A Singing Lesson from Paul

I think as Pastor Milton said, there are some discussion questions up here if you're leading a discussion, this afternoon or later in the week, for a care group. But, let's go ahead and, and pray, and then we'll jump into this morning's message. Lord, we thank you so much for this wonderful time that we've been able to sing to you as part of our worship. We thank you for the wonderful words that we were able to sing to you and to one another.

We pray that you continue to be glorified and lifted up. To the preaching of your word, we pray that you'd fill me and us with your Spirit, so that we could hear and discern what you have for us, and so that we could grow thereby, in the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. Well, last week, Pastor Milton, ended our, our series on prayer with ingredients of an epic prayer, and, that, sermon ended as Joe, was talking about during the, the music time.

With a discussion of worship or the music part of worship, and you have all of these singers that are coming together to sing and God is using their praises or responding to their praises and setting ambushes against the enemies of Israel. So ingredients of an epic prayer, this morning, the title of my message is a singing Lesson from Paul. And you could view this as a continuation of the series on prayer because singing is partially, prayer. It's us putting prayers to song.

That's part of what is going on. And so maybe I should have titled this, The Ingredients of Epic Singing. Maybe we can get this epic word just really rolling and on a roll, both in the college career and in the pulpit. But, what we want to focus on is, is, is we're gonna be looking at Colossians 3 and you can open up there.

Colossians 3 chap verse 16 is the main passage that we'll be dealing with, and Paul is the author of Colossians, and as we know, it's the Holy Spirit that's actually writing through a particular author. But we're viewing this as singing lessons from Paul. And so I want to go back before we look at Colossus and just think about an incident that happened to Paul and Silas back in Philippi in chapter 16 of Acts. You guys may remember that they were preaching the gospel and there was this demon possessed girl that was running around behind them and, and harassing them and she was a fortune teller.

And then finally, Paul turns around and casts this demon out of her. And then, so the people who own this fortune-telling girl or the slave can't make any money from her anymore. And so they get all mad and they get the authorities together, they arrest Paul and Silas, beat them up, throw them into prison. And what do Paul, how do Paul and Silas respond at midnight, they're praying and singing, right?

And all the prisoners can hear them. So they're public with their prayers, they're public with their singing, they're not keeping it to themselves. And then the Lord obviously uses that, that singing and causes an earthquake to come and you get this jailer that receives Christ and some amazing things happen. And so here the apostle Paul.

was accustomed to singing. He was accustomed to lifting up his voice in praise to God. And, and you just wonder what would it have been like to be in the prison cell next to Paul. You're listening to this man.

We don't have any information. Did he have a good voice? Did he have a bad voice? Was he totally out of tune?

what were the contents of what, what was he singing about? What hymns or praises was he and, and Silas, were he and Silas singing? all we know is that they were praying and singing, and God responded, to them. As we come to the Book of Colossians, in chapter 3, Paul is, is going to exhort the Colossians to make singing a big part of what they do and what they're all about.

the Book of Colossians is all about the exaltation of Christ, right? Here, the, the people that Paul was writing to, these people had been confused about the person and nature of Christ. And in chapter one and two, Paul leaves no stone unturned and, and really settles once and for all that Jesus Christ is preeminent. He's the creator.

He uphold, all things by the word of his power. he is exalted. He is high. He is worthy to be worshiped.

He is the one through whom grace comes. He is far and above all of the angels. And then when you get to chapter 3, Paul starts to turn his attention to imperatives. Now he's starting to give them instruction.

And commands, he says, in light of who Christ is, in light of who you are in Christ, now set your mind on things above, not on things of the earth. For you are seated at the right hand of Christ in the heavenlies, and therefore, because of your position in Christ, due to his resurrection and your resurrection with him, you can now put off these deeds that you're still giving into. You're still giving into these old patterns that God's going to judge the sons of disobedience for patterns of lust and hatred and bitterness.

God's going to judge the Sons of Disobedience.

But you've been chosen, you've been elected, and you're seated at the right hand of the Father with Christ in Christ. So therefore, you have the power to put these things away. You can put on the old man or the new man and put off the old. So he says, set your mind on Christ, set your mind on things above, and let the peace of God dwell in you.

And then we come to verse 16, and let the word of Christ dwell richly in you, get the word of Christ in you, in a rich way, be enriched by the word of Christ. And as he develops this passage, as we, as we read the rest of the phrases, it's through singing that this is to happen in this context. Let's read the passage together. Colossians 3:16, Paul says, the word of, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom.

Teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. So in this one passage, we could shape it like this, Paul is giving the Colossians a singing lesson. He's not gonna tell them how to push with their diaphragm or to keep their throat open, or not to sing through their nose like I do. What he's going to do is talk to them about the spiritual aspects of singing, right?

And so I wanna shape it this way. There's all kinds of ways we could shape this verse. And actually, grammatically, this is a pretty challenging little verse. and that's why if you look at various translations, people have different phrases in different places and they're all trying to figure out which, what is modifying what.

but the kernel is here. And so I want to try to answer three questions as we look at this verse this morning. And the three questions basically involve this. Number 1, why do we sing?

2, what do we sing? And 3, how do we sing? Tell the kids write those in and now they can go to sleep. OK.

Now, there's some questions for the kids at the bottom, some bonus questions, kids, at the bottom of your page. So don't forget the bonus, right? So why do we singing What are we seeing? And how do we sing?

That's, those are the questions that we're going to try to ask of this text, in order to learn the singing lesson from the Apostle Paul, really from the Holy Spirit, right? OK, so let's ask these questions and try to answer. First of all, why do we sing? I want to suggest to you that we sing.

One of the reasons we sing, this isn't the only reason in all of scripture that we sing, but this is one of the reasons that are is stated in this passage is we sing to enrich ourselves with the gospel. We sing to enrich ourselves with the gospel. You can go all throughout the scriptures and come up with a full systematic answer to that question. But in this verse, this is one of the answers we sing to enrich ourselves with the gospel.

Notice the phrases that are used in the first part of this verse, let the word of Christ. dwell in you richly in all wisdom. What does Paul mean when he commands us? He doesn't just suggest this, he commands, let the word of Christ.

What does that mean? Word of Christ? Well, if you look at chapter 1, verse 5, in this book, if you look at how the Lord or how Paul uses word, and Word of God, or this is the only place where it's called Word of Christ, or Word of truth. This is basically a synonym for the gospel.

If you want to, you can turn back to chapter 1, verse 5 in Colossians, where Paul says, because of the hope, which is laid up for you in heaven, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel, And throughout the book of Acts, you see that when Luke is saying that Paul or Peter went to preach the word, oftentimes it'll follow it up with an explanation of the gospel. They went to preach the word, they want to preach the gospel. So in this context, when the Book of Colossians was written, the scriptures weren't completed yet.

We didn't have the complete canon.

Paul isn't thinking in his writing to the Colossians, Let the whole Bible dwell within you. We know that that's going to be true by application as the canon comes together. But primarily what Paul's talking about in this context is let the gospel, let the good news of Jesus Christ dwell in you. And so let's think about that for a second, dwell on you.

Let the gospel take up residence inside of you as individuals, and probably more than that, as you as a corporate body. He's writing corporately to the Colossians, let the gospel take up residence and not just take up residence, like, in the garage or out in the backyard., I don't know if you guys, any of you own a mother-in-law house. Have you guys heard of that concept of mother-in-law house? The idea is, is, when your mother-in-law gets, old enough and you need to bring her to your place, is you have a house out there, right?

Where she can kinda have her place and then you can maintain your place. And so this isn't saying we bring the gospel like we bring our mother-in-law into a mother-in-law house. This is, we bring our mother-in-law in, right? And we let her come and, and be rich in the house.

The idea here of letting the gospel come in is really letting the gospel come in and be the master and call the shots. Imagine that you invited somebody to come live with you and they, they walked in and they start saying, yeah, we're not gonna eat that here. No. No, we're not gonna watch that on TV.

Those magazines, they're out. no, at 7 o'clock, we'll do this. I don't know about you, but I would be like, who is this guy? What are they here for?

They're the guests, right? And it would be appropriate for us to feel that way if we had a guest come stay in our house. The gospel is not just a guest, the gospel is being brought in to be an enriching element. It's the gospels the king, right?

Christ is The, the, the gospel of Christ is the king that's being brought into us and into this corporate body to richly dwell, to rule in all wisdom, to bring all applications, and, and, and, and means to the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. So why do we sing? Well, one main reason that we sing is so that we can be enriched by the gospel. Now we can be enriched by the gospel in a lot of different ways through teaching and through, the preaching of the word, through fellowship, through personal Bible reading and stuff, but one of the ways that we get enriched by the gospel is through singing, OK?

And so we're gonna, let's develop this a little more. Let's ask a second question. and that is this. What do we sing?

OK, so why do we sing? We're, we're supposed to be enriched by the gospel. What do we sing? well, I want to suggest to you is a, a summary of, of the idea here in this verse is that we sing songs to ourselves that teach and admonish.

We sing songs to ourselves that teach and admonish. Really, this could be what do we sing and to whom. let's just stick with the idea of what. Paul says, teaching and admonishing, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom.

Teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms, hymns, we'll get to that here in a second. So we're supposed to teach and admonish or exhort one another or I think maybe more properly the idea is ourselves. We're speaking to us and to everybody else. So this is an interesting concept, that As we consider what it is we are to sing, the content of our singing should be teaching.

And admonishment. there's other passages that talk about what we should sing about, but in this particular passage, Paul's contemplating the idea that the content of our, of our singing should have teaching, that's the same word for doctrine, all throughout the scripture, and admonishment. There should be warnings, there should be encouragements. There should be course correcting.

And so this, what this, what this brings up is what we call the horizontal aspect of singing. this is, as, as Christian theologians and pastors over the years have developed a hymnology or a doctrine of singing. one of the aspects of our doctrine of singing is that we, yes, we sing to the Lord vertically and most of us understand that, but we also sing horizontally. And we get this from passages like Colossians 3:16, Ephesians 5, 1819 and 20, the Psalms, Bless the Lord, oh my soul and all that is within me.

Who am I speaking to? Myself. And join me, let us rejoice and praise the Lord together. I'm speaking to you and you're speaking to me.

Psalms that speak to the Gentiles, you're speaking to nations that don't even know Christ. And then it'll turn around and, and direct it to the Lord. Let me give you just a little, a quote that I thought was very helpful and interesting. This is off the Gospel Coalition blog.

Justin Taylor's one of the bloggers there, really commend it to you. he just quoted Greg Gilbert in this blog, and here's what he had to say, Greg Gilbert. But here's the thing, when you sing in a congregation, you're not just singing for yourself. You're singing for every other member of the congregation, for their edification and building up in Christ too.

In 1 Corinthians 14:26, Paul tells us that when we come together, everything we do, including our singing is done for Each other Singing hymns is not just an opportunity for each of us as individuals to worship God in our own way. It's an opportunity for the church as a whole to worship God together. He goes on, that means that even if you don't like a particular song, it's likely that someone else in the congregation resonates with it deeply. They feel about it the same way you feel about your favorites.

And so you have a responsibility to love that person by singing that song with all your heart you can muster, all the heart you can muster. In other words, don't check out on songs that aren't your favorites. Sing them, sing them aloud and heartily, not because you particularly like them, but because you may be helping to edify another brother or sister whose heart is engaged deeply with those songs. Worship isn't finally an individual experience, it's corporate.

I, I should have underlined that, highlighted that. I hope you write that down in your notes. Worship is not an individual experience, it's corporate. And everything we do, everything Paul tells us, including our singing, should be done for the building up of the saints.

So as we gather together to sing, we are building one another up as we teach and admonish one another with our singing, both the content and the way we do it. And so let's, let me just take a moment here. To, to, do a little side route, because this, this phrase is in the passage. OK, so we're teaching admonishing one another, the Psalms, hymns, spiritual songs.

OK, what does that mean? Psalms, hymns, spiritual songs. and there you can read all kinds of articles, look up all kinds of, commentaries, whatever. What, how do we distinguish psalms, hymns, spiritual songs?

Nobody knows. We have no idea. the fact is, is the word, the Greek word behind psalms, behind hymns, and behind spiritual songs, those words are all used in the Greek translation of the Psalms to speak of psalms. So a psalm could be called a psalm, a psalm could be called a hymn, a psalm could be called a spiritual song, right?

So these are, these can be synonyms, Some people suggest some variation like Psalms may refer to just the Old Testament Psalm for itself, and then hymns may refer to songs that are primarily praises directed to God or Jesus or the Spirit, and spiritual songs may be just general songs, a big category to cover all songs other than secular songs. or spiritual songs may be the type of singing that would occur when somebody stood up with the gift of prophecy in the early church and would sing a prophecy.

that could be the idea. What we do know is that even in the New Testament, 1 Corinthians chapter 14, Paul says, if somebody has a psalm, somebody has a tongue.

And so he uses the word psalm in, in 1 Corinthians 14 to actually refer to something that's probably not the psalter. So you see some of the confusion, most people would say what Paul is saying, Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, he's just saying, whatever type of song that you sing in the church, it ought to be done with the, with the goal of teaching and admonishing so that the gospel would enrich you. That's the idea. Let's track this.

Let the word of Christ, let the gospel. dwell in us in a rich way and all wisdom. OK, how's that gonna happen? As we teach and admonish one another, teach and admonish one another with what?

Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, all of your singing, the whole repertoire, right, should end up teaching and admonishing yourselves and one another, so that the gospel richly indwells all people, all the people in your congregation. That's the idea. What do we sing? We sing psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, whatever songs you sing in your church with a teaching and an admonishing direction.

So let's talk, let's, let's take a moment and divide those two concepts up. Songs that teach, songs that admonish. Songs that teach, I already mentioned would be songs that have doctrinal content. Songs that teach us something about our Creator, songs that teach us something about our Savior, songs that teach us something about our sin and who we are, as being made in the image of God, the fact that we fall short, and that we are actually heading towards a place of judgment, a place called hell.

But Jesus Christ came and died on the cross. taking on the wrath of God upon Himself, him being perfect, who knew no sin, died on the cross in our place as our substitute, so that we no longer have to endure the wrath of God upon ourselves. But now we are actually enveloped in the righteousness of Christ and we get dressed in His righteousness, the solid rock, right? Hi, I'm on solid ground.

I stand, right? we're dressed in His righteousness. And now we can relate to our Abba Father because we have a high priest, who is at the right hand of the Father, always interceding for us, and Jesus Christ is coming back. And he is going to, and we will bow before Him and we will worship Him, and he will take us to be with Him forever.

That's what we sing about. We sing about the gospel. We sing about doctrine, we sing about who God is. And so it begs the question, why does, why doesn't God, why is the Holy Spirit not content just to have us preaching the gospel or preaching doctrine?

Why do we even do this thing called singing? Why is it not sufficient for Pastor Milton or whoever's up here on a given Sunday just to get up and preach the gospel every week? Why do we take time out to sing the gospel, to sing doctrine? Well, the first reason is, is because the Holy Spirit says so, right?

And the Holy Spirit says so because he wants us filled and enriched with Christ. The Spirit wants to exalt Christ. And as we, we're singing the things that we're hearing preached from the pulpit, there's something in the way that God has made us where it sticks in our brains, right? It starts to stick in our minds.

We're hearing it preached, and then we hear it sung, and these lyrics. How many times have I just, gone to bed at night and I wake up in the morning, and for some odd reason, I've been listening to a song and all of a sudden I'm like, how from a foundation. It's just like in my mind, I wake up and there, there it is. And these things that will just enter into our minds.

And so it's very important for us to be singing the gospel. It enriches us, it causes us, it brings it to memory, the Holy Spirit uses it. It's something that he has ordained. We can we call it a means of grace?

He's, he's told us to preach. He's told us to take communion. He's told us the fellowship, he's told us to sing, right? To sing doctrine.

in the early church, there were those that would put heresies to nice little ditties, little commercial songs. Arias, was really well known for this. He would take a little ditty about Christ not being God and only a man and put it to a nice memorable tune. Before it, everybody's singing, Jesus isn't God, Jesus isn't God.

He's just a man, whatever his, whatever they said in Latin back then. And, and so this is what people are beginning to learn. Athanasius and all the other guys are out here preaching, preaching, preaching. They said, what, we're going to make our own ditties.

And so they start making their ditties and their songs and hymns that are exalting the, the immanency of Christ and the deity of Christ. And so you have that stuff going on. Let me just, give you one, this is one of the most ancient hymns that we have. It's in our Bible.

1 Timothy 3:16. It's about every commentator and theologian I've read on this passage will tell you this is an early church hymn that Paul's quoting. He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up into glory. This is that horizontal aspect of worship.

This is the teaching aspect of worship. Why is the congregation singing this? Is this being sung directly to God? No, it's being sung to one another.

Just imagine yourself in an early church congregation and you're singing these words. You're proclaiming the fact that Christ came in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed in the world, ascended up into glory. I think of a great hymn like in Christ alone, one of my favorite hymns. And this is one of those hymns that has that horizontal aspect to it.

It's, it's something that we're singing about God, and, and it has a teaching element to it. the Getty, the Gettys wrote this, Keith Getty says, in Christ alone, who took on flesh, fullness of God in helpless babe. That's a great phrase right there. Fullness of God, the deity of Christ in helpless babe, the incarnation.

The gift of love and righteousness, scorned by the ones who came to save, till on the cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied propitiation for every sin on him was laid substitution. Here in the death of Christ, I live, I am one with Christ, right? I've been brought into my unification with Christ. These are the type of, of words that we sing in a church that distinguish our worship from worship that would be sung by a Buddhist, or a Jehovah Witness, or some cult, or some other group., one of, one of the things that I know that a number of songwriters and, worship artists were very concerned about, particularly, I would say about 1520 years ago, is the fact that more and more it was starting to look like Christian music was being owned by almost exclusively secular parent companies.

And, and so there was a time when Christian artists were like, this is not a good trend. Because the stuff that's being written is stuff that needs to sell. And if you write stuff that just needs to sell, you're going to write to the lowest common denominator. Because you have to sell your records, right?

And so you have to minimalize, you have to, what, what is the stuff that everybody out there can agree on, every single denomination and group and anybody that quasi calls himself a Christian, what can they all agree on? And that's the stuff that we're going to start to write. And there was a period in church hymnody, I would say, there's exceptions to this, but my opinion and my studies, the 70s and 80s were not a good time for Christian music. you can find exceptions, but there's a lot of Christian music that could have been sung to Jehovah's Witnesses in Jehovah's Witness churches, Mormon churches, or Buddhist temples for that matter.

And you wouldn't have really known who in the world you were singing to. Some people have cynically called it Jesus is my boyfriend music. Who, who, who's being sung to here? We don't really know because there's no distinguishing teaching elements to what we're singing.

And so the congregation goes out feeling moved by the music. And feeling like they enjoyed the worship, but when you begin to question what really happened, you don't really know. And I'm intimately acquainted with this, from one respect because I, I went through all of that., I, I got saved. as a 14 year old, started going to a great church.

I love this church. And I went out and bought a, I, I love singing to the Lord at my church. I went out and bought a guitar at a garage sale and got a book, started learning. All I wanted to do is just sing praises to the Lord in my room.

And I know the Lord, just, the way the Lord is, how gracious He is, regardless of how immature I was, or just maybe how, young I was, and even maybe how shallow some of the things I was seeing, the Lord just receiving my worship. But, we all, we all need to grow up. And I just remember in the culture that I was raised in, I thought, and it's not like anybody said this to me directly, but my theology of worship was, is there are songs that are spirit-filled worship. And then there's other stuff that's just not as spirit-filled.

And to me, our, at our church, we had like, we sang traditional hymns one time a month. And that was the unspirit-filled Sunday, right? And you could feel it throughout the congregation. We'd all show up on those other three Sundays, and raise my hands, and boy we're praying, just praising the Lord as a charismatic church, I'm charismatic, we're just, hey, and then, and then that Sunday would come, where it was just nothing but traditional hymns.

I gotta admit, there's some times where I overslept. And, and didn't get there till after the songs were done. Or, I'd get there, I'd get there during the singing, I'd just be like, This isn't spiritual worship, man. I'm in Orange County, dude, this is not spiritual worship.

We need spiritual worship, man. And, that was my attitude. Then the Lord moved me out to the Inland Empire and I started going to a church over here, it wasn't Cornerstone, but it was another church. And they, they did things a little bit differently.

they sing a lot of old hymns. And, and even when they sing stuff that I grew up singing and leading back in Orange County, it sounded corny. They tried to do it, but it just wasn't working, they're up there at the piano and organ and just trying to lead this song that I grew up, leading, and I'm just like, oh this is so corny. And I can just remember, pastor talking to me one day.

I'd only been in the church for a little while, and he says, hey, how are you enjoying the church? And I'm just like, wow, the teaching's great. Teaching is great. But boy, your guys' worship, you guys, you guys got a long way to go.

He's like, oh, what do you mean? It's just not spirit-filled. Well, explain what do you mean? And, and, in my theology, what I said to him was, we do a lot of singing about God here, but we don't do enough singing to God.

You guys are always singing these songs that are like, and I don't know that I even knew enough to say in the third person. it's like, you're singing who God is, you're singing about his attributes and immortal, invisible and all that stuff. But what about just praising Jesus, just singing directly to him? We're not doing a whole lot of that.

And he didn't get offended. He was just like, well, let's, let's take a look at the Bible. And so he showed me passages like Colossians and Ephesians 5, and he took me to the Psalms, where David is saying, Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and he's speaking to unbelievers, and he's speaking to other people. And then at other times he's crying out to the Lord.

There's some Psalms that are totally directed to the Lord and other Psalms where there isn't anything in the first person in the entire Psalm. It's all in the third person. And suddenly it began to dawn on me that my theology of worship was uninformed by the scriptures. That there's a vertical aspect of worship which is right there in the Psalms, but there's a horizontal aspect of worship that's right here in Colossians 3 and in the Psalms and in a lot of places in Scripture.

And so I began to lower my critical evaluation of their singing time, and then began to enter in and just sing some of these old hymns that I really wasn't used to. And I began to be amazed at, at just the quality, how the quality of my worship changed. The music didn't get any better. The piano player didn't get any better.

But I got better as I began to say, these are some awesome hymns, awesome songs. And then I went through a whole period where I began to be critical and judge everybody in my past and to throw the baby out with the bathwater and forget the lesson that the pastor was trying to teach me, to find balance of horizontal and vertical and And that's what about the time that me and a bunch of people came over to Cornerstone in 1993. And now we, we had come from this really, really, really traditional old school hymn singing church, came to Cornerstone and just criticized everything.

Oh just, oh boy.

Now we're like, where's the reverence for God? Where's the great old hymns of the faith? What in the world are we doing? In my heart, there rings a melody, there rings a melody.

There's a harmony. Like what? Are we at a circus or what is going on here? So I bring all this judgmentalism over to Cornerstone.

And they're at their own place in development and worship and stuff and And, and then the Lord does some other teaching and molding of me and a bunch of us that came over from this other church. All that to say is, there's this, there's this horizontal teaching aspect that should be part of our theology of worship. That we are singing truth to one another. So, and then there's also the admonition aspect.

OK, so we, we teach doctrine. But there also ought to be a correcting that's going on as we sing. Are we singing songs that offer corrective thoughts? All of us, every single day, the Bible in the book of Hebrews says, while it is today, we need to believe, right?

It, it only takes one day and we're off, right? And so you come in on any given Sunday and you're off and I'm off and we need correction. And so we sing a hymn like we did this morning, beat out my vision. OK, what's going on with this?

This is an 8th century hymn, Irish hymn that gets reversified and, and put into English and in the 1900s. And so what's the hymnwriter doing here? Be thou my vision, oh Lord of my heart, I, my vision needs correcting, not be all else to me, save that thou art. Why are we singing that?

Why am I singing this? Because there are things that are important to me that need to be set aside. Thou my best thought by day or by night, waking or sleeping, thy presence, my light. And so I'm, as I'm singing this hymn to the Lord, and I'm singing it to you, we're like, that's right.

Our vision needs to be corrected, riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise. Thou mine inheritance now in all ways, thou and thou only, first in my heart. Now when the hymn writer wrote that, was he thinking that I will, this is my disposition all the time? Or is he thinking, I'm going to write this down so that we can be reminded that we need to be corrected into this position all the time?

I think it's the latter. Thou and thou only first in my heart, High King of heaven, my treasure, thou art. We're singing things that we want to be true of us now, right? We know, I know that Christ is not always my treasure.

And so I come and I begin to sing these songs, and you sing these songs, we're singing to each other. And the Holy Spirit gets all wrapped up in it. And then we were course correcting. And it's the Holy Spirit's design that we would come and sing these things to each other and course correct.

And by implication, if the Holy Spirit's commanding us to do this, if we don't do this, it seems to imply, doesn't it, that we're going to get off if we're not singing, teaching and ad admonishing words to one another. Another hymn, that I love that doesn't get sung in churches much anymore. I, I love Isaac Watts. I love, there's a lot of songs in our hymn books and in church hymnody that we don't always feel very comfortable singing these days.

We live in a time period, actually, I would say, I, I would say we're growing, see, I got 5 minutes. We're growing. I would say in the last like 15 years or so, we're going through a period that I think future historians are going to call the reawakening of hymns. It's like there's the new hymns movement.

Everybody's going back and getting old hymns and rewriting them and putting them into new music. They're writing brand new hymns that have never been written before. But there's this real Awakening that's going on now that's reminiscent of other times in church history, like the time of the Great Awakening, like the time of Isaac Watts, like the time right of the Reformation, where people had in the last 1520 years have said, we're not satisfied with singing Jesus is my boyfriend songs.

We want to have a connection to the history of the church.

And so they're going back and resurrecting these hymns, and this hymn has been resurrected by a band called Sojourn. And it's, it's an admonition hymn. It's, it goes this way, just a couple stanzas of mistaken souls, the dream of heaven and make their empty boast of inward joys and sins forgiven while they are slaves to lust. Vain are the fancies, airy flights, if faith be cold and dead.

None but a living power unites to Christ, the living head. What's the advantage of singing a hymn like that? Well, one, those of us that are truly born again, but maybe struggling or whatever, we're like, that's right, I need to put away my loss. I want to be Lord, Spirit, fill me up.

I want to be united with you. Give me that assurance of salvation. Maybe there's people within our congregations that are deceiving themselves, like, I'm good. I'm born again.

I'm good. I'm ready to go. And yet they're just, they're loved, they're just totally loving everything of the world and everything of lust, lusty eyes, the pride of life. That's what they truly love.

But they come in every Sunday and deceive themselves into thinking, I'm going to heaven, I'm good. And then you sing a hymn like this, and the Holy Spirit reawakens them. Right? There's hymns like this that have that admonition effect, can have that admission, admonition.

And so there's a horizontal aspect to our worship. Let's get to the last question, which will bring in more of that vertical aspect, and that is this, how do we sing? We talked about why do we sing, what do we sing, how do we sing? And I want to suggest to you that from the final couple of phrases in this verse, That we sing to the Lord with the knowledge of undeserved favor in the front of our minds.

We sing to the Lord with the knowledge of undeserved favor in the front of our minds. There's a lot of ways to slice these phrases and you can see some of the difficulty translators have by comparing the translations, but the, what I want to suggest to you is, is I think the idea here is let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching, admonishing one another with psalms, hymns, spiritual songs. With the grace in your hearts, with the undeserved favor of God in your hearts, which in the Hebrew mindset, it means in your mind, in the front of your mind.

You and I are recipients of undeserved favor through Christ.

We don't deserve heaven, but we get it. We don't deserve goodness, but we get it. We don't deserve God's kindness, but we get it because Jesus, the perfect one died and took the wrath of God in our place. And so we enter in and as we begin to worship and as we begin to contemplate our brothers and sisters around us and as we begin to contemplate whether we like or don't like the particular songs that are chosen that morning.

undeserved favor is front and foremost in our minds, and we sing in that attitude to the Lord. We're singing these songs that are teaching and and admonishing, and we're singing them to the Lord with undeserved favor, front and foremost in our mind. And it just seems to me that that has to have an effect on our expressiveness, I would think, doesn't it? If I understand, if I'm really conscious of the fact that I am a saved sinner, and I get to be here in the presence of Almighty God with his people and singing, That that should have an impact.

The grace should turn itself into gratitude and thankfulness, which a lot of your translations say. The result of this grace is gratitude and thankfulness to the Lord. And I have to think that as the Holy Spirit is growing us as a body, that that gratefulness is going to be expressed in ways that are Similar to the way Christ feels about us, right? Consider Zephaniah 3:17.

This is the Lord, he's talking about Israel. But by extension, this is all of the people of God, the Lord your God in your midst, the Mighty One will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. The idea is he will shout with joy over you with gladness.

He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing. So here's God Almighty contemplating us. And he's expressive. He's rejoicing.

At times, he's quiet, and he's, he's, he's tender and he's loving. But he's, he's excited about saving you. And he wants you to be excited about him saving you. Think about the fact that Jesus Christ himself.

After they took the Passover, that first communion for us, right? They took the Passover, they're in the upper room. And then it says, and they sang a hymn, literally, they did hymn singing. A lot of people would suggest that after the Passover, Jews would sing the Hillel, Psalm 115 to 118.

And so Christ probably sings Psalm 115 to 118, right after the Passover. And how do you think Christ led in worship? In the upper room. How do you think he went about that?

He said, all right, Go ahead and turn to Psalm 115. You guys there? OK, Psalm 115, well, I don't really like that one. Let's go to 118.

No, 117 is real short. Let's do that one. OK, praise the Lord. Oh you Gentiles.

Love them all your peoples. For his mercy and kindness is great towards us. It's true of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord.

Amen. OK, let's, let's call you guys. I just can't imagine Jesus being dispassionate in his leadership in worship. Right?

Now the disciples, you could see them all over the map, right? Depending on where they're at at the particular time. And, and this isn't to say that we don't struggle, right? We're, we're all struggling.

Jesus is the perfect worshiper and praise the Lord that we're in him. And so his worship is sufficient to present before God, right? But we need to learn from, I think we need to learn from the example of God in the Old Testament, Zephaniah, and look at Christ, consider what, how passionate with Christ be and how passionate was he about his father. And that should impact our singing.

And just to think about the horizontal aspect of our singing, your singing has an impact on me and my singing has an impact on you. And I'm forgetting, when does the service end? I got the old time in my head somehow. What is it?

Oh, OK, there we go. OK, so cool. Yeah, I got more time than I thought. I just heard a news story this morning about 40-year-olds are actually getting, losing their mind, or, it's not just people 50 or 60, it's like in your 40s is when it starts.

Whatever that means. OK, so, So when we're singing in here, this passage isn't, I don't want you guys to get the idea this passage isn't just about corporate worship. It's about, OK, what are you doing in your quiet times? What are you doing in your family worship?

What are you doing in your care groups? What are you doing in your Bible study, but also, yes, what are we doing here when we gather together on Sunday mornings? Are you cognizant of the people around you? Are you just, is your attitude that it's, I'm having this private worship moment.

Please do not disturb. And, there's churches that actually that's their attitude and they don't want any kids in the service. They don't want any ushers coming down. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're disturbing my worship, man.

Come on. it's this private little thing. No, no, it's a corporate thing. We're teaching and singing to one another.

I used to love, man, our old chairman of the board, Ron Needham, he'd sit right down here. We'd be singing Wonderful grace of Jesus and Ron would just be turning around just looking at everybody, just wonderful grace of Jesus, and the people right behind him would just be like. What's going on. But he just wanted to look out and just see everybody smiling and singing.

He was just excited. And I, personally, I think it's a great thing for us to, look around and see what's going on. Let me just give you a little clue. when I'm up here preaching or when I'm up here leading worship, I can see you.

There's this little psychological thing where an audience thinks that the speaker or the people can't see him. That's false. And I have my go to people. When I'm up here and I start getting discouraged.

I know certain people. I'm going to Jonathan Jones, baby. I'm going over here. I'm going here.

I'm Dave ceiling. I gotta look at Dave., if I start getting discouraged, I'm gonna look around and find those people. And I'm not gonna call anybody out, but there are some people who are not my go to people. If I'm starting to feel a little down, I avert eye contact.

I'm looking somewhere else. And I know that we struggle too here up on, we talk about it all the time as worship leaders, like how can we be better in our, our leadership and our expressiveness, a lot of times we'll be out here on a Wednesday night and John will be up there at the board and he's like, you guys look like you're dead and 6 ft under. and so we're taking video, how can we get, help us grow, let this be a Holy Spirit filled thing. We don't want to manufacture it, help us Lord, just to lead.

But, it goes both ways. We want to just, we want to encourage one another. And so I would just challenge you in that challenge you. It's not just about you and Jesus, it's about all of us in Jesus.

let me just say one other little side little application as far as corporate worship goes here is I can tell which one of you guys don't like certain songs or certain style of songs, right? We'll be, we'll be singing like a traditional, maybe an older hymn, even if we're doing it in a contemporary way or maybe we're doing it a more traditional way. And I'll look, I'll look out there and I just know who ain't gonna be singing. Now I know there's different reasons why somebody might not be singing, maybe they've got a disability.

Maybe somebody's like, I know sometimes I get to the point where if I start singing, I'm gonna, I'm gonna cry. And so I like have to hold back, or whatever. But there's other times where I can, you can just see it, it's like, OK, we start singing to him and here, here goes that person. And then all of a sudden we start singing something more contemporary and it's upbeat and it's booming, and there goes up.

And, and then people vote with their voices. You ever noticed that? Like we'll start singing like say somebody doesn't really like an upbeat song or something like that, but then we'll start singing How from a foundation, how firm a foundation you say I'm voting with my boys, and we should sing more songs like this, not those contemporary worldly songs, whatever. it's just like, dude.

Let's, let's enter in, man. Let's encourage one another. It's not, I got a, news flash. This, I don't want this to sound cruel, news flash, it ain't all about you.

it's, it ain't all about me. It's all about Jesus and it's about us trying to enter into each other's pleasure, right? what, so and so loves this song. There's songs that we used to do, and I'm rambling here, but, Vernon, when he, he played his organ over here for years and years and years.

And there's songs that Vernon absolutely loved. They, he, he would cry. And the only reason I led those songs is because Vernon and some of the old saints in here loved them. I hated them.

There's, I won't tell you because then you'll like have that marked every time I do it. But there's certain songs I just could not stand, but it was just a preference thing. It wasn't because there's anything bad about the doctrine, I didn't like the style of the song, or I didn't like the way we did it, but I'd be like, what, these, these people love this song, and so I'm gonna lead this song. And anytime I started to feel like this is corny, I just look over at Vernon and see him falling.

Sorry. And then just be like, what, it's, it's so not about preferences. It's so not about musical styles. It's so about us just enjoying each other and enjoying Christ as we're teaching and admonishing one another.

That's what it's all about. And we all, we all need to grow, we don't, we don't want to stay status quo, we all wanna grow, right? We wanna get better in our musicality and all these other things, but what Paul's concerned about here is the spiritual part. we could be the most musical church, we could have the best vocalists, we could have the best congregation choirs.

Sounds awesome. Everything's pro. But if we're not singing with undeserved favor in the front of our minds to the Lord and to each other, clanging cymbals. Right, clanging cymbals.

Let me just end with this. Well, a couple of quick quotes here. Bob Coughlin, one of my theological worship heroes, worshiping God in song isn't simply a nice idea, or only for musically gifted people. The question is not, has God given me a voice, but has God given me a song.

If you trust in the finished work of Christ, the answer is clear, yes. and I just want, I want to challenge all the dads in here to pray for your kids that the Spirit will overwhelm them with a sense of undeserved favor so that they'll sing to the Lord. because I, I know, you can't judge anybody on any given particular day. All of us have bad days and stuff, but When I look out and I see what looks to me like cynicism or Or I ain't going to sing, or it feels like sometimes maybe they're just people that are welled up with pride and so they're not going to let their voices go for Christ.

I just wonder how much have they tasted of undeserved favor. And I can't answer that, but I think a lot of our dads in the church can. They know their kids. And, and, and the, the way of doing that, we all got to be careful.

I, I, I can't go up to my kids, you guys, we're going to sing and have joy today, or you're going to get it. Not going to work. But I, if I just pour out my heart to the Lord, I'm praying for my kids, and I'm trying to set the pace at home, best I can, I'm singing in front of my kids. you may not think you have the greatest voice or whatever, but what, it doesn't matter.

Yeah, I, I'll just, I'll just call out Carlos Slimtiaco, man. This dude, he loves Christ. I just remember him being in his bedroom as a brand new Christian. This guy's like 2 weeks old, the Lord.

He's in his room on his knees. Come the father. and just like crying out to Christ, man, and I'm like in the other room just crying because this young Christians in there just, just lifting his heart up to the Lord and he doesn't care if his unbelieving family hears him or whatever. He's just like crying out to the Lord and, and you can have an impact on your kids, regardless of your musicality, just by letting your heart go in front of your children.

We sing at our, at our house. at the end of family devotions, we sing, most of the time, Jesus paid it all. We'll mix it up once in a while. But Samuel can tell when I'm getting at the end of Bible reading or I don't know what it is, if it's the tone of my voice or something, but I start doing that thing, and then he'll go, Jesus, like, OK, you're done, Dad.

Jesus paid it all, so we'll, we'll sing that together and, and, my little 3 year old knows all the words, he's mumbling them, but he knows them, and so, and he enjoys that and, and we can sing to one another. You guys think about, I'm sure you guys sing to each other in your home. Do you ever sing to a little baby, right? Or sing to a girlfriend or wife or whatever, and, we can sing to the Lord, sing to each other.

I guess one last, since I'm rambling here, one last little story. another thing that we sing at home is I'll sing, don't tell anybody this. I'll sing this song to Samuel before we put him to bed. It's by Tom Petty.

Don't tell anybody. It's called Goodnight Babies. It's like, goodnight, baby. Sleep tight, my love.

And then a lot of times if he's ready to go to bed and he's real tired, he'll get into it and he'll sing it, he's cool with it. But if he doesn't want to go to bed, I'll say, good. And he's just bawling, man, he just doesn't want it. But, these are things, that you don't have to be a great singer or whatever, but just little things like that, just to, to try to lead your, your kids.

at home and seeing that, hey, this is a special thing. The Holy Spirit commands us to do this. And so it must be for our good. And I don't think it's too, too much of a stretch to say this is a means of grace that the Lord's given us to sing songs that teach and admonish one another.

When you're thinking about songs to teach for your family worship. Think about songs that teach and admonish. Get some good hymns, modern songs, old songs, all kinds of songs. Examine the content.

If you're gonna be leading care group this afternoon, next week, think about the songs you're leading. You're leading worship at the youth group. Don't just go and listen to what's on Christian radio and just say, well, this is the most popular song, so I'm gonna sing that. Some of the most popular songs are junk, right?

I'm, and I'm not just, saying that to be mean, but there's some really, really popular songs that are great, and some of them are just like they could be sung by a Buddhist, OK? Get songs that are really, can admonish and teach, care group, Bible study here at Cornerstone. Final quote, and then we will pray. Wesley's rules for singing that he gave his congregation.

This is rule 4, sing vigorously and with good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead or half asleep. But lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of it being heard than when you sung the songs of Satan., I can remember my BC days.

I'm just kinda doing it, Orange County, whatever, and just getting into it. and then, fortunately, I think worship atmosphere at the church I went to is, I think somewhat was pretty expressive and so I learned from that. but I'll tell you what, when we had those hymn Sundays, I'd be out there just like I was dead, just like this isn't spirit-filled, man. It's not spirit-filled.

Just, just dead. But then like, two hours later, I'm in the car, Sweet home Alabama, whatever, just singing it out. It's like, why can't I sing, why can't I enter in with these songs that, our, our leadership at that church was deciding to sing one Sunday a month. I'm all excited about.

Lynyrd Skynyrd. OK. So, Anyway, so that's along the short. Let's let the Holy Spirit apply these things to our hearts.

You guys will talk about in care group. There's a lot of questions on there that we didn't discuss in the sermon, so you can flush it out. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for your goodness to us and allowing us to be in your presence, and to sing to you today and to learn about singing.

We pray, Lord, that You would make us better singers. Not, Lord, that we're pushing with our diaphragm better or opening up our throat or singing more in tune. if that's what you choose to do, that's great. What we pray, Lord, is that you would give us a passion to sing the way your spirit is directed.

And that is singing, thoughtfully songs, these songs that are teaching and admonishing and that we would sing with a consciousness, a conscientiousness of our brothers and sisters all around us. Lord, that those of us that are leaders in this church, that we would lead those around us and under us in our worship. At the same time, help us not to be judgmental of one another. help us to look at our own hearts and apply these things to ourselves, not to take these truths and apply or apply them in a wrong way by judging our brothers and sisters around us that sit around us on any given Sunday.

We ask that you would do your work through us in Christ's name we pray. Amen.