122. Freedom In The Church - Worship
Episode Notes
Brett and James sit at discuss worship and what that looks like.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Hosts
Welcome to the 4-Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, James Safrit and Brett Martin.
Well, welcome to the 4-Freedom Podcast. Thank you for being with us today. We're back in our series, Freedom in the Church.
But before that, we just want to welcome you back. James, what's going on in your world today? Well, we're back in the hot seat, Brett, back in the studio, back in our offices recording.
And man, it's been a busy week. It's been a good weekend. We had our marriage conference this past weekend and ordained a deacon this past Sunday.
It's a great time of fellowship and just being able to be around God's people. It's been a blessing.
I'm loving going through this series of In the Church. And where we're at and loving talking through some of these topics that we have sort of been taboo topics or topics that we've been preached or heard one way.
But it's been great to be able to talk through these things. And some of the interviews that we've got lined up are just phenomenal. But, yeah, things are going great. And still, I'm in that phase, Brett, where I'm still in that honeymoon phase at the church.
You know, we're sort of testing and seeing how things are going and throwing things against the wall and seeing if they stick. And if they don't, we pull them back off the wall and we go with it. So that's sort of where I'm at in that first couple of months of ministry.
And it's been exciting. It's been good. But at the same time, it's a little nerve-wracking. It's nervous. You know, am I going to make a bad choice or a bad decision? And a lot of prayer, a lot of coveting and following the Lord in that prayer.
And it's been good. So how are things on your end? You're in a possible building project here coming up? Yes, we have. We decided to enlarge our fellowship hall.
And we had one plan and the deacons had a plan. And then we had our committee meeting. We formed a committee because we're a good Baptist church. Amen.
And we formed a committee to do the building project. And then, you know, we threw that plan out and got a new plan. But no, just kidding.
We're ready to go and we're excited about what the future holds for us. You said that you're still in your honeymoon phase. Well, this is, you know, entering into, you know, two years for me, two full years here. So honeymoon is over.
And, you know, we're trying some different things. And, you know, I've got a little bit of change in my pocket.
And we're seeing how much we can buy with it. And I'm just like you. I'm excited for ministry. I can't believe I get to do what I get to do with my life. I'm so blessed to get to serve God full time.
So much in my ministry. I never thought that I would have the privilege of being in full time ministry, full time pastor.
I'm so blessed to get to be able to do this with my life. And I'm excited about the church that we're at. And I'm ready to I'm ready to go. So and so that's about it. I love it.
And, you know, me and my wife, we we try to make it a habit of us.
And I teach us our church as well, that the length of amount of time that you pray for something should be the equivalent of amount of length of time that you praise the Lord for that answered prayer.
So if you pray for something for five years, you should praise the Lord for five years, not five seconds that it happened.
And so that's so we yeah, we've I learned that in college from a professor of mine. It was just eye opening for me because oftentimes we'll pray and pray and pray and God will answer that prayer. And then we're just like, OK, thank you, Lord. And we forget about it.
And so we we've been praying for the last three years for us to be a senior pastor, be a lead pastor of a church.
So it's been good these last six months just to be able to pray and have that we pray at night together and just thank the Lord that we're in that position.
We're in that role where where God wants us to be. You know, it took three years to get there, but it was those time of growing, that time of healing, the time of preparing us for where we're at.
And so it's been good and exciting to see God work in mighty ways. It's literally nothing that I could ever do. It's all God's work.
And I'm just thankful just to be able to be part of that back in the in the back of the bus and just watching God move and God work and me just get to be a part of the ride, you know. Amen. Amen. It's nothing like it. Praise the Lord. It is.
So, well, that's sort of the backseat of our ministry life there. You probably may have fast forwarded the last couple of minutes just to get to the episode. But before we get to that, we've got a couple of things coming up. We've got our meetup in Katusa in November.
Hopefully you'll be planning to do that the first weekend in November. It's going to be a great time of fellowship down there, hanging out with the family,
hanging out with those of like minded faith. We'll be going to Indianapolis for the convention.
And if you're going to be there or in that area, let us know. Me and Brett have booked our house. We're going to be staying in a house there and we'll be at the convention every day there. I'll be there Saturday through Thursday, I believe it is.
And hopefully you'll be able to come and hang out with us. I think Brett's going to take me on a tour of the Holy Lands, which is the Howells Anderson fairgrounds where all the parties happen. They're the great statue.
And we're going to pay homage to Jack Howells and pray at his feet and make the trip to Mecca to see the Holy Lands.
And so hopefully you'll be there in the area and you can come hang out with us. But speaking of the real Holy Lands, Brett, why don't you tell us about our trip coming up almost one year from now?
Yes, we are going to Israel. Me and James are taking our churches and some close friends. We're going back to Israel. We have it on good authority that by the time next March rolls around, tourism will be open.
We've got people on the ground in Israel who are contacts for us that are letting us know the situation. And we want you to go.
If you're a listener of the podcast and you have never been to Israel, you will never regret it. You'll never regret spending the money. You'll never regret going. You'll never regret using the vacation days to go. I'm telling you, this is planned around spring break.
So we planned it to where most schools are on spring break during the month of March. And we are going back to Israel. And it's going to be a week on the ground, starting at the northern part,
Incessary of Philippi in Israel and working our way all the way down. Once we come back from our summer break, we've got a series planned on Israel. And that's what I'm looking forward to because I love talking about it. There's a pastor, a pastor, Brother Stephen Evans.
He's the pastor of First Baptist Church here in the county.
When we get in our pastor's meeting, he's been to Israel several times. And when me and him get to talking about Israel back and forth, we can take over the preacher's meeting because we just we love talking about it so much. But it's something you'll never regret doing.
And so we want to invite everybody that can and want to start saving now. Let us know that you're interested. Send us a message. And because we want everybody to go that wants to go. Absolutely. I can't wait to go back, man.
New Series on Worship
I can't wait to be there, be with you again, and hopefully be able to take our brides as well and hang out in a wonderful time there. So, Brett, we're in the In the Church series.
And we're starting a new topic today. We've discussed abuse the last couple of weeks. But today we get to jump into the next topic, which is worship.
Our view of worship sometimes can be skewed by the way we are raised or by what we've been taught in the past. And so we're wanting to realign our thoughts with scripture, realign our thoughts of what worship is and why it's so important in our life to worship.
And when we say the word worship, immediately what we think of is music. And music is important. It's a it's a vital part of our society. It's a vital part of our personal life.
God created music for us to use to specifically worship him.
In the very beginning, we see instruments, we see choirs, we see people playing those instruments, singing and using their talents to worship and to glorify God. But we also can see that it's used as an idol.
Worship can be an idol and it can be taking us away from God. And so as we begin this thought of worship and we're going to go through some specifics of helps that we can have, but then also ways that we can worship God. Brett, what is worship in our mind?
How do we define this and how do we work through this in our thought of scripture and in our life? I think the first thing we have to understand, worship is not limited to just church.
But at the same time, when we come to church, we have to understand that we're not coming to church just to sit.
We need to get out of this consumerism attitude that we're here to sit. We're here to take in.
I preached about this Sunday, and that's why it's on my heart, is because, you know, we are priests in the church. We belong to a holy priesthood, a royal priesthood.
And when we come to church, we have a job to do. One of those jobs it described in the Bible is a sacrifice of praise.
And Hebrews 13 tells us that the sacrifice of praise is the fruit of our lips. You know, it's crazy to come to church and see people not sing. We are there to worship God.
I'll tell you, music is a big part of my ministry because I was a music director for the first decade and a half of my ministry. And when I left the IFB, music was my biggest hurdle.
It was my biggest thing that I had an issue with because even though I had left the IFB,
I left legalism, hymn-only, 1950s-style piano-only music. I left that.
It was still ingrained in me my whole life that certain types of music are wrong, certain beats, certain instruments.
And so at this new church that I was now pastoring, they had screen music. So they had the computer set up. You might lead a hymn or two, but then you would play a couple songs on the screen. And I would get on the PowerPoint, and I would pick the songs.
And I went through, and every worship song I had on that computer that had any type of drum beat, I took it and put it in its own separate folder. Because I was afraid that, you know,
that anybody from my old church might come in and hear this music and think, oh, what's Brett doing? When he's went liberal because he's playing this hard music.
So it was two years of some of the most boring music you've ever heard in your life.
But it took me a while to kind of warm up to different styles of music, and hymn worship is not the only way to do it. There are several different types of music, and we need to embrace more than just the piano.
You know, we need to embrace more than that. Listen to all these different instruments that are used in the Bible. In the Bible, we use bells,
harps, and it's not the harps like we think today. A lyre is like the guitar of the day. Flutes, cymbals, psaltery, trumpets, pipes, dulcimer, chauffeurs,
drums, and that's just to name a few. There are many other different types of music in the Bible. And James, I don't know if you know this or not. I think it's a well-kept secret.
But did you know that when David worshipped, he danced? Amen. Oh, man. That's crazy. Dance with the Lord. Oh, man.
Brett, you were sharing a story there about you're in ministry there. So in college, this is a true story that I shared with our church just a couple of months ago. In college, my wife went to a Casting Crowns concert.
And at the time we were dating, and if I'm lying, I'm dying right now, Brett. I told her that I don't know if our relationship would last because she was going to a Casting Crowns concert.
I told her that we may have to break up because I was a Southern Gospel, hymns only. Like, contemporary music in Casting Crowns was Satan.
It wasn't like you're going liberal. It was Satan. Like, they were worshipping demons up there on stage. They had flashing lights, Brett. I mean, we can't have that in the church.
And so I told her, I said, I don't know if our relationship will last through you going to Casting Crowns. She went, and of course, we got married. And this, I mean, we go to Winter Jam.
We go to Extreme Winter. We take our kids to, I think, Seventh Day Slumber is going to be there this year. Skillet, things like that.
Like, it's crazy, the other side of that. But we look back on it and we laugh because that was such a, we considered that. Like, they're not even worshipping God. But yet, we have some other instances in Scripture where,
yes, music is used not to worship God. We see a specific example of the children of Israel. They were receiving the Ten Commandments. They were receiving worship from God. They were receiving what they should and shouldn't do. And yet, they were tired of waiting.
And while they were tired of waiting, they began to worship. And the Bible says they played foreign music.
And the Bible even goes on to say it sounded like war music because they were taking on the music of the enemies and of the pagan gods. And in Exodus chapter 32, we get this illustration where it talks about this thought of idols and music being played.
And so, I'm going to read it, Exodus 32, verse 17 and 18, once I get there. It said, So, we see here that,
yes, music can be used as a tool of good. But it can also be used as a tool of bad. And music and worship is so powerful in our life.
It affects us in a mighty way. Colossians 3, 16 talks about what we put in our body, what we put in our life is affecting every area of our life.
And that everything that we should do and say and work and have a part of should be to glorify God in everything we do.
And oftentimes, we get to the point where we are putting things in our body that aren't glorifying God, that aren't taking our mind toward God, but taking our mind away from God. Let me read that, Colossians 3, 16.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly and in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual psalms, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
Ultimately, Brett, worship is an act of acknowledging the greatness of God, acknowledging who he is and what he's done and how we can glorify him in everything we do. This is our words, our thoughts, our actions, our emotions. Everything is turning glory back to God. Amen. Amen. Absolutely.
Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
Worship Beyond Music
So, you know, there's a couple of different areas, areas there of different types of music we use to praise God. But like we said, worship is more is more than just music. I have some notes here.
Let's see here. Romans 12, one. Therefore, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies, a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. So once again, worship is not relegated to just music, although music is a big part of it.
But we're going to we're going to dive into this subject here today. So, James, why don't you start us off in our outline here and tell us what we've got coming up first? I think we've got a few helps here. Yeah.
So oftentimes we get the question asked, OK, what can and can I do? What we've got freedom we've got?
We talk about that often. Galatians 5, one for freedom.
Christ is set us free not to be under the yoke of bondage, but to be under the yoke of Christ and to be able to live in that freedom and what it looks like. And so we're not here to tell you a bunch of what you can and can't do.
We just want to give you some guidelines, some helps of ways that we can worship God in a mighty way. And then we'll close with Psalms 100 and we're going to break it down expository.
And we're going to give you four different ways that you are able to worship God. The first one is this. We must be discerning of what we listen to.
This is understanding that everything that goes in our ears affects the way we think and act. All right. So I label it like this.
This is music and or content. Music and or content.
And what I mean by content is podcasts such as the probably the greatest podcast ever released, the 4-Freedom Podcast.
These are these are things that you listen to. These are areas of your life that you are letting come into your life that are going to affect you and influence you. And part of that is music. But other this can be talk radio.
This can be TV shows. This can anything that we are allowing to be in front of us. This is discerning and allowing ourselves to to put off some of these things to put on godliness. The Bible says to put on those things. Ephesians 5, 18 and 19 says it like this.
Once I just flip a page over my bad. Ephesians 5, 18 and 19. Pray in the spirit always with all kinds of prayer and supplication that to the end be alert with all perseverance and supplications for the saints.
Pray for me that the power may speak may be given to me that I may open my mouth boldly and make known the mysteries of God. He says to be alert there to watch out for the things that are around us.
I was telling Brett when we were preparing for this, I said, I listen to a couple of political podcasts every single day of my life almost. I like to stay aware of what's going on in the context of the world and different political views and know what's culturally around me.
Not that it affects what I do, but oftentimes I will find myself because I love politics.
I love listening to it. It affecting the way I think or even the way I treat people by listening to some of these things that I'm putting in my ears. And I said the other day, I said, Brett,
I said, I sort of had to take a quick little sabbatical from listening to them.
And just when I was because I drive more now, it's 20 minutes drive to the church. And so I've got plenty of time where I'm driving, I'm listening and I've got things that are playing in my car. And I said, for a couple of days, I didn't listen to a podcast.
I just turned on worship music and I hit play every time I was in the vehicle because I could sense in my spirit that I was being transformed, as you said, in Romans 12,
by the things that I was listening to. And I wasn't allowing God's word and God's worship to transform me.
So it's been discerning to what we're listening to and allowing the music and the things that we listen to, making sure they're lifting us up and not tearing us down.
Exactly. And when we talk about music, we're talking about music as a whole, as in the song, the words, the lyrics, the message of the song, which, by the way, I would like to just say, talk about this just for a second, because I've had a lot of pushback from local pastors.
Of course, you know, you're going to have pushback from IFB guys and and different things like that. And I want to talk a little bit about music is in just like the rhythm, the beat without the words,
just music. So I am I would be classified as what you would call a musical relativist. And what that means is that music, in my view, is is amoral. So what matters is the words. I mean, worship in itself is a matter of the heart.
But I still believe that a Christian composer has the freedom to use any style and any materials.
OK, no style should be considered off limits in expressing the gospel. So music without words is amoral. It's neutral.
And when I say that, what I mean by that is sound itself cannot express truth, communicate belief or proposition truth. I believe that style is neutral ethically and morally. Any chord, any rhythm, any instrument should be theoretically acceptable for worship.
Like like the sound of a saxophone is not more or less immoral than the sound of a clarinet or violin. I mean, James, there was there was years, years ago you couldn't play a saxophone in church because it was associated with with sensuality.
But but that that that's not the case anymore. You know, a reggae beat is no more evil than a waltz or a march.
And people that argue that music and rhythm and beat by themselves without the lyrics can't either be wrong or immoral or immoral.
Man, they've got a lot of good, thought out arguments that sound logical. And and all the research that I've done, they've got no Bible to back it up. And any Bible they bring into it is taken out of context.
However, I will say that depending on the crowd, a certain type of music may not be appropriate. OK, you mentioned earlier Seventh Day Slumber. OK, I was just recently introduced to them.
And, you know, now now I listen to all the time. And what they do is they take contemporary songs, contemporary Christian songs that you might hear at Passion, and they put them to a rock beat. Now, these are Christian songs concerted, converted to a kind of heavy metal rock beat.
And listen, I'm going to say that there's there's nothing wrong with that. But, you know, at the same time, am I going to allow that for worship on Sunday morning at the church where I pastor?
No, not because I think it's wrong, because I know there's going to be people in the service that feel that that style of worship is not appropriate for church. Now, my goal is just like Paul is to teach everyone to be strong.
That's what Paul was trying to do. He was trying to teach everybody to be strong and to accept meat offered to idols. I think this goes into the meat offered to idols scripture.
When Paul's talking about this, he says, look, the earth is the Lord's and this meat, it comes from the earth. Paul said, look, there's nothing wrong with eating the meat that's been offered to idols.
I mean, we know there's only one God. So when you offer the meat to these, you know, these fake gods, but then he warned us not to be a stumbling block to the weak, because if somebody that has a weak conscience sees me eating meat that's
been offered to idols, well, then that's going to be a stumbling block to them, even though there's nothing wrong with it.
So I'm not going to eat that meat in front of them, even if there's nothing wrong with it, because I don't want to be a stumbling block. So say you have a church, and I say this from a pastor's perspective, because I'm a pastor.
Say you have a church that for years only played him music. Well, you know, I know that there's nothing wrong with the contemporary style of worship music, so I'm going to begin to slowly introduce the newer music to the church and try to bring them out of that thinking.
And as they get stronger, I'll introduce a little more.
And, you know, you've got to get to know the crowd and use discretion. You want to bring people out of this mindset that the only way that it can be done is how my grandparents used to do it in the 50s, to a modern day way of thinking where you can be
all things to all men, that by all means you may reach some.
You know, yes, we're to be separate from the world, but we're to be separate from the sin of the world.
You know, so that's the only reason why I wouldn't play something like Seventh Day Slumber on a Sunday morning in my church, because weaker Christians wouldn't be able to handle it. But other than that, I think that any music style should be redeemable. If somebody does something bad with a style,
well, then the Christian should be allowed to come in with wisdom and associate it with something good. I like that. One of the things I'll give a personal illustration here. My brother-in-law,
he's a black man. My sister married a black guy. And I was playing something the other day for him, a worship song, something that I listen to often. I can't remember exactly what it was.
He told me, he said, James, if I listen to this on a regular basis, I would go to sleep. He said, it's the most boring thing I've ever listened to. And so I'm thinking, OK, well, how is this boring? Like, I'm worried.
Like, this is this is this is my soul. This is awesome.
But then I got to thinking and, you know, he he was raised a different way than I was. His his whole way of life.
I mean, he was on the drum line. He played drums in the in the marching band.
So, I mean, after games, they would have a drum circle and they were going crazy and it was awesome. And so I found some worship music by guys that had that style that I wouldn't listen to. And I sent it to him. He was like, dude, that's some great stuff.
Like, I couldn't even understand the words they were saying because they were talking so fast. And he was like, dude, those are some of the most powerful words I've ever heard. And I'm literally responding like I don't understand the words they're saying.
But because he was raised in that culture, he understood it and it was appropriate for him.
And I think that's what we're getting across here is discernment, listen to and understand what is appropriate for us. Number two here on some few helps for us is guard your heart above all else. We have two gates to our heart. We have our eyes and we have our ears.
What we watch and what we look at and what we listen to affects our heart. We are to be protectors of our heart. We must remember that we control what we have access to in our heart.
Proverbs 4.23 says, keep your heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life. One reformer says that our heart is an idle factory.
And what we put into our heart, what we put into our eyes will eventually produce idols for us to worship.
And so we must make sure that what we're putting in will eventually put out the right idols for us to worship, which are going to be glorifying God and allowing us to grow closer to him.
And so if we're putting things in our heart, through our mind and through our ears, through our eyes and through our ears, we eventually will put out the wrong things in our actions as well.
And so we must understand that what we're doing must be guarding our heart because eventually it's going to come out one way or another. I agree. You know, the heart is the source of our thoughts, attitudes,
beliefs and actions. And it can lead us down a path of righteousness or it can lead us down a path of destruction, you know, because we are born with a sinful nature and our hearts are predisposed to sin.
And so we have to be so careful what we allow in our heart because that will come out of us. It will control our actions.
One of the things that I've done for years is I've got this app on my phone and it's called Pandora. And I know it's no new thing. There's a lot of people out there that know Pandora Radio.
But what I like about it is, you know, you can thumbs up a song, hear it more often and hear more songs like it. Or if you thumbs down a song,
you know, then you'll never hear that song again. Now, listen, you know, we we do listen to secular music.
Now, we at the same time, we listen to K-Love. We listen to Christian music. We listen to gospel music. We listen to contemporary Christian music. One of my favorite stations on my Pandora is the Casting Crowns radio.
So I guess I guess I relate. We can't have a relationship anymore because I listen to Casting Crowns radio. That's right. That's right. But listen, we listen to other stuff, too. We listen to country,
which listen, 90s country is the best country out there. There is no better decade for country music than 90s country. Should have been a cowboy. I know.
So, you know, we listen to rock, too. But, you know, the important thing, I think, is whatever you listen to, listen to the words. I'm very careful about whether, you know, even Christian music can have the wrong message. And when we listen to secular music, it can be sinful.
So, you know, if there's cussing in the song, I'm going to thumbs down. Immorality in the song, I'm going to thumbs down. I'm not going to listen to it anymore. You know, songs about cheating and getting drunk.
We're not going to listen to any of that. So, you know, I have a radio station on my phone that plays all Creed all the time. I mean, higher? I mean, come on. I think that's, you know, Christian music.
Creed, how could you say it's not? But like I said, where I'm coming from, it's about the message of the song. It's about the lyrics of the song. Yes, you can listen to worship music. But, you know, you can, with discernment, listen to secular music, too.
You don't always have to listen. You know, and that's what we were brought up thinking. If you didn't have a Howes Anderson Quartet CD in your CD player on repeat, and that was the only thing you listened to all the time,
then, you know, you're sinning and you're wrong. I can't tell you how many times I've had to burn CDs after coming home from camps when, you know, you just use a little bit of discretion. There's nothing wrong with secular music as long as there's nothing sinful in it.
Brett, you said Creed, and I had to look them up because it's been so long since I've listened to Creed. Creed is doing a concert series with Three Doors Down.
Oh, wow. I don't know if you can get a better lineup than Creed and Three Doors Down in a group to sing. So many millennials are going to be at that concert. It's just going to be all millennials.
I'm there for it. I'm just going to spend some, Brett, they're doing a lineup here. They're going to be in Little Rock, Arkansas. They're going to be in Texas.
They're not going to be in North Carolina, unfortunately. Oh, this is incredible.
Man, you just brought me back to my high school, middle school years. This is fantastic. Man, I love it.
I'm going to be merciful to our audience and not do my Creed impression for them. So, hey, I'll save that for the Patreon.
There we go. As soon as we get done with this, I'm listening to a Creed and Three Doors Down song. All right. Brett, give us number three. So, we're discerning what we listen to. We're guarding our heart. What's the next thing? Next thing is remember that music can help or hinder your spirit.
Because, listen, music has power. And, you know, think about in the Bible, think back to 1 Samuel 16 where you had David. You know, Saul had an evil spirit on him. And David came in and played his heart, which, like I said earlier, was not like a heart like we think.
It was more like a lyre, almost like a guitar of the day. And David would play that. And it soothed Saul.
It soothes that evil spirit and brought a good spirit on him. Music has an effect on you. There's nothing like, listen, there's nothing like being in a service.
And, man, that worship music just getting a hold of you and moving you. And you just forget about everything else in your life. And you forget about your bills.
You forget about your job. You forget about the doctor's appointment you got. And all you're thinking about in that moment, the only thing in your brain is worshiping God. And it feels like you're worshiping alone.
Like, yes, there are other people in that room. But in that moment, you're so in tune with worshiping God that it feels like there's nobody but you and God in that room.
There's nothing like that. And nothing can bring you in to the presence of God faster than music. It has that much power.
Yeah. And you're so true on that, Brett. Because there's been times where I'll just be in a funk or in a style that's just not right. And I don't listen to Pandora.
I have Apple Music. And so they have your station that is just a combination of the songs you have downloaded, the stuff that's in your Apple Music, all these different things. And so for me, it's a mix between Southern gospel, contemporary, country love songs.
And I'll just hit my station and a song will come on.
You know, maybe a Getty song that I just hadn't heard in a while. And all of a sudden, my firm foundation is on the Lord. And it just begins to minister to me and changes my spirit in a way that is so powerful.
Because music has that effect. Worship has that effect. Our lifestyle has that effect.
You've been on a mission trip before or in your community serving. And you go and you help someone. You serve them by worshiping and loving with them. And you walk away blessed more than that person that you just served. Because your actions affect the way your attitude is.
And we've got to remember that when we begin to have worship, when we begin to fellowship with God, it changes every part of our body.
Not just our emotions, but it changes our actions. It changes who we are and what we are designed to do. Which leads us to our next part, number four, for this one. Worship is more than music. Worship is more than music.
I'll label it like this. It's our whole life. Romans 12, 1 and 2. I'm going to flip to it real quick.
Most of you probably could say it by heart. And I probably could too. But I don't want to butcher. I want to read this and maybe read it a little slower than what we would maybe read it before. Because this is a summation of what our life should be. It says, Therefore,
brothers, I beseech you, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
Don't be conformed to this world. But be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove which is your good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Because this is our life.
It's our whole life to be worshiping the Lord. It is a sacrifice of who we are. And where it's a sacrifice of saying, God, if it's my time, you can have it. If it's my body, you can have it.
If it's my actions, you can have it. If it's I'm driving to a store and I see someone and I want to help. It's everything that we do is part of our worship. It's more than just music.
But music is a huge part of it. Music is powerful and it's a mighty thing in our life. But it's more than that. And when we understand that it's more than that, we understand that it is our bodies that we are sacrificing, that we are giving God everything that we have.
You know, McDonald's sells more than just hamburgers. Right. Amazon sells more than just books. And so that means that worship is more than just the music portion of your service on Sunday morning. Music is so much. In fact, the key elements of worship encompass so much more than music. Now, music certainly is a significant part of it.
Elements of Worship
But doing some research, there's about nine different key elements of worship. And they are public prayers, vocal and instrumental music, public testimonies, financial contributions, public scripture reading, expositional preaching, observing the ordinances, speaking words of spiritual encouragement,
and confessing faults. Listen, when you gather as a church to worship God, you should engage in all of these activities. And you should do it with an attitude of awe, a heart of submission, an expectation to serve.
And, you know, and not every worship gathering is going to feature every one of these elements. But all of these elements should regularly occur in our worship and gatherings to some degree with one another. And just like Romans 12, one, we present our bodies.
That is our worship is when you present your body to God, when you make a sacrifice to God, when you when you worship him in any way.
And that's singing, that's prayer, that that's studying the Bible. All this is a part of our worship. You're giving and we need to not relegate our worship to just music.
Worship is so much more. Yeah, I'll read one more passage of scripture before we get into the Psalms here. First Corinthians 1031.
It says it like this. Very familiar passage of scripture. Therefore, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.
And I think when we get to that point in our life where we can say everything I'm doing, whether it's walking down the street, whether it's sitting down and eating a dinner with my family, whether it's sitting outside and hanging out and lounging on the back porch,
whatever I'm doing, it's for the glory of God. It's I'm going to give God the glory. It's it's looking out and seeing the trees and seeing the animals run around the trees.
And you're saying, God, you made that. God, you made me to be in this spot for a specific reason, to see those animals, to be a part of this culture, to be a part of this world at this specific time so that I can influence this world for this specific time.
And it's understanding that God has created us for that purpose. And we give glory back to God in everything we do. And that is what worship is.
It's every area of our life, not just when we're at church for a couple hours singing and preaching and listening to people sing to us. It's more than that.
It's our whole life. It's giving worship back to God every area of our life. And so Psalms 100.
Brennan, I'll have you read that because these are this psalm is a fantastic psalm on how we can worship God, ways we can worship God.
But I preached this simple four-point outline just the other day, and I thought it would be helpful for us. And so we're not going to preach it today. We're just going to give these thoughts to you and help you out a little bit. So Psalms 100.
Brett, read it for us. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness.
Come before his presence with singing. Know that the Lord, he is God. It is he who has made us, not we ourselves. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. Be thankful to him and bless his name. For the Lord is good, his mercy endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations. That's so good. It's such a powerful psalm because it begins by starting out.
This is the Psalm of David who begins by saying publicly everywhere we go, we should be praising the Lord.
We should be making a joyful noise unto all the earth. As I was thinking through this and even meditating on this as we were preparing for this, the thought came to my mind. This is doing,
worshiping Jesus, making a joyful noise in front of other people. This is not just in our private time.
This is, and we're going to get to that. He gets to it in verse three, but in verse one, he starts out by saying this should be public. This should be a joyful noise.
I've never met someone who goes outside and makes a noise and I can't hear them if they're around my house. My kids, they go outside and they're playing and they're jumping on the trampoline and they're moving dirt around the house and they're making noise and I hear them.
Because they're public, they're outside, they're doing things, they're making things happen. They're moving things around. They're getting on each other's nerves. And when we are in public, we should be making a noise unto the Lord. We should be making this thought around what we're doing all about Jesus because Jesus is worth it.
Jesus is worth it for everything that we do. And so we should be making a joyful noise everywhere we go. Brett? Brett.
You know, I remember whenever I was a teenager, I was pulling up to a restaurant to pick up my buddy. And, you know, I had my windows down. It was the summer and I was playing, you know, a worship song on the radio.
And, you know, I wasn't trying necessarily to make it to where people heard it.
It was just a normal thing that I do. And I remember stopping and I remember a lady stopping me after I got out of my car and said, you know, you encourage me with that song.
Hearing that song come from you, you're a teenager, you're, you know, you're listening to country music or not worship music, country music on the brain. But you're listening to worship music.
And I think that's just a good thing. I just want to let you know it was such an encouragement to me. And I don't say that to ring my own bell. It's that we should be constantly praising God.
It says make a joyful noise. So you don't have to sing well. You just have to sing. Listen, you shouldn't just give a sacrifice of praise on Sunday.
Sunday is not the only day you're allowed to be happy. See, you are, we are the church wherever we go.
So we should praise God outside the walls of the church as well. Going down the street, mowing the lawn, in line at the grocery store, wherever you're at.
We should regularly sing praises to God. Just like you quoted Colossians 3.16. We're to admonish one another with songs, hymns, and spiritual songs.
So I'm, so yes, I'm singing to God, but I'm also singing for your benefit. I'm singing to admonish you, to encourage you, to remind you of the truth. That's our ministry to one another. So yes, we definitely need to sing publicly.
Now, the second part, and I'll go into this second part here. Serve the Lord with gladness, come before his praise with singing. So first publicly, and then we should praise the Lord. You know, we should praise with our family. You know, we equate that to, you know, family, devotions,
worship, and just do something with your family. You know, we have family devotions.
It doesn't have to be the same thing every time. But, you know, the kids need to see you pray.
Family Worship Practices
The kids need to see you worship God. The kids need to see you read the Bible. James, what does your family devotion look like? Well, Brett, we've done so much variety over the years.
When this verse says, serve the Lord, I get this sense of that we should be together, serving together.
We have every night, without fail, as much as humanly possible, I pray together with each of my kids individually. And so we do a, I have a song that I sing with them. It's the same song every single night.
I have a poem that I read to them every single night, same thing. And then I pray with them. But on top of that, and we've been busy these last couple of months, and so we have failed to do some of this. But in the past, we have done the catechisms.
We have done the Little Pilgrim's Progress.
We have done the Bible story, Easter Bible story, where you begin and you begin at Christmas and you read the birth of Jesus. And you read through his life and you end at the resurrection on Easter Sunday. And we've done that through the Bible reading time.
But I say all that to say, sometimes we'll just be sitting there and we'll throw a worship song on TV and we'll just worship and we'll just sing. And that would be our devotion time. But everything we're doing, we're pointing our kids back to Jesus.
They make a bad grade in school. And I pray for them and I say, Lord, be with their mind. Help them to focus more.
Help them to – everything we do, we're trying to bring them back into the reality that we don't do this alone. We are here and we are created to come before his presence and sing you.
When I'm taking that test at school, I'm in front of God and I'm in front of his presence. And I need to glorify him with gladness in that moment. And so it's constantly reminding our kids everything we can do to bring them back into the presence of the Lord.
And so for us, it's always looking different. We don't – I told Allie years ago, my wife, I said, I don't want to get into the point where every night it's me preaching my Sunday message to them and using them as a test subject.
I don't want this to be a Sunday school lesson every night before we go to bed because what they're going to do is they're going to begin to resent that. They're going to begin to resent church.
I said, I want worship to be fun. I want worship to be exciting. I want it to be a time where they look forward to it.
They look forward to me coming in their room and it's just me and Jade. It's just me and Brody.
And eventually it will just be me and Hudson where I am just spending that last couple of minutes before they go to bed with them. And it's some of my most memorable times as a parent. Amen.
I agree. I think that mixing it up, there's no formula. There's no set way to do it. There's nothing that says you have to do it this way. Bible reading, worship time, incorporate different things.
It doesn't have to be a cookie cutter thing. And I think variety and family devotion time is a wise thing. The kids will remember it. And like you said, they'll look forward to it. Definitely.
Yeah. Next up, we see we start publicly. We begin to enter into his presence with singing family. But then in verse three, it says this.
No, Lord begins to be very personal. He is God. It is he who has made us, specifically talking about us and not we ourselves. We are his people and the sheep of his pastures. And so I title it this way, publicly, family, privately.
This is the times where we have our own private devotions, where maybe it's a song that we're singing and,
or maybe it's a scripture that we read that we begin to meditate on the goodness of God, the greatness of God, who he is and what he's done for us. We had Jason Riddle come and do a marriage conference for us. And he mentioned the, the, the spiritual disciplines of silence and solitude,
meditation, prayer, tithing, giving of ourselves. And, and he began to think about these things. And me and him were, this was just me and him talking personally. And he said, oftentimes the spiritual disciplines, we felt, we failed to do, sorry about that.
We failed to do because we just weren't taught right how to do them.
And he said, oftentimes when we get into a spiritual discipline of just meditation, where we just focus on a passive scripture and we just allow it to turn over and over in our mind, we allow it to turn over and over in our hearts.
It changes the way we act and think because scripture is impacting our life.
You know, we, we live in such a busy world that silence is, is a taboo topic.
It's hard for us to sit in silence, but that's what Jesus would do. He would get alone on a mountain. He would pray and he would sit in silence because he knew he needed it. And it's a lost art that we have.
And when we need to get back to this point where we are able to have private loving devotion with the Lord, where we're meditating, we're praying, we're praising, we're, we're throwing a song on.
Private Worship Importance
We're just worshiping the Lord, but it's gotta be privately. We're going to have times where it's public when our family, but we've got to be times where we're working on ourselves as well. You know, Jesus is our ultimate example.
And how many times do we see in the gospels that he went off by himself alone in the wilderness, in nature, getting close to God? You know, I'm reminded of Matthew 6, 6 here.
And even though it's part of it, it's Matthew 6, 6 is about prayer. You know, prayer is an act of worship. And Matthew 6, 6 says, but you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door,
pray to your father who is in secret and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. Listen, life is busy. I mean, the phone is ringing. The TV is blaring.
The kids are fighting. The dog is yapping. How in the world can we find time in this busy world to get alone with God and pray and worship and read the Bible privately, alone, go off by ourselves? How can we find time to do that? Well, we have to make time.
You have to decide to carve out time in your schedule to worship privately, to pray privately, to get alone with God.
You know, there's an old saying, if you fail to plan, then you can plan to fail. You know, you have to plan time. You have to schedule that alone time with God.
And see, the thing is, is that, you know, we prioritize things in our lives according to how important they are to us.
You know, if something's important enough to you, you will find time to do it. We're going to find time to eat that supper.
You know, we're going to find time to watch our favorite show, you know, because those things are important to us. Well, alone time with God and worshiping privately should be more so important to us.
And we'll find, if we make it a priority, we'll find time to do it. And then we'll go into number four, which is corporately. So we've got publicly, family, we've got privately.
And now verse four and five, we're going to worship corporately. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, into his courts with praise. Be thankful to him and bless his name. For the Lord is good and his mercy endures forever. His faithfulness to all generations. So this is us corporately getting together.
And like I said earlier, you don't have to sing well. You just have to sing. But when we get together and we sing corporately together as a church, as the body of Christ, that is our opportunity to give our sacrifice of praise as priests in his service.
And that sacrifice of praise is the fruit of our lips. You know, James,
you know this, and I know this. When you are in a church and everybody that's in that service is singing, and I mean everybody, and everybody's participating, it's just a different vibe.
I mean, it can change the whole feel of the church. And when visitors come into a church like that and everybody's singing loud, man, they automatically think, wow, man, there's something special about this church.
You know, there's something special here. The people here are invested. They're saying, man, I'm looking around and everybody's singing. I've never been a part of a service like this. Let me give a little illustration about this. Me and you went to Israel.
Now, there were some things that I knew were going to have an effect on that I didn't know were going to have an effect on me.
But then there were things that I knew, yeah, this is going to have a big impact on me. One of those was the Garden of Gethsemane.
But the other thing that I knew was going to have an effect on me was the Garden Tomb. And we sat there on those bleachers, and she said, this is Calvary over here.
And she pointed to a cliff. It was a bus station down below. It was a Muslim cemetery up top. And you could just make out the skull in the side of the cliff face. But we were 30 yards away from where Jesus shed his blood.
Now, it might not be the place, but all evidence points to this being the place where Jesus died. And then we walked past the wine press in the garden where Joseph of Arimathea, it was a commercial garden. So they dug down and found the wine press.
And then we went into the empty tomb. You know, it was just I never in my life thought that I would be in that empty tomb. And I almost did not want to leave. I took some pictures. I took video.
They told us not to stay in there a long time. But I lingered longer than I should because I did not want to leave that tomb.
And James, you know that after we left that tomb, we went into a side room where we would take communion. And we took the Lord's Supper and we ate the bread that represented his flesh. We drank the wine that represented his blood.
And then we began to sing. Now, this is a group of 30 pastors.
So when we sing, we're all going to sing, just all 30 of us. And we're going to sing loud at the top of our lungs.
And, man, we sang in Christ alone. And listen, I've been in bigger worship services before, but I've never been in a bigger,
more impactful, spirit-filled service than 30 pastors in one room singing at the top of their lungs in Christ alone.
Because when we sing, when we corporately worship God together, that invites the presence of God.
And it was so powerful and it was so moving. And as we walked out of that room,
our tour guide was standing at the door. He was a lost Jewish man named Amir.
And this lost Jewish man turned to Marcus, our leader, and said, man, that was powerful, wasn't it?
So even a lost man could recognize the power that's in a service when every Christian that's participating,
when they give it their all, they engage, they sing. Man, it invites the presence of God. There's nothing like it.
You know, once again, I know we've read this verse two or three, maybe even five times, but it applies so much. Colossians 3, 16. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you with all wisdom,
teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. We're to admonish one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Encourage each other.
Remind each other of the truth. And there's nothing better than corporate worship when everybody's participating. Absolutely, Brett, man.
That was bringing me back emotionally just now thinking about that. I've got all that on video. I'm going to look it up here in a minute and listen to that in Christ alone because I recorded all the audio while I was in there. I want to share two moments with you just corporately.
So years ago, six years ago, we went to a call together for the gospel.
I think it was like five or six thousand pastors got together in the Yale Monitorium there in Kentucky. And I was up on the balcony, third floor, I think. And just hearing all those men sing together corporately, we're just worshiping the Lord,
was like nothing else as well. But I want to share this one other time because oftentimes we will,
the argument will be, well, why do I need to be in church? Why do I need to be around people? Why do I need to worship with other people? Well, I have the opportunity as lead pastor. I know what I'm preaching.
I know where the Lord's leading me. And so I'll send some songs that have impacted me as I am preparing for my message to our music leader. And I'll say, hey, these are maybe some songs we could practice, our choir could sing, or we could sing as a congregational.
And it's happened more than once in the last six months.
But I'll send a song and then I'll be listening to it, preparing my heart, preparing my mind for the worship and for the word that I'm going to be preaching. But when we get together as a church and we sing that song together, it's like the Lord uses it in a different way.
Because I'm hearing these other voices, not just the professionals on the soundtrack,
but these other voices that are singing along with me. And we're just worshiping together. And I'll find myself oftentimes just sort of broken with tears and not having the words to say because corporately we're coming together. We're worshiping the Lord.
And it's just something about that because God has commanded, even in Psalms 111, it says, praise the Lord.
I will give thanks to the Lord with all my heart, not just part of it, not just at times when I'm feeling happy, but with all my heart in the company of the upright and in the assembly.
There's just something about coming together, worshiping the Lord with fellow brothers and sisters who love Jesus, who love one another, who want to see the gospel move forward. And ultimately, when we begin to think of worship and music in our life, it's more than just music.
I want us to understand that because worship is not just getting together on Sunday morning at 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock and singing a couple of songs. It is every single moment of our day, every single moment of our life, worshiping the Lord in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
And it's an active service every single day. Brett, any final words?
I just think that this is such a great subject to talk about. When I came out of legalism, I was lost. I had no reference.
I really didn't know what was right, what was wrong. I had to kind of fumble through the dark in this subject to kind of find my way, do my own research.
Closing Thoughts on Worship
And while that was good and was healthy, I just wanted a resource to kind of guide me through it. And so I'm glad we're doing this. I think that it's a great subject. Music is important.
Worship is more than music, although music is a big part of it. It's a big part of our Christian life. It's a big part of our church life, our worship life. And I'm just glad we have this conversation. Absolutely.
And until next time, to God, not the pastor, be the glory. I found my new name. I found that good grace.
I found that healing. And the tears fell down my face when I found my beginning that has no ending. I found that second chance. I found my best friend. I found my forgiveness. I found my happiness. I've been singing ever since. I found my freedom in you.
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