In the last month or so I have heard some interesting comments. I’ve heard, “we don’t sing enough of the old hymns,” or “I don’t like the new music,” and I have also heard “we are singing too many hymns,” or “we sing songs too slow.” Interesting isn’t it? Whenever people are involved there are differing opinions on just about anything, music in worship included. What interests me the most though is not the comments themselves, but the meaning behind the comment. The meaning behind what is said is, “I wish we could have the kind of music that I like, or that I am familiar with.”
In fact just recently someone said to me, “I am not getting anything out of church service.” And I am pretty sure this person was referring to the music. The music wasn’t meeting their need. Perhaps you have felt that way before too. You have left the service thinking, “I just didn’t get anything out of that service.” Maybe it was the music, it was too fast, too slow, too new, too old, played with an organ, played with a guitar, perhaps the prayer time was too long, to short, to much silence, not enough silence, or the preaching was too longwinded, too disorganized. In any case something didn’t really do anything for you. There are two responses that jump out to me when I hear that comment: 1) you get out what you put in. Just like anything in life whether it is a computer, an education, work, exercise, you only get out what you put in. If you are not putting anything into the service, not singing, not giving, not opening yourself to God’s voice, you probably won’t get anything out of it. 2) Worship is not primarily about you, or your preferences. Just like the first line in Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life, “It’s not about you.” What we receive in a worship service is secondary, it’s frosting on the cake, the gravy on the mash potatoes. Worship, which includes the singing, is about God. Our first consideration should be, what is God getting out of this? If we are gauging the success of a church service by what we felt we received, we have missed the point of worship. Worship by its very nature is meant to be God focused and centered, it is what we offer to God, not out of what we receive.
As I was reflecting upon the comments that have been made to me and sorting this all out I came across a few Psalms. The Psalms were written primarily as songs for worship. We cam think of the book of Psalms as the song book of the Israelite people. The particular Psalms I came across were Psalm 33, 96 & 98. The one I am focusing on is Psalm 98 in which the anonymous psalm writer invites us to worship God, by singing. The purpose of singing, playing instruments, shouting, or making a noise is to praise God with our voice and instruments because of who God is and what God has done. In the context of Psalm 98 God is righteous, loving, and faithful, and he has demonstrated his righteousness, love, and faithfulness by bringing salvation to his people.
NIV Psalm 98:1 A psalm. Sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him. 2 The LORD has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations. 3 He has remembered his love and his faithfulness to the house of Israel; all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
We must praise the Lord, must sing a new song to the Lord, we must sing with the lyre, the harp, trumpets, and rams horn because of his saving work, whether it is shouting or playing loud music. The reason we sing is not to make us feel good but to praise God.
Praising God for his Saving Work
As Christians at least one of the reasons we should praise God is because he has brought us salvation through his Son, Jesus.
We believe God has sent his Son to the world to save us from our sins. Our sin separates us from God and the only way we can have a relationship with God and have eternal life is not by my the good things that I have done, it is only through God sending his Son to die for us.
John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
God did a saving work in Jesus Christ. But what are we saved from? According to John 3:16 & 17 God sent his Son into the world in order to save the world by bringing everlasting life. Although we don’t talk about it very often, this passage is saying that without Jesus, we cannot receive everlasting life, instead we perish, we face an eternity of suffering because of our sin which has separated us from God. Yet God loves us and desires for everyone to live eternal life in heaven with him.
What has God saved us from?
In our culture we don’t like to talk about hell, in fact some Christians don’t even believe it exists. It is just a scare tactic among Christians to get you to believe their message. Sure some evangelists and pastors do use the hellfire and brimstone messages to scare people into believing in Jesus. But just because some people abuse it doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Jesus described hell as a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth, a place eternally separated from God’s presence. In a video series we have been watching on our Tuesday night Bible study, the teacher, Ray Vanderlaan, was on site of an ancient city in Israel, and one of the people questioned Ray about the ditch running through the city. He explained that in ancient cities they didn’t have a plumbing system but instead the ditch served as a disposal site for all their garbage. The garbage would collect in these ditches and during the rainy season, the rain would wash the garbage out into the valley (cities were usually built on a hill fortification near a valley) where it would eventually get burned. He explained this valley of burning refuse is the visual the Bible gives of what hell is like. Not very pleasant is it? Without Jesus to cover our sins this is our eternal destination.
Because of God’s love he wants to save us from that destination, to be with him forever, and so he made a way, by sending his Son. We are praise God for this saving work. It has nothing to do with what we have done, the Bible tells us our good deeds do not save us, it is only by God’s loving gift of his Son, Jesus.
I wonder if we forget God’s saving work, we take it for granted, and our gratitude over what God has done for us turns to apathy. We forget what God has done for us, and our worship of God turns inward, and worship becomes more about what I receive than what I have to offer God.
Our response to God’s grace is worship, we should offer our praise, we should sing, heartfelt thanksgiving should be offered to God with our praises.
When we lose our appreciation for what God has done for us through Jesus Christ, worship tends to be us just going through the motions, we sing a song because its familiar to us, we know the words, the tune, or perhaps we refrain from singing because its unfamiliar to us. I am not saying this is true for those who have made comments to me, just that it can be a danger for us.
Keeping that in mind listen again to what the Psalmist writes:
"4 Shout for joy to the LORD (make a joyful noise), all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music; 5 make music to the LORD with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing, 6 with trumpets and the blast of the ram’s horn-- shout for joy before the LORD, the King."
Do you shout for joy to the Lord, do you make music and if so why do you do it? God loves the praises of his people. In fact the scriptures say God inhabits the praises of his people. When people praise him truly from their hearts, God’s presence comes and dwells there in a special way. God loves it when you praise him, when you sing to him.
I know some of you might be thinking, well if my voice didn’t sound like a frog croaking I would sing out load. The KJV says, “make a joyful noise.” It doesn’t matter what your voice sounds like. God loves the sound of your voice. After all he made it, you can blame it on him if it sounds awful. If you’re off tune, don’t worry God doesn’t care, as long as it is in worship of him it sounds beautiful. Perhaps you get embarrassed because you’re afraid of what other people around you might think. Remember, we come to worship only one person, we are here to please only one person, and that is God. Try to push the thought of what other people think out of your mind. Focus on God, and the pleasure you are bringing to him.
Perhaps your reservation is the music itself. The music isn’t particularly to your liking. You don’t like the instruments or the style of the song, the words are too repetitious, it’s too fast, or too slow. Here’s my suggestion, if your attention becomes on being annoyed by the music, focus on the cross. Remember what God has done for you. Focus on him. Let the music fade away, perhaps even quit singing, and speak the words instead singing them.
I’m afraid to tell you this, but praise for God and his saving work in our life through Jesus cannot be contained in any one song or in any particular tune or style of music. God’s mercies begin new each day. As long as people have new encounters with the saving work of the living God, there will be new songs. As the author of Psalm 98 began, “Sing to the Lord a new song.”
Sing a New Song
The great hymn writer Fanny Crosby wrote over 8,000 hymns in her lifetime. Fanny lived to 95 years of age. If you calculate that out, God gave a new song to Fanny Crosby at an average of 100 songs/year, about two every week during her whole life. Just think of that, if Fanny had a church, and you sang all of her songs, you would be singing 2 new songs every Sunday.
God is bigger than any particular kind of music. God created all styles of music (even the styles we don’t like). God created the instruments musicians use. God loves them all, as long as the lyrics are in praise to him. Is our focus on the music we are singing or on God? If we are singing a hymn and I think, “this is too slow or too fast,” “I don’t understand the words or this is so old fashioned” “I don’t like the organ, the guitar, the keyboard, the drums.” My focus is not on God but on the music.
Some of you may not enjoy the old hymns, some of you may not like the “new songs” we sing, but I encourage you to get beyond your personal preference to focus on the one we worship, the Lord God, and the salvation he has brought to you. maybe it is not a style of music you care for, but let me ask you why do you sing? Are you singing because you enjoy the music, or are you singing so the Lord enjoys you?
I wonder if Paul was dealing with the issue of music when he wrote:
Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, (Ephesians 5:19, NIV).
As though Paul was saying, sing the Old Psalms just like our ancestors did, sing the hymns, sing the new spiritual songs. Sing them all, just sing and make music in your heart to the Lord. As long as we have a wide range of people in worship, we will have a wide range of music. We will sing psalms, praise music, choruses, and hymns, but it’s really not about the music. It’s about making music in your heart to the Lord.
