Knowing and Growing - HHBC Ministries in Music
Vern Peterman · Nov 26, 2017
Knowing & Growing, No. 45
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492661013368

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

In going through various things, of course, on Christmas Eve, which is a Sunday, and New Year's Eve, which is a Sunday, no electives. So we'll be continuing this through, what is that, the 17th? And then we'll be done for the year and then starting over again the first Sunday in January with the three new electives. one class in Ephesians, one class in Romans, and then I'll be teaching the unfathomable riches of Christ. So we'll be doing that for this next year. And I pray that the Lord will come for us all, and in spite of plans, we won't be able to fulfill them because he's taken us all home. So that would be great. Meanwhile, we're finishing up this Knowing and Growing series, the last part of which has to do with the church.

And so one of the things we've got in front of you is a handout. Now, have you got, it should come off as a two-page, probably one side and then the other, and then another one page that's at the bottom called a supplement. Is that what you've got? Okay, good. It always helps when what I think you're supposed to have and what you actually have matches up. So one of the things we want to talk about is ministries and music. So think about this.

Here are Jesus and the disciples. What was their idea of music? What was music typically carried on as the disciples were disciples in Israel, coming sometimes into Jerusalem, probably about a fifth of the time in Jerusalem and the other four-fifths approximately around Galilee and surrounding areas and then other times going between them. Usually taking several days to go between them, but most of the time it was Galilee and then a minority, but a significant minority of the time in Jerusalem. So what would be their typical exposure to music? Alright, so instrument-wise there might be a flute, right? And something stringed like a lyre or something more. Yeah, so you've got something stringed and you'd have a flute typically as a wind instrument. And of course neither of those would look quite like anything we're accustomed to today. Our instruments today are not identical, but At least you kind of get a general idea.

Anything else? Yeah, oftentimes the percussion was some kind of a drum, right? But to have anything much besides that in the way of instrumentation was unusual. And even to have multiple ones. Yeah, it might be a tambourine kind of thing for another kind of percussion type instrument. But usually pretty simple.

And then we find in a rare occasion, here's Jesus and the disciples, and it says they sing a hymn, and then they went off somewhere else. And so that was unaccompanied, most likely. So this is another thing that we have in our modern era. Going back for some centuries, the development of musical recording and music theory, and we have no evidence that they had anywhere near that kind of sophistication in the music recording. So things were passed along orally and by tradition, and the recording of music was very simple. It didn't mean they didn't record it, but it was very simple. I have some Middle Eastern music that's more, it's redone from the nation of Assyria.

You can imagine that. And it's sort of a combination of string, wind instrument, and percussion. And so, and then it would be They would have a hymn to the rise of the moon, and a hymn to the setting of the moon, and the sun, and those kinds of things. But getting back into it, here's the New Testament time. Now there's a couple other things that we need to add to this. In the height, the apex of music expression, with any spiritual focus or content was what was done in the temple. So in the inner temple, you have priests and Levites, and what do the priests do? The priests are largely involved with the sacrifices. There are occasionally some other things that are needed, but largely involved with the sacrificial system.

Then there are guys called Levites, and what's the difference between priests and Levites? So if you look at it, the priests are all descended from Kohath, within the tribe of Levi. Those who were within the tribe of Levi but not descended from Kohath were the Levites. The priests had specific things they had to do, largely focused on the sacrificial system. The Levites did everything else that was prescribed, except for what the priests did.

So they'd do everything else, and it might have to do with, you know, you've got to load the wood on the fire and keep the fire going. You have to, and of course one of the things that the Levites did weren't. One of the things that the Levites did is that they would sing and play instruments in the temple because that was something that the priests were not prescribed to do. So it's something that they took up. So several times a day Every single day, several times a day, the Levites would get out there and they would have a Levite's choir.

Various things were marked off as to time. Various things were marked off as to time, and among the stones we have left from the temple that was dumped off the edge by the Romans, there's an engraving there in Hebrew that says the trumpeter's place. So this was the place where that stone marked where the trumpeter would go and announce things. Because trumpets just announce all sorts of things, right? So here's the trumpeter's place, and that would announce certain things are going to begin. That was the way he let everybody know, because did people have watches? No. And the sun dials were approximate, especially if it's dark and especially if it's real cloudy or foggy. So here's the priest.

So the priest would play instruments, and what we have is that they would play an instrument called a cathara, where we get our word guitar, right? They would play a cathara, and that was a harp. And so they would play harps, there's evidence that they would blow trumpets. They may have had other instruments, but they at least have these cathara, or harps, as they called them. and they would sing and during the time when they were sacrificing the lambs on Passover all during the sacrifice which took place between noon and three on the day of the Passover the day before the Passover actually between noon and three they would sacrifice the lambs and for those three hours The Levites choir would sing Psalms 113 to 118 continuously during that sacrifice. So you imagine, have you ever seen a choir sing for three hours? That's what they did. They sang for three hours, Psalm 113 to 118.

And it contains amazing things. The stone which the builder rejected has become the chief cornerstone. That's in there. They would sing that. As a part of the continuous singing during the time when the lambs were being sacrificed. Rather astounding. So all that would go on. Now, when the church began, initially the church, they hung around Jerusalem, right?

So, but then, and one of the core things in terms of what do I say, would be the book of Psalms. Israel's national hymn book. Psalms. By the way, it's important to remember in terms of Is it inspired? Yes. Is everything in the book of Psalms directly pointed at us who are in the church? No. So there are things to learn from it, there are things to understand, some by comparison, similar or the same, some by contrast. We don't follow the same thing, but we understand how it was with them.

So when it says, take not your Holy Spirit from me, That's them, right? What is true of us regarding the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit continuously indwells every single believer. They could not count on that. So they could have a psalm that says, take not your Holy Spirit from me. And they would sing that. I don't need to sing that. Not personally. Do I need to plead for what the Lord has promised will never depart?

So one of the things as we look here on the front of page one, one of the things that we point out is as we go through the Old Testament, especially the Book of Psalms, but on into the New Testament, there are poetic patterns. So here's something that's a little bit jarring for our ears. The Jews didn't rhyme the sounds. Roses are red and violets are blue. They used to tease about blue cheese. This cheese is dead except for the blue. So we want things to rhyme. Because that, where do we get that? Where do we want things to rhyme? Why do we want things to rhyme? Sounds good. Yeah, it sounds good and so we like a rhyming sound.

We will even kind of allow a little bit of adjustment in meaning. Sometimes even the rhyme is a little bit pushed. Something will be, you know, heaven and We'll contract it, and we'll do things with it, contracting the sounds, and the rhyming is not quite ideally matched. And then we'll even make things up that don't fit good doctrine, because it rhymes well. The number of times the songs make king and sing is great, even if it's not great doctrine. So we'll do that, but with the Jews, they rhymed meanings, and to them that was fine. Now, what's the advantage to us of rhyming meanings instead of sounds? We get reinforcement. So what happens is the meaning still rhymes when you translate it, even if the sound is completely different.

I was over in Germany one time, and I attended a Lutheran church in a small town, and they sang in German, A Mighty Fortress is Our God by Martin Luther. Well, my German has gotten awfully rusty since that was 30 years ago. But, one of the things I noticed, they're not singing exactly the same thing that we sing. So why is that? Why is it that A Mighty Fortress is Our God is not just a translation from the German to English?

Here's what Martin Luther wrote in German and it rhymes in German. But if I just translate that and don't concern myself with the rhyme, it doesn't end up saying the same thing in English, and it doesn't rhyme in English. So what do we do? We go and we take A Mighty Fortress, which he wrote, and we go and modify it so that the words rhyme, even if it isn't exactly the same thing as Martin Luther wrote. Because we want the sounds to rhyme, and our cultural background, we do that. But the advantage, the way the Jews did it, was no matter how many languages you translate it in, if it's translated well, the meanings rhyme. And then what you'll find is there are a great many parts of the Old Testament and even in the New Testament where There are poetic patterns and things are made to rhyme in meaning, not necessarily in sound, and also not according to some consistent pattern, like we're accustomed to.

We have to have our rhymes in the right place, right? In English? If things aren't rhyming in quite the right place, it doesn't sound quite the way it ought to be. What's that? Yes, and we also have this thing called meter, right? And so, yeah, the meter of a particular piece of poetry, put to music, needs to, you know, be correct in our way of thinking. They didn't worry about that.

So here's John 4, 23 and 24. There is that Jesus is speaking to the woman at the well. in Sycharth, Jacob's well. But an hour is coming, and now is, when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For such people the Father seeks for the worshipping of him. God is spirit, and those who worship must worship in spirit and truth. So in spirit and in truth is repeated there.

The words around it have some, what of a poetic pattern, but again, they're not rhyming the sound, there's a rhyming in the poetic pattern of meaning. So here, this gets to one other thing, and that is that what matters in music? In Christian music, what matters? What really matters in Christian music? What should matter, or what matters?

In other words, you put your finger on it, for a great many people, it's what feelings does this music stir up, is the primary question. And our requirement is that the feelings, often, Our requirement is that the feelings are feelings that I like. And then, of course, we run into different issues of personal preference and what generation are you from, and what stirs up the same kind of feelings with you. Right? Yeah?

I've often thought of it as program worship. In other words, music has to program the worship instead of the other way around. Yeah, we have a particular, not only are requirements frequently in our culture for here are the feelings that I want to generate, and that often times goes with a certain style of music. It turns out that the push on feelings since World War II, which includes pretty much most of us here, since World War II that's been the message to our culture is that the feelings are a big deal.

It may come as a surprise. How many of you enjoy listening to the Hallelujah Chorus? Yeah, you like listening to it. Why? It's triumphant? Good. And what else would you describe it as? It's easy to memorize? It's easy to memorize. Okay, and why is it easy to memorize?

Isn't it the same words over and over again? Yeah, it's repetitive, not immensely so, but it is generally repetitive. So what are the words? And he shall reign for... Right? So you've got that all memorized, and so it's repetitive, And what else about it? It's biblical. Pardon? It's from the Bible. It's actually biblical. And so let's ask this question from our standpoint.

He will reign forever and ever. When was that, is that, or will that be? How about here on earth? Ultimately what a fair amount of our Christmas music is focused on is the Millennial Kingdom. Joy to the world, the Lord has come. Let earth receive her King. When's that going to be? Millennial Kingdom.

So actually, here we sing about Christmas, but what we often do, many cases, what we'll do is sing about the Millennial Kingdom. Joy to the world, the Lord has come, let earth receive her King. Joy to the world isn't a Christmas song, really. It's a Christian song about Christ, but it's not a Christmas song, specifically, one verse is.

Yes, so that's the thing, we often times, like the Hallelujah Chorus, we're right in the season starting now, when people will go to productions of the Hallelujah Chorus, right? But in fact, it's focused on the Millennial Kingdom. And it's supposed to be the Messiah was written really for Easter, wasn't it?

So here's the thing. No, it is all the history. Who wrote this? Who wrote this? Handel wrote this. And here's the wild thing. It was, that production was for decades, I would even say beyond a century, one of the most controversial pieces of music produced in the last 500 years.

And do you know why it was controversial? Isn't that amazing? And for decades they debated it, for decades there were people who got very upset over it, So why? When was it written? 1700s. The reason it was controversial is that it got people's feelings all stirred up. How about that?

It got people's feelings all stirred up, and one of the things that some of the aristocracy and the royalty in Europe wanted to do was to get things so that some of the lower classes, because people didn't have MP3 players, so some of the lower classes could be stirred up by this. So they actually had it especially written in certain versions for the lower classes to get them stirred up. But there were others who were quite upset, and this is decades after it was written. There were others who were quite upset that you would have a piece so deliberately designed to get people all stirred up emotionally. You're talking about Hamel's Messiah? Yes. The Messiah. particular piece. And so it was actually rewritten to particularly stir up the lower classes.

And then there were people who were very upset about that. So now, how we come full circle is, I want a piece that stirs me up, and I want music in the church that stirs me up. Matter of fact, I want the music to be so good that it keeps me pumped up until next Sunday.

So back in the 1700s, they thought it was unspiritual to be emotional? Oh, yes. And so, yeah, there was a great, great, I mean, it was hugely controversial. And the controversy continued for decades, pretty much about a century long, where people were very, very, very upset about how stirring that music was.

So it kind of makes you feel like doing something? Yeah, so you have this music that is so stirring, even atheists will say, boy that is really a stirring piece of music. It almost makes me want to believe it. So it's interesting how we've kind of come full circle where two centuries back, two centuries plus, there would be a great, great concern over getting people stirred emotionally, where since World War II, the press has been towards that's a requirement.

Well, Handel was German, he wrote it originally in German, wasn't he? Yeah, but when it was carried over into English, that was particularly where it was rewritten for the lower classes. So he was originally contracted to write it, and then it went into different versions, and of course in different languages. So do we have the original version now, or is it pre-emotional? Yep, you can have access to all of them, and all the different versions. They're all available. So none of that's been lost. And we also have access to all the controversy they created.

Just like I say, for centuries it was one of the most controversial pieces of music. If you were to say, what's the most controversial piece of music over the last 500 years? That's it. Handel's Messiah. So what do we do? We have people that go, hey, I want to go hear the Messiah this Christmas season. But just to kind of ponder, oh, at one point in time that was considered to be just a really emotionally abusive piece of music. Who commissioned it? Was it the Catholic Church? I believe it was originally a Catholic Church production. And I'd have to check on that.

I don't want to speak out of hand. But yeah, I was amazed to find that this is among the most controversial pieces of music that you could ever have. And so one of the things that it really amounts to is the two things that tend to grip us are traditions, and when it comes to music, traditions and feelings. And what has generally happened in the youngest generation, and the youngest generations, is that there's a tendency to have more of an emphasis on the feelings. There's a sense of existentialism that says that the feelings validate what is true. And my experience with a piece of music validates what's true. And by the way, that's been a controversy here even since I've come, among some. They're looking for these, you know, I know that this is the right song because it validates my feelings and this has been a real turning point song for me and had great significance and all that.

So, feelings and traditions are huge. Now, biblically, how important are traditions? In other words, if we say what does God count the most, what does God say matters the most, are traditions on the list? Yeah, so if you start thinking, okay, what did God lay down?

And so that's where I start off with here, in spirit and in truth. And what does that mean, spirit and in truth? Worship in spirit and truth. Here Jesus said it. He actually said spirit and truth twice. So what does that mean? I've had spirit, to me, mean feeling. I've had that presented to me. That's how you feel, right? And the truth is confirmed by your feelings. I've had that presented to me. And I've had that happen years and years and years ago, and I've even had it happen here at Holly Hills.

So, but what matters biblically? And what did Jesus mean when he was talking to the Samaritan woman about spirit and truth? What does that mean, spirit? I know it's the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is truth. And let's ask this question. Is the Holy Spirit primarily known about by feelings or by what? How do we know about the Holy Spirit? If we're a believer, the Spirit is in us. So what we have is objective truth. in Scripture revealed to us, right? So here's objective truth. It is the facts revealed in Scripture about the Holy Spirit. Even, you know, should I pray, take not your Holy Spirit from me? Should I pray the Spirit of the living God fall fresh on me, especially if that feels good? No, because it's not truth. It's not truth.

So what that says is, oh, I'm looking for truth, and it's absolute truth. and it may not necessarily be related to my feelings. One of the reasons why we keep showing this train and the tracks is like the faith and the facts, and the feelings follow, like the caboose. So we don't have the feelings leading the train. We don't have the feelings leading the train.

So the spirit, the spirit is in spirit, and ultimately the spirit, we can talk about the Holy Spirit, we talk about the Holy Spirit, and by the way, are spirit and truth frequently connected in the Bible? One of the connections made is the spirit of truth. So a direct connection made there.

By the way, we get often times, with this question, we get often times presented among Christians that you've got to choose between love and truth. Does scripture make that statement? Does 1 Corinthians say, 1 Corinthians 13, love rejoices in the truth. Or, in Ephesians 4, it says, translations say, speaking the truth in love. It's actually, it's the word truth put into a verb, truthing in love.

So rather than having them at odds pick one, they are one and the same. They're not incompatible. They're not ones to be chosen. Between love and truth, I'll pick love. No. Love rejoices in the truth, and I'm to be truthing in love, so love and truth go together inseparably. That's big. So our culture is not telling us that, and frankly most of Christendom is embracing this feelings-based as the basis for the music that we have. Yes? At the very least, love and truth are compatible. But like I said, yeah, they're almost... Yes, love and truth are completely harmonious. The idea that they are somehow at odds is not the biblical concept at all.

That's absolutely foolish. Yeah. Do you choose between your head and the rest of your body? No. You don't pick one. You say, no, I think I'd rather have them together. They're both essential, an essence of God, right? Very good. God is love, God is truth, that they're both part of the essence of God. Do I pick between different characteristics of God himself?

No, I'm not called to do that. So anyway, what is often presented among Christians, when tested by scriptures, oftentimes just doesn't match up. And I think having a long-term perspective, and I look at this huge, decades-long, even up to a century-long controversy over Handel's Messiah, and the different versions of it, that's just a real eye-opener.

And I look at Jesus talking about worship in spirit and in truth, is that all about feelings? Well, there are those who would try to sell us that, but in truth it's not about feelings. I can understand why they felt that way because I have learned not to trust my feelings. I can trust the facts of God's Word, you know, the truth in it. I can't trust my feelings. When this music comes up, it really stirs me emotionally. I can't trust those emotions, so yeah, I don't want that. I'm sure they were thinking that way. So let's ask this question.

Is it wrong for me to have emotions? No, but just like we use the analogy of the train and the tracks and the faith and the facts and the feelings follow, it's fine to have emotions, emotions aren't automatically bad, but we don't look at them to lead the train, they are a response for us to examine, but we don't operate based on emotions. I'm thankful for my emotions, it's not disturbing me, but I don't trust them. Yeah, I look at those, the emotions are there, they're real.

It's kind of, in one sense, it's kind of like you've got various lights and indicators in your car, and I don't have the warning light on the oil hardwired to my steering wheel. Whenever the warning light comes on, my steering wheel goes hard right. Well, that might not be a good thing, right? But that's the way a lot of us are kind of taught to think in terms of the music thing. We get our feelings response hardwired rather than say, okay, engage brain, what's going on here?

So basically, what does it mean to worship in spirit? Okay, so look at that. One is that the worship needs to be spiritual worship. And when we say spiritual, is it vaguely spiritual? Or when we say spiritual, what do we mean from a biblical standpoint? I guess you can sing about anything, but specifically it's asking you to sing about spiritual things. Spiritual things, and when you say spiritual things, a lot of people associate it with a lot of things.

It's also entirely consistent with the truth. So the worship is spiritual, but it's spirituality consistent with the truth. If somebody says, well, here's something spiritual, and it's a Buddhist hymn, is that Spiritual. Not according to the Word of God. Well, it certainly isn't spirit and truth.

Right? So just being spiritual without relating to the truth, I could have anything. I meant the right spirit. Pardon? Yeah, I mean, I could, you know, Nancy and I lived just about two houses down, across the street from a Mormon, not a temple, but one of their ward buildings.

And they went in there and they had various hymns. And they had hymns to Joseph Smith. Praise the man. Looked at some of them. Boy, this is really strange. But have they got spiritual hymns? Yeah, they're spiritual. What's the problem with them? It's missing the truth aspect. So is it spiritual? Yeah, it's spiritual, but it's missing the truth aspect. I need to put both of those together. Spiritually true may be one way to put those. Is there an aspect where when it's talking about the spirit, is it the spirit of truth?

Like I think of the Israelites, how they didn't follow the spirit of the law, they added to it. the spirit of the law wasn't there, which was God and truth. They weren't worshipping God. It was their own legalistic additions to the law. So Jesus didn't come to the Samaritan woman who was worshipping according to the Samaritan customs, which had error, right? But he didn't come to her and say, you know, you really need to worship like these Jews are. Why not? Why didn't he say that? Because they weren't worshipping in spirit and in truth either. And so he didn't say, well you guys are doing it wrong and these guys are doing it right.

He said, you know, must worship in spirit and in truth. And so this is spiritual, but it's tied to the truth. And how do we know what's true? God's Word spells out to us what's true. Let's talk about Christ himself. I am the way, the truth, and the life. Spirit and truth is not just conceptual, it is personal. Worship the Father, the Spirit, and the truth. You have the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all involved. here with the Word of God and with the truth, right? And so it is not just spiritual, it's not just truth, it's also personal. Beholding God. Yeah, and so it's not just a question of what am I saying when I worship, but who am I worshiping? Right?

Now, we haven't gotten past the first page. And so what I'm going to do is we're going to carry this over because we have at least another week, maybe two, in this thing. Because we haven't gotten past the first... page, and we actually have three pages. So we'll go at least next week to continue this. So hold on to this. We'll hold them here if you like, but hold on to this. We'll continue on with this because we've got some very important stuff to cover.

And this is a pattern in which most of Christendom has gone off course. by being so focused on emotions, so focused on traditions, one group wants to say, I want to sing all the old hymns, and the other one says, I don't want to sing all those old hymns, and somebody else says, I want to sing something straight through, and somebody else says, I want to sing you know, twelve times.

And so then you know, here's the Hallelujah Chorus, and guess what? A lot of repetition, you know? And here's an old one. It's funny, it's so sorting that all out, and also sorting out the fact that we've got different messages, and different traditions, and different things that we relate to feeling-wise, I tell you, it's a real challenge for church shepherds to try to sort out. How do we do this?

What a lot of churches have gone to, and it actually divides up the body of Christ, is we'll have one service and this is our hymns, and they'll have another service and that's our contemporary. And so you divide up the body of Christ based on that, which is frequently, not always, it's frequently age based. And so where are the older men and the older women bringing along the younger ones? That dismisses that in order to make people happy about their music. Stylus. So anyway, we run into that here, and how do we do what's biblical and not divide the body up? Anyway, we will continue on with this. There's apparently a lot more to go. We're off to a good start. Let's pray.

Thank you, Lord, for what you've revealed. Thank you that you do have, with all the variations that have taken place over time, you do have good, solid, sound revelation for us and good truths for us to not only just know and understand, but to live by. And we thank you for that. We look for your continuing guidance and leading as we proceed with this subject. especially into this Christmas season. We pray, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen.