Holly Hills' Ministry in Music - Part II

Good morning. We last week began a series, a five-part series on ministry perspectives here at Holly Hills, and so we introduced the first one on ministry and music. Well, after last Sunday's service. I've got all sorts of feedback, lots of feedback of various kinds. So at any rate, with all that feedback we decided that we should actually continue the theme here and continue on to part two in ministry and music. And one of the things that I've said is I wish we had done this five years ago, but nonetheless we're doing it now. So let's first do a brief review, refresh some memories for one. The other is there are a few that weren't able to make it last week that are here this week. So just to get us somewhat in sync here.

One of the passages that Wayne just read for us and we looked at last week was where Jesus was talking to the Samaritan woman there at the well of Jacob. And the thing that he said there particularly focused on worshiping the Father in spirit and truth and in fact that particular set of words he repeated and that fits in of course the poetry pattern that we outlined. The other two verses that follow that Wayne read for us here tells us also about who Christ is.

And so when we look at worship, one of the key things is looking at spirit and truth. What do we mean by that? What we mean by that is that spirit means it is, in fact, truly spiritual. And it is spiritual, not something that's pseudo-spiritual. And it is the truth as revealed in scripture and focusing on the person of Christ. Our worship and music, then, is to be in spirit and in truth.

Biblically spiritual and expressing the truth of God's living word and his written word to the father Okay, another passage that we looked at was Romans 15 5 & 6 And it says, now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another. And that's a phrase that's used actually earlier in chapter 12 of Romans. Paul uses that phrase, the same mind, as he writes to the Corinthians and also to the church at Philippi. same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus, so that with one accord, with one voice, we pointed out that it actually literally means with one mouth. There is intended a unity among believers as we worship, as we glorify the Lord, that starts at the heart, being of the same mind. It even goes to having the same harmonious passion and with one mouth glorifying the Lord.

There's a unity that starts from inside and continues on to our expression. Contrary to what some Christians have gravitated towards, it is not a unity that's in spite of the fact we have all of our differences. It's not setting aside the differences. It's unity from the inside out. Now, so Paul wants all believers to be in one accord, right? Not exactly. Who has an accord out in the parking lot? You're just about to get it loaded up. Well, anyway.

So we're to say the same thing in unity, from heart to word and expression. One other, actually, pair of passages we looked at, Ephesians 5, 18 and 19, and Colossians 3, 16, have some very similar words. And particularly, the phrase psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs is identical between the two.

There are some differences in the teaching, particularly that the message that we're conveying is particularly focused in Colossians 3.16. We made a point of that.

Colossians 1.28 says, we proclaim him, that is, Christ, in the context. admonishing every man, and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete, that is, mature in Christ, spiritually mature.

Those same words, admonishing, teaching, and all wisdom, are what show up in Colossians 3.16.

Our worship, our music, is actually a medium of teaching one another. It is the word of Christ dwelling in our hearts richly, making its home in our hearts. So we would summarize it this way. Our music is a key part of the Word of Christ, the message of Christ, making its home in us. Our music is to teach and admonish one another with all wisdom.

And psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, those are the three kinds that Paul talks about. One of the points we made last week is psalms are talking about God. Hymns, at least in the biblical definition, are talking to God, and spiritual songs are songs that aren't talking to or about God particularly, but are still biblically spiritual. An example of that would be Amazing Grace.

It's particularly talking about spiritual truths. So our worship is the Word of Christ dwelling in us richly, making its home in all of us, every single one of us, and expressed through us to one another. We're using the words, the content of the songs to express the message of Christ to one another. Not just so that you have data going across. This isn't just a download. My hard drive knows lots of things, but that's not doing any good if it just sits there. It's not just spiritual information. It's Christ himself personally making his home in us. And what's the direction of that? The words that we sing together actually have a part in maturing us spiritually. That's God's intent.

Now, one of the other points we made, and at the request of Debbie Tracy, I actually didn't put this in last week's handout, but it's in this week's handout, okay, is we said faith That is belief and trust. In the original Greek, it is the same word. Faith or belief and trust is faith in the spiritual facts based in reality as revealed in scripture. We put our trust in what God has revealed in his word.

Feelings, and we're not denying them, but feelings are on top of that. We don't put our faith in the feelings. We don't use our feelings to determine what's true. We don't use our feelings and experiences to verify what's true or what's not. We put our trust in what God has revealed.

Faith in the facts. One of the ways we put that is faith in the facts is like the train in the tracks. Right? Here are the facts. Here is faith. Faith in the facts is like the train in the tracks. And feelings follow. How's that for a bunch of poetry? Okay.

One of the ways that it shows up in the book Major Bible Themes, and this we did not present last week, is in chapter 31, page 203, it says this, the doctrine of sanctification, that is how we grow and are made holy, cannot be interpreted by experience. This principle is widely violated by Christians in our culture. Biblical teaching is set aside based on personal experience or the inability to fit biblical teaching into some mental framework that's consistent with personal experience. The tendency of our culture is to tell us to measure things by how we feel.

Oh, is that true? Oh, I know it's true because of how I feel. Is this song a good song for us to sing? Oh, yeah. I know. Why? Because of how it makes me feel. You see, that's the pattern that our culture has taught us to do. Biblically, It's faith in the facts is like the train on the tracks, right? Okay.

Now, one of the illustrations that we use, because we're not talking about we shouldn't have feelings, one of the illustrations that we use is many of you know that I just love little kids. As a matter of fact, I was one one time, okay? And while I love little kids, I really don't want them to be driving the car, okay? I like them in the car, but not driving the car.

And so feelings are like that. We certainly have feelings. We ought to have feelings. Feelings are not to be denied or ignored. But you don't want the feelings driving. The feelings are to follow and to be a byproduct, not to be steering the ship, so to speak. OK.

Well, one of the things we also thought might be helpful is to talk about how music is selected at Holly Hills Bible Church. And in fact, that's something we'd like for you to have some input in and offer suggestions. And I've got some other ideas on how you can be involved that we'll talk about in a minute.

Once the message topic or the passage schedule is set in place, And each of the themes for this Sunday are given. And what I'll do is I'll go through the schedule that most of you see. And I will then put in themes for each one that will guide the song selection.

Then the standard pattern is Doug Hallam provides the suggested hymns and songs as a starting point. Obviously, a little different on the Sundays than Randy does it. But most of the time, it starts with Doug providing suggestions for hymns and songs. So he does that, except for the time when Randy does it about once a month, usually the third Sunday.

Then Vern and Nancy work together to make any final changes to what is selected, considering tempo, transitions in the messages for the songs, who will be playing that week, et cetera. And so we work at that. Now, just as of this last week, Vani is coordinating the musicians.

And so that's greatly appreciated. So in case you're wondering how things happen, that's a change that just recently took place. So we're thankful for her input. Oh, I got one little thing to point out. This word final, take that with a grain of salt.

Once we come up with some songs, there can be changes all the way up to the time when we walk in here this morning. And the reason that happens is because you walk in and somebody says, well, you know, I never did quite get that worked out on how to play that. Or do you want to repeat that line or not? And so sometimes we'll try to make last minute changes. So the final isn't final until we sing it. Then it's final. OK. Now, how songs are introduced.

This is something we don't necessarily have some sort of a lockdown pattern. So this is generalization. Once a new song is chosen, the music and sometimes an mp3 file or a YouTube video link is sent to the musicians and to others involved. Here is Love is one we introduced the second Sunday of January of this year. So that's one where the music was out there. It's been available, but we hadn't sung it before.

So at any rate, and we'll send along, it's available in several different versions on YouTube, so we'll pick one that seems appropriate and might send that along. And then we'll put together slides and try to send those along. So that's generally the pattern. We have a few different song books that we pick from.

Some of these as well. And there are even additional ones beyond these six that I have shown here. There's one that I hear the musicians talk about, Big Red or something, but I don't think it's the soda. So anyway, there's occasionally other ones you might hear about. And just so you're aware of that. Okay.

The song is then deliberately set on the schedule for more than the usual frequency. In other words, if it's too long before the next time we sing the new song, then you're starting all over again. So we try to repeat it a little more frequently. Written music for other people, aside from the musicians, it's kind of varied in what we've done. I'm open to suggestions on that, by the way. Here, for example, is the song Buried with Christ. And what happens is you end up having the words a little hard to read if we put the music on there. And then because the verses are typically on there, we have to keep going through the same ones in cycle. And it makes for a lot of changes in slides, too. A little tougher to follow.

So one of the things we can do is to, for example, email, send it out and attach it to email. Nancy and I counted. I think that we had something like around 32 people at Holly Hills that can read music. So at any rate, that's quite a few. And so that's something that's helpful. Buried with Christ is a little easier to track, for example, when we don't have a bunch of slide changes all the time. All right.

But here is, I think, a key thing we want to cover here. More music is needed to convey all the truths that the Bible teaches. One of the things that we're finding out is that there are a lot of things that the Bible teaches, and particularly things that we teach here, that are not reflected commonly in a lot of the music that's available. and fairly significant areas, and a fairly significant number of areas, that's the case. There are a lot of precious truths for which there are few songs, or in some cases, almost none.

And if they're available, that's great. You can let us know. We would greatly encourage this body of believers to find and or write music, and we've had both of those things occur in these areas of teaching that aren't reflected in what's commonly known and available. Now, what do I mean by that? You can look in big books if you want, Big Red even, to find songs that are in some of the categories I'm about to talk about.

You can write music. Go ahead and pursue that. You can look far and wide. You can dig deep. That's fine to look for music in some of these categories here. On the following slides are given some categories of teaching, and you also have it in your handout, where there is little or no music commonly available.

It would be great to find or write some. So that's a challenge to you. One of them, identification with Christ and all of its consequences. Very rare to find songs that talk about this. If our singing is to be teaching one another, as Colossians 3.16 says is the case, this is an area where there is very little in the way of available music, as far as I can tell. and one where we could locate or write some. And that would be great. Buried with Christ is one when I mentioned one time that this is an area where there's very little music. Andrew Malloy said, hey, I found this. And so he sent me Buried with Christ and came and played it for us on the trumpet and introduced it that way. It's a good one, but it's also rather unusual. not too much.

Seeing that there wasn't much music along this, I put the words together for in Christ I'm eternally blessed and Winnie put music to it and so that's why we sing it here. But it's just it's a matter of finding and writing songs that talk about those truths, precious and special truths. The believers position in Christ Of course, that's identification and Christ and the believer. Those two parallel truths are, it's not impossible, but difficult to find songs that fit that. And then along with that, our position, or as I like to put it to make it clear, our eternal position and our daily condition. Songs are unusual to really put those together in quite that way. Another set of terms that has been used for those same things is standing, or position, and state, is how are we doing right now.

You're familiar with the songs Moment by Moment and Day by Day? You know how the song Moment by Moment was written? There was this fellow who had just gotten out of church, and they sang Day by Day, and he says, that's not often enough. And he wrote Moment by Moment. Anyway, that's how it came up.

Okay, full biblical grace is the reigning principle for us in the church. Many of the hymns that have been written have been written by people who don't fully understand grace. Here is what is common among many Christians. What people tend to do is they tend to trim down the law. Instead of taking the whole law of Moses, all 613 laws, 365 of them say don't do this. Even down to don't eat an apple with a worm in it. You know, that's in the law. Okay?

If you don't understand that the law is ominous, you will tend not to see grace as big as it is either. So what Christians have tended to do is to come up with mini-law. and then come up with mini-grace, micro-grace. In fact, the law is awesome. And grace ought to be presented as awesome as well. Grace isn't grace unless it's amazing. So, full biblical grace as the reigning principle is something that ought to be more commonly presented.

I just can't find it very often. Even Amazing Grace, being probably the most popular hymn that's out there, is, I think, misunderstood commonly because the tendency is to look at grace as smaller than it is. For many people, grace means God's just not as uptight as he used to be. And that's not an adequate definition.

So this is an area where we could use songs, grace, and I mean capital letters big like it's shown on the slide. I hope so anyway. Okay. And then full biblical grace as the reigning principle. Romans 5, 17, and 21. Okay. Faith in the facts is revealed in God's Word. There are songs about the Bible.

There are songs telling us to read it and things like that. but faith in the facts as the way that we walk, the way that we live, the way that we believe. That needs to be more commonly and clearly laid out. Christians ought not to be confused, as many are, by putting feelings and experiences as the gauge for what is true and how life ought to be lived. Just because you're a Christian and you get a hunch doesn't mean God told you, right? We know what we know because God's revealed it, because He loves us.

Here's another one. The nature of the interactions between us and the body of Christ. The New Testament has a whole bunch of passages that are called one another's. If you list them all, one line at a time, you can fill up two or three pages. all these one another's. Love one another, encourage one another, and on and on and on.

And the interactions between us in the body of Christ is something I find very difficult to find good songs in this category. Spiritual growth and maturity. How it happens and appears. What I'm finding is that this is another area where it's hard to find songs. spiritual growth and maturity. We talk about it. We have whole electives on it. But it's hard to find songs so we can sing about it and teach one another through that, right? And shouldn't we be worshiping the Lord for the spiritual growth that He brings about in us?

And there are two different ways in which that happens. Individually, one person at a time is part of spiritual growth, and as a church body. Both of those are described. Colossians 1.28 is individual spiritual growth, every single person.

Ephesians 4.11-16 is the growth of the church body. Both dimensions of spiritual growth are biblical. We ought to be singing about them both, right? We ought to be talking about what does that look like? How about being conformed and being transformed into Christ's image? Songs about that.

God works all things together for good. What's the good? Well, not everything is good. There's no question about that. Some things are just plain lousy and worse. But God works all things together for good. To what good? That we are conformed to the image of His Son. Do we sing about it? No, but I'd like to.

Transformed. We are transformed as we behold the Lord through his word. Transformed is similar to conformed, but transformed is a miraculous Holy Spirit accomplished process in our lives. And it happens because we behold the Lord Jesus Christ in His Word.

We ought to be able to sing about that, too. There are two different processes. Both of them are in the direction of making us into the image of Christ. Both of them are taking place, or ought to be, here on this earth. There are truths that are parallel truths that we ought to be able to sing about. Maybe even in the same song, wouldn't that be great?

Having and detailing every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. And you can't be seated in the heavenly just by getting on top of a tall pole. Alright. We have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. It's fairly common for Christians, and I'm not saying it's wrong, but fairly common for Christians to say something like, you know, God bless you or something of that sort. But the reality is, He already has! Okay? He can't bless you anymore. He has blessed you so phenomenally, it's not possible for Him to bless you anymore with spiritual blessings in the heavenly places. Why? Because you have every single one already.

Do we know what they are? Do we know where they are? Do we sing about it? There's a phenomenal set of things for us to understand and to sing about and to teach one another and encourage one another. We have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Do we sing about our heavenly citizenship?

Set your mind, Paul wrote to the Colossians, set your mind on things above. Here's the wild thing. You ever hear this, you know, he's so heavenly minded, he's no earthly good? I'll turn that around. If you want to be any earthly good at all, you've got to be heavenly minded. Right?

And we ought to be able to sing about that. We ought to be able to talk about that. As a matter of fact, when we sing, Don't we have an opportunity to encourage one another to set our mind on things above? Encourage one another to look at and recognize how we've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Full and truthful expression of our relationship with Christ. There are some good songs out there.

I'd like to see more. In the Garden. is one about intimacy with the Lord, isn't it? Taking that quiet time with Him. I have this fellow sleeping on a chain in the picture there. Songs like Jesus, I am resting, resting. Things that describe our relationship with the Lord, depending upon Him, that talk about that, that talk about that intimacy with the Lord.

There are some songs out there I'd like to see more. The rapture of the church rather than the second coming of Christ. That is, many of the songs, I was talking to Nancy just on the way to church here, the song One Day, I love that song. One day when heaven was filled with his praises. But the verse goes like this. One day He is coming, O glorious day.

The problem is it's not clear. Because you know when Christ comes with a second coming? He won't be coming for us. He will be coming with us. He will already have come for us at least seven years earlier. So a great song, I'm just so tempted to tweak it.

When Christ comes again will actually be a time of judgment. It says in Zechariah, I think it's chapter 14, it says that the Messiah's feet, and he will be God, his feet will touch down on the Mount of Olives. But what will happen is judgment at that time. We will be among the armies that come with the Lord at that time.

But when He's coming for a second coming, people on earth are going to be scared, most of them frightened terribly. Because here's somebody, all he does is talk and it's done. I don't care what kind of weaponry you have. It's not going to do any good. It's going to be a frightening time for a lot of people. The rapture is our blessed hope.

Titus 2.13 it is our blessed hope Christ is coming for us to take us to be with him and we will be like him for we will see him as he is face to face that's real different from the time when we come with him to rule and reign upon the earth the comparison between Israel and the church and the contrast I had a fellow that came and visited.

I was talking about doing, I did a, oh boy, Nancy can roll her eyes at this one. Occasionally I'll sit down and give her like a, one time I gave her a lesson on 1 Corinthians in two hours. You know, the whole book. At any rate, we had a guy come and join us. I invited him to come from another church and we went through Revelation in just a couple hours. And so anyway, he was telling me, well, I don't see that much difference between Israel and the church. Well, wow. OK. And so there was a lot to try to catch him up on.

And so the comparison and contrast between Israel and the church, Israel in the Old Testament was under the law. Even most of the Gospels is Israel under the law. When Jesus talked to the Jews, and aside from a little trip in his infancy down to Egypt, he was always in Israel. He was always talking to the Jews. When he sent the disciples out, two by two, he said, go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. In chapter 15 of Matthew, he himself said, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. There is a distinction between our Lord's earthly ministry until the very end which was to Israel, and the ministry that we have with the church which is not under law.

The comparison and contrast between law and grace is a biggie. It is an area where we could do a great deal of good getting that out there. Even this last week, I was dealing with a fellow I've been corresponding with for some time. who doesn't understand the difference between law and grace, doesn't get it. Many law and many grace. And it's a very important difference. And we can sing about it. We can teach one another about it.

It's one of those areas that we can work on finding songs, writing songs, and growing as a church body. All these areas, all these topics, Lots of opportunity to expand our worship together as we teach one another and worship the Lord. As we grow, having the message of Christ, the Word of Christ dwelling in us richly, making His home in us. All these truths are part of the Word of Christ. We've got tremendous areas in which we can do some growing here. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for your most amazing grace. And as we see these different areas of learning, as we see these different areas of teaching that are in your word, we look to you for resources, whether they're found and located and identified songs or whether they are things instead that are written by us or someone else we know. We look forward to your working among us that we would grow in these areas, that we would teach one another through song and through our worship together. We thank you for the opportunities you lay in front of us. We pray for the resources from you. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.