This was kind of the providential surprise, surprise, week five of a four-week series. And I hope to finish up some topical application of the principles that we've worked really, really hard the last few weeks to learn from Scripture. And now we want to put it into work in the real world. So there are a couple follow-up items I wanted to touch on real quick from last week. Excellent questions. First, the body as the image of God. Some question was raised as to whether that made sense because God is spirit and does not have a body like men, so how can body be part of the image of God? And then also the slide that you see on the screen with creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, most found that very helpful method, but also just raised the question of you know, where do we get the idea or get this methodology from? And I want to turn to scripture on both. So first turn to Genesis 9, chapter 9. This is right after the flood with Noah. God does a reiteration as we saw in some of our other classes. of the cultural mandate to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, except this time, as Brother Day pointed out, there will actually be fear and terror of the creatures, commingled with man, exercising his dominion. Now everything is given as food. And then in verse 6, this is where I want to talk about body as image of God. Genesis 9, verse 6, whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed. for in the image of God he made man. I want to say before I forget quickly that John Murray's volume two in his Systematic Theology, Collected Writings, has a chapter, I think it's on page 14 and following, on the nature of man, where he takes up that very question of if God is spirit and does not have a body like man, how do we say that body is part of the image of God? And does an excellent job of treating that. This is kind of my layman's attempt at handling it with a really simplistic answer, but I hope not too simple. And that is looking at verse six, whoever sheds man's blood, by man's his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God he made man. Notice from verse six, there is a strong correlation or a strong relationship between blood, blood shedding, and image of God. That alone makes it kind of strange to think of the body not being part of the image of God because, first of all, souls don't shed blood. Second of all, man cannot literally strike a soul. Maybe metaphysically or philosophically maybe he can strike a soul with evil words or something, but he can't strike a soul. A soul can't shed blood. And souls also don't die except the eternal second death of Revelation. So that alone, plus the mention of image of God right there in the exact same verse, the very basis of capital punishment is the fact that man is the image of God. I think that provides at least enough food for thought to chew on for a while to say the opposite question. Why would we separate the body from image bearing? Most of the verses are quite clear. The second thing for creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, let's look at Yes, Dave. Well, in the mystery of the Trinity involved in all of this, I mean, Jesus was a man, is a man. So he has blood, he shed blood. So, you know, in that mystery, God does have blood. Yes, and if you go, thank you Dave, if you go to Colossians 1 verse 15, he is the express image of the what? Invisible God. So the implied contrast is he is visible, God the Father is not visible, so he is the express image of the invisible God. Well how is he visible? With a body. So again, you have the same problem that you run into if you try to extract body from image bearing. 2 Peter, chapter 2. I'm sorry, chapter 3. Verse 3, knowing this, first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking following after their own lusts and saying, where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation. For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God, the heavens existed long ago. The earth was formed out of the water and by water through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. But by his word, the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men." Notice the exact argumentation that Peter uses in order to shut the mouths of the mockers who say, where's the promise of his coming? He goes all the way back to what? Creation. Then he gets into the fall because he talks about Noah's flood. Then he peeks into restoration, although before restoration comes the cleansing or the purging, the judgment fires. This present world is kept by God for fire. And if we could multiply example after example from Paul and Peter and Jesus himself when Jesus argues for the Sabbath. Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. And so this type of argumentation of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, although it's not always all four of those categories, is replete throughout the Bible, especially the New Testament. Paul's ethics often go all the way back to creation to say, this was the norm. This was how things were created. Therefore, this is how the church ought to behave. So excellent questions. Yes, Mickey. Philosophers basically have researched, you know, metaphysics or ontology. Where do we come from? Epistemology. How do we know? And then axiology or ethics, what is my responsibility? And you can throw in eschatology as well. And that basically brings out those four as well. So I think it's part of the common grace of man being created in the image of God. See, in case you didn't quite catch what Mickey was saying, secular, if we could use that term, secular categories in philosophy actually parallel the very structure that we're talking about. Ontology has to do with things as they are, their being, their essence, and then so forth in there. Okay, let's move into today then. two common pitfalls. Because I will freely admit that the material that we're covering right now, if it were heard by a large segment of evangelicals out there somewhere, would probably not receive a great reception or at best be kind of a, or at worst, maybe, I don't know how you want to look at it, but it'd just kind of be, I don't know what you're carrying on about. I don't know why you're talking about this. I don't know why it's so important. That attitude is understandable for two reasons. Two assumptions on the part of evangelicals at large. The first one is cultural, what? Neutrality. They've been sold a bag of goods by someone somewhere to buy into the notion that culture, it's just whatever. It's neutral. And the second thing is, let's see. If not sin, and I was terrible at algebra, as you can tell. If not, if not sin, jump in. Green light, proceed. No need for caution, no need for warning, no need for sober reflection, because God has already either said outright or has passively remained silent, has not pronounced something sin, and if God hasn't said it's sin, then jump in. It's okay. Let's talk for a minute as a group, starting with the first assumption. What's wrong with the idea of cultural neutrality? Based on what you've learned over the last few weeks, how would we handle that argument? Well, I actually wanted to just start out by mentioning cultural neutrality is often It often starts with a false dichotomy and often starts by the assumption that if you don't think culture is neutral, then you're touting one particular culture as the only good one, essentially. You're probably a racist. Yeah, you're probably a racist. So that's often where it kind of starts, with that assumption at least, even if it's not stated. And so the moment you start talking about not being neutral, then you're accused of all sorts of things that are really irrelevant, you know. But yeah, cultural neutrality, it's the idea that this is cultural stuff, anything that's specific to a culture, then you can't judge it, part of the postmodern thing, you can't judge it by objective standards, because the standards are different by culture, right? And who's to say that your preference, as they would see it, your cultural preference is better than my cultural preference, because again, preferences are supposed to be neutral. Very well stated. So from running with what Ben has said and from the material that we reviewed, how do we dismantle what's the biblical argument that we use to say no, cultural is not neutral? Well, I think of an example I heard somewhere in the past where if you take certain countries have what could be called national sins or sins that are peculiarly strong in that country or that culture. And a good example of it is Japan. And we've all heard the term saving face. All right? And I don't know if that's waning or not today, but I know it was a very strong concept and ethic. And another way of saying saving face is pride. So you can say part of their culture is a culture of sinful pride. Just like Americans have a rebellious streak about 10 miles wide through us. It's a false concept to say neutrality, because man was created not neutral, but he was created upright, righteous. And in the fall, he lost that righteousness. Because through redemption, we're being recreated in true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. And so you can take that fact and say that all mankind is dealing with, trying to express neutrality, but no one is neutral. You don't begin with neutrality, and neutrality never comes. That's right. And Mickey, did you notice how he went from creation to fall, just like we were talking about a while ago, right? Man was made upright. Culture making came out of an upright heart. But when man fell, man, yes, remains the image of God. So he is capable of some cultural good. But he's also depraved. His mind, his heart, his flesh is hostile toward God. So that's what makes the concept of cultural neutrality. So a way that you can apply that with your Christian friend who asks about this concept of no cultural neutrality. That's right. hand, they still have saving face. I mean, you know, when they fail, most of the time they commit suicide. Okay, so the short answer in Romans, you could just take them to Romans chapter 8 and talk about the fleshly mind being hostile toward God. There is no neutrality. If you're saved, you still have remaining sin that you have to deal with, but the unregenerate, the unsaved is hostile toward God. The second thing, if not sin, jump in. How many are familiar with this verse from Paul? All things are lawful to me, stop. Right? It stops right there, right? No, it doesn't stop. But not all things are profitable. Paul himself recognizes that just because something may be lawful doesn't mean it's helpful, doesn't mean it's profitable, doesn't mean if you use a bigger biblical word that transcends kind of the entirety of Scripture, it doesn't mean it's wise. and wisdom is a very lost concept in our day. So that's two common pitfalls to the type of approach and the type of questions that we're concerning ourselves with. So now we wanna get into what I think will be a great big outlaw ribeye today. Except Pastor Ben wants an hors d'oeuvre. What do you need, Pastor Ben? point in the issue that you're going to discuss, it has to do with the regular principle of worship against the normative. The normative is, if it's not sin, jump in, even when it comes to the worship of God. We're talking about something different. God governs the church with different principles. We can't have that sort of logic when it comes to the church. Last week we looked at the topic of cremation. And although we didn't explicitly mention this, we did two things with that term cremation before we got into the creation, fall, redemption analysis. And that one was, what is it? In our case, we were talking about cremation. And the second thing we asked was, what does it do? And after we decided that what it did, we defined it carefully as the intentional, planned, willful, funeral-oriented destruction of the human body, not burning down in a house fire or dying in a war and getting burned up, none of that, but the intentional, willful destruction of the human body in an affluent culture that doesn't require you financially to consider such extreme measures. So we asked, what does it do? Then we went to our creation fall redemption category. Well, we're gonna do a similar thing today. We're going to ask a really weird question. Can a gorilla be repurposed? What do I mean by that? Well, we have to do the two questions that we just went over. First, we have to ask what a gorilla is. And second, we ask what gorillas do. And that's the humor. If you wanted to analyze, it's hard to analyze humor, because as soon as you start analyzing, it's not funny anymore. But to analyze the humor of these slides, the reason they're funny is why? Because gorillas don't typically do these things, do they? Their nature, their essence, Their being is such that being a precise, classically trained violinist is probably not in the gorilla's future. Or being a medical doctor, or being a ballerina for that matter. Maybe the weightlifter, I don't know. He might be able to do something weird there and train. Go-kart rider and entertainer. Those aren't in the gorilla's future most likely. Why? Because a gorilla is this creature that is known for its strength, usually in the wild, and known for a lot of other characteristics that don't lend themselves to these other categories. The reason we wanted to ask this humorous question is to prepare ourselves then for a very difficult question, a very pressing question in our day. Should rock music be repurposed for corporate worship? And just like with our gorilla, what is rock? And in its natural habitat, what does rock do? And then look at creation, fall, Redemption and Restoration. Okay. So first of all, I think it was a couple weeks ago, had posted on our GRB Facebook page this article. You know the song that we sing, He Will Hold Me Fast? That guy, Matt Merker, is the author of the article that I posted. and he is a pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church where Mark Dever is pastor. And he was interacting with a book written by a woman from Baylor University, Monique Ingalls, called Singing the Congregation, How Contemporary Worship Music Forms Evangelical Community. She was focusing on the decades from 2007 to 2017, and she was looking at modern praise worship music context through a sociological lens basically asking questions about how are these settings shaping us as Christians? And again, that's not the type of question that's typically asked anymore, but if we're going to think and think biblically, we must ask them. Why? Because back to our very basics, let's see. We said culture was both activity and what? Atmosphere. Most evangelicals have decided the activities and the products created by them are neutral already. And they rarely, if ever, hardly think about atmosphere at all. Or if they do think about atmosphere, it's because they're wanting to try to produce something. a feeling, a sense, but they give very little intentional conscious thought to atmosphere. So that's why these questions are going to seem kind of odd. But in Engel's assessment and study, she came up with three categories, actually four, that were very concerning to her, the way evangelical culture is being shaped. First of all, worship is now, because of contemporary music, equated with an experience. And usually the experience, almost always the experience, is manward. Man getting some kind of blessing. Man meeting with God. Man leaving encouraged and refreshed and so on and so forth. Second, because of that, oftentimes then, how can a normal regular church service compete with such an experience. How can these pews and these lights and this interior compete with a concert hall? It can't. Three, the YouTubification of worship, meaning that now worship can be experienced anywhere at any time. shattering kind of the notion of the local assembly. And then finally, the power of image, which gets into almost a secondary layer of discussion of the use of images during the worship event. This was posted by some dear friends on Facebook, and I was glad to see the positive reception that the article received at the time. However, I raised the question, and will still raise it and go into it today, The article doesn't go far enough. I think the article's making the right observations and drawing some of the right conclusions, but the article stops short in that it doesn't question the genre of the music itself. Is there something about repurposed rock music that creates the atmospheric concerns that this author has? And I say yes. Yes, in fact, it can't help but do that. If you want more reading, Mickey, I don't know if this is a distant relation of yours or not, but Ken Myers put out a book in 89 called All God's Children in Blue Suede Shoes, Christians in Popular Culture. I got a hold of this book somewhere around 98, 99, and here it is 2019, and it's just as fresh, if not more fresh today, reading this book as it was back then. But going into than the history of rock, that's what we have to do. As Christians, we have to ask the question, okay, before we bring this genre of music in, we need to know what it is, where it came from, and what does it do. Now, do you remember from last week, We talked about the Enlightenment producing the modern era, or modernity. The industrial age was wrapped up in that whole time period, which made the possibility of, or created the environment, or even the technology to create a mass pop culture. That's a product of modernity. Modernity, as you remember, perhaps, still held onto the notion of objective truth and reason. In fact, it elevated those things to almost the level of idolatry. And it began to chuck the supernatural and it began to chuck the concept of God altogether. Within the modern era, there was a strong reaction known as romanticism or the romantics. The interesting thing about the romantics, truth for them was attained through subjectivity and through the emotions. These two things began to have a heavy collision in our country in the 1950s, especially in the arena of high culture, high art, and high classical music world. The romantics, combined with the capability now of reaching a mass pop culture, wanted to tear down high culture because it was elite, It was snobby. And by that time, some of these things were actually true. Elite, snobbish, inaccessible to the masses. And they wanted to give the masses the ability to attain truth through an emotional experience. So first on the scene, the art world itself was attacked. in pop art. But since the notion of God had been discarded, the only thing that the pop art world could reflect on and recreate was culture itself. So I don't know how many of you remember the artist Andy Warhol and his pictures of Campbell suit cans and stuff like that. That actually, he was right in the throes and right up in the heat of this pop art rebellion against modernity's high culture. That art wasn't just goofiness that we kind of chuckle about. It was a statement. It was intentional. It was a rebellion. And he's just one name among many. So that happened. But even at the most accessible level of pop art, there still be huge swaths of the masses that would not be reached by such a thing. Most people at that time, no use for art anyway. But pop music is so accessible, so common, so mass produced, that it's not even questioned anymore. It's the soundtrack to our life. Hardly anywhere you can go, whether it's the mall, the grocery store, the airport, wherever, constantly has some kind if not multiple kinds of soundtracks going on in the background. Pop music became the vehicle then in the 1960s to push the romantic rebellion against modernity into full throttle and into massive, massive success. Rock and roll music was born out of this background. Especially when you consider the British, the first wave of British rock and roll. Those, many of those same artists were also students in the pop art schools at that time. So what they did with microphones and guitars and drum sets was very conscious, was very deliberate, very intentional. They knew what they were doing, they did it on purpose, and they wanted to keep doing it. Why? Let me read a quote from this book. The essence of that myth that was rock would offer a form of spiritual deliverance from the straitjacket of modernity by providing a superior form of knowledge. Here's their definition of superior form of knowledge. A form that was immediate rather than reflective, physical rather than mental, and emotional rather than involving the will, or volitional. So rock music wasn't just music. And it wasn't just a statement. It was a vehicle to recover the concept that modernity had destroyed. Probably going to spell this wrong. The concept of the transcendent. Remember the pre-modern era that we looked at last week? There were pagans and there were Christians, lots of different thinkers, but this much they had in common. They believed in the supernatural. They believed in attaining knowledge from above. And therefore, truth was transcendent. Truth was something that existed up here and couldn't be touched and couldn't be changed. It was objective, it was real, and it was eternal. The Enlightenment wanted to hang on to that truth, but pushed it down to the earth and said, it doesn't involve God, doesn't need God. In fact, there is no God, but there's still objective truth. Well, obviously that's going to disintegrate at some point. In fact, the Romantics wanted it to disintegrate. And here was their vehicle to accomplish that mission. Now we're going to create an art form, in this case, music. that will do and replace what modernity had destroyed, a sense of the transcendent. So that is the history of rock and roll in a nutshell right there. Now, let's go back to the second question. We've seen what rock is and where it came from. And by the way, notice I didn't have any Did I throw out Satanism or backward masking? Did I quote a bunch of terrible lyrics? I didn't do any of that, did I? I didn't have to. All I have to do is show you the philosophical background of rock and roll. That's all I have to do. It should be enough. Maybe for some it isn't, but. So now, what does rock and roll do? Yes. Here she comes. It was really a or the best medium, I guess you could say, that they could think of, because music is something that comes from God, really. And it's something that most people enjoy at some level or another. Also during the 50s, late 40s, 50s, and early 60s, folk music was really, really big. And I'm old enough to remember that. And it in some ways had the same message, the words, but not the musical expression. But it was the same kind of thinking involved in it. But generally, people like music. We're attracted to it. We enjoy it. It can make us feel good. It does affect our moods. When I'm all jumpy and everything, I listen to some classical music for a while until it irritates me. So it was a perfect, and Satan is the great counterfeiter. So it was a perfect medium to accomplish this. Those characteristics that we read, now taking up our second question of what does rock do, by its very design and intention, it's non-reflective, it doesn't inspire or encourage really sitting down and thinking hard about something. It's non-reflective. It's even non-mental. It's physical in nature, the beat, the things that Dave's talking about. And rather than involving the will and the deliberate mental process leading to the actions of the will, it's passionate. It's emotional. Now notice we're not talking about emotions. There's nothing wrong with emotions. Jesus had emotions. But we're talking about being emotional. That means being driven by, ruled by, steered by, guided by your emotions. That's what we're talking about here. Now, so what does rock do? It's going to produce an atmosphere. Back to our It's going to produce an atmosphere that's non-reflective, non-mental, and emotional in its abundance. So again, we're not talking about syncopated beats. We're not talking about Satanism. We're not talking about backward masking or terrible John Lennon lyrics or any of that kind of stuff. Today we're simply focusing on what does rock in its native environment, like the gorilla, what does rock do? What was it designed to do, intentionally designed to do? To be non-reflective, non-mental, and to drive by passion, to drive by emotions. That's what it's designed to do. Now, now we're in the position to look at our process. How does this atmosphere square with the worship of God? And I've got things I could say right off the bat, but I'll restrain myself and let you. Go ahead, Matt. Okay. Take it back to me. That's all you got? It doesn't. Okay. and what he's done for us, and those things have to be thought about, they have to be contemplated, and they're objective, they're not, and they produce emotions in us, but the emotions come from who he is and what he's done for us, and not emotional feelings based on what this beat does to my sensory, sensory. All right, Clare, Jonathan, and then Pastor Ben. Yeah, one of the things we can avoid is the common pitfall of some reformed Baptists is no emotion. It all has to be thought process. It all has to follow proper eschatology and stuff. One of the key passages that we could point to is when King David danced before the Lord. Obviously, there was some emotion involved. And when one of his wives said, oh, you shouldn't do that, she got cursed. Because he was in true worship of the Lord. He was in true worship of the Lord. And so that doesn't mean it's all completely emotional, you actually have to think about it, but obviously there is some involved. So Spock would not be our symbol for corporate worship, right? That's what you're trying to say? Yeah, okay. Verse 16, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Non-reflective, well, the word of God tells us that we need to be absolutely reflective when we sing and worship the Lord. What is the greatest commandment, Pastor Ben? All your heart, mind, soul, and strength, yes. And love your neighbor as yourself, yeah. I think putting the best construction, the best of intentions on the application of rock and corporate worship would be back to what Sue was saying last week to engage the culture around you. If this is what the culture around you is swimming in and taking in on a daily basis, then the law of love, the law of neighbor, requires us to accommodate that. And that, on the surface, is not necessarily a bad path of thinking to take, but when you start plugging that into the totality of scripture and considering the very nature of rock itself, it's problematic. You can get your exercise. So you're actually looking at rock not as entertainment, but in corporate worship? Yes. Well, the presupposition behind this, like Mark Driscoll said, in order to get modern man to come, we have to do this. So at base, what has been done is they start with a presupposition that the gospel is not powerful and that God is not sovereign. We have to do something. It's basically Arminianism in a very vulgar sense, and using vulgar in the way that the music is. And so that's what we're dealing with. But I want to take issue with rock music not being non-reflective and non-mental. It causes deep reflection and it definitely deals with a message. But it's not a good message. Um, but you know, again, you're, you're dealing with this, you know, you can start with, and it's, this is where I had the problem. This is when I came to this realization that, you know, it's, it's not, I'm not talking about, you know, being a hyper Calvinist and, you know, not having a sign out front and saying, you know, if God's will for them to come, they'll be here. But, um. You know, to take that to the other extreme, I think, is what's going on. And even in some of these new Calvinists, you know, where they begin to incorporate this, they really are a contradiction in their theology. It's basically, it's ultimately a theological issue. Thank you, Mickey. Claire, back to Ben, and then Blake. Maybe part of the mistake that got us here in the first place, and I don't think this is what you're doing, but is to make it all about, well it's all, it's just because people don't like rock. These problems started long before rock and roll existed, and most of the evangelical church was on that train of looking for some, for ways to make worship more driven by what feels good and driven by what is acceptable to the masses, what is populist, what isn't so foreign to someone coming in off the street. That started in the Victorian era when Some would argue pop culture really started mass-produced culture It looked a lot different because it was it was hadn't gotten nearly hadn't swirled nearly as far down the toilet bowl but but It started way before rock, and so part of the thing is, I agree, rock has a lot of even worse problems than some other musical forms, and I appreciate you talking through it. At the same time, people can miss the point. It's not just about The stodgy older generation attacking your favorite bands It's a lot deeper than that and and the reason the church got here is because it had already Compromised in all those areas before rock showed up rock was just a better way and a more moving way Of doing the same of getting the same rush but if you look at I'll shut up in a second here, but late 1800s They had already ditched the hymns of the generations before them because they were not man-centered enough, they were not feel-good enough. They'd already ditched that. So why not go to this then, if that's the direction you're going? Yeah, and actually, what I was going to say picks up off what Ben was saying really well, because I think about guys like you and like Rex, and in some ways like me, we both really enjoy a lot of rock or a lot of different genres of music that I don't think should be in worship. As Christians, we can consume some of these things on our own, in ways that, you know, thoughtful ways. Obviously not everything. There's a lot of stuff out there that we shouldn't listen to, flat out. It's just wicked on its face, right? But, you know, even if we were to think about certain Christian music that is not bad in and of itself, you know, I don't know if this is still the case, but I know that I've been sitting outside and hear Pastor Sam pull up bumping some holy hip-hop, all right, some Reformed rap, and that would surprise a lot of people. But he enjoyed it in and of himself. He thinks that the structure of it is really good for getting a lot of dense theological material in there, but guess what? We're not going to have that in worship. Just a little bit, kind of the reflective side of what Mickey was getting at. You know, you have people like Driscoll who are, oh, we just have to do what the culture wants. But there's also a lot of very well-meaning people who recognize we're supposed to worship in spirit and in truth. And so we have to involve the emotions. And quite frankly, this kind of music does stir your emotions like other things don't. But the problem is that they're actually undercutting themselves because God's means of moving our emotions. There's nothing good in and of itself about having an emotional experience. But if truth affects your soul so that moves your emotions, that's what brings you to move your will. And true worship works that way. God speaks to us through our minds, which moves our emotions, which moves our will to conform us into the image of Christ. When they bypass that and go straight to the emotions, when the experience is over, the will isn't affected. And so they think, oh, we're making worship more meaningful, and they're actually doing the opposite. They're fueling that which causes people to be one thing in church and something else once they leave, because the experience is over now. Thank you, Rick. Here's something to consider as we kind of wrap up this morning. Is it sinful to have a rock genre song in your corporate worship? No, because we probably sing at least two or three contemporary songs that are, if you trace the family lineage back far enough, it would have some kind of connection or roots to that. But it's usually coupled also with some folk music. For example, the Gettys tend to have the Celtic flavor and things wrapped with their contemporary hymns and so forth, which make them more robust, makes them stick around longer than, say, some of Chris Tomlin's material. It'll be forgotten in another decade, but the Gettys, I suspect, will be around for quite some time. The problem is Not in saying that it's sinful, but the problem is, as the writer of the article said, and as this book said, is the atmosphere that it produces with these characteristics, which leads to a culture of immaturity. Mental immaturity, emotional immaturity, and frankly, Christian living immaturity, discipleship immaturity. The reason I say that, on more than one occasion I've had private conversations with pastors whose worship reflects this contemporary rock-based type atmosphere, but behind the scenes have bemoaned the lack of attendance of people, the lack of tithing on the ones that do attend, the lack of interest in discipleship and mentoring those who are younger than they, and all the things that we would call normal churchmanship, normal Christian living, and they're bemoaning the absence of such things in their congregations. Well, there could be, you know, other contributing factors for sure, but this much I know, as if the rock genre is the dominant feature week in, week out, week after week after week after week in your corporate culture, and given its character, what it is and what it does, Why should you be surprised if immature discipleship is the outcome? That's what you're conditioning your people for, just like Rex was just saying. You're conditioning them to come for an event, get their high, even the language, drug language is used often with worship experience, the high, or I've got to get my Jesus fix, and crazy statements like that. Jesus is not a drug. And so have I at once defended any certain historic periods, hymnody? I haven't said a word about hymnody, hardly. I haven't attacked rock music. If you check my Facebook page out, you know I love selected features of different rock bands and things like that. So I'm not against rock. But if the goal of corporate gathering, go to Ephesians 4, and we'll wrap up with this. If the goal of Christ in giving the gift of pastor-teachers is to have a man of the word for the ministry of the word, for the maturity of the people of God, then we have to ask ourselves, is this the type of corporate worship genre that will help us in that endeavor? But Christ gives gifts. And in verse 11, he gave some as apostles and some as prophets and evangelists and pastor teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ until he's given these ministers of the word until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the son of God to a mature man. to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. The goal of the Christian faith within the context of the local body is maturity. So we don't want to surround ourselves week after week after week after week with a genre that's known to produce the very opposite characteristics of that which we're trying to produce. And Dave, I'll let you have the last word. In front of that word immaturity, I would put the word permanent. Yeah, that's possible. I think redemption, of course, could make it recoverable, but not in that you'd have to leave that environment, too, Pastor Ben. Hey, just to be able to recognize what rock music is, maybe some of us aren't so aware of maybe the distinctive features of rock music, so maybe we can be on the lookout just to be thinking about these things, especially with Christian songs. What are some things that really stick out in rock music that have been translated into Christian music? You know repetitive choruses or what? You know Do you know what I'm asking? I guess are you asking about using contemporary music in and otherwise? Well, what does rock music look like? I mean, what are its distinctive features? usually The things that come to most people's minds when you mention beat rhythm energy Heightened emotions Okay. Which are fairly generic categories, I realize. Yeah, or specific instruments being used. Yeah, usually the iconic instruments are drum sets and guitars. Yeah. Yeah, electric guitar specifically. That's right. The one thing, if you want to define rock music. Rock music is definition is that it's defined by the backbeat. All rock music is four-four time with emphasis on the two and the four. And no matter what genre of rock music you go to, it's always the same. That's the one almost mathematical, quantifiable, definable thing about rock music. Four-four time, emphasis on the two and the four. Whether it's metal or punk or hip-hop, it's all the same. The Rex is bringing up a great point. What I would caution against, though, is using that as the only defining factor. Yeah. Yeah, and just to kind of wrap up, if you think this is good enough to wrap up on, is It also begs the question, why think about this at all if this is just another part of worship? Music is not just another part of worship. Not only are we just singing to God and everything, God himself commanded that we worship him in this way. So always, in anything that God commands us to do, always we should lend thought to it and make proper conclusions. Thank you all for the last five weeks. It's been enjoyable. It's been neat to see everybody, including myself, wrestle and re-wrestle with these things. And I hope it was for your profit.