Sing the New Song

And I can't quote the whole thing, but I'll quote the last verse. He pictures nature and how nature so beautifully does what God intends for them to do and how happy they are. I mean, he says, you just almost can't think but what the flowers and the birds and all of nature is just happy.

And then he comes to the last verse and he says this, if this belief from heaven be sent, if such be nature's holy plan, have I not reason to lament what man has made of man. And so tonight I would like for us to think in terms of what God intends for us in relation to music. So I'd like for you to turn to 810 for a beginning tonight.

Now, the author of this text is on the left-hand side there and you see the name William Williams. Does anybody recognize William Williams besides my wife? How many have heard of John Wesley? How many have heard of Charles Wesley? This man was a contemporary. He did the very same thing in Wales that John and Charles did in England.

And he was both a preacher and a songwriter. He wrote about 800 songs in Welsh. Most of them have not been translated.

This is his most famous one. And the interesting thing about William Williams is he brought about a tremendous revival in Wales and it was basically by song. There was some preaching, but it wasn't long into a sermon till somebody would just spontaneously begin singing and the Holy Spirit fell on Wales and there was a tremendous revival.

And for years afterward, this was practically the national anthem of Wales. You would see the miners, they say, walking and as they walked along, people would join the crowd headed for the mines to work and they'd be singing William Williams songs, especially this one. So let's sing the first two verses and we'll sing the last verse at the end.

Guide me, O thou great Jehovah. This is an analogy of the children of Israel going through the wilderness. It's applied to us as Christians.

And so I want you just to notice the analogy as we go down through the song. O soul, guide me, O thou great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land. I am weak, but thou art mighty, hold me with thy powerful hand.

Bread of heaven, bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more. Feed me till I want no more. Open now the crystal fountain whence the leek dreams do flow.

Let the fiery cloudy pillar lead me all my journey through. Strong deliver, strong deliver, be thou still my strength and shield. Be thou still my strength and shield.

I need to tell you I can hardly sing, in fact, I can't sing the high notes anymore. I'm almost 80 years old, to satisfy your question as to how old I am. And so I've lost my upper range.

So when we sing, I'm going to let you sopranos sing the high part. Now you can pick up these papers that I sent out to you. I'm basically going to talk about two things tonight.

First of all, I'm going to talk about what music does for the Christian, what happens when we sing. It's my belief that music, singing, is not just something we do to inspire us, it's actually a resource. The Bible says a lot more about music than it says about any other subject, including prayer.

And we had a bishop speak in our churches years ago, and he made a striking statement, and I don't remember what his subject was or anything else he said, but in the middle of his message he said this, beware of the boy who has no song. And what I want you to understand tonight is a person who doesn't have a song is really very spiritually handicapped. Now I believe a person could probably be a Christian who doesn't sing, the deaf people certainly can't sing, so there are some people who just can't sing.

You can't sing what you can't hear. But singing is a resource, and that's really what the message is tonight. What happens when we sing? I want you to turn to 2 Chronicles, a very famous incident, where the children of Judah, we're going back now 2,500 years with William Williams, we went back 300 years to the early 1700s, now we're going back even further to pick up another example.

In this case, the nation of Judah was attacked by the Moabites, the Ammonites, and the Edomites, and they were totally outnumbered. And Jehoshaphat in desperation calls the people together, and in this chapter, I'm not going to read the whole chapter, but he reminds God of a number of things. He says, God, you gave this land to Abraham, your friend.

And furthermore, you said that if we ever have any trouble and we come to the temple, you will hear our prayer. And furthermore, these people who have attacked us, the Edomites, who were the descendants of Esau, the Moabites, the descendants of Lot, the Ammonites, the descendants of Lot, when we pass through their land coming to the land of promise, you did not let us attack them. We just passed through their land and caused them no trouble, and now look what they're doing to us.

This is not fair, this is unjust, and you are a just God. And so Jehoshaphat reminds God of all these things in his prayer, calling on God to help them in their situation. And so I want to pick up reading in verse 11, and I want you to look carefully who this character is that we're going to be looking at for just a moment.

And all Judah stood before the Lord with their little ones and their wives and their children. Now I want you to notice who this man is. Then upon Jehaziel, the son of Zechariah, the son of Benaiah, the son of Jeiel, the son of Madaniah, a Levite of the sons of Asaph.

Does the name Asaph ring any bells? Who was he? Just say it. He was a singer. In fact, he wrote a significant number of the Psalms.

Not only that, he was one of David's counselors. David had three counselors, sort of an inner circle, sort of a cabinet that he went to for advice, Haman, Juduthan, and Asaph. And all of them were singers.

And we find in 1 Chronicles that he appointed them to prophesy with song. Now we're going to be looking at some of this later on, but to me that is very interesting. Here he did this.

Here this singer prophesied. He said to these people, he said, you're not going to have to fight in this battle. And of course, you all know what happened the next morning.

And I think it was at his advice. Jehoshaphat sent them into battle singing. I think it was at the advice of this man, Jehaziel, the son of Asaph.

So that brings us to the first point in our outline. And that is, one of the resources, one of the things that happens is songs result in supernatural enablement, okay? Songs result in supernatural enablement. We're studying Nehemiah in our church right now.

And in Nehemiah 8, verse 10, there is this statement, the joy of the Lord is your strength. Now, of course, you can express the joy of the Lord in ways other than singing, but singing probably is the very best way to express the joy of the Lord. And it says there's strength in song.

Some years ago, we had a man and his wife, Dcio and Olivia. Olivia was an American, Dcio was an Argentine, and they were both singers. She brought her big concert harp into our living room.

Our son, Jeffrey, who died in 2007, was still living. He played the piano, she played her harp, and we all sang. But they told this amazing story.

They had been in, well, they had been in Christian work all their lives. And they were back in the United States on furlough, and they were in Atlanta, Georgia, in a motel, and there had been several murders in the city, and the word had gone out that people were supposed to keep their doors shut. They were supposed to be very wary of strangers because of these two murders.

They did not hear the warning. And they were very friendly people, and they were expecting some friends to come visit them there in their motel that night, and so they left the door of the motel open and in walked these two murderers, and ordered them to the floor. And Dcio did that, and of course, what had happened was that's what they did with their victims.

They had them on the floor, and then they shot them in the back of the head. But Olivia was sitting on the edge of her bed, and she stood up and walked toward them singing a gospel song, and they turned and left. Now that won't always happen.

That won't always happen. And I should have asked the question before I told the story. People often ask us non-resistant Christians, what would you do if someone attacked your family? Well, I'm sure you would all pray.

But I wonder how many of you would remember to sing. This is a spiritual resource, okay? And what I'm going to try to convince you of tonight is this is a very important spiritual resource, and you should make good use of it. You should make frequent use of it, and you will be the better for it.

You will be a stronger person. You will be a better Christian, and better things will happen in your life as a result. Paul and Silas prayed in that prison that night, but they also sang.

And I'm convinced that without the song, you would not have the story that you have. I think the singing and the prayer was all, the singing was part of the resource that they brought to that situation. David understood this.

One of the first things he did when he became king was appointed, set up temple worship in Jerusalem. Two thousand men paid musicians to sing full time in the temple all day, every day. A lot of people are not aware of that.

David believed, I think, that the very best way he could make sure that God would be at the center of his kingdom is if there was perpetual song in that temple every day, all day. And so here you have these 2,000 men, can you imagine? Do you folks have full-time paid singers to come here and sing all day, every day? Brother Jerry? What? Just a couple, but you can sing all day, every day. I'm just trying to make a point here.

The interesting thing is David was, his kingdom was the apex of the kings of Israel. If you look at what happened during his kingship, he took a little country, and by the time he died, it was ten times its original size. It had almost reached the borders that God had promised the nation they would eventually have.

And I think singing was an awful lot of that. I don't know if David out there on those hills when he was singing connected his song with his power over that bear and over that lion, that somehow singing was the reason why he had those powers, and so he wanted that brought into the center of his kingdom when he became a king. I'm not sure what was going through David's mind.

But so, that's my first point. Songs result in supernatural enablement. In fact, Jesus sang before he went to the cross, and it wasn't just a tiny little song, it was the great Jewish Hillel, I think, which is Psalm 113 to 118, six chapters or five chapters, six chapters all together.

And go look at those psalms. They have wonderful praise for God's attributes, and I really believe that that was one of the resources that Jesus used before he went to the cross. In fact, I'd like for you to look at the frame of mind that Jesus had when he was in that garden.

He was in a real struggle. I want you to turn to Mark chapter 14, and he needed every resource that he could muster even though he was the son of God. He was struggling with his humanity.

It says in verse 33, and he taketh with him Peter and James and John and began to be sore amazed. Now, that word means stricken with horror and terror. I never thought of Jesus in those terms.

If you look this word amazed up, that's what it means. It means filled with horror and terror. I would be, if somebody was going to crucify me the next day, and especially with Jesus going to take on the sins of the whole world and all that involved, which we have no idea what all that involved.

He knew he was facing this horrible experience as a human being, and he reacted with horror and with terror. And then it says he began to be very heavy. That means desperately depressed.

So here's Jesus in the garden, stricken with horror and terror and desperately depressed. And what did he do? Well, he prayed all night, but he also sang before he went out to that cross. And I honestly believe that the victory was won before he left that garden.

Because in the garden, you have him in this horrible frame of mind, or this frame of mind where he's really struggling. But when he goes to the cross, perfect poise, he says everything right, he does everything right, his attitudes are right, everything's perfect. I think we win our battles before we get to the battle.

And song is one of our resources, it's one of our pieces of equipment, all right? The Reformers, or the Roman Catholic Church said at one point, Luther did more harm by his songs than he did by his theology. He sent people singing, okay? The next thing you see on your sheet is songs cause God to dwell in our experience. So that's why there is such power in song.

If you turn to, and you don't have to do this, I have the verse right there for you. If you look at Psalm 22.3, it says, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. That is saying that when you sing, if it's God's song and your heart is right, God comes to dwell where he hears his song.

After all, he's a singer, he invented this thing. In fact, we have reference that God is a singer in Zephaniah, it says he's going to sing over us sometime. Can you imagine? I'm 80 years old, this is not going to be very long for me before I probably will experience, I have a son, Jeffrey, who left us in 2007.

I don't know but what Jeffrey's already heard God singing. And I can expect Jeffrey's probably saying, wait till dad hears this. God's a singer.

And when he hears his song, this verse says, that's where he comes. Where's this? Oh, there it is. And there's where he goes to dwell when he hears his song.

So by all means, let's sing. All right. Solomon.

You remember that story where Solomon was dedicating the temple? And the presence of God so overwhelmed the people in that temple, they all had to leave. You all know that incident, don't you? Go back sometime, we're not going to take the time tonight. Go back and look what was happening at the time that God's presence filled the temple.

The music began. It was the music that brought God's presence to fill the temple, just like this says. He dwells in the praises of his people.

And that's what I'm saying. That's why I think David wanted those singers in the temple. I said 2,000.

Actually, I didn't look, I think it was 4,000. I have it here somewhere. It's 4,000.

I had the number wrong. In fact, out of those 4,000, there were 283 of them that he appointed to go throughout Israel and teach the nation to sing. David wanted a singing nation.

He wanted God's presence in that nation. And that, he knew, was a way to have that happen. The third thing you see on that sheet, songs open us to the world of the spirit.

And this one I do want you to turn to, if you will turn to 2 Kings chapter 3. Now in this case, Jehoshaphat was doing what he frequently did, which is very perplexing. He'd go to war with those evil kings of Israel. Jehoshaphat somehow was always cooperating.

In fact, his son married Athaliah, Ahab's daughter. I think what happened with Jehoshaphat is he never accepted the divided kingdom. He was always dreaming, could we put this thing back together? And so he would go to war with these evil kings.

And in this particular situation, they were going out to war with Edom. Yes, Judah, Israel, and Edom were going out to battle against Moab. And they ran out of water.

And you all know the story. They call on Elisha to help them. So Elisha shows up, and we see this in verse 13.

First of all, he has something to say to that wicked king of Israel. He said, look, if it wasn't for Jehoshaphat, I wouldn't even come here and help you at all. But because Jehoshaphat's here, I will help you.

So this is what he says. And Elisha said to the king of Israel, what have I to do with thee? Get thee to the prophets of thy father, and to the prophets of thy mother. And the king of Israel said unto him, Nay, for the Lord hath called these three kings together to deliver them into the head of Moab.

And Elisha said, As the Lord of hosts liveth before whom I stand, surely were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, I would not look toward thee, nor see thee. But now bring me a minstrel. And it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him.

Now, we know that music has something to do with spirits because David came and played and drove evil spirits away from Saul. But this is telling us that the spirit of the Lord also responds to music. Spirits respond to music.

There's a tremendous lie that has been perpetuated that music is amoral. All you need to do is write the right words. So what they do is they take rock music, bad music, and write Christian words, and then they think they have a good song, and they say, well, the church has always borrowed music from the world.

Didn't the Anabaptists sing their songs to popular music of the day? Yes. I'm going to stop here and say something. The world produces two kinds of music.

One is folk music. Those are the songs that, this land is your land, they're folk songs. And the music is good music.

And why do I say that? Because it endures. It goes down through the generations, it's disciplined by time. In its own way, it's sort of classical music.

It's good music. It's not sensual music. And it endures.

That's what the church has borrowed. The church has borrowed the world's folk music. It has never borrowed its pop music, its dance music, its commercial stuff, its little ditties that it sings to sell Chevrolets or Fords.

The church has never borrowed that kind of music. In fact, Martin Luther, who got the church singing after 1,000 years of just choirs singing plain songs, he got the church singing. He had a lot to say about this, the kind of music that he wanted the church to borrow.

And it was not pop music. It was not the kind of music that our people now, people are borrowing from the world. The world's still writing some pretty nice folk music.

In fact, This Land is Your Land is one of them. It was written in my generation. In fact, it's in my hymnal.

I have that tune in my hymnal. So let's not misunderstand. The heathen have always known what kind of music to produce to conjure up the evil spirits.

They never believed that music was amoral. Because it isn't. Music has a lot to do with the world of the spirit.

And if you sing the wrong kind of songs, you will have the wrong spirit motivating you. And so I'll give that for what it's worth. All right.

The verse I have there is an interesting verse. I don't have the verse. Okay.

It's in the next one. Songs open up the prophetic insight and wisdom. Now this one I want you to turn to 2 Chronicles.

I've already alluded to this one, but I want you to see it. Turn to 2 Chronicles chapter 25, 1 Chronicles 25 verse 1. This is what it says. Moreover David and the captains of the hosts separated to the service of the sons of Asaph and of Heman and of Juduthun.

Those are those three men I told you about earlier. Who should prophesy with harps and psalteries and cymbals. See that.

Song opens up our prophetic insight. And the verse I have here is, blessed are the people who know the joyful sound. They shall walk, O Lord, in the light of Thy countenance.

They will have light upon their pathway. They will have a prophetic understanding of the situations and the issues of the day. And they will have clear direction because they sing.

Blessed are the people who know the joyful sound. The joyful sound. The world's music, by the way, is usually very pessimistic and depressing.

Christians sing joy. In fact, I was in India some years ago. And in the city of Bhubaneswar where I was, there was a temple in almost every corner.

And I'd walk past them and I'd hear the wailing in those temples. They didn't do much singing, but what they did sing was depressing music. And the reason why, well, I'll get to that later.

Okay. Blessed are the people who know the joyful sound. They shall walk, O Lord, in the light of Thy countenance.

I forgot something about the spirit. Remember Saul one time was told to go out and he would meet a group of prophets and he would prophesy. Well, he did.

He went out and he saw these prophets coming down the hill and they were prophesying and they were playing music. And Saul joined them and became a prophet for that short period of time. But it was really, I mean, it's interesting to me when you start to look at this subject, the connection between the spirit and prophecy and power and the presence of God.

I mean, I'm trying to show you that singing is a spiritual resource. Okay. And I will say in my own experience, people have known me as a singer all my life.

I've loved to sing. I will say I don't know where I would be today if I had not learned to sing and love singing and make it a major part of my life, all my life. All right.

Let's see. People like David understood this. And so what I'm trying to say is singing is not optional.

It's not just something you should do. It's something if you want to be a full-fledged Christian enjoying all the resources that God has placed at your disposal, you will be a singer. And I'll go back to the bishop who said, beware of the boy who has no song.

He is spiritually handicapped. God's presence is not going to be with him as often as it should be or in the way it should be. He's not going to have prophetic insight.

He's not going to have power. There's just many things. He's going to be a deficient person.

Thank you. Can you be a Christian and not sing? Well, can you be a Christian and not pray? I put the two sort of in the same category. Like I told you at the beginning, the Bible actually says more about singing than it says about prayer.

A lot more about singing. In fact, there are 300 references in the Bible to song. And most of them, by the way, are commands.

Sing unto the Lord, sing unto the Lord. We Mennonites, if there's one command in the scripture and it's only in one verse, we will say that verse has to be obeyed. Are you going to accept it if I say that if you don't sing and you can sing, you're being disobedient? Because these are all, almost all of them are commands.

They say sing unto the Lord. Why does God command us to sing? Isn't singing something we enjoy? Well, it seems like we need sometimes to have commands and especially, I think sometimes we need to sing at times when we feel the least like singing. The children of Israel were down in Babylon and they said, sing one of the Lord's songs.

Oh, we can't. We hung our harps on the willows. We're here in captivity.

We don't feel like singing. That's when they should have been singing. Their Psalms had wonderful things that they could have been singing about God.

And God would have come and dwelt in their presence. They would have had so much benefit from singing. And so I think that's one of the reasons why God commands us to sing, because often we should be singing when we least feel like singing and we're commanded to sing.

All right. Song is important to God. I'm going to quote the verse now from Zephaniah.

The Lord thy God is in the midst of thee is mighty. He will save. He will rejoice over thee with joy.

He will rest in his love. He will joy over thee with singing. Someday we're going to hear God sing.

I cannot wait to hear that. Is it in 50 parts? I mean, I have no idea what it must be like when God sings. Now David was a man after God's own heart.

And I think this is one of the things that is involved in that statement. God's a singer. We all know that David was a singer.

He wrote about 70 of the Psalms. At the creation, it says, all the morning stars sang together. There was a great singing celebration at the creation.

We have one whole book of songs in the Bible. It's the longest book. It's the biggest book of the Bible.

And it directs us to sing the new song. Now what is the subject of this song? Well, the Bible's pretty clear on that one. Would you turn to Psalm 96? What is it we're singing? Psalm 96, here you have the command.

Oh, sing unto the Lord a new song. In fact, you have it three times in two verses. So it tells us what we're to sing.

We're to sing the new song. And in just a moment, we're going to see what that is. Sing unto the Lord all the earth.

God wants every creature on this earth to be singing, just like he has birds singing and he has nature singing. Sing unto the Lord, bless his name, show forth his salvation from day to day. Oh, so the song is about salvation.

Now when people hear that word salvation, they think of going to heaven when they die. Well, that's part of it. But the word salvation comes from the same word that the word salvage comes from.

It means to take a bad situation and turn it into a good situation. That's what salvation is. And God's doing that, I don't know about you, but he's doing that in my life all the time.

And we are to be singing to the world that we serve a God that can salvage bad situations. The Apostle Paul was in prison and he said this. And for years, it perplexed me what Paul meant when he said this in Philippians.

He said, I know this shall turn to my salvation. Now the Apostle Paul was in prison and every day he was handcuffed or chained to a guard for four hours and a shift. And then they took him out and brought another one, four hours.

And people pitied Paul, he was in prison. And Paul said, wait a minute, don't pity me. I'm set for the defense of the gospel.

That word set means providentially placed. Paul never says he's a prisoner of Rome. He always says he's a prisoner of the Lord.

He believed he was exactly where God wanted him to be. Okay, and that's why he sang when he was in prison. I mean, that was his attitude towards.

In fact, if you turn to the end of the book of Philippians, you find out that some of those guards got converted. He says, we're sending greetings from Caesar's household. They were the Praetorian guards that were guarding Paul.

Well, those poor men came in there four hours at a clip and had to listen to Paul pray. They had to listen to Paul dictate his letters. They had to listen to Paul say, talk to people about spiritual things.

They had to listen to that for four hours. You call that a captive audience? I'm not sure who the prisoner was. I don't think it was Paul.

And that's the God we serve. Now, it looked bad. Paul was in prison, but look, we know the larger story.

It's a story of victory. Paul was not being restricted. His story is one of deliverance.

His story is one of salvation. It's one of salvaging. We have a book of the Bible because he was, many books of the Bible because he was in prison.

And so that's what we're to sing about. We're to sing about the way God is a powerful salvation God that delivers bad situations and turns them into good situations. I want you now to turn to Psalm 100.

We're just looking at two psalms here and what they have to say about music, about singing. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord all ye lands. Well, that's an amazing statement right there because I already told you the heathen do not make joyful sounds when they sing.

I don't know of any heathen group I've ever heard of that had songs that were joyful. They're all mournful, and I'll tell you why. Because the gods they serve, and by the way, I was in India, and they told me they have a million and a half gods, and they're still counting.

And all of them are angry. Every one of those gods is angry. And they live in constant fear, and they do things to make the gods pity them so the gods don't cause them any trouble.

In fact, I just had an Indian missionary in my home, and I tell the flashcard story to children sometimes of William Carriot, and it has a picture of a man who had hooks put through his back, and he's suspended on a pole, and they're swinging him around. And I said, do they still do that? Yep, it's illegal, but in places where they can get away with it, yes, they still do this to cause the gods to pity them. And so their songs are mournful, they're depressing.

And he says, make a joyful noise unto the Lord. We have a God who wants us to be joyful. We have a good God.

In fact, I asked that man some years ago when he visited me, I said, what's your message to the Indians? He said, well, the first thing we tell them is there's one God. And they go, that's a relief. We don't have to worry about a million and a half of them.

And then the next part of the message is, and he's a good God. He loves us. He wants to bless us.

So it says, make a joyful noise unto the Lord all ye lands. And notice it's a command, like these other commands. Serve the Lord with gladness.

Come before his presence with singing. Look at your songbook. Look on the front cover.

There it is. Come before his presence with singing. Now, this psalm was written in a day when they had kings.

And people who had special problems would come to the king with their problem. But they didn't just rush into the king's chamber with their problem and say, oh, king. No, no, no, no, no.

The first thing they did was they brought the best present they could possibly bring. And only after they had honored the king with their presence and with everything they could do to show their appreciation for him, then they made their request. I'm not gonna ask for a raise of hands, but how many of you sing before you have your quiet time? Or do you just go rushing into God's presence rudely with your requests, without the gift? He tells us the gift that we're to bring when we come into his presence.

Come before his presence with singing. How much clearer could it be? Now, I didn't used to do it either. I used to have my quiet.

I'd sit down, read my Bible, have my prayer. My wife will tell you that for years now, she'll hear me singing before I start because this verse says the gift that we are to bring. And I have to wonder how much more effective our prayers would be if we brought the gift and didn't come rudely into God's presence with our requests and just to make sure we don't miss it, he repeats it.

Look, verse four, enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. And be thankful unto him and bless his name for the Lord is good. So I just wanna encourage you to come into God's presence with a song.

He's a singer and he loves to have us come into his presence with a song. So I have there at the bottom of the sheet, well, I have some things about the importance of music, I have the 300 references. There are some of the things I just quoted to you.

And then in verse, the second part there, the New Testament concepts of song. There are two of them I have listed there. One of them is song is the authentic expression of the spirit-filled life.

Now, we hear this question all the time. What's the evidence of the filling of the Holy Spirit? And what do some people say? Tongues. Well, now I'm gonna quote the verse that says be filled with the spirit.

Be filled with the spirit, speaking to yourselves in, oh, it doesn't say tongues. That's the verse I quote to my charismatic friends. That's where it should be.

It says speaking to yourselves. If you're filled with the spirit, you're gonna be speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. What does that mean? That means that you will have an unquenchable song.

They can burn you at the stake and you will still be singing. In your most difficult experiences, people will hear you singing. There's nothing that can quench this man's song.

There's something supernatural welling up within him. So song, for you to be a singing person in all of life's circumstances is the evidence that you're filled with the spirit. That's the authentic evidence of being filled with the spirit.

You have unquenchable praise. If you go on in that passage, you give thanks for everything. And the last one is you can submit yourselves one to another.

I never heard anybody preach about being filled with the spirit that a person has a submissive attitude. Brother Jerry, you preach that sermon and send me a copy of it. We have many churches where people do not have a submissive attitude.

Their hackles are always up. I don't listen to anybody. I just listen to God.

He tells me what to do. I don't listen to the church. I don't listen.

You're not filled with the spirit if that's your attitude. But the main thing about that verse is you have an unquenchable song. Well, there's another thing.

Song is the New Testament counterpart of the Old Testament sacrifice. I think I have the verse here. Here it is.

By him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually. That is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name. Oh, so in the Old Testament, they brought a lamb.

And now we're to bring a song. This is the counterpart to the Old Testament sacrifice. Well, what was that lamb to be like without spot? It was to be a perfect lamb.

I sometimes look around in church when people are singing. That's bad. I was listening to your singing, by the way, and I feel free to say this, because it was pretty good.

This congregation sings with enthusiasm, so I can say this now, because you won't feel judged. But there's some people that don't put their whole heart into their singing. Their song is a sheep without a tail.

It has its eye punched out. It's a blemished sheep. We are to give a perfect sacrifice.

God always has wanted a perfect sacrifice. Now, first of all, it has to be a perfect heart. That's the first thing.

We had a man that would visit our church occasionally who could not sing, couldn't carry a tune. And when he sang, he sang with all his heart. I mean, he sang so loud that it was a blemish, we thought, on the congregational song.

I mean, it was above everybody else. But that man, I think, might have had a song that was as perfect as anybody's song in that congregation. He was singing with all his heart to the best of his ability.

So I want to emphasize that first. In fact, they seated him one night beside me. And after church, he was loudly proclaiming to everybody he would never sit beside me again because I got him off the tune.

He was making a joyful noise, for sure. So I want to make sure that you understand that that can be perfect, even though the song, but you should be making this song as perfect as you possibly can with all your heart and make it as beautiful and as enthusiastic and as inspirational, whatever you can do to make your song perfect. That's what God's looking for.

He's looking for a perfect sacrifice. Okay. So that brings us to the next side of the sheet.

You can flip it over. Let's talk about what kind of song shall we sing? Well, there's a lot of confusion in our day, and so I just want, with a few little comments and illustrations to help you understand what kind of song is worthy of Christian singing. Now, Andrew Fletcher quoted something similar to what Brother Tom's quote was.

He was a politician, an English politician. He said, let me write the words to the music of a nation, and we care not who writes its laws. We've had that illustrated in our generation.

The Beatles said two things. Our music is calculated to create rebellion and to lose people's sexual inhibitions. What have we had in the last 30 years since the Beatles? Rebellion and sexual license.

If you were to ask people, why has this nation gone down? I'm not sure they would say it because of the music. I'm convinced that 50 years of this music has done exactly to the nation what the Beatles said they had purposed for it to do, and I would say this man is right. We saw with our own eyes, we witnessed with our ears and with our lives what happens to a nation if it has bad music.

You can make the best laws you want to make, the morals of the people will go down. Plato, the Greeks understood this. They insisted that every boy learn to sing and play a lyre and sing, and they were very careful what kind of music they had.

Plato said, the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state since the styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions. And Aristotle, his student, said this, music directly represents the passions or states of the soul. If one listens to the wrong kind of music, he will become the wrong kind of person.

Now when Samuel played for Saul, it says he was refreshed. They say that it does actually affect us physically. Our pulse, our blood pressure, our breathing is affected by our music.

And it says Paul, Saul was well, that means he was mentally affected. And stores know this, they play the kind of music that will make you most conducive to buy their products. And of course spiritual, the evil spirit departed.

Now before we talk about music, I want to talk about communication. When I went to college, they were always talking about communication. Composition, public speaking, we had to study all that stuff.

And there were four things that, no matter what course you took, this is what they basically were saying. If you want to communicate well, you have to first of all have a theme. My theme tonight has been that music is a resource and I've tried in every way I possibly could to get that theme across, okay.

Now some people get up and speak and they don't really have a very clear theme, they have a lot of good verses, they have a lot of good thoughts, but they don't have a very good theme, they don't have a theme. And so if you would ask them after the service, what was the message about, they'd say, well, there were a lot of good thoughts, but I can't just think what it was about. Well, that's okay, but it's not gonna have the effect it should have if you don't have a clear theme and keep hammering away at that same theme so that nobody forgets the theme, okay.

So you have to have repetition. It has to be repeated often enough that people get it. And I tried to do that all evening.

I was emphasizing this is a resource and this is why and this is what you should do, okay. But the problem is, if you have only repetition, you'll bore everybody. The preacher on the way home from the service once asked his wife, do you think people agreed with my message? Oh, she said, I'm sure they did because every one of them was nodding.

So you need variety. The repetition has to be varied, okay. So the speaker will say, here's my theme, and then he'll have point one, and that's about the theme, and then he'll have point two, that's another aspect of the theme, and then point three is another aspect of the theme, and so he's helping you see that theme from various angles, and he'll tell stories, and he'll do quotes, and he'll do all kinds of things, and he's repeating, but not just over and over the same thing.

Now, I've heard sermons where the preacher would get up and basically said the same thing over and over in the same words. We're not talking about that. We're talking about the variety not only helps keep interest, it also broadens the theme.

It helps to see all many aspects of that theme, and helps you broaden your thinking about it. And then finally, it has a definite conclusion. It has a wrap-up that leaves you feeling that the whole thing has been wrapped up in a package for you to take with you and go home.

Okay. Now, the classical composers did this. That's why their music is classical.

They had a theme. Doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot. How many know Beethoven's Ninth? And then it goes into all kinds of variations, and that theme keeps coming back.

Doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, yeah. That's good. That's what we're looking for.

We're looking for something that's cohesive, something that holds together. Now, I often tell my family, we're in a store. We're not very often in a store together, but I have already said, let's just stop right here.

Would you listen to the music? It's not going anywhere. You could never sing that song. It has no melody.

It's just a bunch of noise that just goes on and on and on, and then finally stops and has no conclusion. That's not good music. That's not good communication.

You do not communicate well, and you don't create a wholesome effect if you don't have at least a little bit of this. Now, the good songs don't have all of this. I'm gonna show you a couple songs that pretty well have all of it, but there'll be some aspects of this.

Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine. That's a lighter song, but if you look at it, it has some interesting repetition with some variety, and it has a good conclusion, and so that's why Blessed Assurance is sung over and over again, because it has enough of this to make it a classical melody. I hope I'm communicating.

Anyway, so I want you to look. Oh, I wanted to say this. Did you know that the church for 1,000 years prescribed the music that was used in the church? I want you to hear it in just a moment.

I'm not quite ready. It's the Plains Song. Now, the church knew that out there they used metered music.

It had a little bit of a rhythm to it, but they danced to that rhythm. It was sensual, and to just make sure that church music had no sensuality to it, they prescribed that all church music was to have no rhythm at all, and we call it the Plains Song, and they sang it for 1,000 years. It changed at the Reformation.

Martin Luther was the person that started the change, and Queen Elizabeth heard the songs they were singing in Geneva, and Calvin was a very strict person, but he did permit metered music, and Queen Elizabeth was back in the Church of England. They were still singing what you're gonna hear, and when she heard what they were singing in Geneva, she said, these are Geneva jigs. These people down there are dancing.

They are singing sensual music. It has a beat to it, and we're gonna sing one of them, and I'm gonna let you decide whether it's a really bad song. Okay, would you play the Plains Song? This is what the church prescribed.

This is what music had to be in the church for 1,000 years. It's actually beautiful. The Amish are still singing a verse.

They're not singing the Plains Song, but it's unmetered music. If you're not gonna be able to do it, just say. Is it gonna work? There it is.

I dare you to tap your foot to this. I dare you. I mean, that does have a reverence to it.

There's nothing sensual about that, and it's beautiful, and there were thousands of these written, and another thing, they weren't permitted to say who wrote them. They were all anonymous. They didn't want anybody to get any glory.

Okay, you can turn that off. You can go home and look, get on the internet and you can get thousands of these. I mean there were thousands of them written.

Now shall we have meter? Shall we have rhythm with our singing? It tends to sensuality if we're not careful. I say yes, because this music has to be memorized. The Amish have to literally memorize those tunes.

Tom, you were with the Amish long enough, weren't you? How many of you have been with the Amish? Is it true you had to memorize exactly how long to hold each? Yes, that had to be memorized. In fact, this became so sophisticated that finally only choirs did it because congregations couldn't do it very well. So what meter does is it permits us to take a song, a brand new song, and sing it together because we know how much value to give to each note.

That's what rhythm does for us. But if we're going to have meter, which I say we should, it is a tremendous asset to our singing, we take on a responsibility. We take a responsibility to make sure that that does not cross the line.

One of my college friends at Shippensburg University was an old Episcopalian woman, and this is how she said it. She said, John, the beat has swallowed the song. So when we're talking about bad music, we're talking primarily about what people have done with the rhythm.

It's the rhythm that can, now the harmony can also do it, and perhaps the melody. But mostly it's the rhythm that makes the song central. I'm going to say it very crudely.

Does it appeal to the upper part of the body or to the lower part of the body? The rhythm appeals to the lower part. And all you had to do was watch Elvis and you could see that. And so that's what it finally comes down to.

All right. We accept rhythm, but we accept a tremendous responsibility to make sure it does not take on a life of its own and swallow up the song. A good song has this in the melody.

In fact, a good song has a good, strong, singable melody that you want to sing in the shower when you're in the morning. Those songs in the grocery store, you're not going to sing those in the shower. You can't sing them.

They have no melody. All right. They have lots of rhythm, and I think I've explained to you why.

So here's a song that you're going to find in almost every hymnal. I have dozens of hymnals at home, and I think this one appears in every one. I want you to notice something.

It was written, the music was written in 1769. This song has been around for 300 years and people are still singing it. I guarantee you they will not be singing Heaven Came Down and Glory Filled My Soul 300 years from now.

I'm not saying that's a bad song, but it doesn't have, it does not have this quality to it. All right. This I'm going to show you why this song is still being sung 300 years from now.

In fact, it's interesting. Not only did the early church have rules for its singing, there was a group of students went to visit the Mayflower No. 2, the replica of the Mayflower.

How many have ever visited that replica? Just a few of you. While they were in a little space, Patricia, was it the size of this church? Probably not. A hundred people for two and a half months in that little space with their animals, whatever pigs and sheep and cows they brought were in there with them.

And so after the description of this was given, one of the students said, well, what did they do? They said, well, they spent a lot of time singing. You can be sure they did to keep their spirits up. And then the little boy said, well, what did they sing? And the guide said, well, they sang mostly psalms because they were reformed people who sang only the psalms.

But she said the interesting thing was during the week they could sing them however they wanted to sing them. They could sing them with harmony, they could do whatever, but on Sunday they sang only the melody because they considered harmony to be a distraction. They considered it to be something sort of sensual, you know, stir the emotions.

So I'm going to say this, do we want harmony? Yes, but again, we take responsibility to make sure the harmony does not detract from the melody, okay? We keep the emphasis where God made us. The people who taught me this in college were not Christians. This is just the way we were made psychologically.

This is the way God made us to experience communication. So here we have it. We have a little pattern here, a little theme, so me doe.

Now, some of you are going to, I'm going to lose you, but try hard to stay with me, all right? Okay, so, and then what we have is it goes up and it goes down, okay? And then here we have it going up and down in an expanded form, sort of an expansion of this pattern right here, all right? Then we have the theme coming back again, so me doe, but it does something different. It comes down to this so. And then we have this repeated with different notes.

Notice, it does the same thing with different notes and it does it twice. And then we have an inversion of the theme, doe, me, so. Instead of so, me, doe, we go doe, me, so.

And then here's the conclusion. We have the highest note in the soprano and we have the highest note in the tenor. And there you have all of that.

You have a theme, you have it repeated with variety and a conclusion. All in this little song. And that's the reason why that song, that tune, will probably never die, because it conforms to the way God made us to experience good communication, wholesome communication.

And so, just so you can think about this, let's sing it. And you think about, I'll try to remind you while we're singing it, that we're going to do this, but we're going to do something different. And then we're going to do this with different notes.

And then we're going to have an inversion of theme and we're going to have the highest note here and the highest note here. And when you're done singing it, it has gone somewhere and it has come to a conclusion. Doe, me, so, sing.

Come, thou, oh, ma. Here comes the theme. But something different.

We're going to do this. Again. last verse to the grave I just think that is so delightful how that is put together now I'm going to show you another one this is by a very important man in music Lowell Mason how many have ever heard of Lowell Mason he was a composer he and he could write classical music he knew his music all right when the gospel song came out and I need to say a little bit about this always drives me up a wall okay I think I have that okay all right the gospel song let me give you the definition a gospel song is a song that has a refrain if it has what we call a chorus or a refrain that is the general definition of a gospel song now some hymns have a little bit of a refrain so there's an exception and some gospel songs like Savior like a shepherd leaders do not have a refrain so I mean there are exceptions but that's the basic if you want to know how many gospel songs are in your him we'll just go count the songs that have a refrain and that's how many gospel songs you have so what is the gospel song well up until the early 1800s all songs were like this they did not have a refrain there wasn't an over emphasis on you don't think about the rhythm when you're singing that you're thinking about the melody so that's that's that's basically a him that's that's what we call a hemp now a gospel song originated in the camp meetings in the south of this country okay now think about it you have a large group of people for the camp meeting there are no hymn books and there are people it's early 1800 some people can't even read let alone read music and so here you have this big group of people and you're gonna sing and you're gonna you're gonna create some songs that they can all sing together so you write a song that's easy to learn that has more repetition and less variety and also has a refrain so that people who can't learn all the stanzas at least can join in the refrain and have a great rallying on the refrain okay those songs were not taken seriously by the church and so that group of songs that were written the church didn't basically was not affected very much but on the heels of that was the Sunday school movement again you have large groups of children who can't read and can't read music and there are no hymn books and so you you write the same kind of song for children of course lots of repetition children love repetition and a lot more emphasis on the rhythm yes children like that and so did the camp meeting people and you have a refrain so the children can all join in on the refrain if they can't help the same way the stanzas on the heels of that was the revival movement both Sankey and Moody and all their associates again you had huge groups of people at first they had no books later they did and you have a lot of these songs written so by the end of the 1800s there were thousands of these songs now Lowell Mason there he is he watched this happening and he said if this trend toward too much emphasis on the rhythm and too much repetition if that continues it will corrupt church music uh-huh if he were living today he would say I told you so is the gospel song bad no in fact some of them as far as I'm concerned even though they fit the gospel song style with a little too much more repetition a little more they still are good songs we just sang one tonight to God be the glory that's a good song bless an assurance that's a good song when peace like a river it is well with my soul that's a good song greatest I faithfulness these are gospel songs that are really quality songs but it went downhill from there the gospel song was the first step toward contemporary Christian music they just kept doing more and more and more and more and so if there again I said if we're gonna have rhythm let's accept responsibility if we're gonna have harmony let's accept responsibility if we're gonna have gospel songs let's accept responsibility okay so Lowell Mason watched this he was living in the 1800s and he said this he said if this trend continues that started with the gospel song if somebody doesn't draw a line if there's not some responsibility taken here this is going to keep going until we have songs dominated by the rhythm piles of repetition shallow without the depth of meaning that the hymns have so what did he do well Lowell Mason was not a man to curse the darkness he was a man I like I've tried to be and like I was I'm trying to be tonight I believe it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness if you don't have something better to say then don't say anything so so what did he do he set out to write songs that were just as easy to learn just as delightful to sing but they were hymns he counted the gospel song with hymns that were irresistible what were they joy to the world rise glorious conquer rise our 10,000 harps and voices their songs we love to sing and their hymns not a one of them is a gospel song he did not write any gospel songs that I know of so what did he do well let's look at this here's a little pattern a little theme dough me dough then you have this is a stepwise progression Ray is missing here you have scale wise progression it goes up to the next note and down okay he continues that pattern with different notes okay then there's a transition here and then here's sort of an inversion of the theme and this appears four times in the him this pattern right here exactly and then it goes to its conclusion there's the highest note in the soprano there's the highest note in the tenor another interesting thing he did is he changed the key this is the key of C this is the key of G and then it goes back to the key of C all of that variety and all of that repetition written into one little song and it's a song we love to sing and it probably will be around in our circles at least to the end of time because it is written the way God made us to experience communication let's sing the song and we'll conclude with this song so me dough rise glorious conquer rise into the native skies we're going back to the key of C the where do you hear the key change man you the clouds were rolled past through those and rain in light Victor or death and hell chair you'll bake and train praises all each angel sweet sits la and clouds his wings the lamb was slain last verse lie here's a key change you hear the change back to the key of C dirt of the roll claim for thine own those fears but with just a word about the hymnal and then I saw us going down that other road with the hymnals that churches were getting and it was tending more and more away from this kind of music and I knew that there were beautiful pieces of music that were being neglected in fact some of the songs we already knew were being lost think of this the church was going in the direction of singing not our churches so much we were still singing a lot of the old hymns but churches were going more and more singing only songs that were written in the last 30 years or 50 years and there's a 2,000 year hymnody a history of some of those wonderful songs that they were never going to learn and some we already knew they were losing I was invited to a liberal Mennonite banquet one night they said would you come and just stand up and spontaneously let's could you lead some songs and I one of my favorite songs is Jesus thy boundless love to me and they already could not sing that song it broke my heart that is a fabulous song and that's what's happening and so I saw this this trend with the music people were listening to with what they were singing what was the kind of hymn books they were choosing and I said wait a minute somebody has to do something about this and so it was my purpose to give you a book that had a lot of good hymns and it has some got some of the better gospel songs but it also has some wonderful him I want you to turn to one I'll teach you one tonight and then we've got to conclude it's getting late 141 this is a little Mason song 141 it's one that was never never appeared in our hymnals before I want you to notice a little theme though it you have a half note and two quarter notes okay then you have a little progression and then it comes back again with different notes a half note and two quarter notes and then it comes back again with that up on the top of the last score and then it has the highest note in the soprano and the highest note in the tenor all in one two little two line song and our congregation sang this song long before this hymnal and we've had visitors come to our church say where did you get that song it's a beautiful song it's a very simple little song and it is a hymn it is not a gospel song let's you know it you know this song it's new all right we're all gonna sing the melody on the first verse and then we'll sing the harmony no father and friend the high I love beaming through all thy works we see thy glory gilds the heavens above and all the earth is full of thee now let's do the harmony thy voice we hear the high presence feel was thou too pure for mortal sight involved in clouds in this bowl rain is the Lord of life and light now I want you to notice the theology here we know not in what hallowed part of the wide heavens thy throne may be but this we know that where thou art strength wisdom and goodness dwell with thee you don't get that in the CCM and the last verse is the one I really like thy children shall not faint nor fear sustained by this delightful thought and what's the delightful thought since now their guard God are everywhere they cannot be where thou are not that's really good stuff to sing and and you only get it you only get it with this kind of music for some reason the lighter music attracts a lighter text that doesn't say nearly as much or as as well as what this does okay let's sing the last verse then we're my children shall not fade nor her fear sustained by this delightful since now their God are everywhere they cannot be where the heart not shall we pray father someday we will hear you sing and it won't be CCM it'll be good solid music written the way you intended for us to experience it and I pray Lord help us to sing your song on this earth the way you want it to be sung help us to sing it as beautifully and as perfectly from our hearts as we can I thank you for this congregation and the love for song that I hear Lord I pray that they will continue to develop their appreciation for the very best songs and may they sing them Lord in all their experiences of life and experience your power and your presence and the guidance of your Holy Spirit in Jesus name we pray amen