns to God, the prisoners were listening to them.”
I don’t think that Paul and Silas INTENDED to have others listen as they sang, but it would be a little hard to miss – don’t you think?
*Here, these two had been beaten without mercy.
*They’d been placed in the deepest, darkest, most forbidding corner of the prison
*And they been placed in stocks… which were generally not designed for comfort
As far as the other prisoners were concerned these men would have been expected to…
Howl in protest
Curse in rage
Or suffer in silence
But these men were crazy… they were singing praises to God. You’d have thought this was a church service… not a dungeon cell.
(PAUSE…) But they weren’t crazy. These men were so in love with Jesus that even in prison they sang His praises. And because they did this naturally, they literally WITNESSED by their singing. Their voices reached the cells of the other prisoners… and the ears of the jailor who had locked them into their cell
This witness was so strong that - when the ground shook beneath the floors of the prison that night the jailor came to them and asked them "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" (Acts 16:30) And then, the jailor took these two Christians to his home where Paul and Silas taught the jailor and his family what they should believe about Jesus. And that very night, Paul and Silas baptized the Philippian jailor and his family into Christ.
Do you think that Paul and Silas thought as they were being stripped, beaten and dragged down into the worst part of this prison, “He we’re probably going to lead someone to the Lord tonight and baptize them?” No, they were singing because they knew that worshiping God changes your attitude and your circumstances.
ILLUS: Singing is a powerful tool for witnessing.
I recently read the true story of a young boy in India who had been to a missionary school near his home. Among other things, he received food and a place to sleep and he spent time in their children’s classes.
One day, as the boy was walking down the street, he was loudly singing one of the songs he’d heard at the mission – “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
Other children heard him, and they asked him to sing the whole song to them. When he did so, they asked him who this Jesus was and what this book called the Bible was.
The boy told them – he didn’t know – but he took the whole group back to the mission where they heard the story for themselves… and many of them became Christians because one little boy witnessed to them in a song. A song that he didn’t even understand the words to.
Music is powerful tool.
It can change us
It can change our circumstances
And it can change the lives of the people around us.
But there ARE people who don’t like to sing. They’ve come to believe that their singing is an embarrassment. They find themselves identifying with the 3 year old who sang “I love you Lord… and I lift up my noise”
The question this morning is not whether you can sing… but whether you have a song to sing. If you don’t belong to Jesus, you don’t yet have a reason to sing. That’s why we offer an invitation at the end of every service…
And Remember: God’s favorite music is not bluegrass. Or country. Or even rock and roll. God’s favorite music is anything that brings honor and glory to Jesus Christ. And nothing would bring him greater honor than for you to come back to Him this morning. And repent of your sins. And ask for forgiveness and salvation. That would be music to His ears.
