Sing The Word

1:07Music is powerful. People rarely, if ever, say they can't get a speech out of their head. But we all know what it's like to have a song stuck in our head for days, weeks, even months. For the past six weeks, we've been in a series called Back to the Basics, where we are, instead of preaching verse by verse through books of the Bible, taking A look at the basic aspects of the Christian life. And so we've talked about how God reveals Himself through His Word and His Word. We've talked about God's people, the church. Starting a couple weeks ago, we began to look closely at Christian worship and what it is. So we have talked about preaching the word and praying the word. And next week, we're going to talk about seeing the word through baptism and the Lord's Supper. But this morning we're going to talk about singing the word.

2:05And we've said all along that the reason we're doing this series is because there's so much confusion about the church in general and about Christian worship in particular. But I think that there might be more confusion about singing as an element of Christian worship than any other part. The confusion starts with the word worship itself. When most professing Christians think about worship, it is for them synonymous with singing. Worship is singing, singing is worship. But that view is highly problematic. I want you to take a look at this quote from Mike Cosper in his book, Rhythms of Grace. He says, if music is worship, then when you mess with someone's musical preference, You threaten their access to God.

3:04No wonder the debates become so heated. Worship isn't singing. But as we'll learn today, singing is a crucial part of Christian worship. And so, my hope for today is that we will see from Scripture what singing is and what worship really is, and that the way that we think about and talk about and participate in Christian worship, especially through singing, will be shaped by God's word. Now, when you read the Bible, you find God's people singing to the Lord, pouring out their hearts in praise, in joy, in lament, in sadness, in distress, and in hope for the future.

3:56So, after God parted the Red Sea, Moses and Miriam sang to the Lord. David and other writers wrote 150 songs to the Lord that we have in Scripture. Jesus is often found singing with his disciples. One of the last things they did on the night that he was betrayed was sing a hymn. Paul and his companions sang often, and when he and Silas were thrown into prison and beaten, they were found singing hymns to the Lord in the middle of the night.

4:30Almost every single vision of the new heavens and the new earth has a picture of God's people gathered around the throne, worshiping God through song, both in the prophets and in the book of Revelation. See, our God is a singing God. Take a look at Zephaniah 3, verse 17 on the screen. The prophet says, The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love. He will exult over you with loud singing.

5:11God is a singing God. And in response, we sing back to him, but we also sing to one another. And so let's turn our attention now to the text today and consider the role of singing in Christian worship. Colossians 3:16, look at the verse. I want to read the whole thing again just so we can get the context. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

5:51So, what we have here is a command from the Apostle Paul in the context of a series of commands about life together in the local church. So we are commanded to bear the fruit of the Spirit together, to forgive one another, to love each other, to live in unity and peace. And in the context of all of those things, what he says is that we are to allow the word of Christ to dwell in us richly. Well, what exactly is the word of Christ? Well, according to the word itself, that's another way of speaking of God's inspired word. It would include the Old Testament scriptures and the words of the apostles and the words that Jesus said as reported by the apostles.

6:44So it includes all of Jesus' teaching, miracles, his death, and his resurrection. Remember that this is primarily an oral culture, and most of the New Testament was not yet written. And so they are relying on the testimony of the apostles, which we can trust because of what Jesus himself said in John chapter 14. Take a look there on the screen. These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you, but the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

7:22So Paul is referring when he says the word of Christ, he's referring to all of God's inspired words spoken by the prophets, the apostles. Apostles and Jesus Christ Himself. He's saying that word needs to dwell in us richly. So let's think for a minute about that word dwell. What does that mean? Well, it means to live in. And when we think about that word, sometimes homes are referred to as dwellings because that's where people live. You live in, you dwell in a home.

7:58So Paul is saying that the word of Christ needs to find a home in us, in our hearts and minds. But you know, when you move to a new place, how you sometimes say, it just doesn't feel like home? What do we mean when we say that? We mean we're not comfortable there. We mean we're not used to it. It's hard to feel at home when something feels new and uncomfortable. So if the Word of Christ is going to dwell in us, what that means is it has to find a home in us. But for that to happen, we've got to get comfortable with it. We've got to get used to the word. And if it's going to dwell in us richly or abundantly, that means we need lots of time, lots of exposure to the word of Christ. We cannot expect the word of Christ to feel at home in us, comfortable in us. If we don't spend a whole lot of time in it, if we only engage it once in a while.

9:06So, what do we need to do? Look again at the verse. Paul says this: Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom. So, this is very important. Paul is saying that if the Word of Christ is going to dwell in us richly, we've got to teach and admonish one another. Isn't that interesting? It's not just my job, it's not just the job of the pastors to teach, to instruct, or to admonish, to warn all of you. It is our job together. We are commanded, if the word of Christ is going to dwell in us richly, we are commanded to teach and admonish one another, to do this for each other.

9:59We know from Proverbs 1:7 that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And we know that the Word of God, the Word of Christ, is His wise word to us, His perfectly true, perfectly wise word. Jesus, when He prayed for us, He said, Sanctify them in your truth, Your Word is truth. So then, to teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, we've got to instruct and warn each other with the Word of Christ.

10:31Teaching and warning one another without God's Word is instruction and warning devoid of the best and purest wisdom that God has made available to us freely in his word. Now, look at the next phrase. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Now, I told you this sermon was about singing, and it took me this long to mention it, but we have finally arrived at this point in the sermon where we're going to start talking about the role of singing in Christian worship. In the first two phrases, we saw the command, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, and we saw our role in that command. We are to teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, that is, with God's word. But how do we do that?

11:31If I'm the only one up here teaching and preaching, or if the other pastors are the only ones up here teaching and preaching, how do we teach and admonish one another in all wisdom? Well, here it is: by singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to one another. And I think that in another one of Paul's letters, the letter to the Ephesians, this comes out even more clearly. It's even more obvious that this is what he's saying. Take a look at Ephesians 5. On the screen, Paul says, and do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

12:31So, this passage is even more clear, and if we could just leave that up for a minute, guys, this passage is even more clear, I think, than the Colossians passage on the role of singing in Christian worship and how we all participate in this ministry of the church. We are to teach and admonish one another by addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. And so, we see from these passages that the Apostle Paul is commanding us not only to sing to God, but to each other when we gather for worship. I think a lot of Christians have never considered that. Think about what we said at the very beginning of the sermon. That Mike Cosper quote: If singing is worship and worship is singing, then it can only have one right audience, God.

13:29Because we can't. Worship each other. But according to Scripture, worship is more than singing. And when we sing, we're not just singing to God. We are doing that, to be sure. Paul commands us right here in Ephesians 5 to sing and make melody in our hearts to the Lord. So we are doing that. But friends, we're also doing much more than that. We're also addressing one another when we sing because it's one way that we teach and admonish one another.

14:03Look at this quote from Matt Merker in his book, Corporate Worship. He writes, This means singing is a part of each member's ministry to the whole body. When you join a church, you join the choir. You become a steward for the spiritual vitality of the body, a stewardship you fulfill in part by opening your mouth in song. See, friends, that's why the lyrics, the content of what we sing, is so very important. It is important because it's a part of the teaching ministry of the church. Remember, the overall goal is that the word of Christ would dwell in us, would find a home in us richly.

14:55And so, what that means is that the songs that we sing, they are all teaching. us something. They're teaching us something about God, something about his world, something about ourselves, something about salvation. All of the songs that we sing are teaching us something. And so worship music either tells the truth or it tells partial truths or it tells outright lies about God and His world and us. So what we sing when we gather together matters. It matters a great deal because we are teaching and warning one another with the word of Christ when we gather together.

15:45So I think if you grew up in church, you grew up singing classic songs like Away in a Manger. So every Christmas we would sing this, you know, sometimes in worship or on Christmas Eve. It's a song about the birth of Christ. It's a prayer for Jesus to be near to us and to bless us. It's a cute song. But I want you to take a look at the third stanza of this song. The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.

16:21Yikes. The whole point of the incarnation is that Jesus became Fully human. He added full and complete humanity to his full and complete divinity. That's the whole point of the incarnation. He did that so that he could stand in the gap between us and God and become our mediator so that he could represent us fully on the cross when he died for our sins. That's what he was doing. But in this song, we are singing a partial truth that Jesus was God. We call him the little Lord Jesus. That's true. He is Lord. He is God.

17:08But we're saying that he's not fully human. Because when this infant was born in a barn, in the cold, and laid in a feeding trough, and the cows woke him up, he didn't cry. No baby ever has not cried in that scenario. Now you might think, come on, Alan. Is this really that big of a deal? I think that it is because I think it's teaching us to think the wrong thing about Jesus, our high priest.

17:46Take a look at these well-known verses from Hebrews chapter 4. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we Are yet without sin. Let us then, with confidence, draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Now, let me ask you a question: How many times have you failed? You sin against God or maybe someone else, you make a poor decision, you screw up somehow, and then you find it hard to pray, hard to go to Jesus.

18:37You see, it's a lot harder to go to Jesus if you think that he has no idea what you're going through, that he doesn't get your weaknesses, that he doesn't understand what you're experiencing, that he was never tempted. It's hard to confidently go to that kind of Jesus. But the real Jesus was born in the likeness of men. He experienced everything that we experienced, and yet he never sinned. So now, when you screw up, or you feel overwhelmed, or you feel sad and moved to tears about the things that are going on in your life, you don't feel like you have to hide that from a guy who never cried. His own life.

19:32Jesus did cry. He cried at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, who he was about two and a half minutes from raising from the dead. These kinds of things matter because they teach us the wrong thing about Jesus. But the reality is, we can go to Jesus, our high priest, and we can say, Jesus, I screwed up. I fell into temptation. I made a poor decision. I feel sad. And I'm coming to you because I know you understand.

20:06You understand everything that I'm experiencing because you experienced it yourself. Will you help me in my time of need? So what we sing matters. We must sing the truth to God and to each other because it's all a part of the teaching ministry of the church. We're teaching ourselves and others to think the right things or the wrong things about God. And what are we to sing? Take a look again at the text. Paul says, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

20:48Well, psalms are poetry set to music. It's probably referring to the inspired psalms that we have in the scripture. Hymns are simply religious songs. And I think we have a lot of examples of early hymns in the New Testament, places like Philippians 2, Colossians chapter 1, talking about the person of Christ. Spiritual songs is the most unclear term in this phrase, but it seems like most commentators agree. I think this is true too. This term probably just refers to any song that isn't technically a psalm or a hymn. So something perhaps inspired by God's word that you come up with that may or may not be sung corporately by the church. But I think the big takeaway here is that Paul doesn't say sing, he says sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. In other words, there should be variety to our singing.

21:47We should be singing all types of songs, older and newer songs, different styles of songs, because it is a display of unity and humility. One of the reasons that we sing hymns at New Life that are hundreds or hundreds and hundreds of years old is because when we do that, we are reminding ourselves and each other that the Christian faith is not a new invention. It is not a Western invention. Jesus was not an American. That's just always hilarious to me when people call Christianity a Western religion, a Western religion for white people. Come on. Jesus was a miserable. Eastern man. Almost all of the early disciples were Middle Easterners or Eastern European Europeans or Asians.

22:40So when we sing these old hymns that were written by people from all over the world, from the Middle East and Africa and Europe and Asia, we are saying we are unified with the historic church. We believe and sing the same things that these brothers and sisters have sung all over the world for 2,000 years. It's a display of unity. But it's also a display of humility. Because when we sing these older songs, what we're doing is we're saying, we don't think modern people have it all figured out.

23:16We don't think that in the last 20 or 30 years we've come up with all the answers and had all the experiences. When we sing these older songs, what we're saying is we are humbling ourselves to recognize that brothers and sisters who lived generations before us also knew the Lord, also experienced him in a deep way, also wrote and said true things about him. And singing a variety of songs that are modern in our worship service, that is a great display of unity and humility in the local church as well.

23:54We all have musical preferences. And when we gather to worship, We lay those preferences down for the sake of our brothers and sisters when we sing songs that we don't love in styles that we don't love because we understand that the person sitting next to us or across the room from us, they love that song or that style. It's a way that we die to ourselves. And it's also a very compelling witness to the lost. Think about this, what Matt Merker says. Take a look.

24:30I often teach our members that we want a church marked by diverse musical tastes. Music is so often a badge of one's identity and subculture. So the church has an opportunity to provoke our unbelieving neighbors. Why do such different people enjoy singing together so much? Remember, for every song that resonates with you musically, there are probably church members who are laying down their preferences for your sake. So we sing and we sing truth. We sing a variety of songs to God and to each other as a display of unity and humility.

25:17Now look at that last phrase. We must sing with thankfulness in our hearts to God. That word translated thankfulness could be translated. Gratitude or grace. So when we sing, we are singing to the Lord, and we are to sing to Him with thankfulness and gratitude in our hearts. So I want you to buckle up here for a second because this is going to blow some of your minds. Paul is not only saying that emotion should be a part of worship, he is saying that there is a right way to feel when we sing to God.

26:02There is a right way to feel. Now, a lot of churches have an unbiblical understanding of emotion. And so, for some churches, emotions are dangerous and they're off-limits. Because if you express yourself emotionally in worship, what that means is you are worshiping emotion. You're not worshiping God. And then in other churches, emotion is everything. It doesn't matter what you're singing, what you're saying, whether it's true or not true, because it's all about how you feel. Well, both of those are dangerous, twisted understandings of emotion and its role in our lives and its role in worship. Because, friends, God is an emotional being. We saw earlier that he sings over us with joy.

26:51We know that he experiences sadness when Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus. He experiences anger, especially at injustice. Sin. And we were created in his image. And so, what that means is, we were created with emotions as well. And when we look in the Bible, we see all kinds of people pouring out their feelings to God, perhaps no one as eloquently or as often as David does in the Psalms. So, let's go back to this command to sing with thankfulness in our hearts to God. What are we supposed to do when we don't feel thankful?

27:35Well, I think we have to follow David's example because there are a lot of times in the Psalms, which are his spiritual songs, where he starts off in a really bad place. He definitely does not feel thankful. He feels angry, he feels frustrated, he feels sad, he feels alone. So, what does he do? He sings the truth to himself. He reminds himself of God's character, of God's work on his behalf, of God's promises. And by the end, listen to this: David had sung himself into feeling differently.

28:23He sung himself into feeling differently, he had sung his way to thankfulness. I want you to take a look on the screen at Psalm 13. This is a great, brief example of David doing this. Listen to how he begins. How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me, O Lord my God. Light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death. Lest my enemy say, I have prevailed over him, lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

29:16But I have trusted in your steadfast love. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me. Do you think David felt happy at the beginning of that psalm? He definitely did not. Do you think David felt happy at the end of that psalm? I doubt it. But did he feel thankful by the end of that psalm? Yes, he did. This is important for church people to hear.

30:07You don't have to feel happy when you're singing to God. You do not have to pretend to feel happy when you are singing to God. But friends, we are commanded to be thankful as we sing to God. And we can be thankful when we sing to God because we are always doing better than we deserve. We deserve eternal punishment, but God has poured out his grace and his mercy upon us. No matter what we are going through in this life, we can and should feel thankful to God. Some emotions are always right.

30:48It is always right to feel anger at injustice. It is always right to feel sadness that people are going to hell. It is always right to feel joy when God blesses someone in your life. And it's always right to feel thankful to God, no matter what we're going through. So if we don't feel that way, our emotions are out of order. And one of the best ways to bring them back into order is to do the very thing that David does and the thing that Paul commands us to do. To sing the word of Christ with the people of God so that we can sing. Our way to thankfulness so that we can come to a place where at the end of worship and song we can say, along with David, I will sing to the Lord because He has dealt bountifully with me, even if we have to make that statement through tears because we are genuinely sad about what's going on in our life.

32:00If you're not yet following Jesus, it is going to be very hard, if not impossible, for you to follow this command to sing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. People sing when words fail to express how they feel inside. And when I came to college and saw people singing in worship in a way that I had never seen before in my life, I thought it was the strangest thing I'd ever seen. I had never seen anything like that. People pouring so much emotion into it, people lifting their eyes upward, looking around and singing to the other people around them, lifting their hands in praise.

32:48Some weeping because of what they were going through and still trying to hold on to and believe the truth. I had never seen any of that. It was just a rote thing that we. Did. As far as I knew, it was just tradition. Singing was something that you did if you couldn't play sports. I didn't know what to do with that. But when God gave me new life, he also gave me thankfulness in my heart to him for what he had done. For the first time in my life, I understood what I had to be thankful for. That Jesus came to live and die and rise again for me, for my sins. I went from skeptical and indifferent to thankful, all because of what God did for me in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

33:39And so, if you're here and there's little or no thankfulness in your heart to God, it may very well be the case that you are in the exact same place that I was in when I came to college. And I pray that you will see your own need to be rescued, not just from sin's penalty, but from sin's power in your everyday life. I hope that you'll turn to Jesus in faith. He is the only one that can rescue you. The path to thankfulness begins by knowing what you have to be thankful for in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.

34:20And for those of you who are already following Christ, I want to encourage you, as I have encouraged you for the past couple of weeks, to assess how you have approached. Worship, particularly through song. Have you approached it as a concert, as a critic, or as a Christian? Have you approached it like a concert, where your role is simply to be a passive observer and to just sit and watch, or stand and watch rather than be an active participant?

34:59Have you approached it like a critic, where your role is to pass judgment on the music, the singing, the style, the songs? Or have you approached it like a Christian, where your role is to actively participate in singing to God and other believers to instruct and warn us with thankfulness in your heart to God? If you're a Christian, you're in the choir and you are a part of the teaching ministry of the church. So let's take that role just as seriously as we take the other parts of Christian worship.

35:42Let's pray. Father, as I preach this morning, I am acutely aware that we have not done a good job over the years of teaching our church body the importance of singing and Christian worship and why we sing and what we sing and how we sing and why it all matters. But I am thankful that in your providence we are able to think about those things at a deep level this morning. And we pray that you would transform our worship when we gather together so that the singing component of our worship would truly teach and instruct and warn all of us every week because of what we're singing and how we're singing.

36:58God, I pray for those who don't consider themselves singers, don't consider themselves musical, feel awkward when they sing. I pray that you would help them to see this as an area of obedience where they are participating in teaching and admonishing the church and being taught and being admonished by the church. I pray that our singing would be so robust that nobody even has opportunity. To feel weird because all you can hear is our voices together lifted up to you and to each other.

37:38And God, we pray that you would continue to give great grace and help and encouragement to Caleb and to everyone who helps to lead on our worship team in song. We pray that they would take their role seriously. We pray that they would serve in that role joyfully. And we pray that we would do our part to make sure that they're not putting on a concert, but rather leading us to worship you and to teach and instruct each other.

38:17God, we thank you for your word and the clarity that it brings to the Christian life. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.