So our table talk discussion for this evening is on the subject of music. And the question is this, how ought we biblically evaluate music, primarily for worship, but also secondarily for entertainment? So that's a big subject, biblically evaluating music for worship and for entertainment. So I think we kind of have to deal with those issues somewhat separately. So let's talk about music for worship to begin with. How do we biblically evaluate it? Anybody want to jump in and give us a criteria before I suggest one? most fundamentally it's doesn't work my god which doesn't get into the nuts and bolts of the topic but that's the prime objective the words or the talking about the lyrics and actual music. It's almost two different things. The words need to be glorifying God. And we have the actual music, the melody, the arrangement, the instrumentation, all of that. So If we think about evaluating music for worship, I think Kurt starts us off on the right foot by saying obviously the objective is worship. So the goal is to glorify God, right? And so that's a good place to start because so much of what might be done in church could be approached from a very pragmatic standpoint of what is going to please people so that they want to come be a part of this when our first objective ought to be, the first question ought to be, what's going to please God? So I would start though with two obvious passages in the New Testament that tell us to sing as part of our worship, which Ephesians 5, says, therefore, do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. So Paul's gonna tell us what the will of the Lord is. He says in verse 18, do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit. So you can imagine somebody who is drunk, inebriated, happy, you know, I mean, I guess people can be angry drunks, but just imagine that sort of filled with wine to the point where you're overcome with that. And then he says, not to be that, but instead to be filled with the Spirit. And then he says in verse 19, speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. So there's a lot there. Interestingly, as I thought about this, speaking to one another, right? So our worship, as we sing, is speaking to one another. But we are speaking to one another in Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. So we're speaking to one another, but singing to the Lord. So that's kind of an interesting tension that exists in our worship through psalm. is that we're communicating to one another, but we're singing to the Lord. So there's a horizontal aspect, we're gonna get in there, there's a horizontal aspect to this and a vertical aspect, right? So we're singing to the Lord, but also addressing one another in some way. So the twin passage to this is in Colossians chapter three, verse 16. He says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. That's important. In all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another. in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. So as we sing corporately in the church, part of what we're doing has to be oriented toward teaching and admonishing one another. But then he continues and says, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. So again, the horizontal component and the vertical component. We're singing to the Lord, but we're addressing one another And here he gives us the specific content is that it is the word of Christ that we're supposed to be singing. So there's one biblical criteria for evaluating music is, is it doctrinally sound? Is it teaching us the word of Christ? Is it teaching us the truth? And so it teaching and admonishing are interesting words. And we're talking about the lyrical content at this point. We've kind of jumped ahead to that. We'll have to back up a little bit. But teaching is a positive presentation of the truth. Admonishment is a negative warning against error. And our music is supposed to do both of those things. but it needs to have doctrinal content, and it needs to warn us against error. And we did that this morning when we sang Psalm 53. It warned us against error. The fool says in his heart, there is no God. Don't be like that fool. So that Psalm was admonishing us, warning us about an error that we could make. So this, in my mind, these two passages are kind of the controlling passages as far as how we evaluate music is that it is supposed to address the congregation corporately, teaching and admonishing, but it's also supposed to be done to the Lord, singing to the Lord. And if we back up a little bit and go, we'll come back to lyrical content in a minute, but examples of singing, particularly in the New Testament, obviously we're singing in the Old Testament, David singing the Psalms But in the New Testament, Jesus sang with his disciples after they celebrated the Lord's Supper in Matthew 26. Matthew 26 verse 30. They had finished instituting the Lord's Supper, and then it says, and when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. So here Jesus is singing with his disciples. Now when it says he sung a hymn, That word does not mean the same thing that it means to us, right? It is very likely, all the commentators agree, that what they sang was one of the Psalms of Ascent, which was probably Psalm 113 through 118, I believe, or the Psalms of Ascent. So here we have the example of Christ and his apostles singing together as part of their worship. We also see Paul and Silas singing in prison in Acts 16. James tells us that if any of us are happy that we ought to sing, Obviously, in the Gospel of Luke, we have a lot of examples of singing. Interesting, particularly in the first part of Luke. Luke 1, 46 through 55, Mary sings her song, which we typically call the Magnificant. Luke 1, 68 through 79, Zacharias sings, which is typically, his song is usually called the Benedictus. The angels sing in Luke 2, 14, Gloria and Excelsis Deo. And then Simeon sings, in Luke 2, 29-32, the noon dimetis is what they call this song. So, examples of people singing in the New Testament. Now, none of those examples are in the corporate worship of the church, which begs the question, if we're evaluating music for worship in the church, we get into this somewhat thorny issue concerning the Psalms. longest book in the Bible, 150 inspired songs. Both of those passages we looked at in Ephesians and Colossians told us to sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Those are all three references to the psalms. In fact, we look at the titles of the psalms which are included in the Hebrew Bible, usually in small text in English before verse one. The word Psalms is used, if we look at the Greek translation of the Hebrew Septuagint, in the book of Psalms, the word Psalms is used 87 times. 67 times is in the title. This is a psalm, which means a song of praise. The word hymn is used 17 times in the Psalter, six times in a title of a psalm. And the word spiritual songs is the Greek word od, which is used 80 times in the psalms, 36 times in the title of one of the psalms. So when Paul says sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, he's referring to the psalms. practice of the church for millennia is to sing the psalms. The early church sang the psalms. The reformers sang the psalms. Many Scottish Presbyterians and other groups still sing the psalms today. We sing the psalms. We sing one every week. The question becomes, exclusive psalmody or inclusive psalmody? The other option would be not singing psalms at all, which is very common in churches today. I think if we look at Ephesians and Colossians, I don't see how we get around the fact that we're commanded to sing the Psalms. But I would argue on the basis of these other songs that we see, particularly in Luke, or Lauren and I were just reading recently in our Bible reading, and it mentions the fact that King Solomon wrote a thousand songs. They're obviously not included in our Psalter, so if God included 150, that were inspired that he intended the church to continue to use, but I have to believe all those songs Solomon wrote were probably sung by the congregation as they worshiped. So I would personally land in this inclusive psalmody position that we ought to sing the psalms because we're commanded to, but we are allowed to sing other things as well. But some groups will argue that we exclusively ought to be singing the psalms. The Benedictus is in our hymn book, at least a version of it. Yeah. Cool. Wait, that Zacharias? Yeah. So another thing I would point out is if we go back to discussing the lyrical content, we'll discuss musical style in a minute. But as we evaluate the lyrical content, obviously, it's very clean and easy to draw the line at exclusive psalmody. If you sing nothing but the psalms, Everything you're singing is biblical, right? Because it is the Bible. But if we draw the line of inclusive psalmody and now we're going to sing things that are not inspired scripture, now we have to evaluate the content of the hymns that we're singing. So we can look at Colossians. teaching and admonishing one another. Is it presenting us with the truth of scripture? Is it true? Is it doctrinally solid? Is it actually instructing? One thing to be true, you know, you could have a song that was true but was so shallow in its content that it wasn't actually instructing you in any way. But we're supposed to be teaching one another. and admonishing, warning against error. The other thing I would point to in this regard would be Paul's discussion in 1 Corinthians concerning the use of gifts in the church. In chapter 14, 1 Corinthians 14, obviously there's a misuse of the gifts there in the church in Corinth. And so in 1 Corinthians 14, Verse 14, he says, if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful. What is the conclusion then? I will pray with the spirit and I will also pray with the understanding. I will sing with the spirit and I will also sing with the understanding or with the mind. Paul's concern is that if we sing in the church, we ought to be singing in such a way that our mind is engaged. So if we're singing songs that don't engage our mind with truth, with biblical truth, that aren't instructing us and admonishing us, I think those sorts of songs would fail the test, in my opinion. The other comments I would have on lyrical content are, one of the reasons I think singing the Psalms is so valuable is And some of the older hymns do this as well, but the modern worship music, almost exclusively, is happy music. you know, emotional, what's God going to do for me, or this sort of thing. We look at the Psalms, half of them are laments, expressions of sadness and sorrow with a note of hope in them. And I think that's necessary for us as humans to be able to express that in our worship to God. The other comment I would say is that we're singing to one another admonishing, teaching one another, singing to the Lord. There's a certain aspect in which our songs that we sing in the church ought to be addressed to God, about God, centered on God, and a lot of modern worship music is sort of man-centered rather than God-centered. But I want to offer a caveat here. I'll use Psalm 86 as an example. Psalm 86 uses the pronouns I, me, and my 31 times in 17 verses. So it is possible to sing a biblical song that is expressing what I'm feeling, what I'm experiencing, and that's not necessarily wrong. But if all of our music is me focused and not God focused, then I think we've got a problem. on lyrical content. Do you have that quote I gave you from Calvin? Do you have that quote I gave you from Calvin? You know what? I didn't put that in my notes, but I have it in my text messages. I feel like, so when I was in college, I went to a campus group and they used a lot of, you know, modern, well, now they're not modern. They're not modern anymore. There were a lot of people in college, but I just remember, you know, I was kind of a younger Christian. But sometimes I think you, because you like the sound of the song, you aren't really thinking deeply about the lyrics and that can, but then when you go back and actually read it, you're like, what? This is not really focused on God or like it should be, or like we had heard of worship song that, what did it talk about? Something about a roar coming out of your lungs? I mean, it's just like you read it and you're like, what does this even mean? Or there was a song that was popular a number of years ago when we were in Boston and I was functioning as a worship pastor. And I don't even remember who wrote it. I think maybe it was David Crowder, but I don't remember. But the song talked about God reaching down and touching the earth with a sloppy wet kiss. And I'm just like, I can't sing that. I just can't do it. You know, it's irreverent. It's just... Stop and think about the words that you're singing here. Here's the quote that Paul found and sent to me from Calvin. Calvin said, the music must not turn the church into an audience enjoying the music, but into a congregation singing the Lord's praises in his presence. Well, that's such a danger today. There's so much of what's considered worship is very performance audience driven. That's when we come at it from that perspective of what's going to please people, what's going to make them happy, entertain them, that sort of thing, rather than what's going to please God. I think, to put it really maybe simply, you want to sing hymns that don't necessarily make you The emphasis is not on feeling good, but on thinking good. In other words, thinking about God. You can sing a lot of songs, hymns, that make you feel good when you're done singing it. That was great. But when you step out of the church, are you still thinking about what that psalm said about you and God? Or is it just kind of a tune you're hanging on to, or make you feel good at the time? But if it makes you think, I think that's where you want to be challenged, by a hymn that makes you think about what that hymn is singing. about what it's focused on, what portion of scripture even it points you to, or at least what biblical principle it points you to, as opposed to just a pleasant tune, pleasant words, which may even be biblical. But if it's not really getting you to think, then all you've done is just entertain yourself, which is kind of what he's alluding to there. You don't want the hymns to all end up being things at the end of the song everybody applauds because they liked it. Oh, it was wonderful. But they don't think about what it's supposed to be about relationship with God. Well, I'm challenged trying to picture what it looks like thinking about singing to one another. I mean, do we think that way at all when we're trying, you know, when we're singing psalms? And I personally have a little trouble with the psalms, you know, just because it's kind of all new to us and we're not going to get back over them. There's 150, very often. And I'm doing well to get the words out straight and the right tune. And so I struggle with at the end of it, what did I just sing? Let alone singing to somebody else and trying to communicate anything, which I can't quite picture. The one thing I really enjoy is that they read the psalm before we sing it, so I really try to meditate. Yes. So that kind of helps, even though what's in the hymnal is sometimes a little different. I'll be honest with you, a lot of times, I don't know if you notice, I'm sitting up front where people can see me, I'll open the hymnal and follow along while I do, because it's right in front of me. So sometimes I'm comparing. I kind of follow along in the hymnal and see how it's rendered for singing in our hymnal and how it compares to the translation that's being read. Right. And that is part of it too, is when they take a verse, I can understand that verse in the Bible, but we had to turn it around to get the rhyming word or to get the right, you know, and sometimes it's not the way I normally talk. And so I'm trying to think that one through also, because it's come out quite as smooth. One of the things that, I just lost it, this quote from Calvin, he talks about that the music is supposed to turn the church into a congregation singing the Lord's praises in his presence. I think that's part of that speaking to one another thing, and I think that's one of the benefits of having singing as part of our corporate worship is that we're joining our voices together. It helps us sort of express that unity that we have as a body when we're able to join our voices together because the rest of the time you're sitting and listening to me or Paul talk. you know, listening to us read the scripture or preach or teach, but when we sing, we're all joining our voices together as one body. So I think that's valuable to us. That's the same principle as responsive reading. It gets us all reading the scripture together, not just one of us reading or no one else. You're reading it together. And being able to go back and being able to meditate on that psalm, we sing it on Wednesday night, we read it Sunday morning, we sing it again, so being able to think about it, even to go back and think about it afterwards, what did we sing? Look at those lyrics and meditate on them. I know your family did a lot of singing scripture, which is amazing. It does make me think, I wish, and that's when I can say I have parents, I love them, amazing godly people, but can you imagine if you were a small child and sang the hymns from the time you were little, how much of that scripture would be in your head. That's pretty amazing. I feel like I'm getting a late start. My memory's not so good. There are different psalters, aren't there? There are. I mean the one we had from That was different than what we're singing now, isn't it? Well, yeah, because they're singing the actual psalter. I haven't recognized any of it. These basically have been, are like almost transcribed. Some of them, yeah. I mean, this is a composition. So the Scottish psalter from 1650 was kind of the standard for a long time in Presbyterian churches. And some of those renditions are in our home. The Church of Scotland, Crown Covenant Publishing, published a number of different translations of the Psalter into more modern English over the years. The Book of Psalms for Singing, the Book of Psalms for Worship, some of those are in our hymnal as well, and then there's some other ones and more modern ones that have been rendered into English. Isaac Watt's renditions of the Psalms, that sort of thing. Are we going to talk about musical style or are we going to talk about lyrical content? I just had a quick question. When you read a psalm, you're reading it in poem form. What is that from? Usually from the Scottish Psalter. Okay, I was just wondering. Sometimes it will be from the Book of Psalms for Worship from Crown and Covenant Publishing if I like the way they rendered it a little better or something. The Scottish Psalter of 1650 was published by the Church of Scotland, but I think some of those translations were actually done by the Westminster Assembly. And I read something at one point from one of the 17th century Puritans that was actually saying that he had found that those renditions in the Scottish Psalter in places were actually more accurate translations into English of the Hebrew than the King James Bible was. So it's very interesting to read. Sometimes the rhyme doesn't work unless you read it with a Scottish accent. That's fun, yeah. So we'll expect that, right? So musical style. This is kind of almost a separate discussion. I want to start this one by seeing if I can tell this story. And I don't remember where I first heard this. I don't even know if it's true or apocryphal. But the story is that there was an American woman who had gone to, I believe it was South Africa, and was serving as a nurse or some sort of medical aid in a mission hospital setting. And she heard the African women singing while they worked. And she was just, the music was beautiful. Melody, the harmonies, the counterpoint, it was just, it moved her to the point of tears. And she thought, we're in a Christian medical, you know, mission hospital. These women are singing. It's so beautiful. They must be singing something glorious about the Lord. And so she was literally at the point of tears and asked one of her co-workers if they could translate the words into English. And the co-worker said, oh yeah, it's easy. What they're saying is, if you boil the water, you won't get dysentery. The point is, being emotionally moved by the music and actually worshiping God are not the same thing. And unfortunately, in our churches today, many people view heightened emotions as a sign that worship is taking place or that God is being truly worshipped and is present with us. And that's just simply not. necessarily true. It might be true, but it's not necessarily true. Jonathan Edwards, of course, one of the premier commentators on religious affections and worship after the First Great Awakening, he wrote this about singing. He says, the duty of singing praises to God seems to be given wholly to excite and express religious affections. So the fact that God has given us this duty to sing, he says, seems to be that God gave it to us in order to stir us emotionally. He said there is no other reason why we should express ourselves to God in verse rather than in prose and with music except that these things have a tendency to move our affections. And that's true, right? Music moves us. It moves us emotionally. It may move us to joy. It may move us to sorrow and sadness. It may move us to, you know, we were talking about this in the car earlier, like when we did a hymn sing here a third Sunday a month or two ago back in November or something, whenever it was. People requested songs. How many of the men here, sitting here tonight, requested songs that had sort of a militant flavor, either to the lyrics or to the music, right? That moves us as men, right? It stirs us up. It makes us want to be valiant for truth. Music can also move you to anger, right? You think about Are there forms of music that would be inappropriate for worship in the church? Is there a particular genre or style of music that just in and of itself would be inappropriate in the church? I don't know if we could sing rap. First of all we have to have a question about whether that's even music. So obviously God gave us 150 inspired songs and what he gave us is the lyrical content. He didn't give us melodies, harmonies. He didn't give us instrumental arrangements for them. Obviously, the diversity of musical styles that exist from America to Africa to Asia is not going to look the same in every culture and context. And I think that diversity points to the creativity of our God. But are there musical styles that would just be inappropriate in a particular, say, in our cultural context? Obviously, we're not going to sing musical styles that would come out of Asia where they use different musical scales than we do and it's just not even going to be like a foreign language to us. But as far as like American music genres, are there some that would be inappropriate for us to use in the church? I mean I think it's very difficult to say I mean different cultures I mean there might be a subculture within America where particular style music doesn't appeal to us move us emotionally. If there's a particular style of music, and I think of that heavy metal thrasher kind of sound, what is that music doing emotionally? Is it moving you to joy, to happiness, to praise, to sorrow, or to anger? Or anxiety. Is that worshipful? I mean, possibly being angry about sin or something, but I'm That style of music to me just seems like I don't see how that could possibly be worshipful. And also if the music style type, it destroys or it gets to say you cannot hear the lyrics. You don't know what's being said. I mean, so often, you know, if anybody, when my girls are in the car with me and they want to, you know, put them just the regular, local, you know, Christian station, and they all sound the same to me, and they all, I just said, what are they saying? You know, they'll repeat it over and over and over and over and over a few more times, again, but it just, how can you be worshipful? when you don't even know, so whenever Charity's sharing any song, she always gives me the lyrics to look at while it's being, you know, and okay, that's helpful. So this comes down, I don't know so much, maybe this is a style question, a musical style genre question, but it's almost more the instrumentation, the presentation of it. If the band is so loud, the instruments are no longer accompanying the congregation or facilitating the congregation's singing, but are overpowering it, and we can't hear one another, then is it really even congregational worship anymore? What about a lot of contemporary churches are The congregation is not singing. They're just standing there listening to a praise band. That's not meeting the criteria of Scripture. It's admonishing one another, teaching one another through the psalm. Singing with joy in your heart to the Lord. If you're not singing, you're just listening to a performance. Yeah, good point. And we've been to contemporary, more contemporary churches and you know, people just stand there or maybe they're waving their arms around or something. They've got the words up there though, but they don't usually have the words up on the screen. But you don't know the tune. No. You don't, you know, you can't follow. Oh and there's no note, you couldn't possibly sing a melody apart or anything. I even have a problem with the lyrics being up on the screen for And one of the reasons I have a problem with that is because oftentimes they're just putting one or two lines of the lyrics up there at a time and then switching them. And having that line lets you sing that line, but because it's just one line at a time, you're not really getting the context and you can't really think about what it is you're singing because you've just got one piece of it at a time. You wouldn't read the Bible that way, just one line at a time, disconnected from each other. No, I had a conversation with Charity about, because they do have, and she's the one putting the words up on the screen, but they do the whole song at a time. But, because we were talking about with our six, seven, eight verses, sometimes it's like you get lost, which one do I jump down to? You know, are we on the third or the fourth? And she says, well, I guess that's one thing is when they put a verse at a time, the whole verse, you're not doing like we're doing. I says, yeah, but then I don't have my notes. That's the disadvantage of just using words is, yeah, you don't you can't sing parts. You know, you just sing. It's OK to sing congregationally. Some hymns are made better that way than they are for parts. But God did give us parts, too. He gave us, you know, soprano, alto, you know, tenor, bass. So you should be able to sing that part because that's what helps blend the sound together and bring it even a greater worship to God when you're blending those different parts together. But I think, yeah, we do, our problem is we think, you know, our own America, this is the way we sing, whatever, we have different ways of singing. But if you go to Haiti, you go to Africa, some of those kind of countries, they move when they sing. They do not stand still. They are moving. They are jumping. Their beat is very strong. But that's the way they worship. It's very enthusiastic. It's very happy, very joyful. But that's totally different than us. And we could potentially learn from that, but at the same time, if we tried to imitate that, it would probably be inappropriate, because we'd just be putting on a show. Right, yeah, trying to copy them. And it would be inappropriate for them to try and stand and sing the way we do, because they would be restraining themselves in a way that was unnatural for them. So we do have to take those cultural considerations into consideration. play. I just want to share this quote from Luther just because Luther and he's so fun. So in 1538 a guy by the name of George Rowe published a book of a gathering of choral motets. intro for it. This guy didn't write all of them. Some of them were Latin. He translated them into German, into the common language, and he arranged them just for the average person to sing. And Luther, in the introduction, you know, Luther was an accomplished musician. He wrote hymns. He loved music, but he was commenting on this collection of choral hymns for people to sing, and And he said that anyone who did not appreciate the beauty of the melodies and the arrangements of these songs and recognize them as a gift from God to the church, quote, must be a clodhopper indeed and does not deserve to be called a human being. He should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of asses and the grunting of hogs. Tell us what you really think, Luther. So that was how important the actual musical component of it was to Luther. He thought the melodies and the arrangements were so beautiful. It's probably why we still sing Mighty Fortress from their guide. Right, we still sing some of Luther's songs too. Because the lyrics and the music. Because that music does move us and it should move us. Our emotions should be engaged musically. As Edward said, that seems to be why God gave us music and didn't just give us prose to read. He gave us poems and poetry and songs to sing and the gift of music so that we could express ourselves with solid theological lyrical content, but also with the musical content that allows our emotions to be expressed. Go ahead. I was going to say, that's part of the driving force behind Isaac Watts, writing what he did. Because he was challenged, because he complained about how didactic and dry and dull they were singing the Psalter. They weren't really engaged in it. They were just doing it. So his father challenged him to write it, do it yourself. And so he did. He rewrote a lot of these. of the psalms with a different melody and different way of singing it so it was more engaging and more, you know, you're enjoying it, you're singing praise to God that way as opposed to just, you know, chanting out these psalms without really feeling or emotion. You were mentioning that music moves people, and I think that's one of the dangers, like the Bethel music. I don't even know exactly what's popular now. It's supposedly Christian. charismatic church that puts out music a little bit like Hillsong, but they're not very solid theologically. So, but a lot of people are very attracted to that, the melodies, but the lyrics aren't solid. Very shallow. Very shallow, yeah. One of the things I've contemplated as myself is like musical style, what should we be using in church? And I got thinking, What of the things that God has created has Satan not perverted or corrupted? When we see marriage, what adultery and fornication? food, gluttony, blessing of others, covetousness. So it would seem to me that we need to consider that, wait a minute, Satan hasn't left music alone. As powerful as it is, there's a corruption there and trying to distinguish what style has been corrupted would be an exercise. We use a piano. Do we have to use a piano? We could use a cello or a flute or whatever we had, right? What we have to be careful of, though, is that whatever musical instrumental accompaniment we have to the singing, that it aids our worship, that it facilitates our worship, and that it doesn't distract from it. And that's one of the dangers, and I think that's one of the corruptions, is that when you put a band on stage, the temptation is for the band to show off. And that's the corruption of music. That's what bands do. They show off, and that's fun, but when it's in the church, And the band is now calling attention to itself rather than calling attention to the one that we're worshiping. And that's where we've got a disconnect. That's basically what Calvin was saying. It's like you're going to a concert to listen and be entertained as opposed to going to church to worship and give praise to God. That's the difference. And you can enjoy a concert. It can be very uplifting emotionally and even sometimes in a spiritual way too, depending on what the concert is, if you're singing Messiah or something like that. If you're in a church you want to be there to worship God. That's your purpose of coming together is to worship him, to sing his praises, to acknowledge who he is. And yes you can sing about the impact of him and his grace and mercy on you but ultimately the praise should all go back to him not all focused on you, how you feel, how you enjoy this or that. It all should be focused back on him. That should be our ultimate purpose. Doug mentioned this a few minutes ago, that a lot of these churches, the congregation is not singing, they're just there watching a performance, being entertained. I mean, when you were leading worship, and that when church is so loud, like you can't hear yourself, you can't hear the people around you, so it's not like the actual praises, the songs, the words are even being really heard, other than the person on the microphone. When you walk in and you see the drum set encased in glass, you know you're in for a loud... Or worse, they have earplugs in the corner. I would love to go back in time and be there with Solomon or David and when they have all the singers, they had all the instruments. I mean, the Psalms are just so full of all the different instruments giving praise to God. What is the timbrel? We were reading this poem the other day. It talks about the lyre and the harp. What is the timbrel? I think it might be related to a symbol of some sort, a timbrel, something that makes noise. But yeah, I mean, psalms are just full. And the singers, I mean, they were appointed singers. And I'm thinking, are they singing parts? This must have been, I want to be there. But the instruments, I think, We, you know, we say, you know, use your, your abilities, your skills that God's given you or, you know, for the Lord to serve him. And I have seen it once or twice where, you know, someone's doing a violin just behind the piano and it just added beautifully. And you weren't giving it, you know, there was no, attention given there they were just standing off to the side and Everybody was singing too. I mean it was you know, and so you can Instruments I think should be you know used to some degree to To help if you can keep it that way like you said, it's not a show-off. It's not a you know We need to pray the Lord sends somebody to play the violin. Or do you play the violin? Somebody can pick up his violin. He needs to retire so that he can... I think the danger is in two ways sometimes. I've been in churches where even with the keyboard, usually not a piano, but keyboard is, they use the music to sort of manipulate people's emotions while the somebody is speaking or praying or whatever, and they're playing emotional kind of music in the background. So there's that way in which the music is misused in order to move people's emotions. And then the other way is that, and Lauren and I were discussing this, is that there's a certain level of musical proficiency that is necessary for the musicians to be able to show off. And then there's a whole other level of musicality that's necessary for a musician to know how to play tastefully and not exercise all the technical proficiency they have, but to restrain themselves and to play in such a way that it serves the song and directs the congregation's worship rather than calling attention to my skill. And if you look back in history, especially in the time of Bach, Beethoven, Bach was more into organ music. They weren't out in the open. They were behind a wall somewhere. You couldn't see them playing. You could hear it, but you couldn't see them. So there was no way for you to focus on them. And they would be less likely, perhaps, to show up because they're not looking to the audience. They're just playing to him, whatever it is. Well, he still can play all over the place. Yeah, true. On the other hand, and you mentioned what would it have been like to have been there with David and these other people. Listen to this description. I'm being a little bit sneaky here, but listen to this description of the worship that's happening. Then David and all Israel played music before God with all their might, with singing on harps, on stringed instruments, on tambourines, on cymbals, and with trumpets. They've got percussion and wind instruments and stringed instruments, and they're playing with all their might and singing. hiding behind a curtain doing it. They're doing it like you described, some of these African tribes, where they're moving and they're, you know. Enthusiastic. I say I'm being sneaky because it's just a few verses after this that God strikes somebody dead because they were being disobedient as they were doing this. But they were engaging with all their might as they worshiped. Now a couple chapters later, they bring the ark up to the Jerusalem. And it's interesting that when they do it then, it says, David spoke to the leaders of the Levites to appoint their brethren to be the singers, accompanied by instruments of music, stringed instruments, harps, and cymbals, by raising the voice with resounding joy. And then the Levites appoint the singers to lead the congregation in their worship. But now it was rightly ordered according to the word of God. So but they're still using the same instruments and they're still doing it with the sound of joy But here it's ordered properly according to how God had instructed them to worship him. Did they have it written out? Did they have practice time? Did they just start singing? Impromptu. And if that's David, was that, were they singing his psalms or were they singing something else at that time? You know, because he was at that, he was a king, so he had written a number of psalms beforehand, but not all of them. I'm sure there were songs written before the Psalms were written. That's what I'm saying. Moses. Well, I guess that raises an interesting point that, especially in the case of the Psalms, those are divinely inspired lyrics. So the music must be subservient to that. It cannot obscure what's divinely inspired. Right. Good. Here's an interesting little thing to think about. So we think about how important music is to our worship. Listen to this passage in Job. The Lord is speaking to Job here, and he's kind of questioning Job, you know, were you there when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding, who determined its measurement? Surely you know, or who stretched the line upon it to where its foundation is fastened, or who laid its cornerstone? When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy, God is talking about creation. There was music there at creation. and then you flip all the way over to Revelation. And then you flip all the way over here to Revelation 15, and you've got the saints singing the song of Moses and the servant of God and the song of the Lamb, saying, great and marvelous are your works, Lord God Almighty, just and true are your ways, O King of saints. So they're singing at the end. So there is singing and worship of God through song from creation all the way to consummation at the end of the Bible. added on later was there from the beginning and it endures all the way into eternity as we worship God. So music is very important in how we worship the Lord. I think we do have to be careful about the lyrical content that the music itself, like you said, Kurt, is subservient to that lyrical content. It's serving the words that we're singing so that we are teaching and admonishing one another and worshiping God with joy in our heart. I don't think we have time to discuss music for entertainment. We'll have to save that for another time, maybe.