Purity Dove's Christian Music Blog

Sep 20

John Piper – Words of Wonder: What Happens When We Sing?

Desiring God 2008 National Conference

September 27, 2008

By Bob Kauflin

(These are notes taken during the session, not a manuscript.)

Singing has been a major part of my life, but I don’t assume you share my background. To appreciate this message you don’t even have to enjoy singing. But if that’s where you’re at, remember that God has a passion for singing. “Oh sing to the Lord a new song. Sing to the Lord all the earth … tell of his salvation from day to day” (Psalm 96:1-3; cf. Psalm 47:6).

The Bible contains over 400 references to singing and 50 direct commands to sing. We’re commanded twice in the New Testament to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16).

Why does God command us not only to praise him, but tosing praises to him?

We can begin by realizing that God himself sings (Zephaniah 3:17). Jesus sang hymns with his disciples. Ephesians 5 tells us that one of the fruits of being filled with the Spirit is singing. So we worship a triune God who sings, and he wants us to be like him.

How does music relate to words?

Some Christians think music supercedes the word, both in its significance and effect. Others think that music undermines the word. But God himself wants them together. He gave us music to serve to word. How music does this is the theme of this message.

Three Ways Singing Serves the Word

1) Singing can help us remember words.

Ever notice how easy it is to recall the words of songs you haven’t heard for 20 years? We store literally hundreds, even thousands of songs in our memory vaults. Music has an unusual mnemonic power. We remember patterns in music much better than patterns in words alone. Rhyme, meter and song are the most powerful mnemonic devices. They govern and restrict the way we say words and the time it takes to say them. Notice in Deuteronomy 31 that God uses music to help his people remember his words.

Implications

1. In the church we should use effective melodies, that is, melodies that people are able to remember and that they want to remember. And both familiar and new melodies have their place among the people of God. Some great hymn lyrics have been ruined by new melodies and others have been revived by it.

2. We should sing words God wants us to remember. It matters not only that we sing but also what we sing. Colossians 3:16 – It is the word of Christ, the gospel, that should dwell in us richly as we sing. The largest portion of our singing content should be the truths that we are responding to, not just words about the effect that truth has on us. Also, the lyrics of our songs should reflect the broad themes of Scripture. Ask yourself, If the teaching of our church was limited to the songs we sing, what would our people know?

3. We should seek to memorize songs. Don’t be too dependant upon screens or hymnbooks.

2) Singing can help us engage the words emotionally.

Music is a language of emotion in every culture of every age. It is capable of effecting us in profound and subtle ways (like when Saul’s spirit was calmed by David’s harp).

Why does music affect us deeply?

One reason is its associations. In our culture, a fast song in a major key is usually associated with happiness, whereas a slow song in a minor key is associated with sadness. Music can also bring forth old associations of things that happened in certain periods or experiences in our lives.

Musical skill also has a role in affecting us deeply. If it is played well it can affect us to a deeper degree, whereas poorly done music can be distracting or less effective.

Music helps us engage emotionally with the words we’re singing also by stretching things out. It gives us time to think about the words more carefully. Consider the repetition of Psalm 136 or the hymn “It Is Well.” Through repetition the words and emotions are amplified.

Implications:

1. We need a broad emotional range in the songs we sing: reverence, awe, repentance, grief, joy, celebration, etc. The jubilant triumph of Christ’s victory over sin cannot be duly communicated in an acappella hymn.

2. We don’t need to pit different styles or traditions against one another. They each serve to help us in different ways.

3. Know that there is a difference between being emotional moved and spiritually enlightened. Music has a voice but we’re not always sure what that voice is saying. It can make us feel peaceful, but it can’t tell us that the Lord is our shepherd or that Jesus endured God’s wrath in our place to bring us eternal peace with God.

4. Singing should be an emotional event. And they should be religious affections. We won’t always be moved in the same way or to the same effect when we sing, but when the emotions aren’t there we should repent and cry out for mercy to feel them appropriately again. God is worthy of our highest, purest, and strongest emotions. Singing helps express and unite them. Singing without emotion is an oxymoron. Vibrant singing enables us to connect truth about God with passion for that truth. We can sing theologically profound truths and not be affected. But none of that changes the fact that God wants to use music to help break through the apathy and hardness of our heart and engage him emotionally.

3) Singing can help us use words to demonstrate and express our unity.

The first two points can be accomplished when we sing by ourselves, but this point needs other people.

People sing together in the strangest places: rock concerts, sporting events, birthdays, weddings, funerals. Singing together tends to bind us together. It enables us to spend extended periods of times expressing the same thoughts and passions. And when it comes to the church, it has significant implications.

Scripture doesn’t only speak about congregational singing–God can be honored when we sing alone or when soloists sing in the church. But it is clear that the dominant theme of Scripture is believers singing together. Jesus died to redeem a universal choir, and every individual voice matters. We are not called to listen to others sing or to sing by ourselves. We are called to sing together. The question is not, “Do you have a voice?” The question is, “Do you have a song?” If you’re redeemed by Christ’s cross then you do have a song.

Implications

1. We should sing songs that unite rather than divide the church. We can appreciate the diverse musical styles and genres, but we shouldn’t try and make church worship “something for everybody.” There should be a unifying musical center that focuses on the sound of the people themselves. God commands us to worship him with instruments, but the majority of the commands tell us to worship him in song. Instruments are only there to aid the singing. So if you never sing without instruments, you should start singing acappella at times.

2. Musical creativity in the church has functional limits. Your iPod shouldn’t be the starting point for selecting songs to sing together. We want to pursue a creativity that is undistracting and not just innovative.

3. We must be clear that it is the gospel and not music that unites us. We should guard against gathering together in churches based upon our musical preferences rather than according to our unity in the gospel. The gospel is what unites us.Ephesians 2:14 – Jesus has united us, not our music. I don’t connect with people at my church because they have the same song selection on their iPod. I love them because Christ has enabled me to love them.

The host of heaven is not united in their style of music but in the words of their song (Revelation 5:9-10). What kind of music do people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation sing? We don’t know! But the Bible tells us what the focus should be: Worthy is the Lamb who was slain. The Lamb must always be central to our corporate singing. Why? Because Jesus is the one who makes it possible. God doesn’t hear us on account of our skill in singing. He hears it because it is in his Son. We shouldn’t look for music to move us to sing. God has already done something worthy of moving us. How can we then keep from singing?

4. Ask yourself, What are we doing to encourage our church in corporate singing? What are we doing to discourage it? Our singing should more and more resemble what we see in Revelation. Whatever we experience here in terms of the active presence of God, it is a mere glimmer of what is to come. In the new heavens and earth we will sing gloriously and for a long time. Our thoughts and passions will be focused, and we will have the strength to give him the glory he deserves. What a glorious thing to anticipate that time! And part of our singing here on earth is anticipation of what is to come.

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Sep 6

Why Worship God Together?

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Psalm 42

To the choirmaster. A Maskil of the sons of Korah.

As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?” These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me. By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God, my rock: “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.

One of the prominent emotional conditions in the Psalms is spiritual depression. Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote a book titled Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure and based it on Psalm 42. That’s the psalm we will focus on today—the one that says, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?”

The Psalms: Song and Instruction

The heading of the psalm reminds us of what we saw last week. “To the choirmaster. A Maskil of the sons of Korah.”

The sons of Korah were a group of priests who were charged with the ministry of singing. Second Chronicles 20:19 describes them in action: “The Korahites, stood up to praise the LORD, the God of Israel, with a very loud voice.”

So the heading implies that this psalm was probably used in public worship and was sung. That’s one part of what we said last week. The psalms are songs. They are poems. They are written to awaken and express and shape the emotional life of God’s people. Poetry and singing exist because God made us with emotions, not just thoughts. Our emotions are massively important.

The second thing to notice in the heading is that the psalm is called a “maskil.” It’s not clear what the word means. That’s why most versions don’t translate it. It comes from a Hebrew verb that means to make someone wise, or to instruct. So when applied to psalms, it may mean a song that instructs, or a song that is wisely crafted. That reminds us of the other thing we emphasized last week: The psalms intend to instruct. “Blessed is the man whose delight is in the instruction of the Lord, and on hisinstruction he meditates day and night.”

So “To the choirmaster. A Maskil of the Sons of Korah” underlines both points from last time: The psalms are instruction, and the psalms are songs. And Jesus taught that they were inspired by God. They intend to shape what the mind thinks, and they intend to shape what the heart feels. When we immerse ourselves in them, we are “thinking and feeling with God.” That’s what I am praying this series will help us to do.

An Overview of Psalm 42

The way I would like to take us into Psalm 42 is to give an overview, and then show six things that this godly man does in his spiritual depression—six things that I think are meant to shape how we deal with our own seasons of darkness.

Here’s the overview. Externally his circumstances are oppressing. Verse 3 says that his enemies “say to me all the day long, ‘Where is your God?’” And verse 10 says the same thing, only it describes the effect as a deadly wound: “As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, ‘Where is your God?’” And the taunt “Where is your God?” implies that something else has gone wrong too, or they wouldn’t be saying, “Where is your God?” It looks to them like he has been abandoned.

The internal emotional condition of the psalmist is depressed and full of turmoil. In verses 5 and 11, he describes himself as “cast down” and “in turmoil.” In verse 3 he says, “My tears have been my food day and night.” So he is discouraged to the point of crying day and night. In verse 7 he says that it feels like drowning: “All your breakers and your waves have gone over me.”

Fighting to Hope in God

In all of this, he is fighting for hope. Verse 5: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” Verse 11: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” He is not surrendering to the emotions of discouragement. He is fighting back.

I cannot tell you how many hundreds of times in the last twenty-eight years at Bethlehem I have fought back the heaviness of discouragement with these very words: “Hope in God, John. Hope in God. You will again praise him. This miserable emotion will pass. This season will pass. Don’t be downcast. Look to Jesus. The light will dawn.” It was so central to our way of thinking and talking in the early eighties that we put a huge “Hope in God” sign on the outside wall of the old sanctuary and became known around the neighborhood as the “Hope in God” church.

His external circumstances are oppressing. His internal emotional condition is depressed and full of turmoil. But he is fighting for hope. And the really remarkable thing is that at the end of the psalm, he is still fighting but not yet where he wants to be. The last words of the psalm—and the last words of the next psalm—are “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” He leaves us still fighting for the joyful experience of hope and freedom from turmoil. He is not yet praising the way he wants to.

A Bittersweet Ending

Is it a happy ending? Like almost everything else in this life, it’s mixed. His faith really is amazing, and his fight is valiant. But he is not where he wants to be in hope and peace and praise.

So I assume this psalm is in the Bible by God’s design and that if we listen carefully, if we watch this psalmist struggle, if we meditate on this instruction day and night, our thoughts about God and life, on the one hand, and our emotions, on the other hand, will be shaped by God. And we will become like a tree that bears fruit and whose leaves don’t wither when the drought of oppression and discouragement and turmoil comes.

How the Psalmist Responds to Discouragement

So here are six ways that this psalmist responds to the discouragement and turmoil that has come with the taunts of his enemies. I’ll put them in an order that they might have happened, though they surely overlap and repeat themselves.

1. He asks God Why?

First, he responds to his circumstances at one point by asking God Why? Verse 9: “I say to God, my rock: ‘Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?’” The word forgotten is an overstatement. And he knows it is. He just said in verse 8, “By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me.”

What he means is that, it looks like God has forgotten him. It feels as if God has forgotten him. If God hasn’t forgotten him, why aren’t these enemies driven back and consumed? It would be good if all of us were so composed and careful in the expression of our discouragements that we never said anything amiss. But that is not the way we are. In the midst of the tumult of emotions, we are not careful with our words.

Those of us who were around in 1985 when I preached through Job may remember how this truth came home to us as a church. For years afterward, we would refer to the words of Job 6:26 and talk about “words for the wind.” Job says to his critical friends, “Do you think that you can reprove words, when the speech of a despairing man is wind?” In other words, don’t jump on the words of a despairing man. Let it go. There will be ample time to discern the deeper convictions of the heart. Let the wind blow them away. They are words for the wind.

So the psalmist asks Why? It’s a legitimate question. He may not have asked the question with theological or linguistic precision, but if he proves in time that he did not mean that God had forgotten him, we will let that be words for the wind.

2. He affirms God’s sovereign love.

Second, in the midst of his discouragement he affirms God’s sovereign love for him. Verse 8: “By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.” In verses 5 and 11, he calls God “my salvation and my God.” And even though he says it looks as if God has forgotten him, he never stops believing in the absolute sovereignty of God over all his adversity. So at the end of verse 7, he says, “All your breakers and your waves have gone over me.” Yourbreakers and your waves have gone over me.

In other words, all his crashing and tumultuous and oppressing and discouraging circumstances are the waves of God. He never loses this grip on the great truths about God. They are the ballast in his little boat of faith. They keep him from capsizing in the tumult of his emotions. O how many of you have learned this more deeply than I because of the waves that have broken over your lives. You have learned deeply that it is no relief to say that God does not rule the wind and the waves.

So the psalmist affirms God’s sovereign love for him in and through all the troubles.

3. He sings!

Third, he sings to the Lord at night, pleading for his life. Verse 8: “By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.” This is not a song of jubilant hope. He doesn’t feel jubilant hope. He is seeking jubilant hope. This is a prayer song and pleading song—a song “to the God of my life.” That is, a song pleading for his life.

But isn’t it amazing that he is singing his prayer! My guess is that this is where Psalm 42 came from. This very psalm may be that night-time prayer-song. Not many of us can compose songs when we are discouraged and weeping day and night. That’s why a singable psalter is good to keep around—or a hymnbook with the whole array of emotions. For example, Isaac Watts wrote these verses to be sung:

How long wilt Thou conceal Thy face?
My God, how long delay?
When shall I feel those heav’nly rays
That chase my fears away?

How long shall my poor laboring soul
Wrestle and toil in vain?
Thy word can all my foes control
And ease my raging pain.

The Psalter of 1912 contains these verses to be sung the way the psalmist of Psalm 42 sang at night:

How long wilt Thou forget me,
O Lord, Thou God of grace?
How long shall fears beset me
While darkness hides Thy face?
How long shall griefs distress me
And turn my day to night?
How long shall foes oppress me
And triumph in their might?

O Lord my God, behold me
And hear mine earnest cries;
Lest sleep of death enfold me,
Enlighten Thou mine eyes;
Lest now my foe insulting
Should boast of his success,
And enemies exulting
Rejoice in my distress.

These are not jubilant songs. But they are songs of faith. And they are shaped by thinking and feeling with God in the Psalms.

4. He preaches to his own soul.

Fourth, the psalmist preaches to his own soul. Verse 5: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” O how crucial this is in the fight of faith. We must learn to preach the truth to ourselves. Listen to Lloyd-Jones take hold of this verse:

Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says,: “Self, listen for moment, I will speak to you.” (Spiritual Depression, 20-21)

On this side of the cross, we know the greatest ground for our hope: Jesus Christ crucified for our sins and triumphant over death. So the main thing we must learn is to preach the gospel to ourselves:

Listen, self: If God is for you, who can be against you? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for you, how will he not also with him graciously give you all things? Who shall bring any charge against you as God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for you. Who shall separate you from the love of Christ? (Romans 8:31-35 paraphrased)

Learn to preach the gospel to yourself. If this psalmist were living after Christ, that is what he would have done.

5. He remembers past experiences.

Fifth, the psalmist remembers. He calls past experiences to mind. He remembers past corporate worship experiences. Verse 4: “These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.”

O how much could be said here about the importance of corporate worship in our lives. Don’t take these times together lightly. What we do here is a real transaction with the living God. God means for these encounters with him in corporate worship to preserve your faith now and in the way you remember them later. If corporate worship were not a real supernatural work of God, it would be pure sentimentalism for the psalmist to remember his experiences. He is not engaging in nostalgia. He is confirming his faith in the midst of turmoil and discouragement by remembering how real God was in corporate worship.

O how much more serious we should be about corporate worship. Ask the Lord to show you what is at stake here.

6. He thirsts for God.

Finally, the psalmist thirsts for God like a deer pants for the stream. Verses 1-2: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” What makes this so beautiful, and so crucial for us, is that he is not thirsting mainly for relief from his threatening circumstances. He is not thirsting mainly for escape from his enemies or for their destruction.

It’s not wrong to want relief and to pray for it. It is sometimes right to pray for the defeat of enemies. But more important than any of that is God himself. When we think and feel with God in the Psalms, this is the main result: We come to love God, and we want to see God and be with God and be satisfied in admiring and exulting in God.

That is my ultimate hope and prayer for these weeks that we spend together in the Psalms. That God would be revealed, and we would want to know him as he is in himself and fellowship with him.

Seeing the Face of God in the Gospel of Christ

A likely translation of the end of verse 2 is: “When will I come and see the face of God.” The final answer to that question was given in John 14:9 and 2 Corinthians 4:4. Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). And Paul said that when we are converted to Christ we see “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

When we see the face of Christ, we see the face of God. And we see the glory of his face when we hear the story of the gospel of his death and resurrection. It is “the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.”

May the Lord increase your hunger and your thirst to see the face of God. And may he grant your desire through the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

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