OPEN: Jim Serian tells of the time when one of his congregation’s organizations “The Women’s League” wanted to announce a new project they had undertaken for the church.
On that particular Sunday morning during the announcement time, the President of the Women’s League came up to announce a new project that the women were going to take upon themselves. After a brief description, the President called for all of the ladies of the league (a group made up mostly of our 55 year old and up female saints) to "march up to the front of the sanctuary" so that the congregation could see the earnestness of their endeavor.
Serian was the pianist for the church, and decided to give the ladies a marching tune to encourage them as they came down the aisle. He started playing the children’s chorus, ’The Lord’s Army,’ to keep in step with the march. He says: "In MY head, I was hearing the familiar words, ’I may never march in the infantry, ride in the cavalry, shoot the artillery...’
Unfortunately, everyone else was hearing the words of the original tune, ’The old gray mare, she ain’t what she used to be, ain’t what she used to be, ain’t what she used to be...’"
He said "When the surprised Women’s League President asked why I was playing that tune, I got so flustered, I couldn’t answer, so I just left through the side door."
I. Music often carries messages to our lives.
Music can carry a message of love. For example: How many of you (when you were dating) had one song that was “your song?” When a couple is in love they’ll often speak of a particular song as being “Our song” because it triggers memories of the intimacy and affection they shared from the beginning.
Music can also speak to us of depression. Country music is known for this kind of message. Many of these songs tell stories of lost loves and ruined relationships. Do you know what happens if you play a Country Song backwards? The guy gets his house back, his wife back, his truck back…
Songs written back in the 60’s had a special message as well. Do you remember what the underlying theme of music back in the 60’s? Protest. They protested the war, they protested against authority, they protested against anyone telling them what to do and where to go.
And then there is music that communicates anger, rage, defiance. Music styles such as Heavy Metal and RAP often set forth this message – even when you can’t understand the words.
Music communicates to us… (pause) in fact music’s ability to communicate is so powerful that even the military recognizes it’s importance. Believe it or not, at the “Pentagon’s School of Music” it takes 15 months of instruction to produce one bandleader. By contrast the Air Force takes 13 months to train a jet pilot.
Music has power…
… power to communicate
… power to inspire
… power to change
ILLUS: According to Don Campbell (founder of Institute for Music, Health and Education) music can communicate to us even when we’re not influenced by the words of a song.
He says “music impacts physiology on a deep, basic level. The human heartbeat is especially attuned to sound – changes in tempo and volume act as natural pacemakers. Breathing slows down or speeds up along with the music.”
In addition “Music has a direct effect on the function of the brain. It can slow down and equalize brain waves to create a meditative state… or it can energize brain waves, quickening, the thinking process and enhancing creativity.”
Even the cells of your body respond to music. A study at MSU found that just 15 minutes of listening to music could increase levels of immune chemicals – vital to protect against disease. By contrast, the release of cortisol (the “stress hormone”) dropped by up to 25%.
(source: “Bottom Line –Tomorrow” Sept 1998 p. 9)
What’s all this tell us? It tells us that music is a powerful force.
It communicates messages to our lives
It communicates messages to our hearts
And to our minds
And even the very cells of our bodies.
II. Now, here in Colossians 3, God is telling us that WE need to USE the power of Music
In the NKJV we read “… let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful. 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.” Colossians 3:15-16
God wants us to use music as a tool - to strengthen ourselves and encourage others.
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. It has the power to make us melancholy… or moody.
ILLUS: Back when I first went to Purdue University, I decided I would live life my own way. I didn’t shave. If I didn’t feel like it, I didn’t even brush my teeth. And I intended to listen to MY music as much as possible. After about 3 months I seriously began to entertain thoughts of suicide. This so shocked me that I began to take stock of what I’d been doing with my life. I began to take more pride in personal hygiene and in my appearance… and I took a close look at the type of music I surrounded myself with. My favorite group at the time was the singing group “Simon and Garfunkle”. I’d listen to them for hours. But as I examined the messages of their songs, I discovered a pattern of despair and hopelessness. One song compared man’s life to that of a rat in a maze. Another declared: “I am a rock, I am an island. I touch no one and no one touches me”. I realized I needed to remove that influence from my life and replace it with more upbeat and hopeful music.
ILLUS: By contrast, when I was in Bible College I had a part time job in the back room of a furniture store as a “furniture stripper”. My job was to take old chairs and tables and dip them in a horse tank filled with Methylene Chloride – which would strip off old paint and varnish - and then take the treated furniture over to a shower stall where I would spray the item off and set it aside to be refinished by a more skilled laborer.
It was a lonely, smelly, unpleasant job that nobody liked.
The worst part was the Methylene Chloride was like Acetone with an attitude. If it touched your skin it would burn like crazy. And so, I was forced to wear eye protection and huge rubber gloves.
One day, in a Bible class I encountered Ephesians 5:19-20 which spoke of ways that we could be “filled with the Spirit”. It said: “Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
So, I thought I’d try that at work. I was alone for 3 to 4 hours at a time, and I could do any crazy thing I wanted to. I’d sing and pray and just worship God in my little cathedral. After a couple of weeks, my boss pulled me aside and asked me what I had been doing back there.
A little confused, I asked what he meant.
He said “I don’t know what you’re doing back there, but I have never seen anyone come out of that room before with a smile on their face. What are you doing back there?”
What I’d been doing was obeying the command from Ephesians 5. I had changed my attitude. By singing and praying and praising God I had risen above my circumstances and allowed God’s Spirit to work IN me.
That brings me to my 2nd point: Music not only changes me... Music can give me the power to take control my 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… 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.
In short: 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.
But there’s something even more powerful than this that can take place when we sing:
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, and 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 mercilessly…
· 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 thoughtt 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 missionaries 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.
ILLUS: Singing is a powerful to 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 of.
CLOSE: 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”
One expert noted that approximately 40% of Christians have come to believe that singing should be left to those who can sing. They don’t like to sing out loud and they’d prefer to leave that to those who can carry a tune.
ILLUS: In his book "Psalms of the Heart," George Sweeting illustrated a great truth from the experience of two Moody Bible Institute graduates, John and Elaine Beekman. God called them to missionary work among the Chol Indians of southern Mexico. Sweeting reported that they rode mules and traveled by dugout canoes to reach this tribe. They labored 25 years with other missionaries to translate the New Testament into the language of the Chol Indians.
Today the Chol Church is thriving. More than 12,000 Christians make up the Chol Christian community, which is financially self-supporting.
What’s interesting is that when the missionaries came, the Chol Indians didn’t know how to sing. With the coming of the gospel, however, the believers in the tribe became known as "the singers". "They love to sing now," Sweeting commented, "because they have something to sing about."
The Question we should ask ourselves is not whether we can sing… but whether we have a song to sing. Because if we truly love Jesus… our voices (no matter what WE may think of them) are the sweetest musical instruments known to the courts of Heaven.
ILLUS: For his 27th Anniversary Program, Johnny Carson included a closing segment from one of his previous shows that he said had caught him off guard at the time, but which had actually “moved” him.
The previous year, Orel Hershiser had led his team (the L.A. Dodgers) to victory at the World Series and Carson had asked him what he did to calm his nerves between innings. Hershiser responded that he sang songs. Carson then asked the Pitcher to give him a sample.
The song that this acclaimed World Series Pitcher chose to sing, that had such an impact on a basically unreligious man like Johnny Carson and had moved him so much that he selected that segment to close his anniversary special was a simple “doxology.” A song giving praise to God.
(SING) “Praise God from whom all blessing flow
Praise Him all creatures here below
Praise Him all of ye heavenly host
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”
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…
SERMONS IN THIS SERIES (3:16 and Us)
The Temple of Power - 1 Corinthians 3:16-3:16
The Power of Music - Colossians 3:15-3:16
The Power of Trust - 1 Peter 3:8-3:22
The Power Of Love - 1 John 3:11-3:24
