Join us now for the chapel hour coming to you from the campus of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Following the introduction by Dr. Bob Wood, our speaker will be Mr. Tim Fisher of Sacred Music Services in Greenville, South Carolina. The title of his message is, What Do You Believe About God? The text is from Colossians 3, verse 16. Well, they say that confession is good for the soul, and I must make a confession to you this morning. I didn't sing. I did mouth the words of the song, but I was standing next to a man that would have known how badly I sing if he had heard me. When I pastored a church, my brother-in-law was choir director, and I would sit where pastors sit up at the front next to the side of the podium. And every time he would get up to lead a choir special, he would raise his hands and then look down at me and say, please don't sing. You get the whole choir off. So that was the way I was greeted every Sunday morning. Singing is not one of my gifts, but praise the Lord, it is the gift of our chapel speaker for today and tomorrow. Tim Fisher from Sacred Music Services here in Greenville received his BA and his MA here in 1980. For nine years, he taught on our faculty. He's a man that understands the use of music in the ministry. And he's been involved with sacred music services since 1988 when he and his wife Debbie started it. Their music ministry is dedicated to providing sacred recordings for the home. He travels to high schools and Christian colleges and churches to speak on the issue of scripture and music. He's authored two wonderful books, The Battle for Christian Music and Harmony at Home. He and his family are members of Faith Baptist Church, where he holds the responsibility as a music director. He's loyal to the Word of God. He has a wonderful background as a teacher, a singer, an arranger, a producer. He's a man that loves the Lord and worships the Lord through his music. This is a hot topic in the church today. It's a very hot topic for you. You have various opinions on this. And I don't think we could have a better man to come and speak to us about this subject with Tim Fisher. So you give him your utmost attention as he comes and speaks to us today and tomorrow. Tim? Well, Dr. Wood, I've heard you sing, and you've got nothing to worry about. I won't change my opinion. It's a privilege to be here, and I really mean that. As a graduate, As a homeboy, by the way, I grew up on this campus. 1976, when this building opened, I sat right there where you sit in the sweater. That was my first chapel seat. Right next to me sat Betty Fagg, who is now Dr. Bob III's secretary. And I have appreciated the chance to come back and to speak. It's a great honor. It's one I don't take lightly. I pray for this school. I pray for your administration. I pray for your music faculty. I used to be on the music faculty. I know how unspiritual they are, so I know I have to pray for them a great deal. I'm joking. I'm joking. OK. But I do not come lightly to this. I've been struggling over what I'm going to speak about here because, of course, the time elements are very constraining. But I trust the Lord will bless us the next two days. I'm just going to finish today and go right into tomorrow. So I hope you all come back for that. I'd appreciate it. And Dr. Bob asked me to speak on the topic of contemporary Christian music, something that I have preached on for many years now. A couple of problems that have confronted me are of course the time restraints, but also, I'm aware that most of you know about the issues. You know, I can read all my quotes, and I can read all my sources, and I can give you the Scripture passages that you've heard before, But you know that, most of you do. Now, if you're sincerely searching, and I leave some of those things out, then you can still sincerely search and you can find that information. But I want to approach the topic perhaps in a different way, a way that I was not expecting to until really just very recently as I was preparing for this. and probably differently than you were expecting me to, but I trust that the Lord is going to bless us. You know, we could spend our time here in chapel talking about the issue of the neutrality of music. The fact that music by itself, apart from a text, has the capability of expressing something that will either edify me or tear me down. That will express something either morally in tune with the Word of God or morally out of step with the Word of God and in tune with the world. And we could give you all of this proof. And by the way, there is an abundant amount of proof. Overwhelming. In fact, I've made this statement many times as I have preached. The only people in the history of the world, and I know that's a pretty extreme statement, but it's true. The only people in the history of the world that have ever supported the neutrality of music are Christians who are trying to justify bringing pop styles of music into the church. No one else has ever believed that. We could read quotes for the rest of the chapel time today and tomorrow and on through the week by people who will support this very fact. and you do your reading and you read the books that have been written by people who support contemporary Christian music, and they offer no positive proof as to the fact that music is neutral, because there is none. And they throw out their little clichés like if my neighbor spoke German, I would learn German in order to reach my neighbor, but those illustrations are so full of holes. You inherently know that music affects you. because of the choices that you make. When I was a teenager, and I was at one time, it's just that different groups were popular. When I was in junior high, the Beatles were still number one. Yes, that is how old I am. But you know, the music that I chose as a teenager was the music that I knew would affect me in a certain way. And you make the same choices. We know that music affects us. We know inherently that music affects us. We know from observation that music affects us. We know from Scripture that music affects us. We could talk about this issue, but I'm not going to because I believe that you inherently understand the point. We could talk about the purpose of music. Go through the Bible and look at the purpose of music primarily, not solely, but primarily to offer praise to God. We could look at the verses that talk about music as a gift, as a sacrifice, The book of Hebrews tells us it's a sacrifice of praise that we make to God. The purpose of music is not primarily to evangelize the lost. That's the purpose of preaching. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. And how shall they hear without a preacher? God has ordained that the preaching of the Word of God given to the lost is the way that He brings people into His kingdom. Music can support that, but that's not the primary purpose of music. The primary purpose of Christian music is for Christians to offer praise to God. But the CCM movement has that all backwards. And philosophically, they're just full of holes on this issue. God did not give us the gift of music so that we could selfishly indulge ourselves in our own hedonistic pleasures. God gave us the gift of music for us to give it back to Him as a sacrifice of praise. There's no room for selfish indulgence in this issue. You say, but what about enjoyment? Well, what about enjoyment? What does the Bible have to say about enjoyment? Our enjoyment comes from pleasing the Lord, folks. It doesn't come from indulging ourselves in what we want to do. There's no room for that in the Christian life. Our joy comes from pleasing the Lord. And God said if you do that, I will give you joy and I will give it to you abundantly. But I think most of you understand. You may not practice, but you understand that issue. We could talk about some of the myths of contemporary Christian music. Did you know that Luther used bar tunes? So why can't we take advantage of the secular music of our day? I don't know how many times I've heard that statement. And if somebody could prove to me that Luther used bar tunes, I would be extremely interested. Because I've been researching this topic for years, and it's simply not true. Now, was Luther influenced by the secular music of his day? Yes. But who controlled the secular music of Luther's day? The church. Not the bar. I've heard the same thing said about John and Charles Wesley, you know, they and recently it was funny, somebody forwarded me an article. No conversation for Tavern Tunes, this is from the Washington Times, and one of the leading spokesmen in the area of music for this for the United Methodist Church wrote an article and he said, quote, There is a widespread misconception. I heard it. I hear it at conferences everywhere that the Wesleys use drinking songs, says Dean McIntyre, a music officer with the denominational board of discipleship. He says, quote, this is a myth. It's just not true. And he goes on to talk about, but, you know, you hear these things said all the time and we just accept them. Well, of course, the church is all we've borrowed the bar tunes from the world. There have been a few instances, perhaps, but, you know, most of them simply prove the fact that doing it is extremely unwise and doesn't work. It's just a myth. How about this one? You know, CCM is giving to us fresh and new songs and it's invigorating the church. Now let's stop there just for a second. Would somebody tell me one musical style that CCM has invented? What has CCM brought new? And I say CCM, I'm talking about contemporary Christian music. I think most of you understand that too. What has CCM brought to the table that is new? Absolutely nothing. It is warmed over. Pop music. And that's why the world doesn't respect it. And interestingly enough, most Christians do not listen to it. That will surprise you, but we'll talk about that as we get into the message. CCM has nothing new to offer us, folks. It never has. If tomorrow, let's say the secular world announced from Hollywood, we've got a brand new style of music. And I'm just taking a word out of my brain. We're going to call it carpet. OK, we've got a brand new musical style called carpet. And it's going to be defined by this and this and it's going to be this and this. Guess what we're going to have in six months? Christian carpet. Okay. CCM has nothing new to offer us. All it gives us is warmed over pop musical styles. And frankly, it's not as good as the original. And that's why I say that most Christians don't even listen to CCM. They go to the real stuff. And you know that's true too. Here's another myth. This issue of music must have started at Bob Jones University. Man, I travel all over the country and I speak on music. I've been in churches. I've been in colleges. And, you know, sometimes you get the idea that, you know, every controversy in the history of fundamentalism has originated here at Bob Jones University. And, you know, Dr. Bob is sitting in his office one day and he says, well, it's time to start a new one. Let's just pick on music. Now, some of you may feel that way, but that's really not the case. This is an issue that has been rattling the church for a long time. Do you know that Plato said 400 years before Jesus Christ was born, he said, let me write the songs of a nation and I care not who makes its laws. This is not a new issue. You can go back through the history of the church and find there always have been struggles. Remember, I just read in my devotions recently, Moses coming down from the mount with the Ten Commandments. And Aaron has now offered the golden calf and let the people offer their sacrifices of idolatry and sensuality. And the Bible says that Moses comes down and he says to Aaron, there is a noise of what? War in the camp. And what was he talking about, folks? It was the style of music. The closer they got, they realized that there was a certain style of music that sounded extremely foreign to them. It was closely associated with paganism. And God had to judge it. And by the way, if you think that is just an interesting verse, let me remind you that in Psalm 40, verse 3, David said that when he was saved, that God brought him out of a horrible pit. That word horrible, if you'll look up, take a Strong's Concordance and look up the meaning, it means a horrible, chaotic pit of noise. That's exactly what he's saying in that verse. Isn't it interesting that David used that very same term and said, God brought me up out of this horrible, chaotic pit of noise. and He set my feet upon a rock, and He established my goings." And what was the contrast that David uses in this verse to show his new walk in Christ? It's his music. No longer, he says, is my life characterized by the horrible, chaotic noise of this world. But now I've got a new song in my mouth, even praising to our God, many shall see it in fear and shall trust in the Lord. Here is the contrast that David is making in this passage of Scripture. This issue of CCM being something new or something that is just indigenous to the fundamental movement is really a myth. Dr. Wood mentioned that I've written a couple of books. I wrote The Battle for Christian Music ten years ago. Several years ago, for a while, I would probably say for a period of about two years, do you know who my biggest purchaser of that book was across the country? The Seventh-day Adventist Church. Now, we don't broadcast in those circles. I don't advertise in those circles by any means. But they're facing the same issue. All the denominations. The Catholics are facing the same issue. The major people that have been writing over the last 10 years about the music issues are the Presbyterians. Some of the books that I would recommend that you read, not necessarily believe everything you read, but that are really prescriptive about what is going on in our culture today have been written by Presbyterians. Why? Because they're facing the same issues in their movement. This is not just a fundamental thing. This is across the evangelical church scene of America. It's not something new. It's something that's been around for a long time. I remember many years ago when the Lord convicted me about this area. And you know, I grew up around this area. I grew up here. I received my undergraduate and graduate degrees here in the area of music. And what I believed was simply what was handed down to me. And I realized that one day, and it really bothered me. I said, Lord, I don't have any personal convictions about music. I simply have adopted what my parents have taught me, what my local church has taught me, what my school has taught me. And by the way, I'm thankful for all of those institutions. But my music convictions were not really mine. And I realized if I'm going to serve the Lord in the area of music, I've got to make sure that I believe what I have from Scripture because God has given it to me. And I entered into a personal study period where I really began to delve into the Word of God. Now, I have not learned it all by any means. There's a lot of things I need yet to learn. But God taught me a great deal. And that began the process of developing personal convictions in my life. And I've got to be honest with you. I don't mean to be trite. I don't mean to be dishonest with what I'm about to say. But I'm just telling you as a person who has studied music for 20 years, I've seen the material. I've seen the Scripture. I've seen the arguments on both sides. I've read the CCM interviews. I've looked at what there is. And folks, I am more convinced now of my position and the school's position and the position that we take in the area of music than I have ever been. You're not going to shake me on this. Because I have my convictions from the Word of God. You say, well, Tim, I know a lot of Christians who disagree with you. Yes, they do. And we're going to talk about that. It comes down to what they believe. My ministry is not to go out to churches who do not believe the same thing I do and try to straighten them out in the area of music. My ministry is to come to people who profess to believe the same thing and take the same stand. And I'm talking about you folks here. And say, does our music position line up with our theology? You know, if I believed that Now this is if, okay. If I believed that music was neutral. If I believed that the purpose of music was evangelism. If I believed in the supremacy of experience and the charismatic emphasis equating emotion and experience with doctrine. If I believed in those three things, then CCM folks would be the perfect answer for me. Did you hear that? If I believe in the neutrality of music, if I believe in the supremacy of emotion and experience along with doctrine, equating it with doctrine, and if I believe that the pure purpose for music was evangelism, then CCM is the perfect answer for me. It's the perfect answer for my church. It's the perfect answer for my ministry. But there's a problem. I don't believe in any of those things. I don't think Scripture teaches those things. And it's important that we look at what Scripture has to say, because ultimately, Scripture is going or should define what our actions are. And it's here that I begin the thesis for the message. What do you believe about God? How does your theology influence your practice? Or we could say it this way, does your practice define Your theology. Turn in your Bibles to Colossians 3.16. Most of you know this verse. You know it from memory, but still, if you would turn there. Let's just take a quick look at it as we begin our message. Colossians 3.16 says, Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord." Now, it's difficult, of course, again in this time to set up the entire context of this verse. But if you're familiar with the writings of Paul, you know that Paul always addresses the theology or the supremacy of God before coming to his conclusions about our practice. I feel confident that Jim Berg has been preaching through his new book here created for his glory. And in that, he discusses the book of Ephesians. And in order for us to understand Ephesians 6, children, obey your parents and the Lord, and Ephesians 5, husbands, love your wives, and servants, obey your masters, and all these other interpersonal relationships, in order for us to truly understand those things, we have to go back to Ephesians 1, 2, and 3 and understand who God is. And that's what Paul presents in this book is the theology of Jesus Christ and who He is and what He has done for us. And then when we come to these later chapters and we read things like Children, obey your parents to the Lord. We have a fuller understanding of that because we practice that in the light of who Jesus Christ is. It is our theology that ultimately determines our practice. And here in the book of Colossians, we have the same thing. Just turn back a page in your Bible and look at some of, again, I quote Jim Berg. He goes to our church and I've heard him preach many times, but he refers to the fireworks here. The fireworks of who Jesus Christ is. Things that really ought to get our attention. Things that really wake us up and say, wow, I didn't think about that. But I want you to see the list in Colossians chapter 1, verse 13. Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness. Now folks, there's a lot in that statement. That's talking about Jesus Christ. Who has delivered us from the power of darkness. Look at the next verse. "...in whom we have the redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins." Verse 15, who is the image of the invisible God? We're talking about Jesus Christ. We're learning here about theology. We are learning more about who our God is and what He has done for us. Look at the next verse. "...For by Him were all things created." Verse 17, "...and He is before all things." He is first place. Verse 18, and He is the head of the church. Verse 19, for it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell. And we could go through verse after verse, but these are wonderful descriptions of who Jesus Christ is. Who our God is and what He has done for us. And this is the beginning point for any Christian to determine their practice. What do we believe about God? And then, and again we skip quickly because of the context, we come to Colossians 3, and now we get into some of the more practical applications about how we ought to live as believers. And one of the first things is, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. Why? Because we've already seen who the God of the Word is. And if we want to understand the God that we are to worship, we find out in His Word who He is, and then we order our lives appropriately. And folks, it's the same thing with our music. It is theology that is going to determine what we listen to, what we allow. And of course, we can extend this to what we watch on television, what our video rentals are, and everything else down the line. What we do as believers is going to be determined ultimately by who we believe God is. And if you think that there is uniformity on that topic in the church today, you are sadly mistaken. You are sadly mistaken. These are strange days in which we live. It used to be that churches were defined by doctrine. In other words, you could walk up to a fellow believer, and I'm just speaking here in general terms, evangelistically here. You could walk up to a fellow believer and say, you know, I go to a Baptist church. What are you saying? What did you mean by saying that? That means that I go to a church that adopts a certain position of doctrine and application. And that's the church I have chosen to identify with. And that person might say, well, you know, I go to a Methodist church or I go to a Presbyterian church. And it used to be, right or wrong, that churches were defined by doctrine. But for the first time in church history, our worship is now defined by our music. Just look at the commercials. You call a church up in town, for instance, just a large church in town. And you say, tell me a little bit about their church. And you know what they're going to say first thing? Well, we are a contemporary church. What are they talking about? Are they talking about theology here? No. They're talking about music. We are at the point where music has now defined our worship. And now some churches, they're appealing to everyone. So they have the contemporary service and the traditional service. Worship, for the first time in the history of the church, is now defined by the style of music in which we use, which we enjoy, rather than doctrine. And now the name Baptist is being taken off of a number of churches. The name Presbyterian is being taken off a number of churches. And you know, on and on. Now we have community churches and all this kind of stuff. Why? Because people don't want to be bothered by doctrine anymore. I remember as a boy, My parents both grew up in Anderson, Indiana, and just about 15 miles north of Anderson is a town called Alexandria, Indiana. Alexandria is the home of Bill Gaither, one of the most prominent, one of the most influential, and one of the most seminal people in the history of contemporary Christian music. Virtually every big name that you can think of has somehow worked his way through Bill Gaither, whether it's Sandy Patty, Amy Grant, Steve Green, Michael English, and you can come on up through the newer people. Virtually, he has had his influence. He is one of the most influential people in the history of contemporary Christian music. Well, we used to go up there in the summers and spend some time. And I remember in high school, especially in college, Bill Gaither had a recording studio called Pinebrook, a very famous studio. And basically anybody who was anybody in Christian music did their recording there. And I was getting interested in the area of music. And I would go up there and tour the studio. I got to know the chief producer there and whenever we were in the area, I'd call her up and I'd say, Hey, I'm in town. Do you mind if I come over and sit in on some sessions? And I really enjoyed doing that. And even after we were married, we would go up to visit relatives and I'll always go up there to see what was going on and met just a number of people and had no idea that the Lord was going to lead me into recording. And that influenced me quite a bit, seeing what was going on and all this kind of stuff. But anyway, the point I want to make is while I was there, this chief producer took me around and introduced me to everybody in the office there. Now, I didn't ask her much questions. This is exactly what she said. She said, this is so-and-so, and I'd shake their hands. Now, she's a Roman Catholic. And this is so-and-so, and she's a Lutheran. And this is so-and-so, and she's a Baptist. And this is so-and-so, and she'd go through all these different denominations. And then she made this statement. And folks, this is a true statement. I've heard it 100 times if I've heard it once. In all sincerity, All the sincerity that this person could have. She said, Tim, that's the wonderful thing about it here at Gaither Ministries. We don't let doctrine get in the way of our fellowship. Wow. Folks, it is doctrine that determines our fellowship. We fellowship around the Word of God and the truth of the Word of God. Now, I know what she was saying. But she had no idea what she was really saying. People don't want to be caught by doctrine anymore. Don't put me in that box. I don't want to be called a Baptist. No, there's too much baggage that comes along with that. We don't want to be identified by our doctrine anymore. Why? Because we are at the point where music, or culture we should say, culture defines who we are, not theology. And it's the same thing in the church. And unfortunately, in many cases, it's the same thing in fundamentalism. A quick look at our history will reveal how culture has influenced our vision of Christ. You know, just a quick history here. It's no big thing. But you know, in the late 60s, when Christian rock was just beginning to formulate, we imagined as a Christian culture as a whole, we imagined Jesus in a brightly colored attire. You know, this really bright coat laying on His cloud alongside a lamb. That was the vision of Jesus during the late 60s because of all the Jesus people that came out. of the peace movement. And this was the Jesus that we wrote about. You know, there's a number of choruses that we sing today that came out of that movement. And a lot of them talk about Jesus being the Lamb. He's just a sweet guy. I mean, He would be the first to protest war. He would join these people out on the streets today. Our music reflected in the 70s. You know, in the late 70s, or mid to late 70s and into the early 80s, we imagined Jesus as being a revolutionary. And here we saw the pictures of the long hair and we heard the stories about him going over, throwing the money tables over, and just everything was revolutionary. He was a non-conformist. And so therefore, we began in our Christian world, our music reflected non-conformity. And then we began to have heavy Christian metal. The non-conformist music began to enter in and began to find acceptance. Why? Because culture determined our view of Christ. In the 80s, Jesus was a friend of mine. He was just a nice guy. He was accepting. We imagine Jesus as the man upstairs. Or the old man with the gray beard. He's just our buddy. We were invited to put our hand in the hand of the man who stilled the waters. We speak of Jesus in familiar terms of endearment. That we would speak of our girlfriend or our wife or our lover. And Christian music reflected that theology. The late 80's and 90's, today Jesus looks exactly like we do. It's Jesus who would wear the three-piece suit. It's Jesus who would be politically correct and would never offend anyone. Isn't it interesting? I don't know if it probably has been commented here on the chapel platform. If you've been reading the Greenville News and you're aware of what's going on with the Martin Luther King holiday, isn't it interesting that Jesus would have supported the Martin Luther King holiday? Now, whether or not you agree with it, that's not the issue. But everyone's claiming Jesus now. He would do what they would do because He's one of us. He is politically correct. Our music reflects that. We see Jesus in a politically correct light that never offends and always adapts. We are invited to experience Jesus in a new way that is foreign or perhaps even repulsive to our cultural norms in the name of cooperation. Do you think our Christian music reflects this? Absolutely. And folks, I don't know what's going to be characteristic of this decade on into the next decade, but I have an idea. Because the church has become so sensual and so repulsive in its morals that we're going to begin to picture Jesus as a very perverse person. It's already beginning to happen. I think it's going to continue. Why? Because our culture influences our view of God. Now we see here in our Scripture passage in Colossians 3, it says, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. And I need to close now. All of this has been introduction to get us to this passage. But that's okay because I've gotten through most of what I wanted to get through today. But folks, what this verse is saying is if you are going to honor the Lord in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, it will begin with your understanding of who Jesus Christ is. That the Word of Christ will completely dwell in us, and in this wisdom, The Bible says, in all wisdom. It's referring to the wisdom of Jesus Christ. In His wisdom. In this wisdom. Then we can begin to approach Him with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. So my challenge is this morning to begin with, what do you believe about God? And what God do you believe in? Because we oftentimes, even those of us who are saved, worship a God of our imagination, or a God of our desire rather than the God of Scripture. Let's bow for prayer. Lord, we're thankful for Your Word. Lord, this probably isn't the message that many of us expected to hear, but Lord, this is the message that we need because this is the message that reminds us of who You are. And Lord, whenever we see who You are, we realize our responsibility. We realize in humility how we should serve You. And Lord, it brings us to a point of falling on our face and recognizing You as our divine Redeemer. And Lord, we need to do that. And as we address this musical issue, I pray that You'll give us a fresh vision of who You are. And Lord, I pray for these young people that they would begin a search for the Christ of the Bible rather than the Christ of our imagination. And Lord, would You use this to influence. You've been listening to the Chapel Hour coming to you from the campus of Bob Jones University. Our speaker was Mr. Tim Fisher of Sacred Music Services in Greenville, South Carolina. For a cassette copy of today's message, send a check for $5.13 to Campus Store, Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina 29614. Be sure to mention the name of the speaker and today's date. The Chapel Hour has been sponsored by Bob Jones University.