Music and Our Relationship With God

You know, listening to music is one of the most, or can be, one of the most emotionally intense human experiences. Have you ever met somebody that is tone deaf and all music sounds the same and they can't figure out what the rest of us like about music? My mother, as she has lost her hearing, music just doesn't seem to mean that much to her anymore.

And she started to lose her hearing back years ago. And I can remember we'd be driving in the car and the music would be playing and she'd say, that's too loud. That's too loud. That's too loud. And then nobody could hear it. And she'd say, that's just right. We'd say, Mom, nobody can hear it now. That's just right. And it didn't matter what kind of music. She was losing her ability to actually process music.

That'd be very difficult for me. I love music. I listen to music all the time. All different kinds of music. And depending on your personality, music can have different impacts on different people. I mean, there are some people who actually think the most enjoyable music you can have are bagpipes. Talk to people from, they have a Scottish background. See, there's even some people shaking their head, yes. They have a Scottish background. They have an Irish background. And it's like, yeah, bagpipes. For other people, it's like the sound of people stepping on screaming cats. One of the reasons they used to play bagpipes is they marched into battle because they would tend to scare the other people so badly, they'd run away.

Anybody who listened to that has to be a mean people, so you'd run away. I have a little Irish blood in me, so I have to admit that bagpipes make me want to go slay the English or something. We all have different reactions. What's interesting is just go across the dial in the radio station. You'll find pop music and rock music and jazz music and oldies and tahado music and at least six or seven different kinds of country music. Try to even define what music is. Some people love opera. It's the only kind of music where you can stab somebody to death while they're singing.

And some people love opera. I can take it a little bit, you know. But then I like jazz. Sometimes I'll be driving in the car and there's a jazz station here in San Antonio and I'll be listening to the jazz and I'll look at my wife and she'll just sort of be twitching. It just, you know, that's syncopated beats, you know. She just, nah, it doesn't work. We have different reactions to music. And you know, when you leave your culture, you know, when you leave your culture and go to other parts of the world, boy, then it's hard. I mean, music can be dramatically different than how it's even defined.

It's like the old story about a Japanese dignitary that came to the United States and they took him to a Western symphony. And they said, what did you think at the end? And he said, you know, he said, it took me a while but I began to understand it and actually began to really enjoy it.

He said, but out of the four pieces, he said the first one was truly outstanding. And the Western diplomat thought, well, there was only three pieces. Then he realized it was when they were warming up the instruments that he thought it was such a good piece. Because music is so powerful, it can be used for both good and evil.

Now, I don't want to talk about styles of music today. What I want to talk about is the place of music in our relationship with God because it can be used for good and it can be used for evil. George Barna, who's a religious researcher in the United States, wrote a book a few years ago called Worship Wars. And he said, what's happening inside the United States and he actually predicted, which is what happened, that most Protestant churches would give up any biblical doctrine over time because the whole purpose was just to get members.

In order to do that, they had to compete with each other on creating the most entertaining service. Music is part of worship and should be part of worship. But, you know, you can go to churches where you have a 45-minute service and 35 minutes of it is music. Now, I'm not saying 35 minutes of music is wrong. I'm saying, though, if the only reason we're going is to be entertained, we have a problem. And yet, music is part of our worship of God. What place does music have in our worship to God?

You know, we have, sometimes I wish we had more music in our services. It's our culture. We have a limited amount of music. Sometimes I wish we had more. Now, I'm just doing a raw, raw speech for Mr. Isaac to get the choir to do more. But, actually, we have a lot of talent here.

And, you know, we have a lot of musical talent. I do understand, though, it takes a lot of work to do music. What we call special music, which is when the congregation isn't singing, but we have music during the services. It takes a lot of work to do that. I understand that. And so, you know, we've always just said, well, music is whenever anybody can get prepared. We haven't had scheduling here force people to try to perform, you know, often or whatever. It depends on the performers. And I feel very comfortable knowing them. But music can have very strong, even physiological effects.

You know, when you're sitting here singing – I know one of the songs that was sung here this morning is a favorite of mine – and I was sitting down going through the announcements, and I'm sitting there singing, you know, because you can't help it. I love the song. The words have a lot of meaning to me, and I'm singing that song. And heart rate goes up. All kinds of things happen when we are singing or listening to music physically. Of course, emotionally is what is the most profound thing that happens to us.

What happens to us emotionally. In fact, you know, I worked in radio. I understand music is designed in radio. That's the reason most songs on the radio are only two and a half to three and a half minutes long. There's a whole reason for that. It's what they can do to you psychologically in that amount of time. You know, you don't have ten, twenty minute songs on radio usually, unless you're listening to classical music or jazz improvisation.

Unless you're listening to that, most songs have a time period. There's reasons for that. All has to do with programming. Why one song follows the next follows the next? All has to do with the psychological effect that they want to have on you. You know why? Because you love country music. No, because they want to sell ads. That's the reality. I mean, I worked for a station one time that couldn't sell anything on Saturday morning, so we had a polka show.

And every person from an Italian and Polish descent for twenty miles in all directions listened every Saturday morning, and we could sell all kinds of ads that time. You know, we would sell a guy doing yodeling or sell time to a guy yodeling if we could sell ads. I mean, that's the purpose. When they design music, you know, they know.

Musicians understand the emotional impact of music. Get a group of musicians together, and that's a pretty emotional group of people after a while. You know, a group of singers. I've always admired people who can direct choirs, because that's not easy. Because it'd be easy if it was just a matter of people reading notes. But it's not a matter of people reading notes. It's not just like they're doing a manual of...a technical manual reading.

There's an awful lot of emotions and work that goes into producing music. You know, some music is actually designed to do very evil things. Some music is designed to make you angry. Some music is designed to create some kind of erotic effect. We understand that. Well, let's talk about, though, the worship of God. Music and the worship of God. There's two words I want to talk about. What is worship? And, you know, when we talk about worship, usually it means in English, it means a prayer or a church service in which you are showing reverence to God.

And I really want to stress showing reverence to God, because there's a fine line here. We have to walk between proper use of music, especially in church services, and music that is just designed to create an emotional effect. We are supposed to have an emotional effect for music that we do, whether we sing it or listen to it at church services. And I'm primarily going to talk about church services today. But this also involves the music you should listen to at home that I think that throughout the week all of us should at some time be listening to some kind of worship music, sacred music or church music or whatever you want to call it.

I thought what you all should listen to all the time, and it would be wrong to sit here and say, okay, I'm going to tell you what taste you should have in music, because I guarantee you 90% of you here do not like my taste in jazz. But we're talking about our relationship with God and how that fits especially in the context that we come here and we worship God.

We know in our culture we usually sing three songs out of the hymnal before services. But how important is that?

I gave a sermon a couple of weeks ago, and I talked about standards. And I said that we have to look at our standards in all our areas of our lives and how we can lower a standard. We'd have to drop it, but we just lower the standard, that flag that we're supposed to be carrying for God. And the Sabbath is one of the ways in which we can lower a standard and not even realize it. Over the next month or two I'm going to be talking a lot about the standard about the Sabbath and the standard of the Sabbath. Today we're going to talk about music and the music that we do when we come here together. So we have the idea of worship, which means to show God reverence. But also there's a word – and by the way, in Hebrew it's interesting – the word translated worship literally means to bow down. In other words, you are literally going before God and getting on your knees and bowing down before God in absolute reverence to who He is. There's another word. Let's go to Psalm 148. Psalm 148.

Of course I always enjoy Mr. Henderson plays. The sons of Korah, the Australian group that all their song lyrics are from the Psalms. And I have their CDs at home. I listen to them all the time. I listen to them in the car. Psalm 148, verse 1. Here is a praise psalm, or in Hebrew it's halal. Now there's a word in English that comes from the Psalm halal. It's hallelujah. It's a praise of God. Now think about how this would have been sung by David. It's quite different than the way you and I sing, by the way. Listen to Middle Eastern music. If David was here and he was going to play one of his Psalms, as he wrote it clear back at 1000 BC, we would have probably been going to wincing a little bit when he played. It would be a totally different style of music than anything that we're used to. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord from the heavens. Praise Him in the heights.

Praise Him all you angels. Praise Him all you hosts. Praise Him sun and moon. Praise Him all you stars of light. Praise Him you heavens of heavens and you waters above the earth. Let them praise the name of the Lord for He commanded and they were created. Now if you go and read through the rest of this Psalm, he just keeps saying everything that's created, all living things, all people, need to praise God. Now the idea of praise is to celebrate or give glory. And one of the ways you do this by the very meaning of the word is in singing. It's in singing. You know, this Psalm though appears, by the way, interesting in a number of our Psalm book in a number of places. In fact, page 87 is, praise you the Lord. Praise you the Lord. Praise from the heavens and praise from the heights. Praise Him you angels. Praise Him you hosts. Praise you the Lord is just Psalm 148 put into English rhyme. So Psalm 148 does appear in our Psalm book. In fact, it appears in a number of different forms in the Psalm book that we use. So we find this basic same definition of worship and praise. They're not exactly the same thing. Worship is to approach God in reverence. Praise is to give glory to God. And that can include music. Now all human beings are made of the image of God. You know, that's the reason why. You put human beings together very long and they will create some kind of music. They'll whistle, they'll sing, they'll get together because God loves music. Now because we're all corrupt images of God, human beings tend to corrupt music. So our music tends to be a mixture of good and evil because that's what we are. But God loves music. He created music. Let's look at some of the places of the Old Testament where singing is part of the praise of God. The first place we really find a song being sung by lots of people in the Bible is back in Exodus 15. Let's go back to Exodus 15. We don't have the score. We have no idea what this song would have sounded like. We know it was very long. All of Exodus 15 are the lyrics of a song, or most of it, not all of it because there are two songs mentioned here. You know, we think of Moses as a lot of things. You never thought of Moses as a songwriter. And yet here he wrote a song that appears in the Scripture. Look at verse 1 here in Exodus 15. Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the Lord and spoke, saying, I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously the horse and the rider he has thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and song, and he has become my salvation. He is my God. And I will praise him, my Father's God, and I will exalt him. Now, the purpose of this song we can see, very similar to Psalm 148. The praise was towards God. This is very important. It's when we talk about worship and praise. It is towards God. It is a way of expressing God's worthiness. It is a way of expressing God's greatness. It's a way of expressing God's righteousness, His goodness. Verse 20.

Dead barium, this is Moses' sister, the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took the timber on her hand, and with all the women went out after her with timbrels and dances. The barium answered them, Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously the horse and its rider he has thrown into the sea. So here is a little sub-chorus going on with just the women singing. The barium has created this song, and they are singing this song. And they have some kind of musical instrument that they are using. First time we see music used in a mass way as all the...there are estimates as high as 3 million Israelites at this point. Millions of people singing, old women, young women, old men, young men, boys, girls, all singing this song. So music is important in the praising of God, but notice it has a worship aspect to it. It is towards God. It is not towards themselves. They didn't go around singing, oh it is so wonderful that we are so wonderful. They sang to God. King David, who was a musician himself and a songwriter himself, was very instrumental in bringing music into the worship of God and ancient Israel. Look at 2 Samuel. 2 Samuel. This goes to Matthew 16. It is important to remember how emotional music is and how important it is in our Sabbath services. It is the standard we need to hold up. 2 Samuel 6.5. Then David and all the House of Israel played music before the Lord. Now notice who this is aimed at. Some people have asked why is it that generally when we have the choir sing or people perform beautiful music, sometimes we have just instrumentals, sometimes we have people come up and sing, we have everything from violins to flutes to guitars to piano pieces. Why won't we do this music? Why don't we clap? The only clapping we generally do is when children sing because we want them to understand that what they did was important, that we appreciate it. Why don't we clap? Well, not because clapping is necessarily wrong or evil, but we do want to remember the song is performed primarily. There are two reasons that music is performed, that the congregation may not be involved, but the music is performed. The first reason is it is a praise and singing of God. It's a form of ministry. It's very important. It's towards God. There is no need to honor the musician who honors God. That's done by God.

We may go thank that person. I'm not saying it's wrong to clap. I have found myself breaking out clapping at times. I just can't hold back. I start doing it. But I'm saying, why is it generally not our custom? That's the reasoning behind it. The primary reason this is being performed is before God. Sometimes I know it's hard if you're in the choir, if you're performing, and you think, oh, I made a mistake, what will people think? Don't worry about it. Because God is pleased. Think about when your children come, and they practice, and they work, and they perform some little song for you, and how you are pleased by that, even though it may not be exactly perfect. That doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for perfection. We should strive for perfection because we're singing, or we're performing primarily, first of all, to God. But at the same time, don't be overly concerned about the rest of us. We will get a benefit from it. So it says, David, in all the house of Israel played music before the Lord with all kinds of instruments, a firwood on harps, on string instruments, on tambourines, on cystrums, and on cymbals. You know, there are people who believe that today in the New Testament we should not use instruments in praising of God. They sure had no problem doing that in the Old Testament. A large number of instruments used as part of this praising before God. But notice it says, they played music before the Lord. That's the number one reason that we come before God. They can be very expressive in their music in ancient Israel, especially the Jews who are very expressive in their music today when they perform music.

Even if they had Jewish groups, it's not unusual for them to dance on Friday night services. Now, that's not part of our culture. I'm not saying we should start dancing in the church, okay? But I'm saying they can be very expressive people. Look at 2 Samuel 6. Verse 14. This is when the Ark of the Covenant was being brought back. The Philistines had it. And David's bringing the Ark back, and there was music being played, and he was excited. And it says that David danced before the Lord with all his might. And he was wearing a linen ephod. He danced before the Lord. That's pretty expressive person. Now, he wasn't doing it as a temple, by the way. There is no exactly what he was doing. He was a very expressive person.

There is an example I can find. There may be one, but I've never found an example of dancing in the temple. But they're bringing the Ark in, and there's music playing, and he's dancing before God.

Of course, remember, in their society, too, women dance with women and men with men. They did not mix men and women dancing together. So their form of dancing is quite different than what it's like dancing, too. They did know waltzing, and they did know what we would call modern dances. It was a particular to that Middle Eastern culture how they dance.

Solomon then, when the temple was built, used music in the worship of God. In fact, there were Levites that that was their form of ministry. There were certain Levites that killed animals. There were certain Levites who taught. They were teachers. There were certain Levites that had one job to prepare music for the services of the temple. 1 Chronicles 6. I'm taking a little time here, but I want to show you that... Sometimes we don't talk about this subject because it's such a sensitive issue. I remember a person one time that was offended by the song, Onward Christian Soldiers. She had her reason for doing so. I finally told her, when we sing that song, just don't sing it. It's okay. You don't have to sing that song. Even in our songbook, I look at some lyrics. Here's one song. I look at the lyrics and I think, those lyrics aren't exactly accurate.

We can look at, we can put all the songs that we sing together and we're going to find something wrong someplace. And it's also very subjective. Music has different effects on different people. If you had some bad experience, you attached to a certain piece of music, you can't figure out why everybody else likes singing that. So sometimes we don't talk about music in our concept of worship of God, or praise of God, because it is a very sensitive subject because it's so personal. I mean, there are songs I listen to, praising God, that we would not do here in this church because it's not exactly our culture.

There's certain gospel songs I like that we may not perform here because it's not our culture. That doesn't mean the songs are wrong, and it doesn't mean we should do them. It means privately I can listen to them, but publicly we may not perform them because they may have some negative impact on somebody else. Even when we put together a hymnal, to put together this hymnal took at least a year, and they had to sort through hundreds of songs to get these. Because they found song after song after song that even the group of people that were putting this together, someone would have a very negative emotional impact from that song, from something in their past. And they would discuss it and discuss it, and finally some songs were pulled out because of that. So this is not an easy subject.

One time I remember as a teenager singing in a restaurant, and there was a jukebox, and someone would go on over and put on a corner and put on a couple pop rock songs. And we were sitting there listening to it, and I remember some man coming over to me and looking at us and saying, You can say you're Christians. Well, you're not. You can't listen to that kind of music. So he put a corner in, and he put on a song. I can't remember who the singer was. He picked a fine time to lead me, Lucille, 400 kids in the crop of the field. I mean, that was like 1977-78, so most of you young people won't know what I'm talking about. I remember thinking, huh, that's Christian? I did anything wrong with the song. I just couldn't figure out how that was Christian. I couldn't figure it out. So that shows you how emotional we get about music.

1 Chronicles 6, verse 31. To the rest of the family of the tribe of Cothonites, they gave by law ten men. Wait, where am I? I'm in 1 Chronicles 6, but I'm not in verse 31, which, but I'm reading to you, has no importance at all to what I'm saying. Verse 31. Now these are the men whom David appointed over the service of song in the house of the Lord after the ark came to rest, and they ministered with music before the dwelling place of the tabernacle of meeting until Solomon had built the house of the Lord in Jerusalem, and they served in their office according to their order.

Professional musicians who served in the house of God.

Let me give you three ways music can be used in a church service, and why we should have music in a church service, and why it's all right to use different instruments. Now we are very blessed here. I mean, Daniel Ortiz can come up and play the guitar.

Mr. Henderson can play the guitar. We have three or four people who can play the piano. Mr. Peir can play the flute. We have others that play different instruments.

We have many people who can sing. Many people who can sing. Why should we have this? Both congregational singing and what we call special music. Three reasons. First one is the 2nd Chronicles 5.

Verse 11.

This is very interesting. This is where the temple is dedicated to God, Solomon's Temple. They came to pass where the priests came out of the most holy place, for all the priests who were present had sanctified themselves without keeping to their divisions. In other words, all the priests came in. There were different divisions. There were too many priests to serve there at any given time of a Levitical priesthood. But they all came to this ceremony. They all were sanctified so that they could serve God throughout the year. The Levites who were the singers, so the Levites who were the singers, this group of priests that this was their job, this was their ministry, all those of Asaph and Haman and Jonathan, with their sons and their brothers, stood at the east end of the altar, clothed in white linen, having cymbals, string instruments and harps, and with them 120 priests sounding with trumpets. Now, you talk about a band. There's 120 trumpet players in this band.

I mean, I led songs at the Visa Tabernacos one year, where we had a 350-voice choir and 105-piece orchestra and 6,500 people singing. And I'll never forget that experience for as long as I live.

I can't imagine 120 trumpet players. I'd be holding some notes there, you know. Let these guys play.

Of course, these are shofar. Some of them. Well, they had silver trumpets. You can't play jazz on a shofar. It's not possible. It says, Indeed it came to pass when the trumpeters and singers were as one. Now, that's an interesting thing here. These singers and these people who were playing instruments, in this music they became as one. There are times when you're singing and you hear your voice blend with everybody else's. It doesn't matter if you have a good voice or not. God doesn't say, I only want people with good voices to sing. He doesn't say that. But when you're singing and your voice blends with everyone else, there's a oneness that takes place. You are praising God together. Congregational singing isn't an individual activity, although there's an individual experience in it.

Have you ever been singing a song and tears start running out of your face? In congregational singing? There are times I have to stop and listen to you sing. I just listen.

Because we're praising God together.

It says, It came to pass where the trumpeters and the singers were as one, to make one sound to be heard and praising and thanking the Lord. But they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music, and praised the Lord, saying, For He is good, for His mercy endures forever. What happened when God heard this singing? That the house of the Lord was filled with a cloud, the shekinah, the very glory of God, what we call the Holy Spirit, the very presence of God, in a unique way, since the priests could not continue ministering because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.

Do you think God was pleased? God came down into that temple when they all sang, and these instruments played, and this music reached Him, and they were praising Him, and He came down to show them that He was there.

First purpose, the purpose of music is to directly praise God and thank Him, for He is good, for His mercy endures forever. That is the number one way you and I pick up our songbooks.

We come to praise and thank God. You know, sometimes the lyrics of the songs that we sing, we've sung them so many times, we don't even think about the lyrics.

We don't even think about those lyrics as we sing them to God. The second purpose is in Ephesians 5. Let's go to the New Testament. Ephesians 5.

Verse 18.

Paul says to the church in Ephesus, "...Zudah be drunk with wine, in which is dispossession, but be filled with the Spirit. Speaking to one another..." I find this interesting. Speaking to one another in what? Because in just speaking to one another, we want to know what that meant, or talking to each other. But he's saying something very specific here. He says, speaking to one another in Psalms and hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. Giving thanks always for all things to God the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and submitting to one another the fear of God. Now, this is still aimed towards God. Notice it says, giving thanks. But we're to sing these songs, these Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and singing, okay, we're to do this towards God, but in doing so, we're speaking to each other also.

When we listen to music being performed during services, or we sing songs to each other, we are actually encouraging and helping each other. The second purpose for music in church is to uplift and encourage and inspire others by giving thanks to God.

To uplift and encourage and inspire others through this praising of God.

The third reason is that music can actually be used to teach people about God and motivate people. Look at Colossians 3. Colossians 3, 16.

I find this an interesting verse. And what's really interesting is how we realize this applies to children. Children learn, or can learn, through song.

My children learned the books of the Bible through a song.

And we're using that same song to teach the grandchildren the books of the Bible. I can remember listening to them do that so many times. I'd be giving a sermon, and I'd say, Well, where is that Genesis, Exodus, Lytton, the Numbers, Deuteronomy? I'd be singing to my head trying to find the place in the Bible. Sadly, if you might remember that song. By the way, if you go to the UCG website right now, that song is performed on the website with Jelly, the little puppet.

I told my oldest granddaughter that I knew Jelly, and I actually know the guy who runs him. She said, Well, you have to introduce me to him. I went to meet him some day. Elijah 3, 16. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another. It would be easy to stop there. Okay, we need to teach each other, admonish each other, encourage each other, help each other grow. But look how it does to do that. In songs, and hymns, and spiritual songs. Singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. You know, this is why, once a month, the last Sabbath of every month, if you come a half hour early to services, there will be a group of people up here on the stage or down here just singing songs. What are they doing? This.

That's what they're doing. So once a month, people come before services, they take a half hour, and they do a Colossians 3, 16 thing.

People come into the church, they learn a lot about us by our songs.

Many of our songs are, shall we say, we are a very conservative group when it comes to music, you know?

People can walk in and say, boy, that's a boring group of people. I actually had someone that came to the Kingdom of God seminar, that then came the next week to services, and came up and told me that. Sure, music is so boring. My answer was, fine, some of it is. You know, every church has this culture. But even the boring songs I like, I know what he meant by boring, but they're not boring to me. But to him, he didn't understand the music. But part of that was, too, as I talked to him, he was looking for a church that would entertain him.

We don't come to church to be entertained. Music is in the church to praise God. Then there's a benefit, you know, if the purpose is to directly praise God. The second purpose is that we uplift each other through that, especially when we participate together. But third, it's used to actually teach people about God.

So those are three reasons why we do and should have music in our services.

But if I did not only in our services, it needs to be part of our life. Praising God at music needs to be part of our life. I think about Paul and Silas in jail. They were stuck in jail. Now, I know what I would be doing if, you know, if I was stuck in jail with one of you, I'd be griping to you. Okay? I can't believe God did this. I can't believe God put us in jail. This is what I expected. What did they do? It says they encouraged each other in the book of Acts. It says they encouraged each other by singing songs of praise.

They sang the God that encouraged each other. And it says all the other prisoners listened to them. Like, these people are different. They're singing to their God. They're different.

So, you and I should have... It's like I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, where I listened to part of the Messiah. I haven't listened to the Messiah in a long time. That's a powerful piece of spiritual music. It's not something many of us have even been exposed to, because it's, you know, classical music. People don't like classical music. That is one of the most powerful pieces of music ever written. Two and a half hours of praising God. And almost all of it is directly from the Bible. I hate to tell you this, because the people are always disappointed by it, but there is one little section in there that's from a pagan Greek poet. The Y-handle stuck that in there. I have no idea. But most of it is directly from the Bible.

Now, worship can be used, or music can be used in worship to really displease God.

You know, remember when Joshua and Moses came down from the mountain where God gave them the Ten Commandments? And they're coming down, and Joshua says, I hear the noise of war in the camp. Go back and read it in Exodus 32. And what Moses says to them, he says, that's not war. They're singing.

They were singing to the calf, the golden calf. And we can see and we know how displeasing that was to God.

But they used this as a form of wrong worship. Look at Amos chapter 5. Our series of Bible studies that we're doing, and the one we'll do here this afternoon, is on, we're going through the Minor Prophets.

And we'll find throughout the Minor Prophets an amazing amount of information that applies to us even today. But Amos 5.21.

God told them, now remember, the problem Amos is dealing with, he's dealing with ancient Israel, where they had mixed the worship of God with pagan customs. They worshiped God, and they worshiped Yahweh, and they worshiped other gods too. They mixed the Holy Days God and given to them with other customs. And when we talk about why we don't keep Christmas, we don't keep Christmas because it's a mixture of these ideas together. Exactly what he condemns them for. He says, I hate and despise your feast days, and do not savor your sacred assemblies. Though you offer me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them, nor will I regard your fat peace offerings. Take away from me the noise of your songs, for I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments, but let justice run down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream. He said, get your personal lives in order, and here's what we can do with worship if we're not careful.

We can be deteriorating in the godly standards of the rest of our lives, but by going to church it makes us feel religious. I go to church, I sing to God, I hear the sermon, I take some notes, I read my Bible, I go home, and I feel better. But what does that mean for the rest of the six days? What does that mean for the rest of the six days? And He tells them, don't sing your songs to me anymore. I don't want to hear them. Imagine how horrible that would be to have God say, just don't even sing to me. I don't want to hear your songs anymore. So we can see that music can be used in a long way. Here they use music to make themselves sort of cover up the sins of their lives. I'm worshiping God so it's okay. I worshiping God so the deterioration of the rest of my life is okay. No, it's not. He says, go be righteous first, then come sing to me. Go be righteous first, then come sing to me.

So let me then just wrap it up here with some principles that you can apply in your worship of God, specifically at Sabbath services, but any time you sing to God or play music to God. I sing alone most of the time in the car with the volume up. I know sometimes when I'm with my wife and I've maybe got the volume up too loud and I'm singing off key because she's very nice about it. She just stares at me. You know, until I get uncomfortable enough to look. Is it loud? Yes. Am I off key? Yes.

Every once in a while she'll actually just lean over and turn it down and just look at me like, please, let me turn it in. When we sing to God, when you sing to God at services, you should have an attitude of worship. See, it's worship and praise. And they have to come together. This isn't entertainment, folks. This isn't entertainment. It is worship towards God. That means we have to have a concept of reverence. Think about this. Think about how easy it is when the song leader says, Five minutes before services, everybody come in, take your seats. And how many times we finally come in and sit down. Once again, this isn't because we're doing evil or we're trying to be wicked. But because we don't recognize the importance of this as part of the worship of God, it's like the second song before we finally come in because we finish our donuts and we talk to somebody and we're just wondering. Pick up a songbook. A lot of times I miss half the music service because I'm trying to put together the announcements, you know, this last-minute announcement coming in. So I miss the song service sometimes and I actually feel bad about it. But how many times do we just sort of add a song service? It isn't that important, you know. And so we miss this opportunity. If we come to worship God, this isn't just me standing up here teaching you. You have a service. You have a ministry you're supposed to do. And that ministry is, part of it, is to sing to God.

The New Testament Church doesn't have professional musicians. We have people who volunteer and we have us. We sing those praises to God. But the Old Testament Levites used to have a special group of people to do. So understand that this is a humble reverence to God every time we get a chance to sing. That means we should put everything we have into it. The second attitude or approach we need to have that will help us in our song services at church is music at Sabbath service should be praising God, so the halalah, the praising of God. And it's uplifting and encouraging to us in our relationship with God. If we're singing and we're looking over and saying, boy, that guy tears a little long. If we're singing and we're looking over and saying, well, that woman's skirt is a little short, then we're missing the purpose of the song service. The purpose of the song service is just get lost in it and sing to God. And what you do, you will uplift each other and you will find yourself uplifted by it. Just sing to God. Well, I don't have a very good voice. That is not a criteria God doesn't give you a pass. He doesn't.

So music at Sabbath service should praise God and speak to those who are present to uplift them and encourage them in their relationship with God. Thirdly, understand that certain songs, whether we sing them or they're performed, there's going to be certain songs that are in a style that doesn't appeal to you, but it may appeal to somebody else. That's okay. That's okay. I suppose somewhere on the face of the earth, someone is actually doing special music at a Sabbath service with an accordion.

Some of you don't like accordion music, so you laugh. The rest of you are like, well, I do. Most people don't like accordion music, although there's a lot of great Tohada music with the accordion in it. A lot of it. The accordion fits there. And, you know, there's polkas with good accordion music in it. It would not fit with the hallelujah, of course. But neither would a bass guitar. Okay. But we've had some great special music here with a bass guitar in it. Some music requires that there be a drum or a rhythm. There has to be. There has to be a cymbal. There has to be in some songs. So sometimes we look at different music and we say, well, that doesn't appeal to me. I used to pastor in the Midwest, and music was very conservative. Very conservative. I pastored a church one time where it took me a year just to get them where they were comfortable with someone playing a guitar on special music. Because that just somehow didn't fit the culture. When they realized it wasn't wrong, they actually learned to enjoy it. But it took a while. I didn't go in and tell them they had to do it. We just had to break that barrier down a little bit at a time. So we have to understand that just because a guitar or someone has a tambourine, and we've never done a song with a tambourine, and we're not going to get up here and do dancing with tambourines. I always have to put a little caveat when I say certain things, or although they're going to become Pentecostal, we'll all be running through the aisles. That's what I'm talking about. Just look at the Scripture. You can see what we're talking about. Although David would...we would find David a bit over the edge today.

There's a little bit to think about, too.

1 Corinthians 14.26 Remember this. And this is why, by the way, people will ask me, how come Mr. Isaac approves all special music? It's because of this. So, everything we do, we try to have a scriptural reason for what we do. How is it that, brother, whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation? Let all things be done for edification. How come every one of you has a psalm? Notice what he's saying. They all have different ideas of what the music should be, and sometimes, in order to bring edification about, we have to funnel that down. And every once in a while, we'll say no to something. And that's why I have Mr. Isaac scream things. Sometimes, there's nothing wrong with the psalm, but it may be offensive to some people. We don't want to come to church and offend somebody. That's not the purpose. That's not the purpose. So we try to be careful. We don't try to be so narrow-minded that we don't allow to express things the way... Because we all express things a little different to God. How you pray is going to be a little different to me, maybe in the way another person prays. How you sing to God is going to be a little different. But that's why we do it that way, because we have to understand it has to be done for edification. It has to be done for the good of the co-egregation and everybody in it. One last scripture. You think, well, I am, but I don't like singing, and I don't think singing is that important. Well, there will come a day when you're going to have to sing before the greatest audience in history. Revelation chapter 15.

Revelation chapter 15.

Revelation chapter 15.

First, John says, And I saw something like a sea of glass, mingled with fire, those who have the victory over the beast, over the image, over his mark, and over the number of his name, standing on the sea of glass, having the harps of God. Now, this is where you get that silly idea of, you know, like people floating around, looking like little cupids playing harps. Okay? That's not your eternity. That's not my eternity. These are instruments.

These are the saints at the resurrection.

At some point, we get to stand before God, and we're given instruments. And it says, And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb. Now, I know what the song of Moses is. I've seen the words. I don't know how the melody goes. The song of the Lamb, I don't know. Jesus Christ hasn't taught us that one yet.

Saying, Great and marvelous are your works. Notice the song that we will sing. Notice who it is towards. But there will be a oneness as we sing it together that will be absolutely amazing.

Absolutely amazing. Great and marvelous are your works, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways, O King of the saints. Who shall not fear you, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy, for all nations shall come and worship before you, for your judgments have been manifested.

You and I get the opportunity every Sabbath to come before God and join with people in praising Him. That is an honor that we take much too lightly. It is a service to God and a service to each other that we take much too lightly. It is one of those standards we can let drop a little bit.

That's one of the reasons why we keep training Lord Mormid to give the lead songs. Leading songs. You know, you see, maybe I get up here and they lead songs. That is some kind of badge of honor. Like, oh, you're a super Christian, so you get the lead songs. Leading songs is a privilege of performing a service to God and His people. It is an important service. It is important that we understand that music is part of what God wants us to do at Sabbath services. Someday you will be part of a choir, playing an instrument, and singing the greatest audience ever. You will be before the throne of the Almighty God and your Lord Jesus Christ. And billions of angels that you will sing.

So just consider every Sabbath as training for that day. I expect you to really sing out in this last song.