I want to call your attention this afternoon to the book of Acts chapter 24. 24th chapter of Acts. We're going to read beginning at verse 10. Acts 24 10, then Paul after that the governor had beckoned unto him to speak, answered, Forasmuch as I know that thou hast been of many years a judge unto this nation, I do the more cheerfully answer for myself, because that thou mayest understand that there are yet but twelve days since I went up to Jerusalem for to worship. And they neither found me in the temple disputing with any man, neither raising up the people, neither in the synagogues, nor in the city. Neither can they prove the things whereof they now accuse me. But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets. and have hope toward God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust. And herein do I exercise myself to have always a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men." The words of Paul in his defense found in verse 14 seem especially relevant to our study here on the subject of worship. This, I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets. What did Paul's contemporaries among the Jews call heresy? Certainly it is the body of truth relating to the person and work of Jesus Christ. That was what was rejected. That was what they considered to be heresy as they insisted on clinging to Moses. Of course they weren't really clinging to Moses but they thought they were clinging to Moses. Christ exposed them as rejecting Moses because Moses wrote of Christ. And you can't take Moses truly and reject Christ. All of the truth rises and falls together. But perhaps there is also included in what Paul calls his worship, which others called heresy. Something concerning worshiping in spirit. Without the Old Testament ceremonies, without the national and ceremonial privileges and distinctions, the priesthood and so on. And so I would take this statement of Paul's and make it my own after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my father's. Today, those who worship without ceremonies, without Sensual entertainments who worship in spirit and in truth. Are considered by some to be heretics, they call it heresy, they we call it worship. Paul called his doctrine and practice worship, though others called it heresy. Now. We have heard and may encounter this accusation that we are simply frozen in time in terms of our public worship. And I believe that, well, we should be frozen in time in our worship, namely the New Testament time and the New Testament order that is spelled out for us in the Word of God. We should not be frozen in time in terms of the 1950s or the 1940s as opposed to the 1990s or 2000s and so on. That is what people usually have in mind today when they talk about the difference between traditional and contemporary worship. By traditional, they mean something from about 50 or 60 years ago. But much of that at that time. Was more contemporary than those of that generation understood. And that's why we should not be frozen in that time, but frozen in the New Testament time. Therefore, when someone asks Is your church traditional or contemporary. Well truly we are neither one. We are New Testament in our worship. Though by today's standards most people would think we were traditional but bring in folks from the so-called traditional background to our gathering here and they would say this is not traditional to us. So. Before we get started in this historical survey, I want to bring you up to date. Some of you are bringing me new articles every week or two as the cutting edge moves further and further away from the scriptures. Here's an article that is a week old from the local newspaper, Bikers Thirsty at Salvation Saloon. There is a saloon in Ozona, Florida, that on Sunday mornings is transformed into a church in as much as a building has anything to do with it. This is not your parents church. This is going to bless your socks off. Well, at least they're still wearing socks, I guess that is better than some. Without reading all the article there's a line or two here that's very relevant to our study. The service here at Salvation Saloon includes at its start a performance by the Posse band which gathers on a small stage. They sing Boulevard of Broken Dreams and I looked up the lyrics to that song on the internet, and I'm really curious as to whether they include the four-letter words or not when they sing it, but they don't say here. They have on a projection screen features of cartoon characters Wren and Stimpy with the message, Welcome Saloonatics. And the pastor says they try to keep discussion of Bible stories or Jesus works simple and relevant. There are no church songs. There are however jokes trivia. And the reading of the Saloni report comical fake classified advertisements. And so the modern worship goes on and on. Now I have something else I want to read to you and see if you can guess who wrote this. We have introduced into churches a type of laborious and theatrical music. A confused chattering of diverse voices such as I do not think was ever heard in the theaters of the Greeks or the Romans. They perform everything with slide trumpets trombones cornets and little flutes and with these the voices of men contend men run to church as to a theater to have their ears tickled. That was written in the early 1500s by Erasmus. And I read that to underscore this point, we are not the first generation to face the issues regarding worship that we are facing today. What Erasmus said is extremely up to date and contemporary to our situation. And in this study. I want to do something that is different and unusual for us in a preaching hour, and that is to give a historical survey of the subject at hand. There is a value in church history. There is a saying that goes like this, antiquity is not authority. And that's very true. We do not take our instructions from history. We take our instructions from the word of God, but it is very beneficial and helpful to see where our forefathers and where other groups were on any given subject or doctrine or practice and see what arguments and what influences led them to the place where they were. And that's what we hope to do here in a very summary fashion here today. Again, I'm not a musicologist. I have only read after some that have some insights. We've already seen the Old Testament worship. As contrasted with New Testament worship. The Old Testament being temporary and introductory to the New Testament worship, the sensual as opposed to the spiritual, elaborate as opposed to simple. And so we pick up at the end of the New Testament time. In what is called the early church. Or the time of the church fathers, as they're called. From that point up until about the time of Constantine. The apostolic simplicity, the simplicity of style ordered after the synagogue worship continued to be practiced. As far as I can tell, all of the writers in those first three centuries who weighed in whatsoever on this issue defended this New Testament simplicity of worship, which included the singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs without any instruments. And in these studies, of course, we're giving some special emphasis and focus upon music in connection with worship or music as a part of worship. Their practice was non-instrumental or what we call a cappella. It is noteworthy that the very phrase a cappella is derived from the Italian way of saying chapel style. A cappella, the cappella is where we get our word chapel. It's the singing of the chapel, chapel style singing, which is without any instruments. Now, unfortunately, some in those early centuries went too far. They went so far as to condemn all musical instruments for any use whatsoever in the home and on social occasions and so forth. Musicians were viewed as idle and immoral people. Thankfully those views did not prevail but there are excesses in most any issue that we consider. You may be familiar with some of the names I'm going to mention here. Ignatius, who lived from about 35 A.D. to 107 A.D., quoted Romans 15, 6, which we read this morning, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And Ignatius said that this verse teaches that live voices. Are the only proper instruments in worship with which to glorify God. And that we sing together with one mouth. In the sight of God, Justin Martyr. 100 A.D. to 165 approximately. said that just as Jewish circumcision no longer applies, nor do Jewish instruments in worship. Clement of Alexandria, who was just a little later than Justin, taught that the Old Testament instruments were replaced with the organs of speech, the mouth, the tongue. Likewise, origin, even though he had problems of his own in other areas. He at least had no innovations in public worship. Eusebius, about 260 to 339, taught that the instruments in worship in the New Testament are all spiritual instruments, namely our voices, which are the instrument of the soul. He said it was a matter of the infancy as opposed to the maturity that in the Old Testament we see the infancy of worship and in the New Testament is the grown up, the adulthood, the maturity, majority of worship. And you can read the same from Athanasius, Chrysostom, Ambrose and Augustine. The point of all this is the pure worship was preserved in this early. The early centuries of church history now we come to the time of Constantine. And I think most of you who know anything about Constantine associate him with tremendous change. Innovation in Christianity as a whole. He changed truly the face of Christianity forever. It was elevated above all the other religions in the empire. He as emperor had the say so to do that he gave Christianity state sponsorship. Christianity went from being a persecuted religion to being an accepted religion and the favored religion. Christianity was now popular, acceptable. And it was this Constantinian change with as it developed over centuries. That became the Roman Universal or Catholic Church. It was state sponsored Christianity. And that in and of itself should make sirens go off in your mind. This kind of Christianity always descends into the superficial. Nominal. That is in name only. in profession only. Yes, I am a Christian because I say that I'm a Christian because I've been baptized as a Christian. And. This. Diluted nominal Christianity is the breeding ground for carnality and, of course, for a mixed membership of believers and unbelievers alike. There were voices that opposed the Constantinian transformation. They insisted on pure churches. And pure worship. They insisted on regenerate membership. And they were put to one side, they were The outcasts, the outsiders, they were consigned to the long struggle of existence outside of popular religion and even outside of popular state sponsored Christianity. And it is that long struggle. In which we ourselves are engaged today. By God's grace, we continue this long struggle We are the ideological descendants of those who never followed the Constantinian changes. They claimed that they were following the New Testament order and that Constantine was taking. Christianity back into the Old Testament. Constantinianism involved a worship revolution. A return to the Old Testament sensual, material, symbolic style of public worship. It was in those days that church buildings first were built. For the first 300 or so years, no church buildings. People met in homes, in hiding, in the woods, and so forth. It was most of the time a time of great persecution. They had to meet in secret. Now that Christianity is acceptable and it's state sponsored, now it's time to get our temples underway, cathedrals and so on. Looking back to the Old Testament, mentality, priests wearing vestments, sacrifices like the mass, all kinds of things to to stimulate the site. Such as crucifixes, idols, relics, stained glass, incense to excite the smell. And so on, it was simply put a return to Judaism, a return to the Old Testament in terms of worship. And of course, music was not exempt. Surprisingly, music was not the first thing affected, but over time, It only it was inevitable that if they're going to return to the Old Testament worship, then they've got to have those who correspond to the Levites that David appointed to be the singers and the players of instruments. They. Saying complicated arrangements, you're familiar with the chance introduced in the time of Gregory the Great, 540 to 604 AD. It's interesting that Gregory the Great absolutely prohibited the use of musical instruments. The Gregorian chants were all a cappella, but it was the beginning of the elaborate singing, trained voices, singing in a language that the people did not speak, singing in a way that they could ... Had they spoken the language, they wouldn't have understood it very well. Of course, the a cappella policy couldn't last long. The first instrument introduced in the Constantinian branch was in a large cathedral in Rome in the year 670. But this was a very unusual, I mean, this was unheard of. And only a few organs were used, introduced for about the next 500 or so years, apart from a few isolated exceptions. organs did not become common until about the 1200s. They had to overcome much opposition, even within the Catholic Church. By about 300 more years, which brings us up to the early 1500s, the time of the Reformation and the time in which Erasmus wrote that paragraph that I read at the beginning, every major cathedral had its grand organ. to match all of the other sensualities of worship. Singing was taken from the common people and left only to expert musicians and trained voices whose music was so complicated and elaborate it could not be understood. It was a theatrical performance. And if you want to hear some of this music or what must be very, very close to it, Tune in Sunday mornings to sacred classics on K W T U and it's it's quite entertaining beautiful music. I can't I have not a clue what they're saying but it's very nice music but it's it doesn't have its place in public worship. No longer could they say with Paul in First Corinthians 1415, I will sing with the understanding. They couldn't understand it, and the masses of the people, the congregation weren't even singing. It was just the choir with the organ playing that was singing. It was more like an exercise of unknown tongues. Then the Protestant Reformation Came. It was a reforming a protesting. Not only of doctrine. But also of worship. There was a doctrinal reformation. There was a worship reformation. And all of the reformers except for Luther. held tenaciously to the regulative principle in worship. Luther was the odd man and even the Lutheran churches even in his day continued to use an organ and so forth. Zwingli was sort of the knee jerk reaction. He went so far. in Zurich as to have no singing at all in public worship, even though he himself was a musician and a composer and studied music for some 10 years himself. For about the next 250 years, all Protestant church music was a cappella and in a known language. The language of the common people. The exception to the acapella rule being the Lutherans and Anglicans. The Puritans determined to keep pure in their worship. Continued on in the in the New Testament order and in the early church order. The only exception. The only exception that I know of or have read of is that of Richard Baxter. Of course, he was an exception in more than that area in Puritanism. They enjoyed music in their homes, but only voices in church. And I'll cite the well-known Matthew Henry as an example. He said, whereas many scriptures in the New Testament keep up singing as a gospel ordinance, none provide for the keeping up of music and dancing. And isn't it interesting he associates musical instruments and dancing as connected because in some respects in the Old Testament they were. Yes, the New Testament teaches that we sing, but not with music and not with dancing. John Owen wrote much along the same lines using the same arguments that we have used in the study of the Old Testament and David's instruments and so forth. I find it very curious that when it comes to worship, These reformers and Puritans are so insistent on a New Testament principle, New Testament order, regulative principle. And I just wish that they could have been that consistent in all of their ecclesiology and in infant baptism, because they can't find that in the New Testament at all. And so we all have our blind spots, don't we? What were the Baptists doing in these days, days of the Reformation and following? Well, men like Bunyan, who at least by some are considered a Baptist, a rather unusual Baptist, and others that were more consistent in their Baptist ecclesiology like Keech, and he is a great figure in hymn writing and hymn singing. John Gill and then later on Fuller and Spurgeon and here in America Wayland and Dagg and David Benedict. They all in their writings and sermons stood in the New Testament order as well concerning these things. So we have at least in this area Baptists and Protestants in agreement. Now about the mid 1700s, changes began to creep in among the Protestants. Like the changes initiated by Constantine 1400 years earlier, these changes were gradual. It was not overnight and it was not without opposition. A few select stringed instruments were introduced into some Protestant churches who felt the need to compete with the Lutherans and the Anglicans. And from the reading I've been able to do thus far it seems like it happened like this at least here in America. After the settling of the nation and people are beyond the point of just worrying whether they're going to be able to raise enough food to survive next season until next season or not they settle down. They build their buildings and they begin to develop the arts here in areas that have been well settled and no longer just on the frontier edge. And children and young people learning to sing, taking voice lessons, developing that art. It just seemed to be natural to bring their special singing into the church. or churches and in the schools of training where they learned to sing and perfected their singing. They did not sing acapella they used some stringed instruments and if they're going to sing like up to their ability and their training then they need those stringed instruments to help them here in the church and so stringed instruments the bass viol or violin were introduced. After all, we don't want the Lutherans and Anglicans to be the only ones that can have that level of singing. Slowly some brought in organs, which is a whole new level in a sense because of the dominant sound of that instrument. There were various arguments used to convince pastors and churches that these changes needed to be made. All the arguments were very pragmatic, among which were these. Number one, the rising popularity of the use of instruments. In other words, Seems like everybody's doing it now. I mean, we've got all these Anglicans and all these Lutherans and so forth. Secondly, in order to keep our musically gifted young people from leaving our churches and going to the ones with big organs and choirs. These were the arguments that were going on in the 1700s. You see how we're not the first generation to face these issues at all. Thirdly, the usefulness of instruments and special music in evangelism. That's the argument that we hear all the time now. Think how many more people we can reach. Think what a hearing we can get for the gospel if we can just have a better music program. There were voices of opposition from both sides of the Atlantic but little by little over the next 200 years virtually all churches succumbed to some degree in the area of worship. The last to hold out were Presbyterians like some in the USA R.L. Dabney and John Gerardo. who wrote extensively on this subject, Gerardo that is, and among the Baptists, men like Spurgeon in England. It is interesting that to this day there are some Presbyterians in Wales at least that continue their a cappella singing. It's also noteworthy that here on American soil with the Rising of the restoration movement under Alexander and Thomas Campbell in the 1840s. As they sought to restore the church to its apostolic purity. They insisted on non instrumental worship as far as music is concerned. One problem was they didn't insist on the New Testament doctrine. And it's interesting that some of them to this day are still very clear on why they are non instrumental in their singing. I asked one recently just to see what his answer would be, and without a moment's hesitation, he says, because it's not in the New Testament. And he's right. Mr. Spurgeon said. We might as well pray by machinery as praise by machinery. What did he mean? He meant that only things with life can worship God. And that an instrument that has no life, that's just wood, metal, whatever else, it can't worship God. That quotation reminds me of those prayer wheels of the Buddhists. As long as that little wheel is spinning, it has a prayer inscribed on it or whatever. They come and they keep those prayer wheels spinning round and round and people walk by in long lines spinning the prayer wheels. As long as those wheels are spinning, then prayers are being offered up. Spurgeon says we might as well pray by machinery as praise by it. David Benedict, who was a great New England Baptist. He wrote a Baptist history. He also wrote a volume called 50 Years Among the Baptists. He says that the first organ in a Baptist church occurred in about 1820 in Rhode Island. In this 50 years among the Baptists, he does much of what Francis Wayland does in another book. He sort of compares what is here now with what was here 50 years ago and the changes that have taken place just in his own lifetime. Here's what he says, quote, The changes which have been experienced in the feelings of a large portion of our people has often surprised me. Staunch old Baptists in former times would as soon Have tolerated the Pope of Rome in their pulpits as an organ in their galleries and yet the instrument has gradually found its way among them and their successors in church management that means other instruments. With nothing the jars and difficulties which arose of old concerning the bass vial and smaller instruments of music in other words there hasn't been. as much opposition raised to it as he thought there would have been. Let me give you a quotation also from Mr. Dabney, representing Southern Presbyterianism here in America. He said, quote, the first organ I ever knew of in a Virginian Presbyterian church was introduced by one of the wisest and most saintly of pastors a paragon of old school doctrinal rigor but he avowedly introduced it introduced this organ on an argument the most unsound and perilous possible for a good man to adopt that It would be advantageous to prevent his young people from leaving his church to run after the Episcopal organ in the city. End of quote. The worship revolution. Came back. Once again. Then enter the influence of revivalists in the later 1800s like Moody and his music man, Mr. Sankey. I don't doubt the sincerity of those men for a moment, but I do doubt the wisdom of those men in many areas. They say that it was the first time In church history, when people said that they were converted not by the preaching of the gospel, but by the singing of the gospel, Sankey being a soloist and musician. That was when the doctrinal. Anchor. Began to drift. As well as the worship anchor. And we could cite other names, the successors of Moody and Sankey up to our very present day. Think of some of the crusade evangelism and so on. With his foot in the door, there was no stopping the camel from fully entering the tent. Bringing it on up to the present day, as music has come to be increasingly important, increasingly emphasized, increasingly necessary. There was yet a further decline that began about in the 1960s. In the 1950s, A whole new kind of music entered Western culture. And it took about 10 or 15 years for it to filter into churches, and it did so through the hippie generation, the Jesus movement. And this Music that is still being refined and re refined to this present day is very different from historical worship. Singing both as to its lyrics which are very dumbed down and as to its style which is appealing to the flesh. This. which is now called contemporary, is commonplace. It's considered normal. It's considered a necessity. No point trying to have church without it. I guess that's another message. So that's all I'll say in way of a historical survey. Let me just close with a couple of observations and applications. First is this. It seems that Our contemporary situation is no doubt worse than the situation that existed prior to the Protestant Reformation. At least the Romanists had only gone back to Judaism. Contemporary worship Not just in terms of music, but including that and that seems that that's that leads the way for everything else. It would be a relief if it were just Judaism and Old Testament style. Now, we're beyond that. We're to the point where anything goes, the salvation saloon, anything passes as worship. Cat in the Hat Sunday, Theology on Tap, ad infinitum, ad absurdum. And it's all usually justified under the argument that it enhances worship or it reaches an audience we couldn't otherwise reach and other pragmatic arguments. As far as reaching an audience that we wouldn't otherwise reach, My question is, what have we reached them with? And as far as the argument that it enhances worship, I would just have to say to the law and to the testimony, it's not an enhancement of worship, it's a desecration. And so this generation of professing Christianity that enjoys its unrestrained approach, No longer shackled and fettered by the New Testament or even by high points of church history. Have indeed become enslaved. And don't even realize it. And so I'll just say this, let us pray as we think about church history, let us pray for a new reformation. In worship. Let us pray for a return to biblical New Testament worship. And let us, by God's grace, seek to preserve it and guard it here. Let us stand together and sing a hymn as we close. After that, we'll pray for the Matthew, but you lead us in that prayer.