Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. Singing not only worships God, and He wants it, He commands it to us, but it benefits us. Sometimes you just can't help but sing.
How many of you have or have always listened to one of the great subtitles of all pop music? Love songs. Love songs. You sing love songs.
It's a great market. Why? When you love someone, you want to sing to them. You want to sing about it. Now think about that in your singing when it comes to God. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. There is a trend among evangelical believers here in the United States that is not good at all.
Evangelicals are choosing not to sing praises to God. Many of the mega churches have professional praise teams and they do a really great job, except that what they've done is they've created a concert atmosphere. And so the rooms are almost always darkened, almost like a theater, real black. Spotlights are on all the musicians and singers. And then the audience just sits there like in a concert and decides whether it approves or disapproves of what the people are singing up front. And the people up front see themselves as performers singing. But the congregation is not so much.
In churches just like ours, there are people that just choose not to sing. I'm not going to. It's an elective anyway, isn't it? It's not.
It's not even close to an elective. I hear all the excuses. Well, you know, I just don't like to. I can't sing well. The Bible has that covered, by the way. The Bible says make a joyful noise.
So you really can't go to that. Singing is not my thing. Well, it should be. Biblically speaking, singing for believers is not an option. God's people have always been, should be now and always will be a singing people. And I don't know if you've thought about it enough from a biblical point of view. I read not long ago, the commentator was saying, of all the different commands that God gives his people, what command in scripture does he give the most to his people?
And he said, it's not even close. You and I are commanded to sing praises to God more than any command in the word of God. Fifty-five times I counted them. Fifty-five times in the Bible God commands us to sing to him. And yet we view it like it's an elective. Well, I would do it if I really want to.
We need to be very careful about this. You know, why is it so important, you know, for us to sing? Is music really that important?
Yes, it is. Beside the fact that God commanded us fifty-five times, which should be more than enough, there's some unique aspects to singing in music. It's one of the most unique gifts from God. In fact, it's such a unique gift from God that music and singing occurred long before there was a creation.
Nothing was created and there was music and singing. Amazing. The book of Job, as you know, is a book about the suffering of Job, and we all sympathize with that. And Job said over and over again, all I want is an audience with God. And eventually in chapter 38 he gets it.
And God comes out of the whirlwind and rebukes Job. And he starts out with this whole idea, where were you? Where were you when I... I don't remember seeing you when I created everything.
The whole idea, who are you to question me? But one of the things God said about that is he said, when I created all things that are created, he said, that's when the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy. The angelic world sang when God created creation.
So it's long before man was ever on the scene, long before any created thing existed. It's an interesting thought. Also there's something else about singing, and that is that singing affects us in multiple ways. I mean it affects us cognitively, but it also affects us soullessly or emotionally. And you know that, that's why we listen to songs. We like to listen to songs because they have a way of gripping us in a way other things wouldn't. Do you ever notice that if there are songs that you like, how easy it is to remember the lyrics? You just remember them because it's a song. But you could read something you like, and if you don't write it down, you'll forget it. Oh, that was really good.
I remember reading it, but I can't remember it. That's another one of the good aspects that you see when it comes to singing. Singing, and I found this in secular sources, singing has tremendous effect on human beings.
I found this this week. What are the benefits of singing? Singing is one of the greatest benefits of singing, it relieves stress. Singing appears to be one of the great stress releases. In fact, some treatments now incorporate singing that help people try to reduce stress in their lives. Singing stimulates your immune response. So maybe one of the reasons you didn't get COVID was you're a singer. You see, because your immune response is an awful lot stronger. Singing increases your pain threshold. I'm going to try that the next time I'm in the dentist chair.
He may not like it, but we'll see how it works. This one, singing may improve snoring. And for some of you in church, this could be a real benefit. It improves your lung function. It develops a sense of belonging and connection. It enhances memory in people with dementia. It helps people deal with grief.
It produces a sense of community. And it says that it activates our neurotransmitters of our brain when we sing. So singing not only worships God, and he wants it, he commands it to us, but it benefits us. Sometimes you just can't help but sing.
How many of you have or have always listened to one of the great subtitles of all pop music? Love songs. Love songs. You sing love songs.
It's a great market. Why? When you love someone, you want to sing to them. You want to sing about them. Now think about that in your singing when it comes to God. Psalm 18, David. This is for the choir director, it's a song. David says, here's how he starts it out, singing. I love you, O Lord, my strength.
It's a love song. I love you, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress, my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge.
My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold, I will call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised. Maybe that's one of the reasons David is called a man after God's own heart. He's singing love songs to God. He sang them.
It had a positive effect on them. And singing can be done in a myriad of ways over a myriad of topics when it comes to you singing to the Lord. Open your Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 32. Deuteronomy chapter 32. And when I look at the last verse of 31, then I'll go into 32. If you look at this chapter, and I invite you sometime in the next week while you're remembering it to read it on your own. It's 52 verses long.
It's a long chapter. By the way, it's a song. The whole thing is a song. It's called the song of Moses. He started part of the song in Exodus 15, but this is the song of Moses. And later you'll figure out why I'm saying that's so important.
But I want you to see something here. The last verse of chapter 31. Then Moses spoke in the hearing of all the assembly of Israel the words of this song until they were complete.
And then he goes on. You see, and Moses starts with a song. But I want you to see what's in that verse.
Then Moses spoke in the hearing of all the assembly of Israel the words of the song. What's that mean? This is the first rap song. This is just rap. You're not singing. He's talking. He's talking the music.
He's talking this song. He says, Give ear, O heavens, let me speak. Let the earth hear the words of my mouth. Let my teaching drop as the rain, my speech distill as the dew, as the droplets on the fresh grass, as the showers on the herb. For I proclaim the name of the Lord, ascribe greatness to our God, the rock.
His work is perfect for all his ways, he said, are just a God of faithfulness and without injustice, righteous and upright is he. And what he introduces here is something that I find kind of fascinating. He's going to talk in this song or in this song that he has, and there's some of it, only a small portion about who God is. The rest of it, most of it is about who we are. The song is actually a warning to the nation Israel. He's warning them about how they act or what they do. There's a message in the song. And I don't know if you think about that, but often I think we think that the only aspect of Christian singing, especially corporate singing, is praise the God. And that's a very important part. We're commanded to do this. But there's more to it. Singing has all kinds of ways of bringing messages into people's hearts.
And it can even be evangelistic. Remember last week I was talking in Acts chapter 16, Paul and Silas were thrown in the jail in Philippi and they were beaten with rods first and all that. And then what did they do? Singing. That's what they were doing. They were singing.
How'd it work? Philippian jailer, what must they do to be saved? Why do you ask that question? Who sings when you're chained in prison? And then there's an earthquake and you can get out and you won't. I want to know more about this. And so they told him, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, he'll be saved.
And he was. A tremendous amount of power when it comes to that. This whole idea of what singing can do. The upper room discourse of Jesus Christ, we talked about that a little bit in the past and it's probably up until Good Friday or what we call the crucifixion day. One of the worst days in Jesus life. He's betrayed by Judas, he's arrested. They beat him, they mock him, they spit on him. The disciples panic. They're in terror of this whole night.
But when they left the upper room on their way to Gethsemane, what did they do? They sang. Jesus had them singing, let's sing. Now, how many of you want to sing on the worst day of your life? Not now.
No, we did. See, it has a real effect on us in that way. And as I said earlier, what is it that we should sing about? Well, notice what Moses sings about here. He talks about first the nature of God, who he is. I proclaim, verse 3, the name of the Lord, ascribe greatness to our God, the rock. His work is perfect for all his ways are just. A God of faithfulness and without injustice, righteous and upright is he. He's just singing who God is.
I really believe that's why God created music. You see, it's an extremely important thing to God. Why is it so important to him?
It's one of the only things he seeks. Remember when Jesus was talking to the woman at the well, Samaritan woman, and they were debating on where you should worship God, in Jerusalem or, you see, in Samaria. And Jesus said, the day is coming, it won't matter where you worship God.
But he also said something else to her. He said, you have to worship God in spirit through your emotional spirit and truth. And then he said, God is seeking worshipers. God seek, what does God seek? You see, he has everything, he's God. He seeks worshipers.
And that's such an important part of this. God is seeking you and I to be worshipers of him. Now, could he make us worship him? Now, only free will beings can worship you. You make someone worship you, that's not worship. That's not ascribing worth, you just made him do it. It's just like saying I can make someone who will love me.
That won't work. But the angelic world worships God. You see, they're free will beings. The human world can worship God, we're free will beings. We choose to worship God. And it's amazing, that's what God seeks. Now, he's amazing what he's accomplished for us and who his person is and all that. But what he wants from his creatures is he wants them to worship. And a very big part of that is he wants them to sing.
That's the way this works. If you look again in Deuteronomy here, he not only says what the nature of God is, but he talks about us. If you look at 32, 36, it says, For the Lord will vindicate his people and will have compassion on his servants. He talked about, look, if you keep in sin, I'm going to judge you. But if you repent, I'll vindicate you.
Why? I'll have compassion on you. The truth of what we sing has a great deal to do with that. You see who God is, who we are, what God has done. God loves us in such a way and he wants us to respond to that through our love and worship of him.
Notice in verse 10, it says, he's talking about Israel. You find him in a desert land and in a howling place of a wilderness. He encircled him, he cared for him, he guarded him as the pupil of his eye. And like an angel, I mean like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that hovers over its young, he spread his wings and caught them and he carried them on his opinions. And he says, and the Lord alone guided him. He does an awful lot for us.
So our singing, when we get together, is we sing who God is, and then we sing what's he done and what are we like. You already did that today. Did you think about that? I mean, be honest with yourself, did you think about that? Or did you just simply say, oh boy, how many more?
Let's get this rolling. Or did you just simply do the words and not even think about what you're singing? You know, I'd hate to give you a test right now to tell me exactly the songs you sang.
There's only five. But I wonder how many you'd get. I don't really think about it.
I think you should. In fact, let me remind you, the first song we sung was Great Things by Phil Wickham. Great Things.
Just how did it start? Come, let us worship our king. Come, let us bow at his feet.
He's done great things. Did you feel that when you sang it? Or did you just simply go through the tune?
See, that's a very important part of this. The second song we sang is Glory Be, Chris Tomlin. And one of the things that's written in there is sing, he said, for the one who has rescued me. He said, with the heavens I will sing, I will lift you high. He rescued me.
I want to thank him for that. Three, I Got Saved, Selah. The chains of the past are broken at last, I got saved.
I'm undone by the mercy of Jesus, I'm done by the goodness of the Lord. Sing that from your heart? See, that's a very important thing, did you sing?
Or did you not sing it at all? I don't sing. Chris Tomlin again, the God who listens. The great creator of all the stars above, and yet you draw close to me. He said, I'm not just hoping, I'm not just wishing, I know I'm praying to the God who listens. Who knows me, who loves me, who never will fail me.
He said, who tells me that I'm his own. That's worship. God loves us to worship, he commands us to sing this way to him. The last one is mercy is more, Shane and Shane. Praise the Lord, his mercy is more. Our sins they are many, but his mercy is more.
He remembers them no more. His blood was the payment, his life was the cost. Wow. And we're singing that to God. You see, part of the problem that we have is somehow, and I've gone over this in the past, you view yourself as, in a sense, an audience and a critic of what goes on up here.
I mean, come on. You got in the car, hon, what do you thought? That sermon, I had no idea what he was talking about. Didn't do a thing for me.
What do you think of the music? That wasn't my favorite. We critique what we do, like we're an audience. Let me explain something. You're not an audience.
Not at all. You see, you know who's getting evaluated today? You.
Every one of you. Every single one, God is looking in your heart and said, are you worshiping me? You see, my job or Matt's job, we're just directors or prompters. Our job is to help you get to know God better. That's what I'm trying to teach you from the word of God. That's what we do in song.
You see, so we're the prompters and then you're the performers. Some time ago, I read of a pastor and guy was coming out of his church and said, pastor, I got to tell you something. I didn't get much out of that worship service today. No, no, you've all thought it. You know what? And the pastor said to him, that's good. We weren't worshiping you. Do you think of it that way though? You see, we start viewing ourselves as the audience and we're going to decide what we thought of it.
Don't do that. You're here to worship God. He's the audience. He reads the intentions of your heart. He expects you to worship him through song.
He 55 times commanded you to sing praises to his name. You know, and it's not just here. This might be bad news for you. It's not just once a week. I mean, once a week I have to get together with these other people and sing. Yes, but it's way more than that.
It's way more than that. Turn with me now to Ephesians chapter five, Ephesians chapter five. Now, if you understand the epistle to the Ephesians, if you understand it, there's something you'll know about it.
It's typical of Paul. The first three chapters of the book of Ephesians, Paul tells the Ephesian believers what God's done for them, just how special they are in God's eyes. He not only saved them by his grace and all that, but in Ephesians one, Paul writes them and says, God has blessed you and me with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
That's an amazing statement. There's no spiritual blessing God hasn't bestowed on you, every single one of them. And he tells us over and over through these first three chapters, all of this greatness that it means to be a believer in Jesus Christ. And then he gets to chapter four, and when he gets to chapter four verse one, he says, therefore, I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to live in a manner worthy of your calling what you have been called.
I've told you what God's done for you. Now, I want to tell you what you should be doing for God. You should live and walk in a manner worthy of your calling.
And that's where this comes in. So, as you read this, you start thinking, man, this is a lot of responsibility. I've got to imitate God. I've got to let no unwholesome word come out of my mouth.
I've got to speak the truth in love. And if you're honest with yourself, you say, I don't think I can do that. I just don't think I can do that. And God says, no, you can't. But I can. See, that's why I gave you the Holy Spirit.
I can do this. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called oneplace.com. That's oneplace.com, and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.
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That's fbcnola.org. At our website, you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online, or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.
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