The following is a lightly edited transcript and may contain errors.
Contents
Psalm 101: Walk in the Truth
Psalm 128 and 127: A Home Built by the Lord
Why We Sing
How and What We Sing
Sing When We Gather and at Home
Closing Prayer
The Word is truth. And today we’re going to look at a few Psalms and talk about another way that we can make truth our home, and I’ll just give it to you up front, talking about singing. Okay, I think singing is an important part that helps make truth your home. So stay with me, don’t tune me out if you’re not a singer. We’re going to look at God’s word together. So let’s turn to Psalm 101. Psalm 101. Psalm 101 is a psalm of David. It says,
I will sing of steadfast love and justice; to you, O Lord, I will make music. I will ponder the way that is blameless. Oh when will you come to me? I will walk with integrity of heart within my house; I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless. I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me. A perverse heart shall be far from me; I will know nothing of evil. Whoever slanders his neighbor secretly I will destroy. Whoever has a haughty look and an arrogant heart I will not endure. I will look with favor on the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me; he who walks in the way that is blameless shall minister to me. No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes. Morning by morning I will destroy all the wicked in the land, cutting off all the evildoers from the city of the Lord. (Psalm 101:1–8)
Psalm 101: Walk in the Truth
Now first thing to notice here is this is actually, David says he’s going to sing of God’s love and justice. He’s going to the Lord. The rest of the psalm focuses on two things. First I would say is walking in the truth, and second, goes along with it, is rejecting evil and lies. So he says he’s pondering the way that is blameless, and what way is that? It’s God’s way, right? It is God’s way. That’s the way of the blameless. It is the way that God has laid out in the Scriptures for us. And he says he’s going to walk with integrity. So he’s going to walk by the truth, in the truth, within his house. I think here, he’s making truth his home. He’s not going to set before his eyes worthless things. He’s not going to set before his eyes untruths, things that lie about God’s good creation, things that lead him away from the truth and into evil. He hates the works of those who walk away from God and away from God’s ways. David is making sure that he’s not going to know anything of evil. He’s not going to be corrupted by the hearts of those who hate God, because he’s going to keep them from influencing him. He’s not going to put up with those who slander or the prideful or the arrogant. Church, if you haven’t figured this out yet, if you’re here this morning, the people you hang out with and spend time with will influence you. They’re going to influence you. And they’re going to influence you for good or for evil. If you spend a lot of time with people that are not walking with the Lord, then you’re going to be influenced in that direction. And then the other way too, you spend time with people who love the Lord, you’re going to be influenced to the Lord. So we want to hang out with people who love Jesus. Doesn’t mean we don’t minister. That’s not what I’m talking about, but we want people who love Jesus. He says he’s going to look to those who are faithful, and he wants to dwell with them, talking about being together. He wants to walk with those who are making truth their home so they can minister to him. We all need probably more ministry than we know. And when we surround ourselves, when we walk with those who love Jesus, those who are making truth their home, then we are encouraged to do so. He says, no one who practices deceit is going to dwell in his house. So he’s making sure that that’s not even going to enter his home. He’s not going to have people who lie keep him company. He is making truth his home just as we should. And so in the psalm, as I said, we see an encouragement to walk in the truth and with those who walk in the truth, and an encouragement to reject lies and those who live by lies, and not to let those lies into your house. And one of the reasons for that is when we talk about the home. So if you’ve been walking with the Lord for a long time, okay, hopefully you’re strong, right, in the Lord. You’re strong in the Lord. Amen? If you’ve been walking with the Lord for a long time. Now, that does not mean you’re invincible, but you’re stronger, so you have more opportunities to minister to other people. So, this is where the echo’s coming from, that’s better. So, you have more opportunities to minister to people. If you’re strong enough to do that, but guess what, your kids, like when you’re talking about they are not strong in the Lord yet. Amen, now some of them might be, hopefully, but it takes time, it takes discipleship, it takes walking with the Lord for them to get there. And so we want to make sure our house is full of truth and full of people who love the truth and not full of deceit and lies and things that are going to lead our children astray, amen. So do not let lies into your home. But back at the beginning of the psalm, David says he will sing. He will sing, he will sing of the Lord’s love and justice and make music to the Lord, the way of the blameless, the way of those who love and walk with the Lord, and singing helps him do this. Singing helps all of us to do this.
Psalm 128 and 127: A Home Built by the Lord
We’re going to look at two more Psalms. First, turn to Psalm 128. It says,
Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways! You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. The Lord bless you from Zion! May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life! May you see your children’s children! Peace be upon Israel! (Psalm 128:1–6)
Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways, those who walk in the truth. This psalm is a song, it says at the beginning there, a song of ascents. It is a song, and it is a song about those who make truth their home. And if you look at this home, that’s a good home, amen. You’ve got a fruitful wife and children around the table, that is a good home. Those who walk in the way of the Lord, who walk in the truth, they eat the fruit of the labor of their hands. They’re blessed and it goes well with them. The wife being like a fruitful vine in the house, I think that’s a beautiful picture. And the children, it says, are like olive shoots around the table. The imagery here is like that they’re like vigorous offshoots from an older olive tree. They’re springing up ready to take its place. One day hopefully your children will take your place in the world and in the church if they’re being trained to walk in the way of the Lord. Amen. It says, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord, who walks in the truth, who makes truth his home. So hopefully, church, you want that for your home. And you want to be blessed like that. I know I do. And my prayer is that the Lord would help us to walk in his ways and make truth our home. The psalm right before it, Psalm 127, it says, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep. Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them. He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.” Another beautiful picture of the family. And we want the Lord to build our house. Amen. We want our house built on the rock, on the truth. And as I said before, this is just like Psalm 128. This is a song. These are both songs. They were meant to be sung by God’s people. God’s people were meant to sing these truths. Why? I mean why were they supposed to sing them? I don’t know. Has anyone ever had a song stuck in their head before? Hey, I think we’ve all gotten that, right? We’re just talking about a song stuck in his head this morning when we were trying to practice. It happens and God designed us that way. That’s how God designed us. He designed us that way. If you listen to a song enough, I know, I think I’ve shared this before, but I remember in a van driving somewhere and people started singing this song they learned, probably haven’t sung in 15 years, Jake. Something like that. I remember singing it as a kid and I picked up the music and immediately, I could sing it. I remember the lyrics and everything. Songs stick with us. So the world, it’s constantly shouting lies and it’s pouring deceit to us all week long. Every chance it gets, wherever you look, through music and media and news, wherever you turn, there’s a constant stream of lies, and it can be hard to combat that, and it’s easy to let it slip into our hearts. So we need to constantly hear the truth. So I talked about being in the Word, right? We need to, but we need to speak and pray the truth as well, and we need to sing the truth. We need to sing the truth. We need to sing songs that remind us of who God is, of who we are before him, of what he’s called us to and what he has done. And we need these truths to take deep root in our souls.
Why We Sing
So turn to Ephesians 5 with me. So, about three years ago, I preached a sermon from this passage. Let’s see, Ephesians chapter 5, verse 19. We’re told in verse 18, be filled with the Spirit. It says, if you back up, verse 18,
And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. (Ephesians 5:18–21)
So that sermon I preached was called “The Wonder of Congregational Singing,” and I wanted to share some of the main points in the sermon, but I encourage you, especially if you haven’t before, to listen to it in its entirety. I can send a link out later after service. In front of the passage I drew out three questions. Why do we sing? How do we sing? And what do we sing? If you’ve heard the answers to these questions, you’re about to get a reminder; if you haven’t, these are just going to be quick hits and you can get the whole explanation by listening to the sermon on it. But why do we sing? First off, we are commanded to sing in Scripture. Okay, we are commanded. The Bible has over 400 references to singing and at least 50 direct commands to sing. So you, whether you’re good at singing or not, whether God has gifted you with a solo voice or whether you can sing on tune, you are commanded to sing. When we come together you’re commanded to sing. It’s not an optional thing. We also sing because God sings. We sing because it’s going to be in our future. We sing because it helps us engage our emotions and our hearts with God’s word. God created music to stir our souls. Okay, he did. He created music to stir our souls and to move our hearts. To live in the truth, we can’t just know it, right? It has to make its home in our heart. And so we sing and it helps the truth of God’s word make its way into our heart. We sing because it helps express and demonstrate our unity. When we were doing just a few minutes ago, we were singing something together, right? We’re all singing together. We do that when we gather on Sunday mornings. We sing together. And we sing because it helps set our hearts on and helps us to remember the truths of God’s word. You might not remember a whole sermon. You probably will remember only tiny slices, honestly, of what I’m telling you now. But you’ll probably remember some of the songs when you go. And so we sing, it helps us remember the truth of God’s word, because it helps us make truth our home.
How and What We Sing
And how we sing also has something to do with it. We sing to God and we sing to one another, both of those things. When we come to sing, we’re singing to God but we’re also singing to each other. We sing to give God praise and glory and honor and we sing to each other to encourage one another. We sing together. We’re not all singing different things. Okay, we don’t get here and then everybody sing a different song. One, I think that would be very difficult, partly because God created us that way to lift our voices together. But we don’t all sing different songs. We sing the same words. We’re singing together and every voice matters. We confess and we praise together. We sing often using instruments to help us serve the word that is being sung. We sing with thankfulness and we sing engaging our hearts and our minds. We don’t just shut off our minds when we sing. We want to know and think about what we’re singing, but we also don’t want to shut off our heart and only know here. We want to know in our heart. We do not disengage our mind and just have the emotions flow out, but we don’t want to cut off our emotions and sing like a robot. We worship with all that we are. Because of this I want to encourage you with two quotes, one from Jonathan Edwards and one from John Wesley. And I’ve read these before. Jonathan Edwards says, “The duty of singing praises to God seems to be appointed wholly to excite and express religious affections.” Those come from the heart. “No other reason can be assigned why we should express ourselves to God in verse rather than in prose and do it with music, but only that such is our nature and frame that these things have a tendency to move our affections.” God created us to be moved in this way. We are created to engage our entire being with God, our heart, our soul, and our mind, and singing helps us do that. Wesley says, sing vigorously and with good courage. Good courage, right? So if you feel like my voice isn’t that good, sing with good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead or half asleep. Now if we’re honest, sometimes we come into church kind of half dead or half asleep, right? If you had a late night, you stayed up late and you come in half awake, he says, don’t sing that way, lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, no more ashamed of it being heard, than when you sung the songs of Satan. And then, so that’s how. What do we sing? We want to sing, if we’re wanting to make truth our home and I’m talking about this helping us do that, we sing songs rich in God’s word. So when we’re selecting songs here at Liberty, we’re selecting songs that are full of his truth. We want to sing songs that teach us his word that are full of rich doctrine and we want to sing songs that admonish and encourage us as we sing to one another. We want to sing songs that recognize the greatness of God and what he has done, and songs that are full of thanksgiving. And when we sing together, we want to sing congregational songs, not personal songs. And when we sing together, we sing with melodies and music that help convey the truth that is being sung. So singing helps us make truth our home. So this morning in a little bit we’re going to continue to worship by hearing the word of God read, prayed, and then singing some more.
Sing When We Gather and at Home
But first, some exhortations. Number one, I encourage you to sing to the best of your ability when we gather. Sing to the best of your ability. Everybody’s got different voices. As I said, God has given some of us amazing voices that anyone would be happy to listen to sing solo all day. You guys know what I’m talking about. I personally, I’m not going to get up and record some solo album that is going to feature my voice and it’s going to go out there, right? That’s not me, but I can sing and a lot of you probably aren’t that. I know there are some of you in here who do have those solo voices, and we love to hear your voices when you’re leading a song, but you don’t have to have that to sing. God has given you the voice you have, and he’s told you to sing. So if solo singing is not your thing, that’s fine, because you know what? We’re singing together. We are singing together. On Sunday morning, you’re not solo singing. You’re singing with your church family. So lift up your voice and sing loud, sing with passion, work to develop your voice, work to get to know the songs. As you do, it’s going to start transforming your heart and your thinking and even your home. One of the things I love to hear from people is when they say that they find themselves singing at home, the songs we sing here. So it’s making its way into their head and into their heart. And the truth of God’s word is transforming them as they sing. Secondly, I encourage you, so that’s singing here, I encourage you to sing at home with your family. Now if you’re not musical, this is probably especially intimidating. But your kids are going to learn to sing based on how you sing. If you sing in church, you sing out loud, they’re going to be encouraged to do so. If you sing in the home, you can sing just a few songs that we sing here without an instrument. You can sing the doxology. We sing it without instruments all the time, right? We sing it with just the voices. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. You could sing Amazing Grace. I would guess most of you know at least a couple of verses of Amazing Grace, right? You can sing that together when you’re with your family. You can sing something like Jesus Paid It All. Laura and I sing without any instruments, even though Laura’s very talented. We sing to TJ all the time, Jesus Paid It All, and ’Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus. Hopefully by the time he’s able to talk and sing, he’ll be able to sing those songs with us. But it helps set these truths in our hearts and our minds, and in the hearts and minds of our family. So sing with your family. If you’re doing family devotions, hopefully you are in some form or fashion, or maybe before you go to bed with your kids, or you get up in the morning, sing a song together. And it also helps teach your kids, I think, especially if you don’t have the most amazing voice. [audio unclear] Music, as I said, was created by God to stir the heart, and it has a profound effect on us. Think about how it totally changes a scene if you have different music. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen any of those little reels that come through where they change the music on something, and it totally changes the feel of the movie. People who make good movies get good music and they put it in there because it’s going to get us to react emotionally. God created us that way. And in the same way, I’ve seen music that people hear it, they really like it, and then bad words are stuck to it, and about things that are lies, things that don’t glorify the Lord, things that honestly make people depressed. And I remember growing up a whole generation worth of music that was really just, it just seemed aimed towards making people really sad, angry, and depressed, and people just latched onto it, and they would sing these songs, and it didn’t help their hearts. The music you consume is going to affect you. There’s a lot of trash out there. Make sure that your home is being filled with good music and other things. Make sure it is filled with truth and not lies. So I’d encourage you to evaluate what music you’re listening to, and then on the other end, Psalm 127 and 128 that I read about, you know, the home. If you’re listening to music that encourages you, not just as like a worship song where you’re singing congregationally to the Lord, but other songs that encourage you to love what the Lord loves, you listen to that music, that makes its way into your heart too. One of the albums that I listened to a whole lot, and I shared a couple of weeks ago that I had kind of, without realizing it, let the culture into my heart and, you know, didn’t necessarily want kids and everything. So part of the journey in getting through that, besides counsel and prayer and everything, there was an album and a song the McNeils sent to us, a song on the album just about boys and becoming men and stuff. I listened to that song and the truth in that song really encouraged me to embrace having a family. Then I listened to the rest of the album and it was all really about the home and the family. The music helped set my heart on where God wanted me to go in his word. So it was about music. Music has an impact. And then lastly I would encourage you, read some Psalms with your family. There’s a treasure trove of truth there. So as we get ready to continue in our worship service, we’re going to do what I talked about a little bit ago. We’re going to read some more Psalms together. And as we read the Psalms, I encourage you, as they are read aloud, don’t look around at other people, don’t get stir-crazy waiting for service to end thinking, are we done? How long do I have to wait until we’re finished here? God’s word sanctifies us and builds us up, right? After the psalm is read, the person reading is going to lead our congregation in prayer from that psalm, and I ask that you would follow along and stand in agreement, and you can say yes Lord, you can say amen. We’re agreeing somebody’s leading our church in prayer, and when the prayer is done we’re going to sing a song together, lifting our voices to the Lord in unison. So we’re going to be all hearing the truth read, prayed, and then sung together. This entire process is meant to be an active thing, a very active thing. You are meant to be an active participant when you’re here on Sunday morning. So you listen intently, you agree in prayer, and you lift your voice and sing to the Lord and sing to your brothers and sisters. So as we do these things together, we worship and we glorify the Lord. But as we do these things together, the Lord also moves our hearts. He moves our hearts. As we do these things, we’re setting our minds and our hearts on what is above, on what is true, on what is good. We’re setting ourselves towards the one who is holy and above all and is worthy of worship. And as we do that, we are combating the lies of the enemy and the world and fixing ourselves on what is good and true. So if you’d stand, we’re going to pray. And when I’m done praying, Jake is going to come and read Psalm 141. Worship team can come up.
Closing Prayer
Lord Jesus, as we read your word and as we pray and as we sing, we ask that you be glorified and that you would turn our hearts to you. May we repent and turn away from any sin we’re cherishing and may we seek to cherish you instead. Please be merciful and turn us away from lies we’ve been believing and help us to believe you. Help us to believe what is true. Revive those who have been apathetic or have fallen asleep. May you turn those caught in sin from their sin toward you. And Lord, we ask for the salvation of anyone here who does not know you. You are our Creator, good, loving, and perfect God, and we know that we’re sinners who have broken your laws. And the punishment for sin against an eternal God is eternal separation in hell. And the wages of sin is death. The gift that you gave is eternal life in your Son Jesus. While we were still sinners, Jesus died for us. And so Lord, may you call to repentance anyone who has not trusted in you. You say in your word that if one confesses with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believes in their heart that God raised him from the dead, they’ll be saved, by turning away from their sin and surrendering to Jesus as the Lord of their life, trusting in him and not in themselves. All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. So God, may you give saving faith this morning to anyone here that does not know you, that they would call on you as we read together, as we pray, and as we sing. Speak to them and speak to us, your church. We pray in your name, Jesus. Amen.