Excerpt from Sunday Mornings: An Introduction to Biblical Worship by Pastor Brian Phillips
For Part 1, visit here
Music is an integral part of worship and Scripture consistently commands us to sing to the Lord. It is a part of the life of the body. And, because singing and music are integral parts of worship, God has given us precepts and principles to follow for what we offer. As with every other detail of worship, God protects us from ourselves and gives us direction for what we should sing and how we should sing it.
Biblical Principles for Music
As sad as this may be, music is at the center of the “worship wars” in the evangelical church. When we boil all the debate down, we find that what people really get riled up about is music. And, because both traditionalists and “contemporary” music advocates are often guilty of relying upon personal preference, we should remember that all decisions about worship music must be based on biblical principle. So, here are some of the principles we must remember.
God determines what is acceptable. It is sad, but true, that discussions about worship music often never acknowledge this. We do not get to decide what God wants; He does. Our personal preferences, while near and dear to our hearts, don’t amount to much when it comes to what is acceptable for worship. The disregard of this principle is most clearly seen in how psalms are neglected. The overwhelming majority of churches do not sing psalms, despite the explicit commands throughout the Bible, in both Old and New Testaments. This is inexcusable.
Music teaches. What we sing and even what is played teaches us. The Psalms are a treasury of theological instruction. We can learn more about the character and actions of God from the Psalms than any other single book in the Bible. The hymns of the early church that we find in the New Testament are rich and valuable in what they teach us about Christ as well.
What we sing affects our understanding of God, ourselves, worship, and everything else. Music teaches us and we must, therefore, be intentional about what we select to sing. Every kind of music teaches something through its words, its notes and chords, and through its presentation. So, we must think through what we are being taught in each of those aspects - words, notes, and presentation.
Different music is appropriate at different times. David played the harp to calm Saul, the Jews (and all civilizations) have songs that tell their story, and children learn songs to help them learn. Music serves different purposes and not all of them are directly related to worship.
What you listen to in your car doesn’t have to be the same as what we sing in worship. In the same way, what we sing in worship you doesn’t have to be what you listen to in your car. This is a major part of the current music issues in the Church. People like a kind of music and so they expect the Church to respond by singing that kind of music. But, this misses the important discipline of propriety and appropriateness.
Music is not subjective. This is easily the most controversial of all the statements I will make on the subject. “Good music” is not ultimately determined by whether or not you or I “like” it. I am always amazed at how easily we retreat into subjectivism when something we “like” is challenged. It’s one thing to say that good art isn’t relative; it’s another thing to tell someone to take a painting down because it is quite ugly.
All forms of art, including music, have an objective beauty by which they are to be judged. Now, it is true that different styles of music are intended to accomplish different things, but they are still held to objective standards of beauty, complexity, and precision. Because this is true, we can say that the works of Leonardo da Vinci was better than Jackson Pollack’s; that Bach’s music was better than Schoenberg’s; that King David is better than Hillsong.
Let’s not be foolish enough to think that something is the best simply because we like it. We may not like admitting things like this, but perhaps we simply need to “man-up” and admit that our taste is not always as good as it should be. Liking something does not make it good in any objective or ultimately meaningful sense.