1219. The Unity of the Church pt. 2

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Today on The Daily Platform, we're continuing a study series entitled, Seeking Things Above, which is a study of the book of Colossians. Today's message is part two of the sermon titled, The Unity of the Church. Today I'd like to finish where we started last week on the theme of the unity of the church. And last week we started out by talking about the fact that there was a form of teaching going on in the church of Colossae that could pull the church apart.

That's basically what the issue was. And so Paul gives four commands to maintain the unity of the church and to counteract the false teaching. And these are things that believers are to do. It's what we're to do within a local church. And I can say this after my experience of 40, 45 years of being parts of local churches, that there's no greater blessing than to be in a unified church and there's no greater misery to be in a church that's being pulled apart. And so as believers, we all have responsibilities.

Every one of you one day, the Lord willing, will graduate or you move on from Bob Jones and you're going to go out in the world and you should seek a local church where you can go and become a part of and being involved in. And so you will be a part of either the problem or you'll be a part of the solution. And so what are the things that we are commanded to do? And he gives us commands, first of all, in verse 14, where he tells us that we are to put on love or we're to put on charity. Love is the belt that holds everything together.

And love is sort of the supreme quality or the graces that we're to be putting on. And essentially he tells us and he brings us out in the passage of scripture that we were before we were saved a part of what is called the old man, what we were prior to salvation. Now we are the new man and we're to put on the qualities or the graces of the new man. And you do that by putting off at the old and at the same time putting on the new. It's like changing your clothes. And so you come in and maybe you've exercised and you're hot and sweaty and you take your clothes off, you shower, and then what do you do?

You put on clean clothes. And he's talking about the transformation of our life as a Christian and that we are to put on these qualities, these graces. And they are supreme in living a life of love. And then the second command he gives us is in verse 15 when he says, let the peace of God rule in your heart. And the idea here is not peace in a just subjective way where you feel peace.

It's an objective way. It's talking about in the church where there's disunity and disruption and disharmony, then a foul has been committed and somebody needs to blow the whistle. Somebody needs to be the referee and say, look, things are not right. We need to fix this. And that's exactly what a referee does in a game.

When there's a foul, the game is stopped, things are made right, and then go back to playing the game. And so let the peace of God rule in your hearts is the idea of making peace a driving focus of the church. We want to live in peaceful harmonies. And then number three, the third thing, and that's what we're going to focus on this morning.

I started last week and I'd like to finish today. And that is that how is it that we maintain unity in the church and that is we focus on the word of Christ. Look at what he says in verse 16, let the word of Christ well in your hearts in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. We have a similar verse in the book of Ephesians, and I'd like you to turn back a couple of books, if you would please, to Ephesians chapter five. And I want to read to you verse 19.

This says in essence, the same thing. It says, speaking to yourselves in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. Now, what he's telling us here is that the central unifying focus of the worship of the church of Jesus Christ is always to be the word of Christ.

And we see this in two primary ways. Number one, first and foremost, it is through the preaching and the teaching of the word of Jesus Christ. That is centrally, what is the most important aspect of the church? What's the most important aspect of the worship of the church? And it always is to be the word of God.

That's what we invest our time in. That's why we come to church. That's why the pulpit is always in the center of the church building, as opposed to a lectern on the far side over here or over here.

And in the middle, you have some form of sacraments or you have different other things that are there. We put the pulpit in the middle because the word of God is to be central in the church. And specifically, he's speaking about the supremacy of Jesus Christ. And we see that throughout the book of Colossians where he says Christ is preeminent. He's the creator. He's the head of the church. Jesus is our all in all. And when we come to church, what must be central and what is sufficient for the church is the preaching of Jesus Christ.

One of my daughters a number of years ago was attending a church in the summertime in a particular city, and she had gone to the church for a number of weeks. And I called her up one Sunday and I said, sweetheart, how's church going? And it was dead quiet.

And usually when it's dead quiet, that's not good. And she said, Dad, I'm just really struggling. I said, what are you struggling with? She wasn't a member. She was just attending. She said, I just really struggled with the sermons. And she said, I feel like it's a lot of rhetoric. I said, OK, I want you to go to this church on Sunday, the next Sunday.

And I want you to go hear the preacher there. And she did. And I called her up that Sunday afternoon. I said, how was the service? And she said, Dad, he preached from Colossians one on Jesus Christ. And she said, I cried through the whole service. That's what I'm talking about. When Christ is preeminent in the church, it is always sufficient for the congregation.

Why? Because Christ is bread to the hungry and Christ is water to the thirsty. You see, it's the Holy Spirit who loves to magnify Jesus in our hearts. He is guidance for the traveler and he's truth to the seeker.

He's strength for the weary and he's comfort for the broken hearted. When the word of Christ is preeminent in the preaching ministry of the church, then it bonds the entire body together like super glue. The supremacy of Christ leads to the sufficiency of Christ. And what should be central in the congregation is the preaching of the word of Jesus Christ.

That's number one. Then secondly, he says that the church is unified not only through the preaching and the teaching, but through the congregational singing of the church. Let's go back to Colossians three and look at what he says. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, a wealth in all wisdom. And then he is very specific, teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing, he says, with grace in your hearts to the Lord. The focal point here is the importance of congregational singing, not so much special music, but congregational singing.

And what he says is that it should unify and edify the church. Yesterday morning, we were in a church in Hartford, Connecticut. Last night, we were in a church in Fredericksburg, Virginia. And in both churches, what did we do? We came together and we sang. And it was the congregational singing that built the church or let me say edify the church. Music should always unify and never divide. It should always build up. It should always enrich the church. And how are we enriched?

It is by singing the word of Jesus Christ. Now, what we read this morning is one of the few verses that you find in the New Testament on the subject of music, but music is a big deal. I think you would agree with me on that. It is a big issue.

And in some cases, maybe it's bigger than it should be, but it is a central issue. And I want to say to all of you here, you need to think through the issue of music. Don't be a person who spends all their life just simply doing what they're told and they become a follower and they never become a thinker.

You need to think it through. And that's one of the things that we've done here at Bob Jones University. We have an outstanding statement on a biblical philosophy of music that's online that every single one of you should read.

The fact is I've decided today that I'm actually going to send it to you as a file attachment in your email just so that you have it so that you don't have to go searching for it online. But it's called Music in the Image Bearer, a Philosophy of Musical Stewardship for BJU. And in it, we talk about music from a scholarship standpoint, that is as an educational institution. We talk about it from a worship standpoint. And we talk about it from an entertainment standpoint. It is really, really important.

It is a big deal. And Paul here is commanding us to let the Word of Christ dwell in us richly through singing. And you can say that Paul is giving us instructions here on how to sing.

So what I'd like to do is try to answer three questions in this passage of Scripture that I hope will be practical to us this morning. The first question is this, what should we sing? And he tells us, we should sing the Word of Christ.

And then he breaks it down. He says, songs, hymns, and spiritual songs. These are different types of songs. Some are songs of praise. Some are songs of worship. Some of them are songs of experience, where oftentimes you'll use the word I in the song and you speak about your experience as a Christian.

And all of these are legitimate. Now some have suggested that these three types of songs are all psalms. And we know that the Jewish hymn book was the 150 Psalms. As time has gone along, of course, as always in the church, there's debate over music, whether or not we should just sing the psalms or should we sing songs that were written by human beings. And that's a legitimate argument because the psalms were written by God and everything else is written by a fallible man or a fallible human being.

So there's always been some kind of disruption over that or some kind of discussion over that. But throughout history, there's always been songs that have been written by the saints of God for the purpose of unifying and edifying the church. They are songs of praise.

They are songs of worship and they are songs of spiritual experience. And in either case, whether it's the book of Psalms or the songbook that we use in the church, there are some things that should be in those songs. I want to read to you a statement that I wrote numbers of years ago for our own ministry when I was an evangelist and when I was a camp director because we had a statement of philosophy of music. And I wrote this, I said, the text of the hymn, and by the way, the text is always supreme. You have text, you have the tune, and you have the author of the writer.

And number one, the text is always to be supreme. The text of the hymn or song must find its source directly in scripture or it must clearly and accurately reflect the truth of God's word. The lyrics of sacred music must be balanced, reflecting both doctrine and practice and emphasizing the complete experience of the Christian life. In other words, it's not just about getting saved or going to heaven because there's more to the Christian life than just those two things.

The music should be beautiful in both order and meter. That is, it's singable and it should be presented in a very clear manner. Its clarity is of the essence. And the focus here is on the message, the centrality of Jesus.

It is not primarily on the messenger. For example, when Paul wrote the book of Galatians, he put a dividing line on the gospel. He was so bold in what he said. He said this, that if an apostle or an angel preach any other message than that which I preached to you, let him come into the curse of God.

That's pretty serious business, don't you think? I mean, Paul, Peter, Apollos, that if they don't preach the gospel, then they face the same judgment as everybody else. Even if an angel comes and announces anything to you that is not according to the scripture, then let him come under the judgment of God. And what we read in the book of Galatians, and we read it throughout the New Testament, that what is central is the word of Jesus Christ. He is the message. And so it's not about Paul. It's not about Peter.

It's not about Apollos. It's not about Luther. It's not about Calvin. It's not about Wesley. It's not about Getty. It's not about Anderson.

It's not even about Steve Pettit, because I wrote two songs. It's about Jesus, folks. And that's where we don't want to mess up. So what do we sing? We sing the word of Christ.

Number two, how should we sing? And when we read the scripture, it's very interesting when it tells us how to sing most of us don't sing this way. The first thing that we're to do when we sing is we're actually to sing in such a way as that we are preaching to one another.

Let me say that again so you don't miss what I said. You're to sing in such a way as that you are to preach to one another. What does Colossians 3 say? Teaching and admonishing. What does it mean to admonish? It actually means to warn.

It means to stir people up. Teaching and admonishing one another. Ephesians says speaking to yourselves in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. When we sing, we are literally preaching to one another. When we had our revival team for many years, I used to tell our team that I know when our music is starting to actually have an impact and be effective, and that's when our singers start preaching to the congregation through song. You know how it is. You learn a song. You learn the words. You want to sing it right. You want to get every note perfect.

Okay, we did all of that, and you know what? As far as I was concerned, we really were not at the pinnacle until those singers knew the song so well that when they stood up, they actually felt like they were preaching to the congregation. Singing is essentially preaching set to song, and that's why singing is so powerful. It is a sermon before the sermon.

Oftentimes, one of the most moving experiences for an unbeliever is to enter into a congregation and listen to the hearty singing of the believers, because when they sing heartily, it really means that they believe what they are singing. Now, when I get to a church and the singing is dead, it's not because the music is dead. It's because the singers are dead. There's no such thing as dead music. Music doesn't die.

People die. And if you walk into a congregation and they're not busting it out, okay, I'm talking about preaching. That's what I'm doing right now. I'm preaching. I'm engaged. I'm emotional. I feel it.

I say it. That's how you're supposed to sing it. Some of you, I watch you. Some of you don't even open your mouth during singing.

You know why? Because your heart's dead as a doornail. Or somehow, you're engaged in something else and you're definitely not here.

You probably have an out-of-body experience. You're standing here, but you're not here. And when we sing, what are we to do? We are to preach to one another.

We believe it. And that's why singing is so effective in a congregation, because after you sing, you sit down and what are you ready to do? You're ready to receive more of God's word. When you don't sing, what does that say about you? It reveals that you're focused on yourself and you're preoccupied. It can reveal an emptiness of your own heart.

It can reveal an absence of the word of Christ in your life. That's why usually the best singing is always with a group of preachers, not because they sing well, it's because they sing loud. They preach when they sing. Or it could be that you just simply don't believe.

You're not really a believer. So when we sing, how do we sing? We sing in a manner where we preach to one another. Number two, we sing to worship the Lord.

And that's what we read here in both Ephesians and Colossians. He says, singing is a biblical form of worship, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. Singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. Who are we singing? We're singing to each other, but primarily we are singing to the Lord.

And what is the effect of the right kind of music? It is always effect on your spirit. There is reverence. There's joy.

There's submission. That's what happens when you sing. You're singing these truths and you're really surrendering to those truths. There's the desire to obey, to trust God, to have confidence. And most of all, there is a spirit of grace. When we sing about Christ, peace is in the atmosphere. Somebody said Paul's theology can be summed up in grace and his ethics are summed up in gratitude. God has given me grace and I live out my Christian experience with gratitude and that's what singing is all about. It is singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

And that leads me to my third and last question and that is this. What should be our style of music? Now when you read this text, I think it's quite clear it doesn't say anything about style. When we talk about style, we talk about the manner of doing something. For example, in leadership, we talk about leadership styles like top-down or collaborative. A style is something that has a distinction to it, a distinct appearance. For example, we talk about architectural styles of buildings. And we talk about a style of music. I think we all understand that especially today because we're living in a world because of technology, that there's like hundreds of styles of music out there. So as a Christian, how do we cut through and come back to truth and think this through? And I want to say this this morning and I say this with somewhat reluctance, but I'm just going to be truthful and honest and be straightforward even if some of you can't handle what I'm about to say because sometimes people take a preacher's word and they run with it.

And you don't run with it, you need to think it through. There's really no style of music specifically in the Bible. The Bible doesn't talk about country and Western. It doesn't talk about rock. It doesn't talk about R&B. It doesn't talk about folk. It doesn't say any of those things.

If we're going to talk about a style of music, the closest maybe we could get to is a Jewish form of music that would have come out of the Old Testament maybe, but that's even questionable. So what do we have to do? We have to do what we have to do with everything and that is we have to be discerning. In other words, God intends for us to use our mind and our conscience and our sense of conviction to make good decisions.

And there are two things that I want to say about our musical styles. Number one, they should reflect our new life in Christ. That's what Colossians 3 is all about. We have been commanded to put off the old man and put on the new man. That's what happened at the cross.

Remember you died and you rose with Jesus. Our new life should reflect our pursuit of things above. So whatever manner of style we use in worship and whatever it appears like, it should be a reflection of the new life of Jesus Christ. God has put in our hearts a new song, but then secondly, it should not reflect the old life. It says, put off the old man with his deeds, put off concerning the former conversation, the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lust. Every church that is serious about worshiping God will have to discern what music is acceptable for worship in their congregation. What is a reflection of the new life and what is a rejection of the old life?

This is not rocket science folks. Hebrews chapter 5 verse 14 says, mature believers have exercised their senses to discern between good and evil. Obviously a church should be led by mature believers and they have to be discerning. I've discovered as I've traveled around the world that churches that take biblical worship seriously, their music was always distinctly different from the prevailing corrupt culture.

Always. I remember the first time I went to Africa and African music is beautiful, especially in the churches. They have no stringed instruments. They've got these little, I call them shaky shakies. They're kind of like drum type beats. I mean those people got serious rhythm. I mean serious rhythm.

And I mean they could flat sing and it was stunningly beautiful. And I asked the missionary, I said, is this music different than the music of the world here in Zambia? And he said, oh yeah.

He says, go down to the marketplace. You can hear it. There was a distinction. If our music is not distinct, then we've got to ask ourselves a credible question.

Are we discerning? Second thing is this, every individual, every Christian has to take their new life seriously by making personal choices musically that will build up their spiritual life. I think it should be a no brainer that music that constantly reflects the old life of sin and perpetually feeds the sinful emotions of your old life should be put off. It's like, come on man.

I mean this is not rocket science. I was confronted, me, I was confronted with my musical choices in college when I was a sophomore. I'd been a Christian for maybe six months and I had a, this isn't a secular school. And he said to me, Steve, you should not as a Christian listen to rock music. I thought, well, what else am I going to listen to? Cause I didn't even know there was Christian music. And then I started listening to Christian music. There was a radio station in town in Charleston, South Carolina that only played old hymns on Sunday morning only. And I would wake up and turn the radio on and I loved it. And my heart was stirred and I, I began to change my appetite.

You know, if all your life you ever ate fried chicken, you might not like grilled chicken right away. And so I began to make musical choices. It used to be at Bob Jones University. When you came here to be a student, we would have a music check because the only way that you could get music was by what you brought. You had a cassette, an eight track or a CD, and you had your own system set up and that's the way that you play it. And every single musical piece that was brought to Bob Jones University was checked to see if it was acceptable. So somebody asked me, said, well, do you check music at Bob Jones?

I said, no, I can't do it. It's in the cloud. It's on your phone.

It's on Spotify. So the truth of the matter is we really can't check your music. So since we can't check it, I'm going to be straight up. Some of you listen to horrible music. You say, I don't like your preaching. Well, I don't like your listening.

I can't check you. Hey, let's just get real. I can't check what you're listening to. So let me just speak truthfully. Some of you are worldly because all you listen to is worldly music. The fact of the matter is you don't even listen to the words. You say, which style? I don't know.

I can go check out on Spotify. There's like a hundred of them. You've got to use your brain.

Is this something that is going to build your life spiritually or is it going to tear you down? You need to get real. And then let me say secondly, you need to develop standards of music. We have standards at Bob Jones University. We have some people who think Bob Jones University is going off the deep end and we're way too loose in music. And some of you think you're way too loose.

Wow. I'm not sure where that leaves me, but I want to tell you this. We do have standards.

You know why? Because we want to be discerning. We want to build an atmosphere that is conducive for spiritual growth and putting on the new man and putting off the old man. So though, though there is no control, there's no control on our part.

We can't really control it. I want to speak to you directly. You need to put on your big boy pants, excuse me, your big girl pants. Don't get mad at me now. Some of you are going to get mad. Some of you already mad at me. Last time I preached on music, man, students were so ripped at me and I'm going, come on, can't you take it?

Well, I just don't agree with you. Well, why don't you take it and think about it? That we really need to take this seriously and ask ourselves, is this a reflection of the new life? I didn't even speak about one style, but does this build up my faith and lead me into a spirit of worship and gratitude and grace? That's what Paul is saying. And that's what he's saying to us today. May the Lord give us grace to be faithful to him. Lord, thank you for your word. Help us, Lord, to live our lives to honor you in Jesus' name. Amen. You've been listening to a sermon from the study series in the book of Colossians by Dr. Steve Pettit, president of Bob Jones University. Thanks for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue the study in Colossians on The Daily Platform.