There’s an old chorus that was based on Psalm 96 and I’d like you to sing it with me: “Sing unto the Lord a new song. Sing unto the Lord all the earth; Sing unto the Lord a new song. Sing unto the Lord all the earth. For God is great and greatly to be praised. God is great and greatly to be praised.” (I sang the verse and chorus through once and then had them sing the verse, chorus verse again with me. To hear how it might be sung, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9plkX3hoe0)
Our family minister, Scott has been doing a series of lessons with the High Schoolers that he has entitled: “Why we do what we do, when we do what we do.” Aside from being a pretty clever title, it asks a very important question. WHY do we do what we do on Sunday Mornings?
Why do we have sermons and study the Bible? Why do we take communion every Sunday? Why do we stress fellowship? Why do we spend so much time in prayer? And of course: WHY DO WE SING on Sundays?
I’ve discovered (over the years) that different churches sing for different reasons.
My home church (for example) seemed to sing songs as if they were CONNECTORS. The songs connected each of the activities of worship. They’d sing a song… then they’d do something. They’d sing another song then they’d do something else. I don’t remember ever singing more than one song at a time. There’d be an opening song. Then there was a prayer. Then there’d be a song for Communion… then we’d take communion. There’d be a song for Offering, then we’d take up the offering. There’d be the sermon followed by the invitation song. They’d pray, then have the closing song. They never seemed to sing just for the joy of singing.
Then there are churches who use songs as a way to manipulate their audiences. A few years ago I was talking with a man who said he didn’t like our songs. He said our songs were more “praise” songs rather than “worship” songs. That puzzled me so I asked what he meant. He explained that (in the church he’d grown up in) they sang worship songs over and over and over again. Sometimes they’d sing the same song for ½ hour or more, In fact they apparently did this with ALL their songs, and the praise team would repeat the song over and over as long as the audience continued to respond. Sometimes they didn’t even have a sermon… they just sang. What were they doing? Essentially, they were manipulating the crowd. They were whipping them into a kind of euphoria. They were trying to make the audience think the Holy Spirit was THERE in their presence and they were manufacturing the Spirit’s presence.
Then there are other churches who have worship bands who don’t care if anyone sings along with them. The music is all about entertainment and performance… not participation.
Now I'm not sure God is overly furious with these different practices, but any church who approaches singing in those ways... isn't really very healthy. By contrast, what I find interesting about Bible passages like Psalm 96 is that they talk less about what a “group” of people ought to do when they sing as much as they talk about how you & I (as individuals) sing to God. It’s almost always a command: “Sing unto the LORD a new song. A sing unto the lord all the earth.”
The question for you and I this morning is this: Why should we sing? Well, I sing because I LIKE to sing! In fact I have a chorus of a song I’d like you to sing with me. “I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free; for his eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me. (repeat chorus then TAG) His eye is on the Sparrow and I know He watches me.”
Why should we sing? We should sing because we have a reason to sing. We have a God who loves us so much that He watches over us. So, I sing because I’m happy, and I sing because I’m free. His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me.
ILLUS: Several years back, there was a group of missionaries who spent 25 years translating the New Testament into the language of the Chol Indians. Today the Chol Church is a thriving group of worshippers – there’s more than 12,000 of them. But what’s interesting is that when the missionaries 1st came, the Chol Indians didn’t even know how to sing. It was only after they heard the gospel of Jesus Christ that they became known as “the singers”. They love to sing now, BECAUSE they have something to sing about. (George Sweeting “Psalms Of The Heart”)
Someone once noted that: “If you have a song in your heart, then you’ll sing. If you don’t, you won’t. You won’t sing because you don’t have a song worth singing. So, the question is NOT, ‘Do you have a voice?’ The question is ‘Do you have a song?’ (Donald Hustead)
ILLUS: You remember when you were younger and you'd turn on the car radio? You'd hear just the first few notes and you knew what song was being played. And as it played you might hum or sing along - because the song "meant" something to you. They weren't "religious" songs... but they spoke to you. As Christians, the songs we sing to glorify God should speak to us even more powerfully than the top 40 hits of our youth.
ILLUS: A famous preacher named Spurgeon once said, “Do we sing as much as the birds do? Yet what have birds to sing about compared with us? Do we sing as much as the angels do? Yet the angels were never redeemed by the blood of Christ. Birds of the air, shall you excel me? Angels, shall you exceed me? You have done so - but I intend to emulate you, and day by day, and night by night pour forth my soul in sacred song.”
Spurgeon had no intention of letting birds or angels sing more praises to God than he did. He intended to sing because he had a reason to sing.
Sing unto the LORD a NEW SONG. What does that mean? Does that mean I should ONLY sing the newest songs on Christian radio and just FORGET all the old favorites I’ve sung all my life? Oh, heaven’s no! Just visit a Nursing Home sometime and listen to their worship. They sing the old, old songs and they find comfort in them. And they should sing those songs… and so should we.
But what I think David was saying here is this: Don’t just SING a song. Don’t just MOUTH the words. Make it NEW in your mind. Understand the words. Understand the meaning of what you’re singing. Sometimes it’s good to sing a song you’ve never heard to refresh the message of God in our minds.
ILLUS: I read the story of an evangelist who stayed overnight at the home of a young couple where he was holding a Revival. He awoke the next morning to hear a beautiful voice singing, “Nearer, My God to Thee.” At breakfast he mentioned how pleased he was to hear that lovely old hymn, “But it seemed to go much faster than I’ve ever heard it before” The woman smiled and said "Oh, I guess that’s because I wasn’t paying too much attention to the words. You see, my mother used to sing it a lot, and I’ve found that it’s a good song to boil eggs by. Just repeat the 1st verse 5 times rapidly for soft-boiled, and 8 times for hard.”
ILLUS: Back when I was a boy, I remember singing out of the hymnals at church. But some of those songs ACTUALLY began to bore me because the church sang them week after week. Believe it or not, I got so I dreaded singing “Tell me the old, old story” and “Tell me the story of Jesus.” We sang them so often they actually began to annoy me. They were good songs but they got really OLD to me! Now, I’ve gotten to the point where I love those songs again, but it took a while. I just had to take a break. It took a while for them to become NEW to me again.
But why should WE sing? Psalm 96:3-4 says “Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples! For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods.”
I’m singing unto the LORD, but when I sing to Him I’m DECLARING His Glory among the nations, and I’m DECLARING His Marvelous Works among all the peoples. In other words… when I sing songs about God, it isn’t about ME! I’m not here to be entertained. When I SING, it’s not a private audience between God and myself.
ILLUS: Ken Idleman (the preacher at the SE Christian Church in Louisville, KY) told of being out in the park on a hot, miserable day. He was sweating profusely and was not in a good mood. But out of the corner of his eye he saw a man in work clothes carrying a hose over his shoulder, and the man was whistling... on this hot, miserable day. As he watched, the workman arrived at his destination - a port-a-pot. The man had come to clean it out... and he was whistling... on a hot and miserable day. And what was he whistling? (I began to whistle "This is the day that the Lord has made," and encouraged the audience to whistle along with me). Idleman marveled at this - here was a man cleaning out a port-a-pot on a hot and miserable day whilsting "This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it!" Without even realizing he was doing it, this workman was praising God and declaring God's glory to all who would listen.
For example: Ephesians 5:19 tells us we should be “speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.”
Have you ever thought that – when you sing in worship – you’re speaking to others? If you sing enthusiastically… you can encourage others. And if you sing with feeling… you can attract the lost to Jesus? Has that ever occurred to you?
ILLUS: I read about a letter a young girl wrote to her friend. “I attended your church yesterday. Although you had invited me, you were not there. I looked for you, hoping to sit with you. I sat alone. A stranger, I wanted to sit near the back of the church but those rows were all packed with regular attenders. An usher took me to the front. I felt as though I was on parade. During the singing of the hymns I was surprised that some of the church people weren’t singing. Between their sighs and yawns, they just stared into space. Three of the kids that I had respected on campus were whispering to one another throughout the whole service. Another girl was giggling. I really didn’t expect that in your church.” (from a sermon by Travis Johnson)
She was surprised that there were church people who were NOT singing. These were supposedly people who had a special relationship with God, but their behavior and their lack of attention told her that God wasn’t all that important to these folks.
Did you realize that the MAIN reason you’re here SHOULD NOT BE to hear me preach? In theory you should have come here to worship God. I mean, I’m glad you’re here… and I’m glad you listen to me, but if you didn’t PRAY intentionally while you’re here, and you didn’t SING with gusto to God - it would be like ME getting up here and just droning on and on as I preached. And IF you could tell I was bored or not interested; and if it looked like was just putting in my time; you’d get tired of me real quick. You’d realize that I’m NOT giving it all that I’ve got and it would upset you.
So when you sing you’re preaching to those around you and you want to give it all you’ve got – you want to worship with enthusiasm and meaning, because someone might be here who needs to hear you.
ILLUS: Back in the late 1920s, J.C. Penney was owned by a man named J.C. Penney. He had a chain of 1700 stores and his stores were very profitable, but he was heavily in debt. THEN the Great Depression hit, and banks called in the loans sooner than anticipated. Penney’s His cash flow was tight, and he was finding it difficult to make payments. He got to the point where he couldn’t sleep and was experiencing sharp pains. Penney checked himself into the Kellogg sanitarium at Battle Creek, Michigan (the Mayo Clinic of the day), but nothing they did for him helped and he was overwhelmed with hopelessness and despair.
Penney later recalled “I got weaker day by day. I was broken nervously and physically, filled with despair, unable to see even a ray of hope. I had nothing to live for, I felt that I hadn’t a friend left in the world, that even my family had turned against me.”
One night he awoke with the conviction that he was living the last night of his life. He said “Getting out of bed, I wrote farewell letters to my wife and to my son, saying that I did not expect to live to see the dawn.”
But the next morning he awoke – and was surprised to find himself alive. He made his way down the hallway of the hospital, when he heard singing… The singing was coming from the little chapel down the hall, and the words of the hymn shook him out of his despair. The words declared: “Be not dismayed whate’er betide, God will take care of you; Beneath His wings of love abide, God will take care of you. God will take care of you, through every day, o’er all the way; He will take care of you, God will take care of you.”
“Suddenly (he said) something happened. I can’t explain it. I can only call it a miracle. I felt as if I had been instantly lifted out of the darkness of a dungeon into a warm, brilliant sunlight. I felt as if I had been transported from hell to Paradise. I felt the power of God as I had never felt it before. From that day to this, my life has been free from worry. The most dramatic and glorious 20 minutes of my life were those I spent in that chapel.”
PEOPLE SINGING THE WORDS OF A HYMN… CHANGED HIS LIFE.
CLOSE: In Acts 16:23-34 we read about Paul & Silas arrested for preaching Jesus. “After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and SINGING HYMNS to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everybody’s chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, "Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!"
The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" They replied, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household."
Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his family were baptized. The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole family.”
What led the jailer to ask how he could be saved? I think he asked because he heard them SINGING, and the songs that Paul & Silas sang changed the life of that Jailer and his family forever. They came to believe in the Jesus who had died for their sins and were baptized into Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. As Jesus declared in Mark 16:16 “He who believes and is baptized, shall be saved.”
