A Spectator in the Dark

Transcript

Good morning, family. Before we get started, I just wanted to quickly say thank you to the pastors, who were so gracious to give me a bit of a break. They have loved me well, and I’m very thankful to be a pastor who is pastored by other pastors well. And additionally, I’d love to say thank you so much for praying for me and praying for my family and giving us a much needed break. It has been a great gift to us and to my family. So thank you very much for your love and care for us. So this morning we’re going to be looking at Colossians, chapter 3 verses 16 and 17. Colossians 3, 16 and 17. Before I read, I just want to pull you back to 10 years ago. I was standing in the front row of a mega church somewhere in the middle of the Midwest. Moments away from preaching. My days as a performing artist would sometimes land me these invitations to preach in some very interesting places. And so there I was getting ready to preach. I can’t remember the city and to tell you the truth, I don’t even remember the name of the church, but I remember the room vividly. There were no windows. The lights were completely dimmed almost blacked out. There was this like thin haze that hung in the air from what I could only deduce was a haze machine. It was subtle, but it was thick enough for me to notice. The music was super polished, but very loud. So loud I couldn’t hear anyone around me singing. All I could hear were the professional voices that were being amplified from the stage and then the steady pulsing thud of the subwoofer that was beating in my chest. I distinctively remember that the songs were pitched so high that it was almost impossible for me or any men for that matter to sing. Even if I could reach the notes, I didn’t know the words because the song was both super trendy and obscure. So I did what everybody else was doing. I looked up at the screens. I had these massive screens. And so I looked up to see the lyrics so that I could try to follow along to the songs I never even heard before. But on those screens I really didn’t see words. Instead I saw these big old faces. It was a live videofeed that filled the screens, close-ups of worship leaders singing with dramatic, almost cringy intensity. Eyes closed, hands raised over the top emotions. Every expression framed and magnified by the video team, of course perfectly lit by that subtle haze that made everything grow like it was something sacred. And standing there, surrounded by all of it, the sounds, the lights, the energy, the production, I had this sudden unsettling realization. This is not worship. This is a concert. Now listen, I understand it’s easy to make those kinds of statements. But I spent years as a performing artist. More than three decades in the music industry and so I know what a concert feels like from the inside. The lighting cues, the sound design, the videofeeds, the emotional build of a room shaped by production, and the language of performance. And standing in that church I recognize it instantly is the same structure. It’s the same sensory experience, same flow. The only real difference was the content of the songs, everything else was identical. The congregation was not singing together at all. They were present, but they were watching the show. They were simply spectators in the dark, isolated, passive, and consuming. And what unsettled me most about this whole situation was not that it was shocking, but that it was familiar, even normal. I had seen it before, experienced it before, and embarrassingly participated it in it before at other churches. You see, somewhere along the way in much of American evangelical Christianity, worship has slowly, almost imperceptibly, taken the shape of a show, where the congregation has become the audience. But family, worship was never meant to form spectators. Worship was meant to form a people. And that’s our aim with this whole sermon series that we’re calling living liturgy, is to help you understand what worship is supposed to look like, to whom it is directed, and what it’s supposed to do to us. Now, this morning we’re addressing the topic of congregational singing, but before we do that, I do think it might be helpful to define a word that we’ve been using throughout this series. And that word is liturgy. Now, we use this word a lot at Trinity, but it’s my guess that for some of you, that word liturgy, lands like something foreign. In fact, many of you, it’s highly likely you never even heard that word liturgy until you started attending Trinity. And for those of you who have heard the word liturgy before, you probably tie it to something like robed priests or incense or rigid recessitations from a prayer book, something Catholic or Anglican, something ancient or maybe even irrelevant. So, I just want to try to clear something up before we get into the weeds. The word liturgy is in every way a biblical word. It comes from the Greek word liturgia, and the word simply means service. It’s how you get the phrase worship service. But the service that this word is pointing to is not referring to like a program or even an order. It’s actually referring to work, service work. In the New Testament, it describes our service to God, our service to one another, and the public ministry of worship when God’s people are gathered together before Him. So, what that means is that when we come together to worship, we are in every way coming together to work. So, before it was ever a traditional church word, it was a biblical word. And here’s the thing, whether churches know it or not, every church has a liturgy. Every church has a form and a structure of work for its worship. Every church has an order of service that shapes the hearts of the people in the room. Every church through its liturgy tells a very particular story. So, the question is not whether a church has a liturgy. The question is, what is the story that their liturgy is telling? Some churches tell a story that centers completely on the individual. My feelings, my needs, my experience. You walk into some of those spaces and you feel like the entire vibe centers on you. Some churches tell a story that centered on the church’s brand or the mood or the moment. Now, I’m not trying to paint all churches like that as bad, but what I do want to make clear is that the story a church’s worship should be telling begins with God. And it ends with God, which raises the question underneath this whole series. Who gets to decide what happens when a church gathers together for worship? And what is the point of a church gathering together for worship? Here’s the instinct we’ve all been trained in as it pertains to the modern evangelical church. That worship is somehow all about self-expression. That authenticity means innovation, and that as long as your heart is sincere, as long as your heart is in the right place, the form worship takes doesn’t really matter. But family scripture never talks about worship that way. In the Bible, worship is not first self-expression, it’s a response. God speaks, and we answer. God reveals, and we receive. God calls, and we follow. Which means worship is not ours to innovate. It is God’s to define. And God has never left us people to guess how we should come to Him in worship. He tells them, and what He commands the church is not complicated. Read the word, preach the word, pray, sing truth, baptize, and break bread around His table. This is a bit of what Sean preached about a couple of weeks ago that we must worship God the way He has revealed. Not the way we imagine it might work best in this cultural moment. Which just means that we let the word of God determine or rather regulate our worship. The word sets the terms, not us. And that’s not being rigid with worship. That is trust. Trust that God knows how His people are formed. Trust that His means are enough and sufficient for us. Trust that obedience is more faithful than creativity we invent on our own. Because the moment worship becomes mostly about what we design, it slowly shifts from formation to performance. From obedience to personal preference. From God speaking and the church responding to the church performing and just hoping that God shows up. And so here is the question I want to put in front of us this morning. If God defines worship through His word, what has He actually said about the way that His people sing? Family, the answer to a culture of spectator worship is not better production. It’s not a more dynamic or gifted worship team. It is a singing congregation. And that’s what we’re going to be focusing our time on this morning. So if you be so kind as to turn with me and your Bibles to Colossians chapter 3, verses 16 and 17, I’m going to read our passage, then I’m going to pray and then we’ll dig in. Colossians 3 starting at 16. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing songs and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to God the Father through Him. Family, this is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray. Father, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. Father, we pray that you would give us the aid of the Holy Spirit to put a spotlight on your truth so that we might be instructed by your word so that we might respond in true worship. We recognize that without the help of the Holy Spirit, we would be hopeless. So meet us this morning. Be our guide, be our wisdom, be our strength. We pray these things in Christ’s name. Amen. This morning I’ve broken up this sermon into three sections. The song inside us, the song between us and why we sing. So let’s begin with the song inside us. Look at verse 16. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. I want thing to note before Paul says a single thing about music, before he mentions songs or hymns or songs, he gives one command. Let the word of Christ dwell in you. And the one thing you need to understand to feel the full weight of that phrase, the word of Christ is that it’s a very rare phrase in Scripture. In fact, Paul never uses it anywhere else. Everywhere else he says the word of God. But here and only here he says the word of Christ. And what he means is not some vague or catch-all phrase for the Bible. He means the message about Christ’s life, death and resurrection. In other words, the gospel. The good news that the whole letter of Colossians announces that Jesus is the image of the invisible God, that in him all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell and that he has made peace by the blood of his cross. That message, the word about Jesus, that is what is supposed to permeate the room when we gather together in worship. And then look at that word dwell. It’s a powerful little word. It means so much more than just kind of hanging around or being around. It means to move in, to take up residence, to make yourself at home. It’s the same kind of word Paul uses when he talks about the Holy Spirit living inside of us. This is what Andre was preaching about last week. This is not the word of Christ being a house guest. This is the word of Christ taking up long-term residence in your life, living inside of you. And then Paul adds one more word. He says ritually. That is to let the word of Christ dwell in you, let it live in you abundantly, let it live in you lavishly. Not simply taking up a corner of your life, but taking up the whole thing, filling the house as it were. One translation reads it this way, let the word of Christ find a home in you. If family don’t miss who Paul is talking to you. He’s not simply talking to you alone in your quiet time with your coffee and your journal, though that’s a good thing you should do that. Look at the very next line, Paul provides clarity as to who he’s talking about. He says teaching one another, singing together. The point Paul is making there is that he is referring to the gathered church. Paul is talking to us. It’s plural. He’s addressing a people, a local church. He’s saying let the message about Jesus take a permanent residence in the middle of this community whenever you gather together. You see in that mega church in the middle of the Midwest, there was something dwelling ritually in that room. But that thing was not the word of Christ. It was atmosphere. It was mood. It was excellent musicianship. It was production. The room was full. It was just full of the wrong things. Because atmosphere, though it looks cool, can’t carry the weight of God. A Hayes machine might make a room fill intimate and sacred, but it cannot on its own turn your heart towards Jesus. But when the word of Christ moves in, takes up residence in your life, fills the house or the congregation, you don’t have to manufacture the presence of God. Because God is not absent from his own gospel. Paul said it plainly. The gospel is the power of God for salvation, not a pointer to the power, but the power itself. And he has promised to be near it. He’s promised to work through it. So the first thing this text says to a church is that worship has nothing to do with performance or vibe or spectating. It’s about letting the word of Jesus move in and letting that fill the room. Section 2, the song between us. Look at the second half of verse 16. Teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing songs, songs and hymns in spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. So how does the word of Christ come to dwell in a people? How does it move in and fill the room? Paul tells us in two ways. And they’re tied together. Teaching and admonishing and then singing. Teaching is the positive side of instruction. It’s putting the truth in front of people. And admonishing is the other side of the same coin. It is the loving warning to a wandering heart. It is to say to those you love, stop. You’re about to walk into danger. It is the loving mother who yells to their child running blindly across the street where a car is full speed turning around the corner. That is admonishing. And here’s what I don’t want you to miss in this verse. Who is doing the teaching and the admonishing in this verse? It’s not the pastor. It’s not the worship leader. It’s not the professionals up on the platform. Paul says, teaching and admonishing one another, that means y’all. That’s the person next to you. That’s the whole body together, teaching and admonishing one another. Earlier in this same letter, Paul described teaching and admonishing as his own personal ministry, his job as an apostle. And here, what he’s doing is he’s handing that same job to every ordinary member of the church. And you see how he says we should do it, the teaching and admonishing, with wisdom by singing songs and hymns and spiritual songs. Family, this is one of the most important things I’m going to say all morning, so just let this sink in. When we sing together, we are teaching each other. When we sing together, we are teaching each other. Congregational singing is not simply the warm-up act for the coming content in the later part of the service. It’s not the kind of emotional kindling before the sermon as if the sermon is the only teaching component. It’s not the filler between the important moments throughout the liturgy. Singing is one of the ways the word of Christ comes to dwell richly in the people of God. You see, when you sing the truth to a brother, you are instructing and encouraging him when he most needs it. When a sister sings the gospel over you, she is teaching you the truths of God because your soul is needy. When we sing as a family, our children are being categorized in the truth. When this whole room lifts its voice, we are teaching one another who God is, what he is done, and what is true, no matter what the week has felt like for you. And family, don’t miss what this kind of act is. When you sing to a brother or sister next to you, you are not only informing them intellectually, you are loving them. Paul told the Corinthians that love builds up, and that’s exactly what singing does. It builds up. Think about the great chapter on love, 1 Corinthians 13. Everybody knows that we read it at weddings all the time, but Paul wrote it to a church that had forgotten what we are supposed to do when we gather. It was a church obsessed with gifts on the platform, and right in the middle of all that, he says, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not loved, I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. Do you hear that? That means you can make an incredible sound, and still not love a single person in the room. But when you sing the truth over a tired saint, or a depressed saint, or a weary saint, when you lift the gospel next to a brother or sister who is barely holding on, because their weak has been crushing them, that is not performance, brothers and sisters, that is love. You are carrying them when they so desperately need it with melody and truth. You are bearing their burden with your own fragile voice. Jesus said by this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have loved one another. Family, the world can hear that love when the whole church sings. And notice, Paul does not give us just one kind of song. He begins with songs, which is God’s own songbook to us if you didn’t know that. The songs he wrote for his people in order that his people might sing those truths back to him and to each other. Family, later today when you have time, open your Bibles to the Psalms and look at the little titles printed above those poems. The headings, our eyes for whatever reason have been trained to look past those things. But over and over again, if you focus, you will read three words consistently to the choir master. In fact, 55 times. And some go even further to the choir master with stringed instruments to the choir master for the flute. Some even name the tune it was set to. So you don’t understand what that means. Those titles are not a footnote. They are inspired text. God did not just hand us words. He handed us the words with the music director in mind. Every one of those headings is God saying this was never meant to be read in silence. It was meant to be sung, out loud. Together, he intended for someone to lead the choir. So when God gave his people a song book, he gave them a choir to go with it. And a choir master and stringed instruments. And most importantly, a command to sing. The Psalms come down to us with sheet music still attached to it. Because a Psalm was never a poem to admire or truth to simply be understood. It was a song to sing with melody and harmony and deep emotion. Then he mentions hymns and this just means the great songs of the faith. Those deep truths set to melody that have been handed down from the saints who came before us. Who’ve seen what life was like 60 years ahead of us. Those are wonderful gifts to the church. And then spiritual songs or new songs. Songs this spirit is giving the church in our own day. So notice what Paul has commended to us in the form of singing. Old and new, ancient and fresh, and all of it, every bit of it, shaped by the word of Christ. So the question for our singing is not first, is it new enough or is it old enough? Is it popular? Will everyone like it? Will the young people vibe to it? The question is, is it full of the word of Christ? Now, do you feel the problem with the congregation that looks like a concert? In that mega church that I preached at, the music was so loud, I could not hear the person next to me. And the lights were so low, I could not even see the person next to me. So do you understand what that meant? It meant at the level of design that the room had already canceled the one thing this verse commands. You can’t sing to one another in a room built where no one can hear you. Or see you. Sing it to yourself. An audience watches a stage, but a congregation sings to each other. And those are not the same thing. They were never the same thing. Think about it like this. You can go to a massive concert, maybe at the motor center. Here, you know, your favorite band, or singer, 10,000 watts of sound, a voice better than anyone in the room will ever hear. And you will stand there in the dark, a stranger among strangers, and you will consume it, and then you will go home alone. Now, that might be a wonderful experience, especially if you see Bonny Bear or something like that. But it’s totally subjective. And it’s catering to your preference. You go see the band you like. And it was all about you and your experience. Or you can stand around a table with your family and sing happy birthday to your little girl. And no one in the room can really sing. Everybody’s a little pitchy and off, you know. But it becomes the most beautiful sound in the world. Because it’s not a performance. It is a family. It was sung with love. And it wasn’t about you and your personal experience. Like no one ever stops that birthday song like, hold up, hold up. We should have done that a little bit more R&B. You just caught up in the moment. Family, the church is not a stadium shaping your musical desires. The church is a family singing around the table of God in love. And family, this is why we do what we do. And this is why we do it the way we do it at Trinity. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we keep the sound low. Not because we’re against skill or against beauty. Or because we don’t have a big sound system. You know this system bangs. It does. I picked it. Look at that thing right there. And whoever you probably don’t even know we have one of those. We keep it low on purpose. Low enough that you could hear the voice of the person next to you. Low enough that the loudest instrument in the room is not coming from the worship team. But it’s the congregation’s voice. I don’t have to do this anymore because it’s been so enculturated in our church. But there was a season when I would sometimes be sitting right there. Or actually I was in the front because we weren’t sitting there. We used to sit there but I would sit there in the front right before I would do something. And I would have to literally get up and walk all the way back to the sound booth. And I would just go to that master fader and turn it down. You know? Because I felt like man the music is too loud. I can’t hear the brothers and sisters singing. And the misconception is well if you want people to sing loud you turn the volume up. And therefore everybody starts singing loud. No that’s backwards. Turn the music down and people will sing louder. And notice we keep the lights up. Those lights do change colors and they are a little bit, they got some color. But they resemble the windows. So they’re like purple and yellow. But the point is we keep the lights up. Not because we don’t have color lights or we don’t know how to use a dimmer. We keep them up on purpose bright enough so that you could see the faces around you. Bright enough so that you can see old saints across the aisle. You know? So that Andy could look across the aisle and see June when she’s singing. That’s a glorious gift from God. Bright enough to see the tears on the face of the person in front of you. So that you know they’re going through a hard week and that you’re not alone. Paul gave the Gather Church one rule for everything that happens when we meet. Let all things be done for building up. Not for impressiveness, for building up. And you can’t build up a brother and sister that you cannot hear and you cannot see. Because that’s the whole point. We’re not here to disappear into the dark and to watch a stage. We’re here to see one another and to hear one another and to sing the word of Christ to one another. We need it family. I don’t know about you. Just because I’m a pastor doesn’t mean that I don’t come here on Sunday needing the saints to tell me the truth about God. I’ve had a hard week too. I know what your week was like. We sing these truths because we need it. We’re desperate for it. The room is not a show. You are not an audience when we gather. You are a choir for the benefit of the saints. Now maybe you’re thinking, okay, I care about that but I care more about the presence of the spirit. I want to feel God when I worship. Are you telling me that I’m just supposed to settle for words? I’m not saying that at all family. I want you to notice something in your Bible. Take this verse in Colossians and then hold it right next to Ephesians 5 verses 18 and 19. Paul wrote these two letters around the same time and they almost sound exactly the same. Here in Colossians he says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly singing songs and hymns and spiritual songs. And then in Ephesians 5 he says, be filled with the spirit addressing one another in songs and hymns and spiritual songs. Did you notice it? Same command, same result, same songs. In one the word fills you, in the other the spirit fills you. And out of both comes the exact same thing, singing, teaching and thankfulness. And here is the truth that ought to set you free. Being filled with the word and being filled with the spirit are not two different things. You have to know that. You do not have to choose between a church that loves the Bible and a church that loves the spirit. Churches do that all the time. If you have a church that loves the word and loves the spirit, you won’t have to manufacture the spirit with the fog machine. You do not have to summon God with a key change. You let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. You open your mouth and sing to one another and the spirit does what only the spirit can do. He moves among us and he forms us and shapes us and sanctifies us and encourages us. That’s our job. Section 3, the reason we sing. Okay, so why do we sing? Well, it goes back to the phrase, the word of Christ. It’s not just content. It’s what’s been given to us. If you look back a few verses and collotions to the top of chapter 3, look what Paul writes. He says this, if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is, seek it at the right hand of God for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Family, do you understand what this means? It means we do not sing to climb up to God. We do not sing to work our way into His presence. We sing because we have already been raised with Christ. We sing because our life is already hidden with Him. We sing because God came all the way down to us in the person of His Son and made us alive when we were dead in our sins. Family, God is in the business of putting a song in the mouth of dead men and women. Let me just think about this for a second. The God who spoke galaxies into being came down into His creation to make dead people alive and give them a new song to sing. That’s crazy. I mean, here is what happened to you when you were saved just in case you forgot. God made you a promise long ago through the prophet Ezekiel. He said, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. That is regeneration. God reaching into a chest full of rocky stone and putting into it a heart that beats. A heart of stone cannot sing. Dead men sing no songs. But the moment God makes you alive, the moment He trades that stone for flesh, something starts to happen in you. David said it like this in Psalm 40. He drew me from the pit of destruction out of the myri bog and set my feet upon a rock. And then he says this notice, he put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Do you hear the order? First God saves, then the song comes. The new song is not how we get a new heart. The new song is the sound a new heart makes. So congregational singing is not us working something up. It’s a regenerated people pushing out what God has put in. When this church opens its mouth on Sunday, you are hearing the sound of resurrection. You are hearing hearts of flesh that used to be hearts of stone. And family, this is not new. This is how it’s always been from the very beginning. When God redeems the people, He makes them a singing people. Go all the way back to the book of Exodus. God’s people are slaves in Egypt. 400 years of chains. 400 years of groaning under the oppression of Pharaoh. The song in Egypt. But then God comes down. He sends plague after plague. He splits the sea in two. He walks his people through dry ground. He drowns their enemies behind them and look what happens on the other side of the water. The very first thing Exodus chapter 15 tells us. Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord. Family, do you see it? The moment they were redeemed, they sang. No one taught them the song. No one printed out the lyrics on the screen. Redemption itself put a song in their mouths. And it’s so infectious that Miriam takes a tambourine in her hand and she’s rocking out and all the women after them are following her, they’re dancing. The whole nation, loud, free, singing on the far shore of the sea because God had saved them. Family, this is who we are. We are people standing on the far shore. We have come through the water. Our Pharaoh is defeated. Our enemy is drowned in the blood of Jesus and a redeemed people cannot help but sing. The concert church says, climb the ladder of emotion until you feel like you’ve touched the heavens. The gospel says heaven has already come down to you. And that is why the text ends in thankfulness. Look at it again, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. The word there for thankfulness is tied to the word for grace and that’s not by accident. Grace is the spring and thankfulness is the river that flows out of it. A church that has already heard the gospel of grace cannot help but become a church that sings its gratitude for grace. This is why real Christian singing is not simply about expressing yourself. It’s about celebrating the mighty acts of God in Jesus Christ. And here is something you can watch all throughout church history. Every single time the church rediscoveres the word of Christ, she starts to sing again. When the gospel was recovered at the Reformation, Martin Luther put a Bible in the language of the people and then what did he do? Then he put a hymn book in their hands. The word came back and then the song came back with it. Every revival in history leaves a trail of new songs behind it, word recovery and song recovery always travel together. And so if we want to be a singing church, the answer is not have better musicians though we have excellent ones. We have excellent musicians, none that are on staff by the way. They faithfully serve to lead this congregation but the answer is not better musicians. The answer is a deeper hold on the word of Christ. Fill the people with the gospel and you will not be able to keep them quiet. And notice Paul doesn’t let us keep it inside the worship service as if that’s the only place. Look at verse 17. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to God the Father through him. Whatever you do. In word, indeed, do everything in the name of Jesus. Do you see what he just did there? He took the song, you sing on Sunday and then he stretched it across your whole Monday. The gathered worship of God’s people is not a sealed religious hour and a half that ends when the worship team stops playing. Or maybe when I’m preaching it’s like an hour and 45 minutes, I don’t know. It doesn’t end when the worship team stops playing. It’s training, it’s formation, it teaches people to walk out those doors and do life in word and deed under the name of Jesus with thankful hearts. What we sing on Sunday, we are meant to live out Monday through Sunday. We should be singing through our week with thankfulness in our hearts to God because He saved us. If everything else in this world falls apart, we will not because we are kept safe and secure in the sovereign grip of Jesus. That’s why we sing, come whatever circumstance that may. We can sing with confidence because you are saved. Family, I want to close this morning by giving a few pastoral addresses to just a few of us in the room. Maybe you’re here this morning and if you’re honest, you have been a spectator for years when it comes to worship. You show up faithfully and that’s a good thing. You watch, good thing, you consume and then you leave. Hear me, gently family, you were not made to simply watch. You were made to sing. You were made to sing. And this is for everyone and I’m just going to say this specifically for men. This is a command for men to sing. Singing is not a feminine feature. I’ve seen this over and over again at various different churches. The voices of women eclipsing the voice of men because men either don’t sing or they have their hands in their pocket, kind of embarrassed to open their mouth. They might mouth the words. Don’t do that. You want to raise children to sing. It starts with men. Men in this church using so that the children know it’s okay for men to sing. This is one of the things we do here. We intentionally try to play songs in a key that both men and women sing because we want to hear both men and women. A few weeks ago I took my boys out to flying pie to get some pizza. This is a pizza shop. And we sat down and right there behind the counter there was these two big burly and bearded men making our pizza. These two men were like throwing the dough up in the air. They were like spinning it and catching it and the whole time they were singing. Not humming, not quietly, they were singing at the top of their lungs, right boys? And they were singing Lady Gaga. June Lady Gaga is just a pop artist. But they were going in. Full voice, no shame. Belting it out over the pizza oven. And my boys and I sat there for a minute and we looked at each other and we started to laugh a little bit. Like, what’s going on? These dudes. But you know it’s crazy. The longer I sat there the more it stopped being funny. And it started to preach to me because there it was right in front of my face. Two men who as far as I could tell had no interest in the God who made them and they could not stop singing. Why? Because God made them to sing. They were wired to sing. It’s part of their DNA. You cannot take the song out of a human being because the God who made us is a singing God who sings over us. And we were made in his image. Now these two men had the voice but they did not have the direction. They were singing with all their strength to a song that cannot save them so their aim was off. But church, we have the aim. And we know the name. We are not singing to Lady Gaga. We are singing to the Lamb who was slain. We have the right song. We have the right savior. We have the right direction. And here’s the point where the part that should undo us. We have something these two men did not have for as far as I could tell. We have new hearts. They were singing with hearts of stone. We are singing with hearts of flesh. They had every reason to be quiet and they sang anyway. We have every reason in heaven and on earth to sing. We have been forgiven. We have been adopted. We have been raised with Christ. Death is behind us. Glory is in front of us. So family of two burly men can belt out a pop song over a pizza oven with hearts of stone. How in the world can we sit in silence with hearts of flesh? We of all people should be the loudest singers on the planet. Not because we have the best voices. Because we have the most to be thankful for. And I do think we are a singing church. So this is an indictment. I think we sing. I think we can sing louder. But I think we’re a singing church. So men, hear me. Don’t stand there with your arms crossed watching everyone else sing. You were made to sing. You were saved to sing. So open your mouths because we need to hear you and sing the truths of God. Sing them so that brothers and sisters next to you can hear it. Sing so loudly that the neighbors down the street lean in with curious ears and hear about the risen savior of the world. In the summertime we used to open up those doors so that the neighbors could hear us. Well, at least that’s what I tell myself. It’s probably because the air conditioning wasn’t working. Two things could be true at the same time. Men sing. You were made to sing. I’m done with that. Now, maybe you’re here and you feel too tired to sing. You had a long Saturday. Maybe you feel too guilty to sing. You had a bad Saturday. Or maybe you’re just too broken to sing. You’ve had a hard year. My encouragement to you is to let the song be grace before it is duty. You don’t have to work up a feeling. You just have to let the word of Christ dwell in you and sing it back even with the cracked voice. Even with tears to the saints standing right beside you. What you are singing to them is exactly what you need to hear from them. And if everyone is singing, everyone hears the truth. So sing. Maybe you’re here this morning. And if you’re really honest, this whole idea of singing the word of Christ sounds crazy. Because you don’t know the Christ that we are singing about. You came in here and you watched and that was it. You saw people sing and you’re like, damn, these people sing. I mean, where else does that happen? Friend, listen, the song we sing is not about how good we are. It’s about a savior who came to save very bad people. People who could never sing their way up to God. You need to know that Jesus lived the life you could not live. Perfection. He died the death you deserve to die for that lack of perfection. He rose again and he is alive, seated at the right hand of the Father and the invitation this morning is not try harder or clean yourself up and then come back when you’re better. The invitation is turned from your sins and trust him now. Do that and he will forgive you. He will give you a new heart, the very thing we were talking about. He will put a new song in your mouth. Come to him this morning. Every song we’ve sung about Jesus this morning was pointing you to the hope that is found only in Jesus Christ. He is the only one who can save you from your sins. Trust him and if you have questions about that, talk to any Christian in this room. They would love to talk to you about Jesus and what it means to follow him. Church, my encouragement for all of us together is to be the kind of people who let the word set the term or terms of our singing. Not the room, not the mood, not the production, the word. Here in Portland in a city with a thousand ways to make you feel something and no way to make you holy. Let us be a people so full of the word of Christ that when we open our mouths on a Sunday morning, it sounds like heaven is leaking into Portland. You could do that. Charles Spurgeon preached on this same verse. He said that when the word of Christ truly lives in us, something happens. Listen to what he said. We shall, as it were, lay our fingers among its wondrous harp strings and bring out from them matchless music, such as no other instrument in the world could ever produce. That’s gold. That is what God is after in this room. Not a performance we watch in the dark, but a people so full of the word of Christ that we become an instrument in his hand. That he brings out of us music that the world could never produce on its own. Not by performing for God, but by participating with the people of God in the worship he commands and the grace he provides. The word of Christ has made its home in us, so let’s open our mouths and sing to one another and sing to our God who has saved us and set us free and sing loudly, amen? Let’s pray. Our Father and our God, we do thank you for saving us, for setting us free. We pray, O God, that you would take the song that you’ve placed in us and cause for it to come out, both as an expression of our deep affection for you. And our affection for our brothers and sisters. May you help us to sing without distraction, to sing boldly and confidently, to sing with expectation and to sing with purpose. You have made us to sing of your redemption, to sing of your great works throughout human history. Help us to do that very thing. We pray these things in Christ’s name. Amen.