Knowing and Growing - HHBC Ministries in Music (continued)

Well, this is a particularly appropriate season for talking about these things as we've got a lot of the Christmas carols and things of that sort where the music and the content and all those things are of issue, are issues. We talked previously about Colossians 3.16.

Colossians 3.16 tells us, may the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another through psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.

So one thing is, is music just something that the church puts on and people participate in? It's a form of worship, okay, so that's part one. So it's worship, whether it's the people, you know, who are leading and playing and what not, and those who are joining in. So it's a church body thing, okay? And how do we know it's a church body thing? How do we know that? We're all participating.

One is this, we're participating here, Colossians 3.16 uses this one another.

This is a real curious thing, in the Greek it's all alone, and it's not all alone, right? So it's sort of a humorous thing, but what it means in the Greek, when you carry it over into English, it's like it's the exact opposite. So it is not all alone, but is instead something shared between us, right? All together, and as a matter of fact, all together and not all alone is the intent of this.

So teaching and admonishing, why not just one or the other? What's the difference between teaching and admonishing that he would use two words? Admonishing is more of a... well, it's scolding. It's what? Admonishing is scolding. Okay, so admonishing is It has a range of means, but the idea is that you're wanting people to go from one place to another, right? And so you might be admonishing them in different directions. But it's a move from here to here in whatever the subject matter is about.

So there's that, and then teaching is what, and how are the two different words? So what's teaching, and how is that different from admonishing? Teaching is to promote understanding. Okay, so to bring understanding, and so part of what that is, if you think about it, if teaching is to bring understanding, and admonishing is to move from here to here, teaching is to bring understanding so that there is a place for admonishing.

Right? Yes? I think of it as teaching kind of covers a lot of people all at once. Where admonishing becomes more personal because when you're teaching, Jim might be listening to something different than what I'm listening to or what I'm hearing because of where we are or whatever. And admonishing would be more like, raise my hand and ask a question or something. Then it becomes more personal.

Yeah, so what's interesting with those is there's kind of a range of scale with those, right? Could teaching and admonishing happen with a smaller group? Could it happen with a larger group? Certainly, right? So there's a range of scale in those, isn't there? But even our worship could also have a range of scale.

Yes? has an idea of correction. You're bringing somebody from an incorrect understanding to a correct understanding. You're drawing from here to there. So yeah, you're wanting to get people to have an understanding, and often times it's not this, but this, right? You're wanting people to have an understanding, and sometimes it is a correction of understanding, right?

And the admonishment. So the teaching may be in the range of including position, right? The admonishing may be more a matter of condition, of urging people, exhorting people, encouraging people to go from where they're at by faith in the teachings. So teachings will often lay a groundwork for the admonishing. What happens if I have admonishing without teaching? Does that happen? It probably does. So what happens is you get people, and a lot of times without the teaching, it ends up being legal. So here's the Apostle Paul. He's writing to the church at Ephesus. We're going to have an elective covering Ephesians this entire next year. We're going to start teaching in Ephesians on our Thursday night group starting next year.

Here's six chapters in the book, four and a half chapters before there's anything to talk about. But what does he talk about? You've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, and you've been chosen in Him, and in Him we have the redemption, the forgiveness of sins. I mean, it just goes all sorts of things about our blessings in Christ, right? And then after four and a half chapters of that, then he says, okay, now let's talk about your lying and stealing problem.

So he doesn't just say, hi, I'm Paul, you guys quit, stop, you know, don't do this lying and stealing stuff anymore. He doesn't do that, does he? He starts out first with teaching and then comes the admonishment. So, really big, you know, sequence issue here.

And then there are three kinds, remember we said three kinds, it was psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, and those might be a little different from what we immediately think of from those words. So let's touch on them. This is on page two, where we've got the three little ovals, and it says psalms. They're often used in reference to the psalms, the 150 psalms in the Old Testament, but they're typically songs about God. That's the main meaning of that word.

So, something else, some groups of people within Christendom have said, well, we shouldn't have instruments in our worship. You get different ones, and that would include, for example, some of the earlier Churches of Christ that are actually kind of moving away from that?

In my little town that I grew up in, there was a church of Christ that had no music. You did not sing a word. I knew a lady who got married in the first Christian church instead Because she had to have music. What's interesting is both of those church denominations are started by the same guys, the Campbells, right? But yeah, the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, and the Church of Christ, those are both Campbell offshoots, and the Church of Christ often went off with this, you know, no musical instruments, even in some extremes, no singing. But their singing, when they did have it, was often no musical instruments.

That was forbidden. Now, does the Bible forbid the use of musical instruments? No, it does not. As a matter of fact, this word translated Psalms is from a word that means to strum. So anyway, it just doesn't fly. And then the Apostle Paul himself talks about symbols and trumpets and different uses of different words. It's a bogus prohibition. The Bible doesn't do that.

But the Bible does put the focus on content, and I think that's key, and a lot of churches have lost sight of that, because it is teaching and admonishing. Our worship is to be teaching and admonishing. That's why we're very careful about the doctrine.

And so if something can be misunderstood, we will sometimes, you can see it even in today's slides, we'll put down a reference there to help, you know, this is how we understand this. O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel. I mean, is that something we sing? Yeah, you're going to hear it this morning. And so how do we understand it is key. So at any rate, even how do we understand certain words?

We will add verses. We're going to do that this morning. With how deep the Father's love for us, we added a verse to include identification. Then we'll add verses. We will change particular words or lines. Jesus paid it all. We changed the one that said, all to him I owe, to his grace and love to show.

So we'll change that, we'll drop out particular verses sometimes. A musician, blind since about six weeks after her birth, Fanny Crosby wrote a great many well-loved and well-known hymns. She was, however, an amillennialist, that is, no millennium, and so therefore the kingdom is through the church now, those kinds of things. So when those kinds of verses crop up, then we will tend to drop those out or change words if that can be done. Music is chosen very carefully and sometimes added to or modified to bring things into biblical balance.

With that, one of the things we say, so at Holly Hills, this is page two, right? We'll employ music and the lyrics as part of our whole worship of the Lord in spirit and truth. We'll exercise discernment about the lyrical content of the music using God's word. Someone said some years ago, and they're not with us anymore, but someone said, well, don't the people at Holly Hills know enough that you can just sing something and not worry about what the content is?

Some of them think about it. Yes, and we got someone to think about it. Also, at the time, we had someone who had just joined us that had joined us just coming out of a cult. And did they automatically know what was true and what was not? No, because the cult had beat all sorts of things into their heads.

We need, at a minimum, for them to be very careful about what our words taught and conveyed, because the music teaches. We don't want music that is admonishing legally. We don't even want to sing songs that says, give of your best to the master. We're going to see that in the acts lesson today. that Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey said they depended upon the Lord, they relied upon the Lord as they were going through this ministry.

That's big. They didn't give them their best, they just relied. No, that's right. And so here they are, they've got these guys. Paul had been giving of his best for years. How was that working, right? It wasn't. Yeah, in retrospect, he looked back on it and said, man, what a, you know, you know, yeah, I just can't believe what I was doing. But anyway, so, so, but you see here, here's Dr. Luke recording.

And one of the things that's key is, is who was the apostolic sponsor? Who was the apostle who was alongside Dr. Luke as he wrote? Paul was the primary one. It doesn't mean he didn't have contact with others, he very likely and even certainly did in one way or another, but Paul was his primary sponsor. We know from chapter 16 on that Dr. Luke was with him during at least a portion, if not a significant amount, of that time from chapter 16 to the end.

Paul considered all his works dumb, trash, filth, but it was because of his trained mind and all his knowledge that he could argue intellectually doctrinally correct letters that he had. He just had an amazing mind, a very disciplined mind. We're very thankful for that. Yes, very insightful. Here's a question.

Suppose we have an author who write some good things but also write some things we disagree with, do we totally scratch off that author as a source for our singing? We don't. And why not? Why don't we say, well, this guy or this gal has some error and so we just won't use any of their stuff? What's that? You don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Yeah, the reality is that they may very well write some excellent content and so we will be selective sometimes about which songs, we'll be selective about which verses, some cases change a particular line, but we don't just go through and say, well this guy has some You know, crazy theology, we just don't use any other stuff. We just don't do that.

So here's a for instance, Charles Wesley. Wrote something on the order of 6,000 hymns or something like that. Did he have some doctrinal issues? Yup. Do we throw out all of his stuff? Nope. And you can go through our hymnal here and other hymns that we sing. and some of them are by Charles Wesley.

Even though we will have some significant concerns about some of the doctrine that he and his brother held to, nonetheless, we will find that a lot of his hymns will make it their way into our music, including some of the songs we sing this time of year and around Easter. I mentioned Fanny Crosby earlier. She was an all-millennialist but prolific hymn writer and we just steer clear of the all-millennial songs or verses or in some cases can just change a word or a line or two and keep going because there's some good material there. Something else that's really interesting and that is in her case She wrote into a great many of her hymns about sight.

The next thing I'm going to see is the Lord, because she can't see now. It's my understanding that she had an open door invitation to a series of U.S. presidents where they would just say, if Fannie Crosby wants to come in, Let her come in, right? No appointment necessary. Yes?

One problem with throwing out all of a person's works just because you don't agree with somebody's theology is that you may miss out on some truths that he points out in a better way than other people. We will sing songs, for example, by Graham Kendrick. We sing at least a couple that immediately come to mind. One is Knowing You by Graham Kendrick. He's out of the Vineyard, which is a group we would have significant doctrinal differences with. But the songs that we sing for the specific lyrics that we sing are good.

So I think that's a good case in point in terms of more modern writers. Majesty by Jack Hayford. I've heard Jack Hayford speak, I've listened to various things, and he certainly has a lot to be careful of. But with one word adjustment, we'll go ahead and sing the song Majesty.

So anyway, that's one of the approaches you'll see here at Holly Hills and we pursue it consistently and that is we will look at the specific lyrics and not blanket judge a particular author and reject or accept all the music based on the doctrine that they have or don't have in general. So we look at the content of each song, each verse, each line. Is this the biblical teaching? So that's key.

Another, we say, what is true of God and our relationship with Him, with one another are the things that God's Word addresses. So these things that are said, Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, those are all things that God's Word talks about. Are there things in God's Word that talk about God? Yeah. Are there things in God's Word that talk directly to God? That's hymns, right? And then, is there spiritual content that isn't necessarily to or about God, but is still valuable spiritual content? Yeah. So the reality is God's Word falls into these categories as well. And that means that God's Word has things that directly apply to the content of these songs that we sing.

One of them, we will not be using our feelings as the basis for measuring our blessings. You may have heard, for example, Randy will say, well we used to go to a charismatic church. Well, it didn't start out that way. It was explicitly not charismatic. And the church had an influx of people from a vineyard church that was falling apart because the pastor was pilfering. Right? So they came over to our church and the pastor at our church was kind of being sly and deceptive in the way he did things. So you get these charismatics coming in.

And I remember one of them saying, well, I feel blessed. And so feeling blessed is suddenly then a criteria for what is true and what's not. So we use God's Word as the standard, not how do I feel about it. So musical aspects of our worship are more subjective but must be considered. So do I sing, oh happy day in minor key? It's a happy day and I thank God for the weather. It's a happy day and I'm living it for my Lord. So we're not oblivious to what the music communicates, because music does in fact communicate some things. It's not as good at communicating content, but music does communicate some things, doesn't it?

And also, you will have along different people different things that they're accustomed to music-wise. And often it has been the pattern that churches will divide even over this. You know, we don't want any of those old dusty, rusty, crusty old hymns. We want more of those dusty, rusty, crusty old hymns, right? And those newfangled praise songs that, you know, talk about seven verses seven times and, you know, And you can go on and on and on and music is so, you know, bangs on my ears and so, you know, we don't want that except for then there's another group that says that's exactly what I want.

Because that's what I feel at home with and that's what I listen to all week. So even a certain patience with one another about, you know, what do we, you know, work with, In the end, what are we looking at? We don't want the music to become so distracting that we lose sight of the content. Right? Because that's in the end what we're looking at here. So, the content. So you're saying the instrument should not drown out the words. Yes. Now, so this is key. The instruments should not drown out the words, why? Why does that matter? There's one mistake to say we can't use the instruments, because the Bible doesn't say that. And if anything, it implies the opposite.

In the Old Testament, did they have musical instruments accompanying the worship? Yes, they did. We have records that use harps and other things, even drums. They had trumpets and all sorts of things in the Old Testament. When we get to heaven, is it going to be without musical instruments? I think David really started up the instrument as their worshipper.

Yes, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, this is relevant for us to consider. So, but the opposite extreme is the music can be so loud, the instruments can be so loud that they drown out the content. So we can't get instruction from the words. Yes, and so it's possible that the music is so loud and intense we just don't get the music from the words and that's a problem, right? And that's particularly when the music begins appealing to feelings and you lose the sense of here's the content. So there are some kind of boundaries to look at, to consider carefully. In some respect they're a judgment call, but it's something to take a look at.

I was in a church in Oklahoma when I went down there for training in social services, and their music was so loud that it actually hurt my ears. It can cause hearing loss. You can still hear the words, but everything was so loud they had the amplifiers turned way up. It was painful. In that sense, it's wrong too, because you hear the words, you hear the music, but you're causing hearing loss in your congregation. One of the larger churches in the U.S., Saddleback, I have a church down in Southern California where Rick Warren is the pastor there.

And it's my understanding that they will have this music which comes with all sorts of light show and everything else and then he'll get up and talk for two or three minutes and then step down and then more of the music with the light show and all that. So by the time it's all said and done, he hasn't said very much or done very much. He'd just come in and has these spots where he talks between the music show. When the music stops, probably they've forgotten everything he said in the first place. Yes, because the reality is by the time that happens, you're not there for what he has to say. And because of the discontinuity, you're not getting really a pattern. The music show takes over as opposed to are we one anothering, right? So, yeah, and not just the music show, but all the light show and everything else that goes with it. I mean, it's quite a production. It's professional, yes, it is professional-level entertainment.

And then he comes up, and by the way, I personally heard Rick Warren speak. He is the funniest speaker you could ever imagine. He's like a stand-up comedian. Just goes from one... So at any rate, yeah, it's... It's very entertaining. Between what he says and the music and the light show and everything else, it's extremely entertaining.

In terms of entertainment value, some of the best you'll ever see. If that's what you're going there for, right? So it is possible for everything to be so good in terms of a production that is distracting. from what's the content. And you're not really dealing with spiritual issues, it's entertainment value. How do I entertain it so that people will keep shelling out the money and coming back? And invite other people to come and enjoy the show.

So this is on page 101, which is the last page there. We ought to say the same thing in unity from heart to word. So one thing is, should there be a unity of teaching among our Psalms? Yes, because there should be a unity of teaching among the things that we teach, music included. Because teaching and admonishing.

For example, if I have one song that's, you know, how amazing grace is, and then we turn around and have another song that's all singing about what you owe to God, and what you better do, and, you know, I'm going to give of my best, and what's this? Right? So it is possible to get very conflicted. between what you're saying and even between one song to the next. It's one of the reasons we're very careful. We've even had some times where it comes up at an elders meeting, I don't want to sing that song anymore, I don't want to sing that verse, or can we change this? We even have points of discussion on different things. We sometimes run things past the elders before we sing it in some cases.

One of the next things you look at here on the diagram, it shows feelings and then faith and then spiritual facts based in reality. So spiritual facts based in reality, these are truly what the Bible says, and our faith is in those spiritual facts, right? And the feelings then are built on top of that. What is often done in churches is to go the other way around, where things are based on the feelings.

Boy, I sure like the way that song makes me feel, right? We mentioned earlier how This time of year, the Hallelujah Chorus is particularly popular. They have big music productions and frankly they do a great job with it. But it's very stirring in its music even though it's a couple centuries plus old. It's very stirring in the music that it presents. Even atheists have said, boy, that's really stirring music. Right? Yes? What if it doesn't stir you anymore? What do you do? Throw it out? Yeah, so this is key.

At what place do feelings have in our evaluation of music? What place do feelings have? Is it completely irrelevant? Is it to be considered? What is the place of feelings? Because many churches have said, how I feel about it is what's most important. Actually, feelings are important. They should be a consideration, but the foundation is the spiritual fact. Yeah, so I think this is key, and this gives us guidance here, that unlike what some churches have done, where everything is about feelings.

How do you feel about that? And I determine what's true based on whether or not I feel blessed, right? And if I feel blessed, you know, whatever that feels like. If I feel blessed, then obviously this is true, right? How can it be wrong if it feels so right? So yeah. We don't rely on feelings because they change. Spiritual facts do not change. Yeah, so let's think about that. The spiritual facts that God intended to reveal in Scripture are unchanging. What God intended to convey in his word is unchanging. It's rock solid. What can feelings depend upon? What are the variables impacting feelings?

One is self, okay? Maybe you got up on the wrong side of the bed, so your feelings are different. Yeah, I'm just not feeling all, you know, happy and joyful right now. I just didn't sleep well last night and a lot of pain. So yeah, different physical circumstances. My breakfast isn't settling well. You know, different things can change that even for a person who is otherwise fairly solid. But yeah, circumstances can change. What else?

So you point out a very important thing, and that is, what are some things in Christian music that appeals to the sin nature? Pardon? The meter does. Yeah, one of the things, it could be the character of the music instrumentally and melodically and harmonically and all those aspects. That could be a part of it. Percussion, right? All that that can appeal this in nature. What else? It's the emotion it stirs. Okay, the emotion it stirs. And so let's ask this question.

How does the sin nature respond to law? Here's the weird thing about the sin nature. The sin nature will either say, yeah, love it, and sign me up for that. I can do it. That's what the sin nature will do. Or what's the opposite reaction the sin nature can have? Rebellion. So the sin nature can go either way. Good luck with that, right? So the sin nature can go either way.

So give me some law. Give me some law in the sin nature and some people at different times will decide, where do I sign? Sign me up for that. Give me more of that. Lord, we are able. Wait a minute, what? That's a song in one of the hymns. I used to sing it when I was a teenager. What's wrong with this? There's kind of a pendulum effect. God's word is very centered and stable.

So one thing is, if the music appeals to the sin nature, or causes the sin nature to rebel, both of those are a sin nature reaction, which tends to be feelings centered. So what else about feelings? Are there any other variables about feelings? Aside from what side of the bed did I get up from and what did I have for breakfast? I think of that song that says, it can't be wrong because it feels so right. 1977, Debbie Boone. By Christian Gal, by the way.

I think they can be deceiving. Part of it is we can get doctrine that sounds appealing and it'll get sold with good music. My most enjoyed songs have a lovely, reconciled melody. They do make me feel good. And I notice the words. But I'm really pleased when this beautiful piece of music starts up. Rather than that I'm going to get to sing these true words. They glorify my Lord or whatever.

There's a tendency for us to get pulled around and that's one of the reasons why here and even in the main service from time to time we'll teach on music just to kind of get us, you know, why are we doing this? Just to kind of get our thoughts re-centered. What's this all about?

Otherwise, it's real easy for people to kind of get off on, you know, this is what I'm used to, this is what I like, those kinds of things instead of, you know, what's true, what admonishes, what, you know, what am I teaching people through the music, those kinds of things. So one of the reasons for talking about it and taking the time to talk about it So we say, okay, that's why we're doing it, and for us to focus on that.

Another thing I think that along that line that the Sin Nature brings out is a negative attitude. Well, I heard a sour note. Can't they play better than that? Or something like that. And it's these little nit-picky things. That's, again, the Sin Nature that brings that out. Yeah, and it's one of those things where it's important to say, okay, what's this really all about? And to keep ourselves focused on that.

So one of the things we'll have here is we'll not only have some variety in terms of musical style, We'll have variety in terms of the kinds of music, and of course Paul has given us a good category of generalization with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, because in terms of content, that's three different kinds that can overlap. As those little ovals indicate, there can be some overlap, even within the same song, you can have all three kinds. Songs about God, songs to God, and then songs that talk about spiritual things, right? So that can be. But one of the other things we will try to do is to try to add music, look for music that isn't necessarily well represented in most music choices here. So here is a listing.

Identification with Christ and all of its consequences is rather unusual. So we have some cases like we'll have this morning of how deep the Father's love for us. Verse four is an identification truths verse that we added here at Holy Hills to that song that didn't otherwise have identification truth in it. So you'll have that. We will sometimes find and locate particular songs that are about identification. One of those would be Buried with Christ. It is one that we've done that's a hymn that is about our identification with Christ. We'll even have entire songs that talk about our identification with Christ and how we're blessed. So then we've got that.

Full biblical grace is the reigning principle for us in the church. It is really easy to creep in with law or to have grace somehow shrunken down. One of the things that happens real commonly among Christians is they will have mini-law, introduce mini-law. in order to only require many grapes. That's one thing about the, and we'll actually be talking about that this morning in the Acts lesson. It's one of the things about, you know, what's characteristic of a lot of Christendom is they say, well, all 613 laws of the Law of Moses. Well, I don't want to do all 613 laws and say that some of them are really difficult. You know, we don't We don't know who the tribes are, and I'm certainly not one of the tribes. We don't have a temple to work with.

I certainly don't want to have multiple marriages. I've got to have a kid for all the things that are in the law. So I don't want all that stuff. Just give me the tent. Oh, except for that Sabbath thing. I don't really want to do that. And so people want to cut and paste. But add the tithe in there. Keep the Sabbath, just kind of make that foggy. But add the tithe in there because we've got to make sure we bang people over the head with that. So we go and doctor up what we want.

By the way, the tithe law in the Old Testament law is sandwiched right between the food laws and let your land life follow every seven years. So, you'll have a pastor get up, and he'll go and ban on everybody, you've got to give your tithe and all that, and then he'll go out and have lunch at Red Lobster. Right? And then he'll go home to his lawn, which he has not let dried up every seven years. Right? The HOA just gets really upset when you do that. You know, every seventh year you just let it dry up. Right? So the bottom line is that we go and pick one that we like, and the rest of it we forget.

By the way, the tithe never applied to anything but agricultural production. So it did not apply to income. It applied to agricultural production, period. That's it. If you got money as a merchant, that did not apply. If you got money because you were a politician of some kind, that did not apply. It was agricultural production only that applied to the tithe.

Because they had to supply the Levites with sustenance. Yes, exactly. And so that's what it was about. And so what happens is people... First of all, a pastor goes saying, you know, bring the whole tithe into the storehouse and all things like that out of the Old Testament. And the bottom line is, all right, where are the Levites?

Where are you guys doing the sacrifices here? Right? I don't think that's going to work, because I don't think the bank will accept it. No. And there's not too many churches where they keep the fire going 24-7, right? Like they did in the temple. So there's a whole bunch of things that they did in the temple we don't do here, right? And it is an exceedingly rare pastor who knows he's a Levite.

Right? If not non-existent. So the whole thing is bogus. So what happens is people go and they trim and they cut and expand, they make it what they like, instead of all 613 laws down to every jot and tittle, every single one, and then, then you begin to have an inkling of the magnitude of grace that I need. Let's trim it down and kind of push this out and snip this off.

Out of 613, I like about 10 of them. They also don't like the requirement that all of the Ten Commandments require death penalty for failure. So if you are not stoning people, For failure to keep the Ten Commandments, you are breaking the law. If you fail to stone people because they broke the Ten Commandments, then you are a lawbreaker.

So good luck with that. Okay, so one of the things we look at here is we look for full biblical grace as the reigning principle for us in the church. And we don't want songs that talk about we owe God this and we owe God that, and we ought to do this and we ought to do that. There are even a lot of songs where they have churches going to rituals, they have confessionals of different kinds. It may or may not be true. Certainly we struggle, and we can say that, but confessionals may or may not be the case. Another one, faith in the facts is revealed in God's Word. Even we can sing about that, and we ought to pursue that, is what we sing.

We'll sing it as simply as the B-I-B-L-E, right? That's the book for me. But even a more complex song at ancient words. by the half-heretical songwriter Michael W. Smith. But there are things that that guy believes and teaches that we look at and say, it's not right. But the words in that song are good. So that's because it's a faith in the facts song.

And then the nature of interactions between us and the body of Christ that includes spiritual gifts and one another's. That's a part of the spiritual songs. They talk about our ministry with one another and looking around for songs like that. And finally, spiritual growth and maturity, how it happens and appears.

So that's why if you were here on this last Sunday night, we sang a version of Joy to the World that talked about growing in the Lord. So, hmm, that's different. But there are frankly not enough songs that talk about our growing in the Lord. So we'd look for that and we'd change verses and write verses and add words and write additional songs. Another one, being conformed and transformed into Christ's image that we talked about earlier in this very elective. So those are things that tend not to be much in the way of songs about those processes.

They're fully biblical processes. Here's what God's doing. So we look at that. having and detailing every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Here's the Apostle Paul, he's writing the Church at Ephesus, and after the introduction, the first couple of verses, he says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing, and he goes on for several verses talking about every spiritual blessing and what that looks like, and every way that you're blessed. And about starting with verse 9 and 10, then he goes into the Millennial Kingdom, and then he switches back to how we're blessed in Christ. And blessed in Christ, blessed in Christ, blessed in Christ, and then he'll finish off the chapter with the Millennial Kingdom again.

But what you see there is a blessing. Now, so do we sing about those blessings? Which, by the way, those blessings are in him. So that's another question. Do we sing about being in Christ and the blessings that come from our being in Christ? So, then we have another one here.

Full and truthful expression of our relationship with Christ. How is our relationship with Christ described? What can often happen is there can be a tendency to write about certain things in our relationship with Christ but not about others. The rapture of the church as opposed to the second coming of Christ.

Have you ever heard of a group called the Gaithers? Some great music in terms of the music and the harmonies and just good quality. And by the way, they do have some very good songs, but one of the things, they've got this song about the king is coming, the king is coming, you know, and it's all millennial, the way it's written. And so it looks to Christ's second coming instead of, we should be looking for the rapture. That's what we should be looking for, is the rapture.

Because the second coming will be with him. We'll be with him. Because the next thing prophetically that's going to happen, there isn't anything that has to happen, the next thing prophetically that's going to happen is the rapture. It is! And people will write books and they'll have conferences and they'll talk about all the prophecy and things that are happening, what's going on with Israel and all kinds of books. You know, the next thing that's going to happen is a rapture. Woo! I'm good with that, right? So, alright, we've run out of time. There are people with noses pressed up against the window almost.

So, we will pray, okay? Thank you Lord for what your word reveals about our worship and our music and just for the direction we have and just we pray as we even move into the service here today that these would be things that we would learn about and apply and think about. We just thank you for the opportunity in our worship to worship you in spirit and in truth as we saw. And we give you thanks Lord in Jesus name. Amen.