Turn with me in your Bibles to where we left off last week. Now we are on Music as Worship part two. And we’ll pick up in Colossians where we left off last week, Colossians chapter three. Colossians chapter three there where Paul gives instruction on how the Colossians were to be conducting worship. Colossians chapter three verse 16 says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with gratefulness in your hearts to God. We’ve come now to our final sermon in this worship series.

And we are focusing, as I’ve mentioned, on the issue of music as worship. Last time we started with a biblical theology of music as worship. So we really looked throughout the Bible to see where music is used as worship. And we saw a lot of different things. We saw really centrally in that sermon where David installed the first worship team.

They’re in First Chronicles 15 and 16, and we saw that Israel’s worship leaders were instructed to do three things. To bring to remembrance who God is and what he’s done for them, so to help the people remember, and then secondly, to thank God, and thirdly, to praise God. So that is the three purposes of their worship music there in 1 Chronicles, to remember, to thank, and to praise God.

And the music of Israel was designed for this very purpose. And as we saw, yes, they used a variety of instruments, all the instruments that they had. And most importantly, Music was designed to be sung congregationally, to involve all of the people in the worship of God. And that’s what we have seen so far in our study of music as worship.

So tonight, I would like to now transition to thinking about what we do. In our worship, in our music as worship, and then also what we don’t do. So why we do what we do and why we don’t do what we don’t do. Really, this is focused on the type of music and songs that we sing and don’t sing.

And as we get started on this topic, I want to point out a really helpful resource, and I’ll reference them later on as well, but that is the ministry. I mentioned them in Sunday school this morning as a ministry we use a lot for good resources, and that is G3 Ministries. The G3 stands for Gospel, Grace, and Glory.

And they have written a lot about modern worship and how we should think biblically about how we worship in this day and age. And just to give an example, they have a good definition of how biblical worship music ought to be. This is what they say. This is their description of worship music and how it is to be biblical. This is what they say. Biblical worship music is used in the corporate worship of God that is regulated by scripture, congregational in nature, theologically rich in content, and fitting in form to the sacred purpose for which it is offered. So that’s a good description. It’s biblical, it’s regulated by scripture, it’s congregational, it’s theologically rich, and it’s fitting in its form to the purpose that it is designed for. And they go on to say that the historic reform tradition prioritizes singing the Psalms and theologically substantive hymns sung by the whole congregation in a manner that fits the gravity and joy of worshiping a holy God.

I think that is a good summary of how we ought to think about worship music. I want to spend some time thinking about that this evening. As I mentioned, we’ve spent six months now considering what worship is and what that looks like, not only in our lives, but in our worship services. And so now once again, we need to consider what is the worship of God for? and what kind of music serves that purpose. So that’s what we’ll be thinking about this evening.

And as we talk about the reformed tradition of worship, one principle that’s often explained is the regulative principle of worship. And that to kind of give some definition to that, again, this is a reformed principle of worship. And basically the regulative principle is this, that the elements of worship are limited to what God has commanded in his word. That we worship God the way he told us to. Now this is a general principle.

Some are more strict with this than others. Again, there are those I mentioned last week, some who use this principle for the most part to say that we can’t worship with modern instruments because those instruments aren’t mentioned in scripture. Those churches sing acapella, because I don’t know many that can play the lute anymore, or any of the instruments used in Scripture. So they use that principle in that way, and that’s far stricter than I think it’s intended to be used. This is a regulative principle, not a rule.

And really, generally, I think it’s a good principle to do the things God has commanded in Scripture when we worship Him. In fact, really this entire series has focused on that. What does the Bible say about our worship of God? And how is scripture informing those things? That’s really the regulative principle. The other side of that is sometimes called the normative principle. And the normative principle says we can include in worship whatever God has not forbidden.

Now that might sound nice, but that’s a pretty big gray area. As long as God doesn’t specifically say no, then we can do anything in worship. That leaves a lot to be interpreted. So I do think it’s a good idea to, as close as we can in our day, stick to what God has said in the worship of himself. It doesn’t really line up to what the Bible says as we’ve already seen to just do whatever we want as long as God hasn’t said no yet.

For example, remember Nadab and Abihu. They were doing things the way they thought was best and God killed them because he said, I have said how to be worshiped and that is what you should do. They offered strange fire and did what God had not commanded. Also, you have passages like Deuteronomy 12, 32 that says, whatever I’m commanding you, you shall be careful to do, and you shall not add to or take away from it. In Matthew 15, Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for teaching us doctrines, the commandments of men. In all these, you see the principle of do what God has said.

God has given us instruction in a lot of things, and so as far as we can, we ought to follow the instructions God has given us. But again, the regulative principle doesn’t mean every detail of worship has to be specified. There’s no chapter in the Bible that lays out a worship service for us. So we do have to use some interpretation in the way that we do these things, but our intent ought to be to do what the Bible says, to worship God in the way that he has instructed us to.

And one of those elements in which God has instructed us is singing. God commands the church to sing. The question is, how and what do we sing? And I think the passage we opened with is helpful in shaping our thoughts on this. Colossians 3.16, once again, says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, with all wisdom and teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with gratefulness in your hearts. And there are three elements of this verse that I’d like to look at. First of all, singing is to be centered on the word of God. The introductory phrase there is, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, and one of the ways that is to be done is through singing. So therefore, our singing, what we sing, ought to contain the word of God so that it can dwell in us richly.

Sound theology shapes everything that we do in our Christian life. But probably in no other area does theology affect our practice as much as in singing. We are formed by what we sing. We remember what we sing. And what we sing remains in our minds and it shapes our thoughts throughout the day. The words that we sing shape our belief. For example, I’m gonna start by picking on an old song because I’m gonna pick on plenty of new songs later on. So just wait, we’re gonna balance this out.

But when you think about what we sing, where in the Bible does it say that the father turned his face away? There is no verse that says the father turned his face away from the son on the cross. First of all, the father doesn’t have a face to turn away. And second, while Jesus does cry out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

He’s quoting Psalm 22 verse one, which is an entire psalm about the crucifixion. A psalm that he is fulfilling in that very moment. A psalm in which the entire point is that God has not in fact forsaken. even though it may feel that way. Because if you keep reading in Psalm 22, you get to verse 24. Psalm 22, 24 says this, for he has not despised and he has not abhorred the affliction of the afflicted. And get this, in Psalm 22, 24, he has not hidden his face from him. The same speaker that said in verse 1, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Verse 24, he gets to the realization he has not hidden his face from him.

And Jesus on the cross gasping for his last breaths. can’t quote the whole Psalm 22 to them to show I’m fulfilling all of the things that this speaks about, including dividing his clothing, casting lots, and all of the detail given to us in Psalm 22, Jesus quotes verse one, so it’ll bring to mind to them everything there that they are seeing before their eyes. And so, he’s saying to them that he is the crucified Messiah Psalm 22 is speaking about. And if we think about our theology, the father cannot be separated from his eternal son. He remains in constant communion with him, otherwise he is not the triune God any longer, which is one of Jesus’s main points in the Gospel of John, if you have noticed. but we learn and we assume this turning away theology by what we sing.

And there are many other older songs that have lines in them that probably aren’t as doctrinally accurate as they could be. Some we’ve changed in the way that we sing them, “And Can It Be” is one of them. But there are some lines that we need to carefully think through when we sing the worship of God. So I picked on one old song. We’ll come back to some newer songs later, so just be patient. But our worship is to be biblical in its words.

And next you see in this verse, Colossians 3.16, it says, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Teaching, singing is teaching. It ought to be teaching one another. Singing is admonishing one another. Singing is one of the teaching ministries of the church. We teach theology by what we sing. Singing shapes who we are. And so what we sing ought to line up with what we believe. And lastly in this verse, it says, singing with gratefulness in your hearts. Again, going back to what we started with in this idea of what worship is, our disposition in worship matters.

We started by looking at Psalm 24, where it says, who may ascend, in verse three, who may ascend into the holy mountain of Yahweh and who may rise into his holy place? That is to say, who is able to worship God acceptably? Who is qualified or worthy of worshiping God? And it gives several qualifying answers, and one of them is, he who has a pure heart.

And purity of heart, as we looked at, means to have the right attitude, or the right motive in our worship, the correct disposition, to come to God with the right, sincere attitude. Exactly the opposite of what we saw in King Saul. when he offered worship the way he saw fit to get what he wanted. That is not what we do in worship. Purity of heart means coming to worship God with a proper attitude of humility and reverence and thankfulness, as we’ve seen throughout Scripture in this series. Not with the attitude of self-centeredness or self-service or manipulation, trying to get from God what I want. That’s why I’ve come to worship Him. We come to worship God to give back to him, expecting nothing in return because of what he’s already given to us, singing with gratefulness in your hearts.

And as we remember some of the principles we’ve seen throughout this series, and even as we saw last week, and as this applies to music in our worship, some of the principles we see related to our music is our music ought to be directed to God. both singing about Him and singing to Him directly.

We see this in Scripture. You look at the Psalms, many of the Psalms begin with a direct address to God. Psalm 3 starts, O Yahweh, how my adversaries have become many. He starts right off talking to Yahweh. Psalm 4, answer me when I call, O God, my righteousness. And many others direct the people to praise Yahweh. They start by saying, to the people, praise him. Psalm 146, verse one, praise Yahweh, oh my soul. Psalm 147, one, praise Yah for it is good to sing praises to our God, for it is pleasant and praise is becoming.

We are to sing to and about our God. That’s what worship ought to be in our music. Again, we just saw worship ought to be rooted in his word. We ought to be singing the words of God back to him. We have to be singing scripture as we just saw in Colossians chapter three.

Our songs should be full of scripture. This is a big reason why a few years back we started incorporating the Psalms into our worship. Now, many of the hymns include lines from the Psalms, but we’ve begun to learn entire Psalms and sing them. And that can be challenging today, depending on the arrangement or the way the words translate over to English and trying to sing them the way they would have in Hebrew is hard, but we can attempt at least to sing the Psalms and sing God’s word back to him. God wrote us worship songs. We should sing them as much as we can.

Thirdly, as we saw last week, songs ought to be congregational. music as worship ought to involve the people of God. It is not a performance. It’s not for the worship leader to get up and perform for the people. The worship leader is to help the people worship God in singing. As we just saw, fourthly, it ought to be edifying. It teaches and it admonishes. And fifth, it ought to be reverent and joyful. We ought to have the right disposition in our worship.

And honestly, Those five principles that we’ve seen from Scripture as to what worship music ought to be already rules out a lot of what passes for worship music today. Music that is performance-based, or theologically shallow, or music that’s focused on the individual worshiping rather than the one who is to be worshiped. And this is completely opposed to the biblical pattern of worship that we’ve seen, even though it’s very popular and makes a lot of money. But what you need to realize is worship music on the radio and on the streaming services that we use to listen to music, that music plays for a market.

And the markets reward what sells. What sells is not always what serves the worship of God. What sells is what serves the people. And so, just because something is popular does not mean it is the best worship song for the people of God. Now, some radio worship music is excellent. There are great worship songs that are popular today, but much of it is not. Some of it’s fine to listen to for entertainment purposes. If you enjoy that music, that’s great. but it’s not fitting for worship. It’s not fitting for the people of God in the congregation to worship God with. So along these lines, I wanna take a few minutes to think about why we don’t sing what we don’t sing. Because that’s important today. There’s a lot of music out there. So why is it that we don’t sing what we don’t sing?

And really what I’m talking about is a lot of the, like I mentioned, modern worship music you hear often on radio or Spotify or however you listen to music as you drive around or whatever. And often you’ll also hear these in contemporary church services.

Now I’m not talking about the church services that play like ACDC and popular rock and not even Christian songs. There are churches that do that, you know. They just play secular music because it sounds good. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the worship songs that because of their popularity are adopted into churches, often not even knowing where those songs come from and the theology behind them. So I want to think about a little bit the problem of modern worship music. And again, not all modern worship music is bad. That is not what I’m saying. We sing some modern hymns that are absolutely wonderful and some of my favorite. We sing songs that have been written recently in the last couple years. So I’m not saying that older is always better. That’s obviously not the case.

But modern worship music has also produced some widespread theological and practical issues in churches. Honestly, modern worship music has introduced a lot of Pentecostal theology into otherwise non-Pentecostal churches without their even knowing it.

G3, again, is a great resource, and they published a great article. And the title of that article, and then they had follow-up articles that you can follow after that, but the title of that article was Stop Singing Hillsong, Bethel, Jesus Culture, and Elevation, four of the biggest name bands there are today in Christian worship music. And the article exposes a lot of the issues with these groups and the songs that they produce. Since this article was written, there was a Netflix documentary that came out about all of the corruption going on within Hillsong and their music group. This is a worldwide platform in Netflix writing about the corruption within this church, just to let you know the issues that we’re talking about.

But most importantly of all, there’s a lot of moral issues and things that go on in there, not only their purpose and practice, but just the moral rot that happens in these churches, because all of these groups come from churches. They were their worship teams that started making and selling music. It became wildly popular and now is incorporated into other churches’ worship.

But most importantly of all, all of these music groups come from churches that are led by false teaching heretics. And I don’t use those words lightly. They’re people that teach things contrary to scripture, contrary to the gospel. That’s where those groups come from.

Even though they’re music, If you read it or hear it, some of their songs sound great. But what you don’t realize is the theology behind it and the theology that’s revealed in the songs that aren’t quite so great. And then you move to the songs that are actually quite bad, but because people have become fans of this music, they don’t even notice the bad theology anymore. And again, that article exposes a lot of great things. It’s a great article to read and to be informed on what’s behind groups like that. And I could send it to you if you’d like me to. You just need to let me know in one way or another. But just to highlight some of the issues with not only these four groups that are named, but a lot of the modern popular music and groups that are out there today.

First of all is shallow theology. The songs that are sung often, again, not all groups, there are some great music that’s being produced with tremendous theology. But many of the popular songs communicate something that might be true, but doesn’t teach you much of anything.

And again, music is to be for teaching and admonishing. Oftentimes they’ll take a general emotional statement and repeat it about 15 times in the song. In fact, this music has often been called 7-11 music because it’s the same seven words 11 times in a row.

I’m not kidding, that’s what this music is. For example, here’s a song that’s pretty popular. You might have even heard it on the radio. It’s called Good Good Father. It’s a true, it has true things in it. But listen to how this song goes. Just listen to a few of the lines of the song. Oh, it’s love so undeniable, I, I can hardly speak. Peace so unexplainable, I, I can hardly think. As you call me deeper still, as you call me deeper still, as you call me deeper still into love, love, love. Then there’s the chorus.

You’re a good, good father. It’s who you are. It’s who you are. It’s who you are. And I’m loved by you. It’s who I am. It’s who I am. It’s who I am. You’re a good, good father. It’s who you are. It’s who you are. It’s who you are. And I’m loved by you. It’s who I am. It’s who I am. It’s who I am.

And that chorus is repeated three to four times or more if the spirit is leading. Now has God a good father? Yeah, he is. Am I loved by him? Yes, I am. And I repeat, it’s who I am over and over and over. And now who is my focus on? In the worship of who?

There’s another song that I’m not gonna read, but the song is about God’s reckless love. I mean, do words not have meaning anymore? There’s absolutely nothing reckless about God. Reckless, no. These are incredibly shallow but emotionally driven mush that teach you almost nothing about God.

And while they build this tempo, while they repeat these lines and the tempo of the music increases and increases so that it elevates your heart and produces adrenaline in you so you feel really good by the time you get through all those choruses, It’s just manipulating emotion.

And it’s not teaching the deep truths that worship ought to be doing. Secondly, a lot of the songs that are produced today are nothing but romantic individualism. Many modern worship songs use primarily the first person of I and my and me. They’re more focused on the worshiper than on the one we worship.

The songs have a very romantic sense that more closely resembles a love song you’d hear on the radio. For example, another song you may have heard before. It’s called How He Loves Me. Again, not surprisingly, because it’s one of the few lines in the song. This is what it says, one of the verses and then the chorus. So heaven meets earth with a sloppy wet kiss. And my heart turns violently inside of my chest. I don’t have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way, and here’s the chorus.

Yeah, he loves us. Whoa, how he loves us. Whoa, how he loves us. Whoa, how he loves us. He loves us. Whoa, how he loves us. Whoa, how he loves us. Whoa, how he loves us. Oh, whoa, how he loves us. Repeated ad nauseum. I mean, heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss. What does that even mean? What are we saying here? And this is a worship song. And who is the focus on again? It’s on us, and how much he loves us, and it’s us, and it’s us, and it’s us.

A third characteristic of a lot of worship songs, I’ve mentioned a little bit already, but most contemporary worship is performance-based. A lot of churches now incorporate a lot of different stage lighting and smoke and effects. In the songs, they repeat the instrumental bridge section, so you’re just sitting there watching while the band goes off and does their thing. And then a lot of churches hire professional bands, and then there’s an applause after they perform.

Modern worship has really turned into a concert. And it transforms the act of worship into something totally foreign from what scripture says it ought to be. That’s not worship. It’s not. It might be a good Christian concert, but it’s not the worship of God as he has instructed us to do so.

And the reason why that’s a problem, the fourth principle here, that you see in a lot of modern worship music, is the loss of the congregation. Often when the music is too loud or too soft, or the lights are too bright, or the fog is clouding up the room, or the lights are too low, you can’t follow along to the music, and the congregation stops singing. A good question for any worship service concerning its music ought to be, are the people actually singing? And not only that, can you hear the people singing? Part of the purpose of worship is to sing to and with each other. And if you can’t hear each other, what are we doing?

And then, as I mentioned, there’s a lot of concern with the authors and sources of this music. Again, a lot of this comes from, at least a lot of the highly popular stuff, comes from movements with serious doctrinal problems. I’ve already mentioned four of them, Bethel, Hillsong, Elevation, and Jesus Culture, which come from ministries that you should have absolutely no part of. And the theology of these songs often can’t be separated. from the theology of the songwriters. When you understand where it’s coming from and you actually think about the words that you’re saying.

I recently saw a pastor share his concerns with this style of music and I think they’re really helpful. I think this is how he and really how we determine what we should and should not sing. First of all, if we can’t recommend their ministry, we should not recommend their music. Singing, as we’ve seen, is a teaching ministry of the church. So if we truly believe that the ministries that produce this teaching are unsound, that they don’t teach the words of God, that they promote serious theological errors, and they’re unhealthy ministries, they’re leading people astray, they’re leading unbelievers away from God, and they’re leading true believers into a misunderstanding of who God is, Why would we put their songs on your lips? Why would we sing that on a Sunday morning? Because we communicate, whether we intend it or not, when we sing songs, that that music ought to be listened to. And when it comes to anything that we as pastors promote, with the books we recommend, the conferences we promote, the missionaries we support, and the songs that we sing.

We’re communicating trust in those things. That’s part of the role of a pastor. And all of the things that we point you to serve as recommendations, whether we know it or not. So we need to be very careful in the things that we include. And people really do follow this music back to their ministries. Many Christians, who’ve since come out of those sorts of ministries, they tell you, I heard the music and I liked it. And so I wanted to check more out. And so I listened to more. And so then I started listening to their pastors and preachers. And the more and more they dug into it, the more they were drawn into these false teaching ministries. The music often functions as a gateway into these things. And this shouldn’t surprise us. Because Proverbs 13 20 tells us that he who walks with the wise will be wise, but the friend of fools will suffer harm. Don’t associate with fools, with dangerous things. You’ll suffer harm.

And the voices that we invite into our life shape us. And this is true not just of music. This is the podcast we listen to, the music we listen to, the preachers we listen to online, all of those things. We need to be careful. We need to be discerning people. Now, there are some things we can listen to if we’re careful and discerning that aren’t necessarily worship songs all the time. I’m not saying that. But we need to be thinking about the things that we’re having as input.

In fact, these groups understand this reality. The worship leaders of these groups, the preachers and ministry leaders, They often instruct their music, their band, their worship leaders, that they’re the tip of the spear for their movement. They tell them that. That your music is the tip of the spear for their movement. They want to bring people in through their music.

And so if we believe that a ministry is teaching error, we shouldn’t be surprised when people follow their music back to the ministry. Also, there’s the issue of the financial support of these ministries. And whether it’s through things like CCLI licensing that you pay the fee for to use music every year, or even through your Spotify playlist, every time someone uses their songs, they get royalties. And this is financial support of these ministries. It really amounts to actively funding the ministries that produce this music. Should we financially support ministries we believe are false teaching?

2 John has something to say about that. 2 John 9-11, anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. The one who does, the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son. But if anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting. For the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds.

Now, we can’t often understand or control the way that financial royalties work with music or things like that, but we can know that our participating and listening to this, or even singing it, is a contribution to their ministry. Money is a form of partnership. And money, financial support, is an extension or an expression of actual support.

So we should not use congregational worship that would support ministries that we would never give money to. Another issue has to do with me as a pastor. I can’t bind your consciences with music, teaching. That is not true. Every Sunday I call you, God’s people, to participate in the worship of God. I ask you to pray and to sing and to read and to listen to God’s word. And in doing that, I am binding your conscience to do so. I’m not merely suggesting that you participate, I am calling you to participate in the worship of God here in our worship services.

And this is a tremendous and weighty responsibility. Can I confidently stand before God and His people knowing that what I’m asking you to do is biblical? That’s on my conscience. I can confidently ask you to sing psalms and biblically sound hymns and spiritual songs like I’m supposed to. I can confidently ask you to praise God and petition him in prayer. I can ask you to confess biblical truth along with the rest of us. But what I cannot do is ask you to sing songs by ministries I know are teaching a false gospel.

We live in an age of incredible musical access. We have an amazing amount of access to good Christian music, good worship music. I have about 15 different hymnals on my bookshelf. There are tons of great songs out there. And there are biblically sound ministries producing more new songs that are both beautiful and biblical every single year. There is good music out there.

So even if you do find a song from one of these groups that might sound okay, my conviction is that there are greener pastures to feed the sheep in. There are pastures that I trust to feed the sheep in where there’s no weeds. and there’s nothing that they can get caught up in.

Again, their music is designed for performance, not congregational singing, which is unfortunately why a lot of worship leaders like them. Too often, worship leaders are simply fulfilling their desire to perform and their desire for attention. Too often that’s the case. Rather than leading the congregation to worship God themselves, it becomes more of watch me worship God as I perform. But congregational worship is not a concert.

Paul tells believers in the parallel passage to the one we’ve been focusing on in Ephesians 519, there he says, to speak to one another. in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. These things are for one another. We are to speak to or sing them in a way that one another can hear them and benefit from them. So this, as we’ve seen in this music of the church, ought to teach and encourage and build up the body. And so the best worship songs on a Sunday morning or Sunday evening encourage the entire congregation to lift their voices together.

Now, that being said, there’s often a objection that comes up when you’re criticizing, as I’ve been doing, modern worship groups and music that aren’t sound, but have music that by itself seems fine. And usually the individual that’s brought up in the discussion, in this objection, is what about Horatio Spafford? Who went on later in life to compromise the gospel and to walk away from God and did some disturbing things later in his life. After he wrote, It Is Well With My Soul. So how can we sing It Is Well With My Soul and not sing some of the songs from these other modern groups? That’s hypocritical. And the answer, I think, is simple. These situations really aren’t comparable. The influence of Horatio Spafford doesn’t exist. Horatio Spafford doesn’t have a church or books or conferences or a podcast.

The same can’t be said about these big groups like Bethel and Hillsong and Elevation. These are ministries with very influential platforms and active teachers and conferences and schools and publishing industries and big financial institutions. Very active ministries and their music functions as a front door to those ministries. The same is not true of a hymn writer that’s been dead for 200 years. You’re not gonna follow that music back to anything Horatio Spafford, it just does not exist. So that danger is not there for them.

So yes, we can take out this individual song that he wrote and see that it is good and right to use in worship. Because one of the demands on me as a pastor, once again, is found in Acts chapter 20. Acts chapter 20 verses 28 and 29, Paul instructs the elders of the church. Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. As your shepherd, I have to be on wolf duty. And I can’t ignore wolves because they sound pretty.

Now, not every song we sing is going to be perfect, as I’ve highlighted already, a song that we do sing. And not every hymn author is recommendable. And there may be lines here and there of a song that we can either change or not sing that part. But we need to exercise wisdom in choosing which pastures we feed the flock in every week. As Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 21, examine all things and hold fast to what is good. And that’s what we need to do in our worship too. So I’ve addressed why we don’t sing what we don’t sing. Now, what is it that we do sing? What is it that we sing on a regular basis here? Well, we’ve seen in Colossians and Ephesians we need to be singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, so we sing psalms.

As I mentioned earlier, we started incorporating this a few years ago, and I’ve really enjoyed learning to sing the words of scripture together. And this has always been part of the tradition of Reformed churches, to sing the psalms. because the Psalms are God’s songbook. God wrote these songs and Scripture is given to us to be profitable. And the Psalms as songs ought to be sung as we can.

And again, the Psalms are so helpful and edifying. They cover a range of human experience. You have Psalms that are Psalms of lament or praise or repentance or Psalms of longing or joy or anger or doubt or hope or any situation you find yourself in. There’s a Psalm that speaks to it. And the Psalms form our way of thinking about these things because we see that the Psalmist is like me. He’s experiencing these things. And he shows me how to come back to God in them. The Psalms are so valuable.

And again, they were used throughout the history of the Reformed Church. In fact, in Geneva, John Calvin published a Psalter for congregational singing. And the Reformed confessions all affirm the singing of the Psalms in our worship. The other thing Paul mentions is hymns and spiritual songs. And I put these together because there’s really not a lot of differentiation between them. They’re songs that are biblical in content, but they’re not Psalms. They’re worship songs that are put together outside of the Psalter.

And these songs have been written and sung throughout the church. Early in the early church, they would sing Mary’s Magnificat. They would put that to music and sing it. They would also sing the song of Simeon, where he introduced the Lord Jesus Christ as a baby. Then you had songs that came about in the medieval church. And then Martin Luther wrote, a mighty fortress is our God. So you have a rich history of good hymns and spiritual songs.

So how do we determine which ones we sing? Well, here’s some helpful questions that I found on an article by G3 that are helpful questions to ask when we think about biblical songs. Here’s what they had to say. These are their questions. Number one, is the content biblical? That’s what we’ve been talking about. Is this content accurate to what the Bible says? Are the words faithful to scripture? Is the theology sound as we looked at already? Does the song that we’re singing teach truths about God that align with what he’s told us about himself? Is the language clear? Can the congregation understand it? And if not, can we either explain it, what it means? Or maybe we shouldn’t sing a song that nobody understands what they’re saying.

Is the music fitting? to the song? Does the tune serve the words or does it dominate or interrupt the singing of the words? Again, can the congregation sing it together? That’s the purpose of worship. Could you preach this song? I think that’s a great question. Could you preach the words of this song? Is the content biblical enough that you could preach a faithful sermon from the lyrics of the song? The song ought to be that biblical. If it’s supposed to be used for teaching and admonishing, the same thing that sermons are to be used for, we ought to be able to preach the songs that we sing because they’re so full of scripture and theology.

Could a new believer learn theology from it? Or does it just describe feelings? Does it direct our worship to God? Or is it just talking about a generic spiritual experience? Could you sing this in any era of the church? I think that’s helpful. Would this song be able to be sung in any area of the church?

If not, it might clue you in that the song’s not necessarily about God. It might be more about the people singing it. So those are all questions that are helpful in determining good songs to sing. Again, not every old hymn is a good song. Not every new song is a bad one. But we ought to be discerning in the songs that we sing. And as we ask these questions about songs, we can determine whether or not songs are fitting for our worship. And a lot of thought also goes into the choice of songs for individual services.

As I plan services each Sunday, there is an order and a lot of thought that goes into why we sing what we do when we do. Again, Paul instructs us that all things ought to be done decently and in order, which means there ought to be some intention into what we do when we come together. So as I pick songs for, say, a Sunday morning, it’s not just my favorites. I’m trying to do something in the order of our worship service. I begin every Sunday with an uplifting song. We start by bringing ourselves up to worship God. The point of the first song is to bring our focus where it ought to be.

And so we often sing, come Christians, join to sing, or come ye sinners, poor and needy, or any songs that point us to the worship of our God, point us to where our focus should be. And then, as we have been the last few years, we sing a psalm, singing the very words of scripture to follow that. And we have some other parts of our service, like the confession reading, the offering, the reading of scripture, the prayer, all those elements of our worship. And then we have two songs before the sermon. And in those songs, I try to find songs that are going to focus us in on what the Bible has to say to us that day. I take what the theme of the sermon is and as much as I can, I try to find songs that go along with the theme and help us to bring our focus even more in tune with what we are about to be thinking about for the next 45 minutes.

And then we have the closing song that help us reflect on what has just been said. And all of that is intentional and purposeful. A lot of planning goes into the order of the songs that we sing. And so, all of that is so our worship is glorifying to God, that it’s intentional and it’s purposeful in bringing our focus to the importance of God in our worship.

And now that we’ve covered all that, That is why we don’t sing what we don’t sing, why we do sing what we do sing, why we sing what we sing on a Sunday morning. Now, as we’ve been focusing on worship for six months now, now to the question that I know you’ve all been waiting for.

Are drums biblical? Are any instruments unbiblical? And as we saw last week, really the answer is no. There’s no list of prohibited instruments. Scripture mentions a wide variety of instruments that are used in worship. Really, it amounts to everything that they had and could play, they were to play for the glory of God in a way that serves the worship, including loud percussion instruments.

Again, remember we read Psalm 150 last week. That’s a whole list of instruments. They’re singing to the choir, singing to the Whatever you call it. Orchestra, thank you. That’s what the song is directed to, to the orchestra. Sing your instrument, sing your instrument. Sing to the glory of God. That’s music as worship. But we do need to ask, if we are to incorporate an instrument into our worship, does the instrument serve the worship of God? Does it serve the singing in the music of God?

Or does it replace or hinder it? Sometimes drums are not done well, and they serve to interrupt or overtake the purpose of congregational singing together. Other times, I’ve heard drums done really well. And there they give a little rhythm to the music, but they’re not so overpowering that it interrupts what the purpose of the worship is. So there’s nothing that says drums are unbiblical. As long as they’re done with excellence in a way that serves the worship of God, and then it is biblical. So that’s my perspective on drums or any other instruments in worship. And that is music as worship.

And that’s the conclusion of our series this first half of the year on worship. I hope that it’s been helpful and clarifying and edifying for all of us to help us think about why do we worship? And what is it that we do when we come together to worship God?

And just to give you a little update, Ben Mulparthy and I are planning to do a conference on worship in July over in Seffner. And we’ll have some information on that so that if you’re available, it’s a Saturday, July 12th, I believe. If you’re available that Saturday, either for part of the day or whatever it may be, you can come be part of that conference as well as we talk about these things. Pastor Pius is gonna be part of the panel discussion there as well. So I’m looking forward to that and really taking all that we’ve studied in the last six months and fitting it into a couple sermons in one day.

That’s gonna be the difficult part. But that is our series on worship. Stand with me as we close in a word of prayer this evening. Our God, we thank you. We come to you with thankful hearts, as your word says that we ought to when we come to worship you. We thank you for the music that you have gifted the church, not only in the Psalms and the words that you wrote to be sung, but even in the gift of the good and theologically rich hymns that have come to be in the history of the church, the songs that your people have come up with to worship you. And we just pray that as we consider our own worship in singing and music as worship, that we would seek to be God-glorifying, that we would not seek selfish ambitions or motives in the worship that we sing, but that we would seek to worship you in all things, that all of it would point to your glory, that you are most important. I pray, Lord, that as we conclude this worship service, we would remember that, that the worship and glory of God is about exalting you as the most important one in our life, even as we go from here to our worship every day. I pray that that would be on our minds, that we would seek to worship you in everything. Lord, we thank you, we praise you, we glorify you. We pray all of this in your son’s name, amen.