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Bible preaching from the pulpit of Choice Hills Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina
All right, we are going to continue in our study this morning on our church.
We're going to leave the topic of the Bible and turn the page into a new subtopic,
and we are going to look at the topic of music, music today.
And specifically, we're not going to do, we're not trying to do an exhaustive study of music.
That is not our purpose for this Sunday School series.
What we're doing is we're trying to look at the topic as it relates to our church
and what our church's position, stance, practice is on these various topics.
And of course, music is a substantial part of our church,
especially our church services, but it's also an important part of our life as a Christian.
And we'll see some of that in the Bible. But a lot of people have a lot of questions about
music. Music is one of the primary reasons that people make choices about the church they go
to. You know that? Some people, you know, because music is something, it's along the same lines,
music is something that also very quickly changes in churches. That it does that it is fluid. It is often fluid, whereas some other things in a church
might be more rigid and harder to alter. For instance, your church constitution, that's a
big thing. It takes a lot of work to change your doctrinal statement or something like that.
So that tends to stay the same, but something that doesn't is music. Music
is very fluid in that way. And yet, when music does change or whatever, however it moves,
that directly affects people. And it affects them personally, and it affects the church,
and sometimes it brings people to a place where, you know, for conscience sake, they can't stay at a church if the music changes.
And others, you know, some people say, you know, well, if our church doesn't change its music,
then I'm going to go to a church that does, you know.
And so it directly, it really plays into this question.
And so it's an important question. And it's actually a question that I field among, you know, members and, you members and visitors and things like that and people I visit
that comes up pretty regularly. And it's definitely an important question. And music has a lot of
influence, does it not? It has a lot of influence on our lives personally. It has a lot of influence
on our lives, especially when we're talking about Christian music. It can have a lot of influence on our lives, especially when we're talking about Christian music.
It can have a lot of influence on us personally, and it definitely has a lot of influence on the attitude
and the tone and spirit of our church meeting, every service.
So it's an important principle and truth to cover, and I do want to look at scriptural principles
because that's
ultimately what is most important. So what we're going to do is we'll pray to begin,
and then I just want to kind of open up with the use of music in scripture. I just want to do like
an overview of the use of music in scripture so that we can really lay our foundations in the Word of God,
so that building upon those foundations,
we can find principles that will allow us to see where our church is
and how we apply those principles in a practical way.
All right?
So let's pray to begin.
Our Father, we thank you so much for the opportunity to meet together.
Thank you so much for your people that are here gathered together
and ready to hear the word, expectant, Lord, to hear from you.
And I pray that that's exactly who they would hear from, not me, Lord, but you.
And that, Lord, you would help our study of the word of God to be helpful and beneficial.
We pray that you would guide the study and
you would give us wisdom and understanding in your Word to see the truths that
are there, that have been there the whole time, and help us and give us wisdom as we apply
them, both in our personal lives and also as we apply them
in our church. Lord, we ask you as well to bless the kids
as they study the Word as well, that you
would give them understanding and help them to grow in their knowledge of you and of your word as well.
In Jesus' name, amen. So the use of music in scripture. Now, let's just, I'll just say this.
I'm not going to spend a lot of time here because I think it's a dumb argument. I don't want to
spend any time on it, all right. There is no question,
we're starting at this premise, that there is no question that the scriptures approve of,
the scriptures sanction and encourage the use of music among God's people. And that is an Old
Testament truth. That is a New Testament truth. And of course,
the foundation of that is found in the Old Testament in the Psalms. Remember, the Psalms,
as I was studying later on, we'll get to Ephesians chapter 5 and Colossians chapter 3,
but where the word Psalm is mentioned. And you know, that word, the word psalm is really hard to understand its meaning. I read
one article and it said the word psalm means praise, but that's not what it means. The word
psalm is a very, very specific word and it refers to the book of psalms, specifically to that. That's
where it comes from. And the book, so think about that.
The book of Psalms is poetry, Hebrew poetry, that was sung or in some cases recited to music.
So we have an entire book of the Bible that is dedicated to music. And it wasn't just acapella music, it was music with instruments.
Many varied types of instruments.
So you say, well, some people, not you, I don't think anybody here would say this,
but some people would say, well, but we don't find musical instruments in the New Testament.
We only find it in the Old Testament.
Well, are we forgetting that the New Testament Christian,
Are we forgetting that the New Testament Christian, his Bible in the early part of the New Testament was the Old Testament, right?
And so all that, how can you be against musical instruments and then read in the Bible musical instruments?
That just blows my mind.
They are there.
They are there, okay? So we just start with the premise that music in praise to God is approved of God, is sanctioned by God, and it is encouraged by God.
And that includes not only the use of singing with the voice, but it includes musical instruments.
And so let's just put that to bed.
We're not going to cover that again.
We just reject the argument, right,
that have been put forth by some groups that,
especially musical instruments, have no place in the church.
So, I don't agree with that at all.
I don't think the Bible teaches it at all either.
Now, I would like you to look at Psalm 66.
Look at a few verses in the Psalms.
Of course, we're going to spend a fair amount of time in the Psalms today.
Psalm 66.
Look at verse number 1, if you would.
I want to show you what music in Scripture is most often associated with.
Is most often associated with.
Psalm 66, verse number 1.
The Bible says this.
Make a joyful noise unto God, all ye lands.
Sing forth.
Now note the music words.
Sing forth the honor of his name.
Make his praise glorious.
Say unto God, how terrible thou art in thy works.
Through the greatness of thy power shall thine enemies submit themselves unto thee.
All the earth shall worship thee and shall sing unto thee.
They shall sing to thy name.
Selah.
Notice the words.
You have the word sing.
You have the word praise.
You have the word joyful.
You have the word noise.
So here's the thing I want you to see from this.
And we'll go just one page over to Psalm 67.
And I'll show it to you again and again, but music is in Scripture
associated with praise and joy. You got to make this connection. You got to get it, you
got to get it in your mind clearly. Music is associated with praise to God and joy. It's important to make this distinction. Notice Psalm 67, verse number 3.
Let the people praise thee, O God.
Let all the nations praise thee.
O let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for thou shalt judge the people righteously
and govern the nations upon earth.
Say la. Psalm 95. If you would look at that. Thou shalt judge the people righteously and govern the nations upon earth.
Selah.
Psalm 95.
If you would look at that.
Psalm 95.
Psalm 95 verse 1.
It says this. O 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.
There's the mention of psalms as well as the noise
and the singing and the praise.
Psalm 98.
Look a couple pages over.
Psalm number 98, verse number 4.
It says,
Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth.
Make a loud noise and rejoice and sing praise.
So cover four passages of Scripture.
I think we've pretty much settled that singing, music, and Scripture is closely associated with praise.
But it is not closely associated with worship.
Make that distinction.
It is closely associated with praise, but not with worship.
Go back to Psalm 66, if you would, where we began.
Psalm 66.
This is one of the few verses in the Bible, verse 4,
where worship and praise are mentioned together.
There aren't very many of them,
although that seems like all you hear in associated with church
is the worship team or the praise team or praise and worship.
It's its own genre of music, right?
But really in scripture they're distinct.
They're not the same.
They're not the same.
Verse 4 says this,
All the earth shall worship thee and shall sing unto thee. They
shall sing to thy name, Selah. It's not saying it's the same, it's just saying they're going
to do both. So in Scripture, although there might be a little bit of overlap, especially
when you talk about worship and praise because they both have the same object, which is God himself. Worship in Scripture is seen as extremely
reverent and prostrate. It is seen as hushed. That's what you see in worship.
Now, I know that what we have here, and every church has a different thing, right?
that what we have here, and every church has a different thing, right?
So let's be real strict here for a minute,
because there are so many traditions we carry on,
and sometimes I think they become a part of our thinking so that we want to impose things on them.
All right.
Scripturally speaking, what we're doing right now, when we come to church
on Sunday, we come meet together on Sunday, what are we doing? Strictly scripturally speaking.
Does anybody want to venture out into this kind of minefield of a question? David.
Teaching. All right. Anybody else? Ben? We are congregating.
Well, that was kind of unique.
It's true, though.
We are congregating.
Anybody else?
Exhorting.
All right.
We're kind of given the idea of the different activities we're performing.
Yeah? I was going to say evangelization is not just teaching the lost,
but it's teaching the saved.
We're good.
We're just doing them to exhort them, to build up. Part of the Great Commission there, right?
Teaching them to observe all things.
So we're doing all those things,
but if you were to kind of,
if you were to take what we do on Sunday
and you were to kind of parrot
or find that thing in the Bible,
where would you look?
Like, where is the connection to the scriptural thing that you see?
And the answer to that is, in the book of Acts,
you see the churches gathering together and meeting on Sunday.
It is not, what we're doing here is not the equivalent of the Old Testament saints going to the temple.
That's not the same.
Although there is overlap.
There's definitely overlap.
This is a specific New Testament thing where we meet together on Sunday.
And within that meeting, there's different activities we do.
Like we teach.
Like we sing.
Like we fellowship.
We exhort.
All of these things that you mentioned.
But the thing in the New Testament
that we are doing is meeting.
Do you know what you will have a hard time finding
in the New Testament?
It's a worship service.
It's just, it's hard to find.
And really, it's kind of an amalgamation of,
the idea is an amalgamation of a bunch of kind of Old Testament references
and that kind of thing where the people of God,
the Jews in particular, went to the temple and they worshipped
and there was sacrifices made and all of that.
They gathered together to worship.
And we see that and that's kind of applied to the New Testament. But the question I have is this.
When we come to church, is this a worship service?
Or should this be a praise service? Now I know that
word is charged, is it not? Are we going to have a praise service,
right? You know what I'm talking about.
What, you like my shoulder movement?
Are we going to have a praise?
All right.
Are we going to have a praise?
Is the purpose of this to praise?
If it's a praise service or a worship service, what are we doing?
What is a preacher doing preaching?
Because that's not worship or praise, technically.
Praise is often done in song and joy.
And there's volume in scripture, is there not?
There's volume, there's excitement,
there's joy that comes with praise.
Music is associated with praise.
Worship, however, is the opposite.
So look at, real quick before I continue,
look at Psalm 95.
I don't wanna lose you.
I wanna show you this.
This is just one example.
There's others you could find.
Psalm 95, verse number six. I want to show you this. This is just one example. There's others you could find.
Psalm 95, verse number 6.
This is one of the verses that kind of summarizes what worship is. Psalm 95, verse number 6 says this.
O come, let us worship and bow down.
Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
Now, how often is it that you come to a church service and you do that?
It's not super often.
Most of the time we come in, we sometimes bow our head when somebody else is praying.
Sometimes we're not even praying ourself or engaged in any way.
That's just the reality of it, right? But anyway, we come to church and we sit on our backside and we listen.
Not this. So what I'm doing is
I'm just trying to challenge you to understand and to think through
what we're doing here yeah Thank you. Mm-hmm. I fully agree that I've never seen it connected to Satan, but there are three of my references also.
And the worship of God is Satan.
He worshiped God the Satan.
Or the Satan of our man who managed to say.
I was trying to be worshiping God,
but there is an aspect of the word.
It's set up.
Yeah, and that's not,
I don't think that's contrary to scripture.
The idea being is the tone, the spirit, and the manner.
Whereas the contrast is praise is generally loud, boisterous, joyful, and involves music.
Worship is generally the opposite of that in Scripture.
So it's not that you're not allowed to talk,
but the idea being is the tone and the manner. And
the reason that's important is because what we've done is in churches, I say we, but what
we've done is we've just kind of thrown it all together into one big pot and it's just
praise and worship and there's no distinction made. And here's what usually happens on a
practical level. Here's what's usually happening. You have churches that are all
about praise. And by that, I mean, it's nothing, but it's basically a music concert. And they think
this is church, right? This is what it's all about. You come and you, you know, you jump around and you
have a good time or whatever. All right. And then you have other churches who like, oh, they, they
kind of shun that and they have a worship service, right?
And so it's very somber, and it's very quiet, and it's worship, and it's reverend, and all that.
And they think, this is the way it's supposed to be.
Neither one is correct.
They're not mutually exclusive.
It's not one is you're supposed to have in the church, you're supposed to have praise or you're supposed to have worship or this praise and worship, which is actually more like just praise, which even that's a little bit debatable.
But it's not just it's not one or the other.
In the church, you have scriptural grounds to to exercise praise to God in the form of music or speech.
In the church, you have grounds to also worship God. to exercise praise to God in the form of music or speech.
In the church, you have grounds to also worship God.
And sometimes, sometimes it's one, it's both,
sometimes it's the other.
But what I want you to see is that these are really,
actually, scripturally, two different things,
although there is a little bit of overlap. But it doesn't have to be one or the other.
There should be times in our church meeting, which is what we have, that there is a little bit of overlap. But it doesn't have to be one or the other. There should be times in our church meeting,
which is what we have, that there is worship.
Right?
You hear the word, you respond to the word,
you stand in awe of God or something that God has done
or something like that,
and you maybe kneel down where you are,
maybe you bow your head, that's scriptural as well,
that he bowed his head and worshiped, you bow your head. That's scriptural as well. He bowed his head and worshiped. You bow
your head and you give glory to God. You stand in awe of what God is or who God is or what he has
done. Other times, however, you come and you sing a song and you lift your voice up to God and you
praise his attributes. You praise His mighty acts or something like that
to the saints in the hearing of the saints and there's joy in that. So although there
is some overlap, I think there should be both, right? Sometimes I think praise is proper
and sometimes I think worship is proper. But what I want you to see that what we have here
is we have, it's not even really a church service.
It makes us feel better, don't it?
I came to church and I served.
Really, it's not a church service.
We have, scripturally speaking, we have a church meeting.
We meet together.
And in that meeting, we seek to serve one another, fellowship, praise, hear the word, teach the word, worship, pray, all of these things within the church meeting.
And they're all proper. All of those things are scriptural.
And I want you to see that. The Lord encourages all of that, right?
The whole book of Psalms is one big encouragement to be involved with praise to God and every other aspect, which is what we're talking about now. So we're talking about today, we're talking about music.
And so that's associated most closely with praise, with praise. Now let's look at a few,
look at, if you would, at 1 Chronicles. I want you to see a few features of music seen in Scripture.
1 Chronicles chapter 15.
1 Chronicles 15.
Look at verse number 27.
1 Chronicles 15, verse 27.
The Bible says this.
And David was clothed with a robe of fine linen,
and all the Levites that bear the ark,
and the singers,
and to deny the master of the song.
Song leader.
So one feature you see in Scripture is you see someone leading the music.
Right?
You see someone leading the music.
So actually a song leader is not an unbiblical thing.
It's actually biblical.
Right?
Let's look at a few more features.
1 Chronicles chapter 15, same passage.
Look at verse 16. And David spake to the chief of the Levites to appoint their
brethren to be the singers with instruments of music, psalteries and harps and cymbals,
sounding by lifting up the voice with joy. And you hold your place here because we'll
come back here. But look at Ezra chapter 2 also. Ezra chapter 2.
Ezra 2.
Of course, 1 Chronicles in the days of David,
Ezra is after the Babylonian captivity.
Ezra chapter 2, verse 41.
When they return from captivity under Ezra,
and later under Nehemiah, it's also mentioned in Nehemiah,
verse 41 mentions in the list of the various people,
the Levites, it mentions, verse 41, the singers, the children of Asaph,
which we know from the Psalms was a major leader among the
musicians, the children of Asaph, and 120 and 8. So what do you see? You see not only song leaders
in Scripture, you see those singing with the voice, you see groups of people singing with
their voice. So you have the idea of a choir.
And these were not just the whole congregation,
although there were probably no doubt times the whole congregation sang.
This was a gifted group of people whose purpose in service was for music,
singing specifically with the voice, a choir, what we would call a choir.
So you see this in Scripture.
Go back to 1 Chronicles chapter number 15.
I'll read verse 16 once again.
1 Chronicles 15 verse 16.
And David spake to the chief of the Levites to appoint their brethren to be the singers with instruments of music,
psalteries and harps and cymbals, sounding by lifting up the voice with joy.
So not only were they singing with their voice, the voice is mentioned in here,
but also they were playing instruments as in an orchestra.
So there were multiple instruments being played simultaneously together in what is an orchestra.
A solid biblical truth.
Look at 2 Chronicles chapter 5 for a little more of that.
2 Chronicles chapter 5.
Verse 12.
verse 12.
2 Chronicles 5, verse 12.
And he stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the congregation of Israel
and spread forth his hands,
for Solomon had made a brazen scaffold.
I'm in the wrong chapter apparently.
I'm in chapter 6.
I apologize.
I was like, that didn't make sense.
All right.
Chapter 5, verse 12.
2 Chronicles 5, 12.
Also the Levites, which were the singers, all of them of Asaph, of Heman and Januthan,
with their sons and their brethren, being arrayed in white linen, having cymbals and
psalteries and harps, stood designated for the purpose of playing music and singing.
An orchestra, if you would.
All right, lastly, go to 1 Chronicles, again, chapter 6 this time.
1 Chronicles, chapter 6.
1 Chronicles, chapter 6, verse 31.
You know, David was the king.
David himself was a musician.
And probably, I would say, as a direct result of David's affinity for music, it was important to him to institute a music ministry in Israel.
Right?
Because that came directly out of David's own life,
own love for music.
He's called the Sweet Psalmist of Israel.
Chapter 6 of 1 Chronicles, verse number 31.
And these are they whom David set over the service of song
in the house of the Lord after that the ark had rest.
And they ministered before the dwelling place of the tabernacle of the congregation with singing verse 1. Heman, a singer, the son of Joel, the son of Shemuel, the son of Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, the son of Eliel, the son of Toa, the son of Zuth, the son of Elkanah, the son of Mahath, the son of Amasi, the son of Elkanah, the son of Joel, the son of Azariah, the son of Zephaniah, the son of Tehath, the son of Asir, the son of Abiasaph. I'm going to butcher these names in a minute. Hang on.
The son of Korah, the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, the son of Israel.
You see that?
Even the genealogies of the singers goes back to the son of Jacob, Levi.
So it wasn't just that they had a bunch of people that got together and picked and grinned.
It was these people were appointed by their birth.
So I guess they wanted good genes, maybe.
But David appointed them.
And it says here, verse 40, verse 39 rather.
And his brother Asaph, who stood on his right hand, even Asaph, the son of Barakiah, the son of Shimea,
the son of Michael, the son of Baaseah, the son of Malchiah, the son of Ethni, the son of Zerah,
the son of Adiah, the son of Ethan, the son of Zema, the son of Shimei, the son of Jahath,
the son of Gershom, the son of Levi, who is one of the tribes.
Right?
Why do I read this to you?
What I want you to see is there was a complete music ministry in Scripture.
I mean, it was all incomprehensive in music.
Now, why am I saying that?
It just, if we see these features in the Bible,
right,
used to praise and glorify God,
it cannot be wrong to have them.
In fact, the example is set
encouraging us to have them, right?
So any idea that somehow
these kinds of things aren't right is unfounded.
Now, I don't think anybody here thinks that because we all sing and you all like music, of course.
But it is important to understand what is the basis of why we do what we do.
And this is one of the reasons. It's clearly just demonstrated in Scripture.
Now, let's look at one other thing.
Instruments used in Scripture. Now, let's look at one other thing. Instruments used in Scripture.
And I'll limit it to the instruments used in a positive sense
because there are a few places, especially in Daniel,
where some instruments are used,
and if somebody really wanted to get picky,
they could say, oh, well, a dulcimer is only used to worship idols,
so therefore you shouldn't use a dulcimer,
although a biblical dulcimer probably has almost no relation to a modern dulcimer, but anyway.
Here are the instruments used to praise God in Scripture.
You have three categories that are mentioned.
You have wind instruments.
You have things like pipes, organs, trumpets, cornets.
And just remember, when you read these names,
they don't directly correspond to what you think of.
Like a trumpet in Scripture is not referring to the instrument,
the brass instrument or silver instrument that we use.
I guess in some way it's related, but it's not the same thing.
But it's similar in that it is a wood instrument.
You've got pipes, organs, trumpets, and cornets,
those things that use wind to produce music.
Then you also have stringed instruments.
You have harps, psalteries.
There's an instrument of ten strings,
and then there's just the generic stringed instruments that are used.
So that would include things like guitars
and things like that in our modern time.
You also have percussion instruments
like the tabret or the timbrel,
both of which are something like a drum or a tambourine.
You also have mention of various kinds of cymbals.
All right, let me ask you,
how many of you think that a drum
or a percussion instrument can be used to praise God?
Okay, now put your hands down.
I'm not going to ask the other question.
How many of you think it cannot be used to praise God?
Because it is.
See it?
It is.
For no other reason than that, you can say, yeah, a percussion instrument can be used to praise God because it was in the Bible.
Right?
I'm going somewhere with this, so hang out.
All right?
So let me, so you have, I say woodwind, you have wind instruments, you have string instruments, you have percussion instruments,
all of which are mentioned in Scripture, and we use all of those in our day, a version of those,
which from a physics perspective, the same principles that made those go make sound,
ours make sound, they make sound a little bit different, but it's the same principle.
But let me hasten to say this, that just because an instrument or a class of instruments is seen in Scripture
does not necessarily mean that any and all use of that instrument is Scriptural.
See, here's the way it goes.
Ah, you see percussion in the Bible?
That's why we need to have a drum set.
That doesn't exactly follow, does it?
In logical, right?
We need to have a drum set
or whatever other kind of,
whatever the going percussion instrument is.
Or stringed instruments.
So we need to have an electric guitar, right?
All that this, so you can't,
in other words,
you can't follow that
and the reason I say that
is because people do it all the time.
That's how they get the foot in the door
for the kind of music.
Here's the truth of the matter.
Is they,
people that push these things
and I say push,
I'm talking about with an agenda.
They are looking,
they're trying to get to an end goal.
They're going somewhere with this.
They're just trying to find a pretext to get there.
A foot in the door.
And one of those is to say something like, well, they use
percussion ministries in the Bible, so how can you say we
shouldn't bring in whatever?
Insert here.
Again, you have to understand this is an argument that is often used
and we have to be wise according to the scripture.
But the reverse of that, the other side of this coin is this.
Because we see an instrument or a class of instruments in scripture,
we can't simply dismiss it as wrong, can't be used.
Right?
Like percussion, as an example.
Or strings.
Or wind instruments.
Or instruments in general.
You know why you just can't say, well, that's wrong, you can't have that.
Why not?
Because God put it in the Bible.
We can't just dismiss it.
Because God put it in the Bible.
We can't just dismiss it.
The truth is, even the most strict people who think that certain instruments are wrong,
somehow they go to a church that has a full orchestra
and all that just flies out the window
because they have different kinds of percussion
or different kinds of strings
that they don't make the same associations with.
Here's the point.
Is that by looking at these instruments, we see that at a minimum we can say,
all right, these absolutely can be used to praise God in a way that is pleasing to Him.
Can we agree on that?
We absolutely can.
There is a way to do that, and that includes percussion.
I've heard that, you've heard that,
using those instruments to praise God.
So, these are the, again, these are the base,
the truths that are kind of the foundation as we move forward and say,
why do we have the instruments that we have?
Why don't we have other instruments
that we don't have that are noticeably absent?
And that's, we're laying the foundation
to get to some of these answers.
All right, let's pray together.