The Key of G-OD

Well, brethren, I really enjoy music. Some of you know that. I really enjoy music. I like to listen to music. I like to play music with other people. And I remember starting out in music, like most kids do, in the fourth grade, playing the recorder, with a skill that you will likely never replicate again after the fourth grade, which is picking up that plastic recorder and playing songs on it.

Similar to many of the skills that you learn for a period of time and never use again, Hot Cross Buns will forever be in my repertoire. That is a song that I will always, always be able to play and never forget how to play it, because we played it so many times on the recorder. But you know, the skills that I learned in that class and on that particular instrument transferred over two years later to the instrument that I began to play in the sixth grade, the alto saxophone.

Next year in junior high, I was playing the tenor saxophone and the baritone sax in the jazz band and the concert band. I played the baritone saxophone. That's the big, curly one that's nice and deep and sounds really wonderful. Until the ninth grade, when I entered what I like to refer to as my ADHD music phase.

Picasso had his blue period. I had my ADHD phase. I got bored with the saxophone and I wanted to try something, anything else. And so this was my ninth grade year. I want to play trumpet! I want to play drums! I want to play guitar! And that was literally the focus of my music education for the entirety of my ninth grade, which was, as you might have guessed, no focus at all. And the end result was significant proficiency in none of them at that point in time. By high school, I'd grown bored with band entirely, instead dropping it to focus on additional electives.

And I played guitar with my friends throughout my high school years. I actually didn't start singing in choirs or really anything meaningful outside of my car until I moved to Salem and started singing in the choir here in this congregation.

That's the first that I really began to sing. I was encouraged to join the choir here. In college, I sang in a production at Western Oregon University. College production my senior year, because I needed something to do for the four hours between genetics and evolutionary biology.

I was stuck on campus and didn't have anything else to do. And they had a choir class, so I joined the choir. We sang Handel's Messiah. So my foray into music began, kind of hard to believe, 30-plus years ago. 30-plus years ago! Looking back, there's times I wish I had more diligence. There's times I wish I had something more to show for it.

But these days, I play drums regularly, and guitar and vocals are still a big part of my life. Maybe what I learned from the process overall, as I think about it, was just an overall appreciation for it and a willingness to participate in it to the extent that I'm able. One of the things I definitely did not learn was music theory. I don't write songs. I don't compose music. I understand the basic fundamentals. My ear is able to tell you the notes that don't belong, largely because it just sounds dissonant.

It sounds wrong to me. But the reason why it doesn't fit is beyond me. The guys on our band thread are now realizing why I was peppering them with theory questions recently. I couldn't tell you why flats or sharps belong in a specific key without looking it up. I don't have that. It's not internalized in my brain. I can't tell you what specific notes go in specific scales, necessarily. There are tools. There are diagrams out there that can help you understand all of that. And I know just enough to very ploddingly use those tools and those diagrams to figure out what it is that I need to know.

But fundamentally, for the background of the message today, we need a little bit of theory. Just a little. So bear with me. Those of you that are musicians, you're going to love this. Those of you who aren't, that's where you're going. So bear with me. Music is composed in specific keys. So all compositions include certain keys. And a key is just simply a way to describe the collection of pitches or sounds that make up a composition based on its scale.

So it's just a collection of sounds that are included in that specific key. That's really what it is. The most common key in most pop music compositions today is C major, and it is made up of the following notes. And we're going to try this. We're going to see if this works. I have a tiny piano and large fingers, so we will see if this works. C major is made up of the following notes.

It's C, D, E, F, G, A, B, and C. No naturals. Or, sorry, no flats, no sharps. So that is going to sound like this.

Can you hear it through the mic? Okay, awesome. Because there's more of that. As the sound guy goes, oh, come on! Each key that music is written in has something called a tonic note. That tonic note is the place where the scale starts and ultimately ends, and the notes in between are different degrees on that scale that related chords can progress in. And those chords and those notes are a part of the key. They're a part of the key. Keys can be major, or they can be minor. So keys can be major or minor. Major keys tend to have a characteristic of a bright, a happy, a cheerful sounding melody, while songs that are composed in minor keys tend to be more melancholic. They tend to feel more sad in their melodic characteristics. Some people love minor music. They really enjoy minor music. Most pop songs today are written in a major key. Majority of them are in C major. But what's really interesting is the difference largely comes from one small change. That's it. And that's flattening the third. Flattening the third. Now, there's more to it than that. I'm oversimplifying this process big time. But for a C major chord, you would play the first, you'd play the third, you'd play the fifth. The C, the E, and the G. That sounds like this. There's your C major. To turn that into C minor, I just do E flat instead of E. So it sounds like this. Oops. Hold on. Okay, so that's the minor, C minor. That's it. That's the difference. That's all that we did was play one note differently. Do you feel the difference in the change between the major and the minor? The major again, and the minor. Just the difference in the feel and the tonality of that particular chord. It changes the whole feel. It changes the whole tonality. To give you an example, consider the hymn in our hymnal, hymn number 142. Be not afraid, my people. Be not afraid, my people. That hymn is in D minor. Now, compare that with hymn number 16, thinking in your head, My shepherd will supply my need. My shepherd will supply my need is in D major. There's difference. You have to be... again, bear with me here. I'm not a piano player. Each of these songs has a very specific key that it's written in, and the key includes specific flats and sharps. D major, for example, is D, E, F sharp, G, A, B, C sharp, and D. I'm going to see if I can do this without messing it up. I have to look at my notes.

That's D major. D minor removes the sharps and adds a B flat.

I missed one. And those of you that are musically trained, you heard it. You noticed, right? Let me try that again real quick.

Okay. So that's D minor. Again, my shepherd will supply my need is in D major. It's in D major, and I want you to hear this real quick. The major chord is D, F sharp, and A.

Do you hear the song?

First three notes, right? That's D major. D minor is this.

Okay, the difference in the key. Why am I telling you this? Because I want you to see something here really fast.

Be Not Afraid. The song that we have in our hymnal, Be Not Afraid, is written in D minor. Okay? And D minor is gonna sound like this. This is the song written in D minor.

Hang on.

Okay, that's the song, right?

This is the same song in D major. Okay? This is the same song in D major.

You hear the difference in the tone? Do you hear the difference in the way that it's set? It changes the song significantly. The feel of the song is different. The tone of the song is different. But you know what's interesting about that? If it were written in that key originally, we wouldn't know the difference. We would know no difference whatsoever. But it has been written in a very specific key. Which means that if a very specific collection of pitches, and if someone's singing along to that song and sings a note that's off key, it means that they've sung a note that doesn't fit in the key of that song. Here's an example, okay? Here's an example. Sorry, hold on.

Ooh. Hear that C sharp? That's not supposed to be there. It doesn't sound right, does it? It stands out. It's kind of like what they say in the biz. It's a little pitchy if you have that note in there. It's off key, it's off pitch. It's not in line with the remainder of the notes in the key. It's dissonant. It's discordant. What I'd like to do today is take just a little bit of time, in the time that we have left, and explore this concept as it pertains to our spiritual walk with God, and this pre-passover examination period that all of us are in the midst of.

The title of the message today is the Key of G. O.D. Let's turn over to Job 38 to begin today. As we start the message today, we take a look at the book of Job. We see in the book of Job a number of trials that Job faces. We can see the questions that he asks about the nature of God, about righteousness, ultimately about suffering. We also get a chance to see Job's friends provide some pretty lousy advice, really, on the whole, as we look at the way that Job's friends respond to the process.

But in verse 38, we see God weigh in. We see God jump into the discussion here, and provides this response to Job. Job 38, and we'll go ahead and pick it up in verse 1. So chapter 38, sorry, and verse 1.

It says, "...Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? He says, Now prepare yourself like a man. I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you, God says to Job, when I laid the foundations of the earth? He says, Tell me, if you have understanding, who determined its measurements? Surely you know. Who stretched the line upon it? To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid the cornerstone?" Right?

He's in the middle of just kind of pepper and Job with questions here. But notice what he says next. When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.

You know, God points out to Job, he wasn't there when the foundations of the earth were laid. He wasn't present for the measurement, the stretching of the lines, the laying of the cornerstone. But what we see is something incredible. Verse 7, When the morning stars, the angels sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. This is before the creation of man. These morning stars that are described are being described as sons of God.

They're created sons of God of the angelic realm. They sang. They are capable of music, and were capable of music long before mankind came along. In fact, Ezekiel 28, you can turn over there if you'd like to. Ezekiel 28, what we see in the midst of the lamentation of the king of Tyre, which we know is a clear reference to Lucifer, one of the angels who rebelled, taking a third of the angels with him and becoming our adversary, states in verse 13 of Ezekiel 28, he says, "'You were in Eden, the garden of God.

Every precious stone was your covering. The sardius, the topaz, the diamond, barrel onyx and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold.' He said, "'The worksmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared for you on the day you were created.' The workmanship of his timbrels or timbretts is like a hand drum. And the pipes is actually a unique Hebrew word that describes a hollow metal reed like a flute. You might think a recorder, to be honest, a little hollow reed-type instrument.

But they were prepared for him on the day in which he was created. Lucifer was created for the capacity of music. The angels sang together, which implies not just their ability to sing, but a coordinated effort of that singing. It implies order, not chaos. It implies order and not chaos. That's one of the things that is so interesting about music, naturally.

Certain pitches sound good together. Other pitches do not. Those of you, again, you can hear when it doesn't belong, you can tell. It grates. It has that certain dissonance. When they blend together the way that they do, it's called harmony. That blending together of pitches in a pleasing way. Now, in most music today, we see three-part harmony. That's the first, the third, the fifth, or thirds off of the main harmony there. Sometimes, things like barbershop, you'll get a four-part harmony. They'll add the seventh in there and kind of diminish the chord just a little bit and kind of make it blend a little bit better before they resolve it back.

Sometimes there's fourths and there's fifths that are used that sound different, but they harmonize pretty well together. Now, most folks, without musical training, myself included, have a hard time finding specific notes for harmony when someone else is singing. Like, if somebody's just belting along and you're asked to harmonize with them, unless you've had specific musical training, that's probably pretty tough. But, most every single one of you, if two people are singing and one of them ain't on, you know, and you know right away, that they are not on.

You, even without a musically trained ear, can recognize dissonance. You can tell that it's not on. I'm going to give you another quick example, okay? This is C-sharp and D. Here we go. Yeah, that's good stuff right there. That's called a second. Mm-hmm. Here's another second. Yeah, that's good stuff, too, right? It's dissonant. Seconds are rough. Sevenths are rough.

Here's another one.

Doesn't sound so good, does it? A note that's not played in harmony with other notes is noticeable. You don't have to be trained in music to hear it. It just grates on you. Why does it grate on you? Because our God is a God of order. He's created a physical world with physical laws. Those laws govern motion, they govern time, gravity. They govern nature. Laws like entropy and thermodynamics, rotational inertia. Our world is governed by specific laws, and those laws are calculable. Those laws are calculable. Now, music on its own is largely subjective from person to person, right? Some enjoy country music. Some do not. Some enjoy pop music. Some do not. Some like jazz. Some do not. But for the most part, whether our preference is one thing or the other, we can all agree when music is not melodic or harmonious. You can hear it. You can absolutely hear it. It just doesn't sound right. The pitches overlap. They create tension, and the tones clash. Turn with me, please, to 1 Corinthians 13. 1 Corinthians 13.

Paul's writing here to the Corinthian church, and we know the Corinthian church had its challenges. You know, especially this first letter to the Corinthian church was a pretty stinging rebuke of a variety of issues. But in 1 Corinthians 13, Paul writes to the Corinthian church, kind of on the heels, actually, of the instruction, to examine themselves in 1 Corinthians 11. He talks about diversity of spiritual gifts. He talks about the role of the body in 1 Corinthians 12. And then in 1 Corinthians 13, he writes the following. He says, in 1 Corinthians 13 and verse 1, He says, Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, But have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. Paul's point here is that love is the greatest gift. Without it, our speech, whether it's the tongue of men or angels, it becomes a sounding brass or clanging cymbals. Now, I play drums, and because it's interesting to me, I've watched videos of people who have hand-hammered cymbals in Turkey. Many of you may or may not know, Turkey is one of the largest cymbal producers in the world, and it's an ancient, ancient skill that goes way, way back beyond the 1600s even. But these guys will take a chunk of brass, and they'll hand-hammer this. And it's hard for most people to hear it, but there is different sounds among those cymbals, depending on the material that's used, whether it's bronze or brass, depending on how big the cymbal is, the shape of the cymbal, whether you lathe it or don't lathe it, whether you clean the surface off or don't, it all affects how that cymbal is heard. It affects the sound of that cymbal. And it takes a lot of effort to watch these guys sit there with that piece of metal, and just hammer it over and over again, and shape this metal around the bell that makes this cymbal. But sometimes, in that process, cymbals just won't do what they want them to do. There's an issue in the metal, the shaping process doesn't work out right, the material cracks, and sometimes, despite their best effort, the cymbal clangs. Sounds horrible.

They don't sound right, it sounds grating, it's like hitting an aluminum pie tin, or a hubcap of a car. It just doesn't reverberate like it should. Sometimes, the craftsman can fix it, sometimes they're able to work with that particular cymbal as they continue to work that metal, sometimes they can continue to produce it, sometimes they can't. And there are some that just don't make it through the process, that just don't have the quality that they're looking for.

Verse 2, 1 Corinthians 13, verse 2, "...though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love..." Paul says, I'm nothing. He says, it profits nothing. He goes on, he says, "...and though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing." Paul takes the time to really enumerate what love is and what love looks like. Verse 4, love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself. It's not puffed up. It does not behave rudely. It does not seek its own. It thinks no evil. I'm sorry, it's not provoked. It thinks no evil. It does not rejoice in inequity, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things. It believes all things. It hopes all things. It endures all things. He goes on in verse 8, it says, love never fails.

But, he says, where there's prophecies, they'll fail. Whether there's tongues, they will cease. Whether there's knowledge, it will vanish away. He says, for we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part will be done away. When I was a child, Paul said, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But he says, when I became a man, I put away childish things. For, he says, we see it a mere dimly, but then face to face. Again, verse 12 of 1 Corinthians 13, now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I am also known. Verse 13, now abides faith, hope, and love, these three, but the greatest of these, Paul says, is love. Paul's point to those in Corinth is the importance of true love, you know, the true gift of love and what love really is.

How when you compare that to these other spiritual gifts, when you compare it to prophecy and discerning of spirits and healing, all important things, all important things. His point is that faith, hope, and love are the three that abide, and the greatest of those is love. Love, ultimately, is a spiritual maturity. It's a spiritual maturity. It's a putting away of childish things. What do I mean by that? You know, there are a lot of really wonderful qualities about children.

Christ encouraged us to put on, you know, many of these wonderful qualities of kids. Humility, teachability, right? God wants us to put these things on. But we also recognize that there are some things about children that thankfully they grow out of. Thankfully they grow out of those things. Children can insist on having their own way.

They can be envious of what toys others are playing with, to the point of going over and pushing the kid over and taking it from them.

They can be impatient. When they want something right now, the whole store is going to hear what they want right now.

They can be provoked to anger. They can be provoked to emotional outbursts pretty easily if someone takes away something that's important to them.

What Paul says is when we became a man, when we matured spiritually, we put away childish things.

Love is spiritual maturity. And as God hammers on us, as God shapes us, as God works us, He develops us to become more mature. He develops us to become more clarity, so to speak, in our sound.

So love is a maturity. This is the description of love that we see here in 1 Corinthians 13. That's the effect of God's Spirit changing us to become more like Him, to think like Him and to act like Him. No longer insisting on our own way, no longer allowing ourselves to be provoked, acting with patience and kindness, a lack of envy, humble, respectful.

You know, we consider our own walk with God, and we consider our lives and the calling that God has given us. This love is the expectation. This is the expectation. This is what we are all growing into and becoming, because this, as 1 John 4, verse 8 says, is God's nature. It's His character. God is love.

And so for the purpose of our analogy today, we might say that that is the key, so to speak, by which God composes. That is the key by which He has written this incredible composition that He has written. This beautiful composition in our lives that He is working on and that He has composed. And brethren, when we, as a part of that composition, when we play notes that aren't in that key, they grate. They're pitchy. They clang. It's noticeable. They're dissonant. They are not in harmony with the key the musical composition is written in. I had a conversation this week with a friend about jazz music. I'm going to pick on jazz musicians a little bit today. I like jazz, so take that for what it is. But we were laughing and commenting about how jazz is really just an excuse to play the wrong notes. That's really what jazz is. It's just the excuse to play the wrong notes. You hit a note off key, you just say, hey, it's experimental jazz. And done! That's all you've got to worry about. Which, you know, we're joking, of course. But modern jazz, as it exists today, is very different from the jazz of the 1920s and 30s. Jazz has a musical style that's focused on improvisation. The goal of jazz is to push the envelope of what is musically possible in a composition. To push it to its limits. And as such, jazz musicians are highly trained musicians. They are experts at their craft. It doesn't always sound like it, but they're experts at their craft. And they understand music theory inside and out. Now, this is an oversimplification of this, but it'll serve our purposes for today. In the early 1920s and 1930s, jazz became something that was focused on pushing the envelope of instruments with regards to speed and scales and soloing and improvisation. This is, you know, the Ella Fitzgeralds of the world, the Duke Ellingtons, the Glenn Millers, the Louis Armstrongs. They stayed generally melodic. They stayed generally in most of the keys the song was written in with their improvisation. So they would solo, but it would stay in the key the composition was written in. Starting in the 1950s, a gentleman named Miles Davis changed all that. Miles Davis did modal jazz. Miles Davis brought modal jazz to the forefront. And modal jazz is different because it doesn't necessarily rely on keys. It relies on modes. And the modes can shift from one to the other to the other. A mode, essentially, is just a scale that starts in a different place on the staff and doesn't always include the sharps and flats. And so what that meant in modal jazz is you could jump from one to the next to the next to the next to the next to the next to the next to the next to the next to the next and jump all over the place. What that leads to, though, is a feeling in jazz that's kind of frenetic. Especially more modern jazz. Kind of frenetic. Kind of harsh, maybe. It doesn't always fit because it may or may not always resolve back to where it started and where it should be at. Now, from that became what's called non-modal jazz or free jazz. And essentially, free jazz has very little rules. Very little rules. You can jump all over the place. You can ultimately improv beyond those constraints. So the joke that we made earlier about how jazz is playing the wrong notes and calling it jazz, that's free jazz. You can play any note that you feel like fits in that particular section because it's about improvisation. It's about what you feel kind of fits there. It was built on this idea that there should be no constraints. A musician should have the ability to express themselves in whatever fashion that they deem appropriate in that moment. The tempo can change. The key can change. It means very little. Modalities don't matter.

Whatever note you feel like should be there at that moment in time is the key or the note ultimately that they can play. And it sounds chaotic. It sounds frenetic. It sounds harsh to the ears.

Most people, modern jazz is an acquired taste. Let's put it that way. It's an acquired taste. But remember what we talked about earlier. God created music. He instituted its rules. He set up its systems. He created mankind to be connected and related to it. Dissonance requires resolution. Dissonance and discordance requires resolution. That's part of the law of music. And we can hear it. We know it when we hear it. We go back to the C major chord that we explored at the beginning. I want to show you this just really quickly. And again, please bear with me. I'm not a piano player. Okay, C major as we saw before. Okay, if we play the fourth in there. Let's see if I can get all four of my fingers in the right spots.

That's the fourth. That's a C major suspended, essentially. Doesn't sound good, does it? You want that F to resolve either to the G or to the E to make...

That sounds a lot better. To our ears, that sounds like that's what it should be. Classical composers used to use this. They would use that technique to drive the composition along before they closed it out. And so what would happen sometimes is you'd get these big, you know, frenetic kind of...

And then it would be like...

And you get this weird chord and you're like, what is that? Resolve it! Resolve it! Resolve it!

And you go, oh, oh, that sounds better. It drives the tension. It drives the pace of the music.

You know, most jazz musicians, even those that are in free jazz, they realize that even though they might experiment, even though they might push the envelope with their improvisation, and they might jump from keys to modes playing notes that sound dissonant, they recognize that in order to resolve the music to the ear of the listener, they have to return to the place where the chords and the notes have consonants, where they fit together, where the harmony sounds pleasant to the ear.

Interestingly enough, with that example I just showed you, adding that note that was an F, that note's actually supposed to be in that key.

That note is a part of that key. It is not something separate. That is a note in that key.

But it still sounds dissonant because of the location where it was played and the chord that it was played with.

Certainly reminiscent sometimes of us ensuring that our words are fitly spoken, as it mentions in Proverbs 25, verse 11 to 13. Even though it might be something perfectly okay to say, it's in God's key, maybe in that scenario, it's not the best thing to say. It's still discordant. It's still dissonant. Dissonance requires resolution. It requires a return to harmony. Over simplifying it, we might say it requires a return to the original key.

You know, brethren, every now and then we're going to play a wrong note.

When it comes to this spiritual walk, we are going to play a wrong note.

We're going to say something. We're going to do something that's not loving, something that's not in the key of G-O-D, and it's going to clang, and it's going to clash.

And it is going to sound horribly dissonant. Horribly dissonant. Sometimes we might even be a little bit tone deaf and not even hear it.

We might not even realize that we made a mistake, but others see it, others hear it, and maybe they're going to stop us and say, Hey, you know what? That was a wrong note. That note doesn't fit there at all.

We don't get to respond but jazz. Right? That's not the response, ultimately.

God has written this composition, this life that we've been called to, he's written it in a very specific key.

He's written it in a very specific key, and as such, it has certain sharps, it has certain flats, and anything that's dissonant to that key has to be resolved.

It has to come back to the original key. We have to return to the original key of the composition. We have to return to the feel and the tone, so to speak, of what it is that God is doing.

That's what this whole season, this Passover season is about.

A recognition that we all play dissonant notes, every now and again.

Romans 3, verse 23, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Right?

But we don't always go on and read the next part. Romans 3, verse 24. Again, Romans 3, verse 23, that's that memory scripture.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but we don't always continue, after that point, into verse 24.

And verse 24 is really important. Romans 3 and verse 24.

Romans 3 and verse 24.

So again, 23, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Verse 24, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Whom God set forth is a propitiation by His blood through faith to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness.

That He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

We talk about justification. We talk about being brought into alignment, justifying by grace through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus.

We might say, in our analogy today, resolving the cord, bringing it back to the original harmony, the original key, that it was intended.

Resolving that melody by bringing it back into line with the original composition, justifying it, aligning it through the blood of Jesus Christ.

So as we continue our Passover examination, as we consider Passover is a month away, it's a month away, let's consider our performance, let's consider our rehearsal, and let's ask the question, are we in tune, or are we off key?

Are we in tune, or are we off key? And continue practicing this peace, this life, this opportunity that we have to be written in the key of G. O.D.