My earliest church memories are of me standing beside my grandmother during the congregational singing. She would always hold the hymnal down so I could see the words, and point with her finger to what line we were singing. I would listen to her singing harmony with the melody line of the hymn. To this day I love to sing harmony with others, and I believe that goes back to my grandma in church.
One of the first songs I remember singing in church is Give me Oil in My Lamp…or as it is more properly known, Sing Hosanna. (As a child, I always wondered who Hosanna was, and why she wouldn’t sing?) This may actually have been the song that my grandmother was singing in my memory. To this day I still love that song. For some reason whenever we’d sing it in church, I’d always imagine an Old West-style covered wagon coming down the center aisle, driven by a grizzled old man, saying, “Come on, Hosanna! Sing!” (I guess that’s how I imagined the children of Israel traveled through the desert…probably because of all the episodes of Gunsmoke and Wagon Train my folks watched on television…black-and-white television, that is. Yes, I’m an old guy.)
Singing was always important to my grandparents. After my grandfather put his faith in Jesus at fifty years of age, it wasn’t too long before they formed a Gospel quartet with a couple of friends, one of whom accompanied them on guitar. And they would sing from old shaped-note hymnals. The notes were different shapes depending on whether the melody went up or down. My grandfather told me he couldn’t read regular music, but he could read shaped notes. I’ve got a couple of my grandparents’ old shaped-note hymnals. It all seems pretty confusing to me, but they sang with shaped notes all the time.
God’s people have always been a singing people, and singing has always been an important part of worship. The book of Psalms was the hymnbook of ancient Israel (minus the musical notation, just the lyrics). About half of the Psalms were written by King David, who was called “the sweet psalmist of Israel” (2 Samuel 23:1). David played a small harp (kinnor in Hebrew, usually translated “harp” or “lute”). He played it first as a shepherd boy, watching over the sheep. Later he played it to calm the troubled King Saul as he descended into madness. He
used his harp to set his prayers to music; that’s how he wrote his Psalms. And later when he was king, David commissioned the making of many instruments to be used to accompany the singers in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem.
The Lord Jesus and His disciples sang a hymn, probably one of the Psalms, after the Last Supper and before they went to spend the night in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:26). The first Christians formulated an early creed which they taught to new converts. It’s found in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, and can be reliably dated to within a couple of years after Jesus’ crucifixion. Some scholars say within six months! Many believe this creed was sung as a hymn, and in it they affirmed the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christians were teaching and singing about the literal, physical resurrection of Christ from the very beginning. The resurrection was not something that was added hundreds of years later.
The apostle Paul taught that singing to each other and to the Lord was one of the signs of a Spirit-filled Christian (Ephesians 5:18-19). Later, when Christians hid from persecution in the catacombs under Rome, they encouraged each another by quietly singing hymns to Christ. Centuries after that and halfway around the world, black slaves in the Old South would gather secretly in one of their huts long after dark and hold worship services which included whisper singing, singing hymns at barely above the level of a whisper. If they were caught, they were punished severely by their oppressive masters. And yet, worshiping God was important enough to them that they even risked being whipped and beaten, just to come together and sing to God.
Singing to God ought to be important to every believer in Jesus. You may be able to sit in a church service with your arms crossed and your mouth clamped shut, with a “Bless me, I dare you!” expression on your face. But you won’t be able to get away with that in Heaven. In fact, if you don’t sing in church here, the angels will make you get up in front of everybody and sing a solo. (Okay, I just made that up. But it could happen. Why take the chance?) The fact is, if you read the book of Revelation, you’ll find that there is an awful lot of singing going on in Heaven. Better get ready for it! Best to get in practice here.
When it comes to the style of music that is sung in church, let me say that I lived through the worship wars of the 1980s and 1990s, and I long ago got sick of the whole thing. No, I don’t want to turn church services into rock concerts. Neither do I want a church service to sound like an old-fashioned funeral. Yes, I like old hymns, but the Bible commands us repeatedly to “sing to the LORD a new song” (Psalm 96:1). If somebody hadn’t obeyed that command, none of your favorite hymns would ever have been written.
That being said, are there some bad hymns? Yes! Just because a song is two centuries old doesn’t make bad theology okay. Are there some bad new Christian songs? Yes! Just because it’s on the top of the Christian radio charts doesn’t make bad theology okay. And I really hate the “Jesus is my boyfriend” type of song, written as though they want it to maybe be a hit on secular radio as a love song.
And let’s face it: often when a believer is going through a tough time, the words of a hymn can bring great comfort, and remind us of great Biblical truths. But here’s an honest question: Can you even remember what was on the Christian “top ten” list last year? Five years ago? Ten? I think a lot of what’s being played on Christian radio isn’t going to have much staying power.
But thankfully, there is a lot of new Christian music being written that will stand the test of time. Christian worship music descended into too many happy-clappy songs with shallow lyrics, not enough words and too much repetition. And the way they were played in worship services was almost like a mantra designed to be repeated over and over until everybody was worked up into an emotional high. Real, heartfelt emotion in worship is a good thing, and too often lacking in our church services. But manufactured emotion is shallow and not worth much, the worship equivalent of a sugar high.
That’s why I was so excited when a new generation of hymnwriters rose up to give the church new, Biblical songs to sing. There is the repetition of “praise and worship” music, but with different verses presenting Scriptural truths in artful, poetic ways. And when you repeat the same melody in each verse and chorus, with different words expressing different facets of Gospel truth, what you end up with is a hymn… a new hymn. And I am so thankful for the new generation of hymnwriters such as Keith and Krysten Getty, Stuart Townend, CityAlight, Sovereign Grace Music, and others. (And the fact that they all have guitars in their worship bands is all right with me, too!)
Speaking of guitars (and I do), I’m glad all the furor over guitars in church has (mostly) died down. Used to be, some pious gasbags were scandalized if you brought a guitar into a church service. I brought a red guitar into church once and a man asked me if I thought that was really appropriate for church. You should be proud of me: I didn’t laugh in his face, stick out my tongue at him, or push him down. I did tell him God made the color red, too.
And Psalm 45:8 does say, “the music of the strings makes you glad.” Psalm 45 is a Messianic psalm. That means it’s talking about Jesus. And that means the music of the strings makes Him glad! (Me, too!) And did you know that the Hebrew word Shoshanim, found in the superscription at the beginning of Psalms 45 and 69, is translated as hexacorda in Latin…and means literally “six-strings”? (You can’t see me pumping my fist right now, but I am.)
All that to say: singing is an important part of our worship, our witness, and our walk with God. Let’s let King David have the final word: “Sing praises to the LORD, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name.” (Psalm 30:4) Amen!
Soli Deo Gloria!
Pastor David