"Music from the Heart" - Ronald L. Dart

and welcome to all our visitors and uh it's good to be back home again greetings for all the brethren in bermuda we had a very nice meeting with the with the little church over there we had bible studies with them on both sabbath and on sunday uh in our recent visit and the weather in bermuda was hot to say the very least there's an interesting thing that happened to me on my first trip to bermuda i was sitting on the veranda of the hotel one night and i could hear what seemed to me it would be wind chimes around the place and i thought that's really charming and just a nice pleasant velvety evening you know with the little wind chimes in the distance and so forth well i got up from the hotel round and walked down to meet a friend i was meeting for dinner he was about a half mile away at the restaurant as i walked i would pass house after house and i would hear the same wind chimes and it did finally strike me as being very odd and illogical that every home in bermuda would have precisely the same wind chimes at every house so i asked my friend about this and he said oh those aren't wind chimes they're frogs the tree frogs in bermuda sound like wind chimes they have a peculiar little bell-like sound i've never heard it in any creature before or since or anywhere else on the face of the earth there are little tiny frogs about the size of your thumbnail of a you know they're they're very small but but when you get a gaggle of them together they make an incredible music this year it was hotter when we got there and there were more of them and i don't know that i would ever made the mistake of thinking they were wind chimes this year because they were everywhere they were nearly on the on the veranda of the of the hotel and just the sound was just everywhere coming at you from these beautiful little things and i thought there are many ways to praise god and singing is only one of them the singing seems to be very high on the list of the things to do to praise god and in fact all nature sings to god even little frogs the size of your thumbnail now i don't know what those frogs are doing singing all night long you would think that if it was a mating song that they were doing that they would meet somebody and get it over with and it would be the end of it and they would slowly after a few days it would all die down as everybody paired off but it doesn't it goes on all night long at the same pace it's still going at dawn uh it will be going tomorrow night it will be going i think every night of the year remember me to all this there's a time when it gets a little too cool for them to do it and i don't think there is such a time in bermuda this wonderful climate and the things seeing everywhere for example in oklahoma this last summer we were up there at summer camp and the tree frogs in oklahoma are different from here the tree frogs in oklahoma at least all of them the same tree chirp on the same beat i've never heard anything like it know i walked outside i was waiting for ally we were going to go over to have dinner with the kids or i mean i think it was over for the team dance and and that was the first time i had really realized what i was hearing but every frog i could hear was exactly on the same beat it was chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp if those things had been you know bigger frogs they would have actually broken the trees down because they were in such a a rhythmic thing every once in a while they would get out of phase and then they would work their way back into phase again and it was as though it depended on the distance if you stood in one place you would hear this these frogs here all together but you would hear the frogs in that set of trees over there at a little different cadence going along and if they were close enough though they seemed to want to come back to it all nature sings to god even in oklahoma it would seem and then and then there was our experience on the banks of the buffalo river camping out when as you lie there at night your sleeping bag and the tree frogs get going you all almost feel like you need ear plugs in order to sleep they are so along the river they are amplified i guess by the by the bluff across the way and they will get so bad at night that you you really do feel like something needs to happen for you to get this out this sound out of your ears they are very loud very persistent after a while just like in bermuda though you get used to them and they become a part of the music that god created on his earth on the buffalo they're accented by these giant bull frogs who go chug or um up and down the river and you'll hear them up and down and then the other accent comes in which is the whipper will and there will be one down there and one way up there and one over here and between the three of them on the riverbank at night and the frogs and all that it makes an incredible symphony of singing to god from nature all nature sings every bird has its own call there is this distinctive squawk of the cardinal which is not like any other bird there's the chirp of the sparrow the chirp of the wren there's i mean bird birders know these calls and they can tell you what bird is listening to and god one day for reasons of his own which i don't really understand decide he would create the mockingbird who would do it all and that bird is unbelievable if those of you who live in the south know the way in which a mockingbird will start off with one bird and then make his way through his whole repertory and then go back and start all over again and you wonder what on earth is he doing who's he trying to fool no self-respecting cardinal is going to go over there once it sees him and mate with him he can forget that that's not what it's all about i just believe they are all singing the praises and the glory of god and even the great whales sing the huge humpback whales put out a song that is so distinctive and so unusual and so strange now having thought about this wouldn't it be odd to learn that god enjoyed or actually preferred only one kind of music seeing he has created this incredible panoply or variety of music in his own hand that he made himself and when he had his chance of making music for himself he made an incredible variety of it on every kind of instrument on every possible way that would sing his praises here on this earth songs in every style every idiom songs in the air songs under the water uh would you take a hymnal and take a look with me would you pass me a hymnal right here please i forgot to bring it up with i'd like to point out a couple of things in the hymnal hymn number 140 is of singular interest in this regard it's a beautiful song somebody recently uh no that's not the one i wanted let's see if i missed myself he's 150. just a few digits over that's what i get for going from memory this is my father's world now somebody decided to make an issue recently that's not god's world this is the devil's world you know and so forth well the society may be the devils but the planet belongs to god let's understand making our distinctions here this song is so beautiful it's this is my father's world and to my listening ears all nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres this is my father's world and i rest me in the thought of rocks and trees of skies and seas his hands the wonders wrought this is my father's world the birds their carols raise the morning light the lily white declare their maker's praise this is my father's world he shines in all that's fair in the rustling grass i hear him pass he speaks to me everywhere this is my father's world oh let me never forget that though the wrong seems off so strong god is the ruler yet this is my father's world the battle is not done jesus who died and saturday shall be satisfied and earth and heaven be one that's a marvelous hymn and it speaks a truth that i think is sometimes forgotten in our worship that this is our father's world and that in him and in in this world we see him everywhere we encounter his beauty we encounter his creativity recount all the things that he has done and then paul comes along and says this for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made even his eternal power and his divinity and there are so many things to learn from nature one day i mean some years ago when i had a little more time for myself before i retired i used to play around with roses a lot and one day as i was working with some roses i had got there were particularly beautiful roses it dawned on me that god did not create this rose god did not create the american beauty he did not create this particular beautiful blush crimson creamy bodied rose with the blush tips around he did not god did not create that rose what he did create was a a certain set of genuses of wild roses which had within them the capacity to make any number a variety of roses that you and i might wish to make of them that god created the basic as in music he created the ear he created the tonality he created the laws which actually make music what it is and he actually created man in such a way that man would resonate with music in certain ways he then left it to man to create the music to make the music and to do things with it just like with the rose he left it to man to have the joy to actually share in the in the possibility of creation to share in the joy of being able to create something that is uniquely ours that we have done he gave us the power to create a whole new rose and introduce it to the world just as he gave man the power to create a whole new song in praise of god and introduce it to the world this is my father's world there are many ways many styles in which to sing and to sing praises to god there is a familiar scripture it's in colossians chapter 3. he says in verse 15 let the peace of god rule in your hearts to the which you are called in one body and be you thankful let the word of christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing with grace in your hearts to the lord now it's interesting there are three different styles of singing here psalms hymns spiritual songs but the most revealing words in this passage are not those they are what we are to do with these psalms and hymns and spiritual songs do you notice that teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs now how would you do that well turn back to pit to hymn number 149 well we're right there that's nowhere to go came number 149 yield not to temptation this is a song which we can sing and admonish one another in a spiritual song yield not to temptation for yielding is sin each victory will help you some other to win fight manfully onward dark passions subdue look ever to jesus he'll carry you through ask the savior to help you comfort strengthen and keep you he is willing to aid you he will carry you through that's the way you admonish one another you know say come on now don't give up hang in there fight this battle you can win it this is something we're supposed to do to admonish one another in spiritual songs shun evil companions bad language disdain god's name hold in reverence don't take it in vain be thoughtful and earnest kindhearted and true look ever to jesus he'll carry you through to him that overcometh god giveth a crown through faith we shall conquer the law often cast down he who is our savior our strength will renew look ever to jesus he'll carry you through ask the savior to help you comfort and strengthen and keep you he is willing to aid you he will carry you through i mean these are marvelous things you know to admonish one another in a song and these songs can touch our hearts the thoughts can catch our attention the songs can change our lives and change our focus and the way we react what about teaching i mentioned teaching one another look back at number 26 hymn number 26. now this is a teaching song to god be the glory great things he has done so loved he the world that he gave us his son who yielded his life and atonement for sin and opened the life gate that all may go in praise the lord praise the lord let the earth hear his voice praise the lord praise the lord let the people rejoice oh come to the father through jesus the son and give him the glory great things he has done 3 great things he has taught us great things he has done great our rejoicing through jesus the son but purer and higher and greater will be our wonder our transport when jesus we see that all these things and and the teaching of the word of god through these songs goes again and again and again and that's why paul writing to the ephesians says this don't be drunk with wine where is an excess but be filled with the spirit speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs there they are again the three making melody in your heart to the lord giving thanks always for all things unto god and the father in the name of our lord jesus christ psalms and hymns and spiritual songs now the psalms we all know the psalms are fairly straightforward and we go to them and seeing many hymns that are drawn from them some hymns i think that are drawn from the psalms you may not even initially realize are until perhaps you look it up hymns on the other hand are well they're fairly straightforward we know what they are too the word comes from an obsolete greek word accident means to celebrate but what's a spiritual song you know psalms hymns spiritual songs actually you can do your word searches on spiritual through the bible and it isn't really going to help a great deal because it doesn't ever get around to giving you a handle on specifically what would be the difference between a spiritual song and a hymn or a psalm and of course it's possible that some of the psalms may even have be categorized as spiritual songs or hymns because in fact i think not all of the psalms are called psalms in the in the titles that's just the title of the entirety of the book now we used to have what we called a negro spiritual and i don't know what they call that anymore since we don't use the word negro anymore uh but anyway it's a it's a musical genre i think which had some of the greatest music ever to be sung by men in praise or or in in in calling out to god because not all of it would ca but would be categorized i think as as praise some really great music was written in the form we call the negro spiritual most of us know these songs in a a modified form that is in an arrangement that some choral director or some musical uh composer has done it's really though great music mostly the uh it's interesting that most negro spirituals were based on the old testament there's a funny thing about that but i think one of the reasons were because they identified so heavily with slavery with egypt with moses with pharaoh and with the story of the liberation of the slaves and so music that originated inside of slavery would be reaching out to say let's we want to leave this place such as go down moses one of those great songs go down moses way down in egypt land tell old pharaoh let my people go boy that's one that would raise the hair on the back of your neck and you think about it being a song sung in slavery at a time when people were held contrary to their will have been shipped across the ocean on boats where most of them died you know in the in the course of the crossing and just had their bodies turned thrown over the side to the sharks and the crabs realizing how these people were and what their yearnings and their hopes were some of these spirituals are powerful powerful music there's a also in the mind of the spiritual a strong connection between moses and jesus and i don't think this is not a sophisticated theological matter of well there's that one prophet there's moses and there's going to be a prophet later like him we don't we don't worry with that what we're concerned about is the comparison with what they did moses went down into egypt and told pharaoh let my people go and he set him free in egypt and so along comes the spiritual it says sweet little jesus boy laid you in a manger sweet little holy child they didn't know who he was didn't know you came to save us lord came to set us free sweet little jesus boy they didn't know who he was and you can see again the the the uh mode of freedom and the idea of freedom being saved being liberated salvation to a slave meant much more i think than it does some of us living in the 20th century whose lives are working good health and everything's okay living in our own homes paying off our mortgage is just fine we don't think in terms of saving in the same way someone who is a slave working his life out seven days a week on somebody else's property and dying at a much younger age because of the work he's doing and the lack of health care and all the rest of stuff that goes with it we don't think of it in the same thing you know it'd be easy to dismiss these songs as theologically unsophisticated but i think that would be a mistake the theology is really quite deep whenever you look at these songs when you analyze what they're trying to say in them the thing about them is it is simple and it has a life application it is these songs are completely and totally relevant to the lives these people were living at the time and because of the way they came from the heart as a result of the lives they were living these songs have a depth that often is missing in contemporary hymn knowledge humanity and so forth which i always find to be so deep river for example one of the great favorites taps into the jordan river is the boundary between this life and the next life again a very strong theme that goes through all hymns all the way back from the negro spiritual to the old ancient 17 18th century 19th century hymns that were written in england or wherever else the idea of the river jordan as being the boundary between this life and the next life between the wilderness and the promised land between this world and and the kingdom of god and the old spiritual says deep river my home is over jordan deep river lord i long to cross over to campground now this is music at its most basic it expressed a hope and a longing that you just you know it's one thing to sit there and say well i'm really looking forward to the next life but that doesn't say what deep river says it doesn't say that there's a bear that there's a barrier between me and that next life and that it's deep and wide and cold it doesn't it doesn't say of how i speak as deeply of the longing that i have for a better world a better life a better chance it's just not there and so people really i mean just to say the words does not say what the music said and so god gave us music he designed us to create music he designed music to be created he made the laws that make music possible and in fact as you go back in time you find even you know three thousand years before christ you find people who were actually putting together musical scales musical systems the ancient babylonian had a had a a seven note scale very much like our major keys today that the the reason why they had these was because the musical laws have been there since there was a man and so consequently the tonality the harmonies these things fall naturally to the human ear it's really fascinating when you go to africa and here's this there's a particular style of african singing uh all male and all female they almost always separate these in africa that has a harmony to it that is rich and powerful and strong and they seem to fall naturally into this you know in the work songs among people who are working at a job because the harmonies are natural they are a part of law music at its best i suppose that black gospel may be an outgrowth of this of the spiritual i've never really been able to develop a taste for black gospel but it's a legitimate musical idiom and it speaks very very strongly to the black culture it's highly interpretive it's one of the things that that and and innovative i should say an improvisational which is something that too many people it it seems strange and falls strangely to the ear but the reason why it is uh so uh improvisational is because it's a free form giving you the ability to be expressive in what it is you're singing and saying as opposed to just bang bang bang bang bang going by the rhythm and singing the notes all at the same intensity like we often do in the way we sing our hymns in church well black gospel as i said gives you a a chance to interpret in a way that most hymns do not i once heard a an old black gentleman saying great is thy faithfulness a song that we have in our hymnal he sang it in that style and it was it was a subdued style but it was highly interpretive in the in the black gospel style and it was one of the most powerful presentations that song i have ever heard and it touched my heart deeply in a way nothing had ever done before so much of our singing is by rote and it has no heart to it black gospel is supposed to be a remedy to that unfortunately black gospel like every other form of music easily degenerates into mere show all as all the idioms of music do and the interpretation is the the variations in the song are not so much to interpret the song and to make it more powerful to the hearer but they are to showcase the person who is actually doing the singing but that's just one of the things that happens in music then there's southern gospel which is closely related to country but when i say that i'm talking about a country music that is much much older than what you hear on the radio today as you tune around country stations what you're hearing there is a i don't know what to call it exactly but it's some sort of a move it's moved a long way frankly toward pop culture and the instrumentation is the same the style is the same and one of the things that strikes me so much about what i hear today is that the heart seems to have gone out of it not long ago i i hadn't discovered an old tape of mine of merle haggard one of his earlier tapes and i popped it in my truck and listened to it going home from work and one day and i thought to myself what an incredible difference between this music and what i'm hearing now in country music it isn't so much a question of the skill of the performer or the style of the performer what it was and it wasn't a question of of the fact that that merle haggard songs were less than you know about drinking and getting drunk and the troubles of life and so forth and modern country music is but the difference was that it really came from the heart that it actually had a uh a depth of feeling to it of real human experience and the pain of that experience i remember his his if we make it through december and you listen to him sing that song you realize that you know here's a poor working man struggling to make ends meet he's got kids he's got to take care of and he's saying if we can just make it through december we'll be okay but it's very much in doubt whether he's going to make it or not it's real these songs are and they speak to real people well that's the thing about southern gospel it was closely related to an old country and in some ways a lot like bluegrass would be today there's a funny little movie out i still haven't figured out whether i like it or not called oh brother where art thou which has some really fine southern gospel in it uh i had never uh you know about some of the songs i've heard before some of them i had not heard before i think maybe some of them they wrote for the movie i don't know in that in that idiom but that's that to me was probably the most remarkable thing about that movie i will probably watch it again for that if for nothing else but once again the music speaks to the hopes and fears of a culture in an idiom they will understand you got people living on the hills of appalachia farms rock scrabble farms farms where it's really hard to earn a living farms where it's hard to make things grow coming from the hills of arkansas i know how tough it can be to grow cash crops on that rocky soil up there well the music speaks to the hopes and fears of a culture in an idiom they will understand i can remember my grandfather sitting in his rocking chair rocking back and forth and singing a song that was his favorite was lord build me just a cabin in the corner of glory land where i can just see the savior's face and shake jesus hand you know it was a simple simple song and it spoke out of a culture to the heart of people who lived in that culture and is a very legitimate approach to music there is a both black and southern gospel could of course descend very quickly into nothing but performance but there's a real depth of the music that can touch you where you live and some of it has really taken on a classic value there was a song i remember many many years ago that was always done at that time in more of a country idiom but more recently has found its way into not into into a more traditional uh presentation by some choral groups it's precious lord take my hand lead me on let me stand i'm tired i'm weak i'm worn lead me on through the night lead me on to the light take my hand precious lord lead me home and you can see how how there are people at certain times of their life that they really speak to them you know it's dark it's cold it's i mean i'm lost i don't know where i'm going somebody needs to take hold of my hand here and lead me home and the marvelous word home you know which comes through so often in this music is important too now there's a tendency on our part to think that only one type of music is suitable for worship whereas in fact nearly any kind of music is is acceptable for worship provided certain conditions are met i'm going to go back to what paul said a minute ago and i want to paraphrase what i think he was really saying i really think that if you were translating this into the modern idiom if you were translating this as a dynamic equivalence translation as opposed to a word for word literalism what paul said is don't be drunk with wine wherein his excess be filled with the spirit speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing and making melody from the heart to the lord not just in your heart i think what paul means by his idiom is our modern idiom from the heart that you sing that you do your hymns and your psalms from the heart the whole idea behind both black and southern gospel is that they should be music from the heart but we all know that in both idioms that isn't always the case now what may be the most powerful of all religious music idioms is classical it's not everybody's cup of tea but the reason why i think and i'm not going to say that it's better for worship better suited for worship than any other form of music but there is a power in the classical music that is not available to other types because of the way in which it pulls together orchestras and choruses to do extremely complicated music in a powerful medium in an organized coordinated way with harmonies and so forth that you and i we don't like we don't have the skills to present it has all the skills of some of the most talented people who have ever lived behind it as far as the music is concerned it has the skills of great musicians very talented musicians people who spend their entire life doing nothing else but learning how to play one instrument to perfection the violinists the cellists you know the the people who play the the horns the for these those beautiful or magnificent english and french horns the the trumpet players the trombonist all of those who play these instruments in the big orchestras spend their lives at him if they're in a good orchestra they don't do much else except practice and play and practice and play because that's their life and you get these conductors who are musical geniuses who are able to pull all this talent together take a set of great voices and have a group of people and a great orchestra stand before us and sing hallelujah in the hallelujah chorus and make every hair on your body stand up this is incredibly powerful music there is in some classical music a true spiritual death not necessarily because the being themselves were spiritual this is something which will fall strangely on the ears of some people that is there's not because the men that were themselves were spiritual but because of the incredible gift that god had given them to write music for his glory god isn't as concerned about some of our snobbish attitudes about men and who what what organization or church they belong to or what their private life is like and one of the things that i i never had really realized it until i saw the movie movie amadeus i had heard stories about mozart's genius and what he was able to do even as a child and and but but watching the the part played out in the movie struck me so deeply and profoundly that this man has a gift from god he has a gift from god this is not something that just crops up occasionally in human genes you can't just breed box you can't breed handles you can't breed mozart's they come out of nowhere they carry with them for some reason how they got it i don't know a gift from god and there's one line in the movie i forget exactly what it was that that wolf gang ibanez mozart said to the king he said i know that i am a low and vulgar man but my music is not his music was not a reflection of his character his music was a reflection of the gift that god had given him there was an interesting story i read recently i i was fascinated by it because i had never imagined such a thing and i really wasn't that familiar with with bach johann sebastian bach the article was in a magazine called first things and it pointed out something that was rather striking japan is not a religious nation japan is in fact very ah religious they are a people more concerned with business than with religion and they are very logical in their approach to things they don't not emotional and so forth there's a different culture there and religion traditional religion has a terribly difficult time penetrating their ordinary evangelical efforts really don't go very far in missionaries in japan what was interesting was that that that what has made the deepest penetration among the intellectual or the smarter the more intelligent ranks of the people in japan in converting people to christianity has been the music of johann sebastian bach now the first when i first heard that i thought what you know why should that be but then i remembered something that had faded away the back of my memory i've never been a a an aficionado of bob but i began to realize no no bach wrote a great deal of religious music for choral works and what is significant about virtually everything that those composers did in those times many people don't realize this is that in it even in the masses that they wrote catholic masses that the words are scripture isn't something somebody invented it's things that come out of the bible that they set to music and so here are people listening to this incredible music and it is the man's music is staggering listening to this incredible music and hearing the words presented and interpreted from the bible in a way that touches their mind and touches their heart in such a way that no preacher could ever do it works it happens why did god do that i don't know maybe to that end maybe so that his glory could be better expressed and it may be more important to god that the man who writes the music be ex for to his glory be talented and gifted than it is that he is converted think about that because the greatest musician in the bible is a man named david who could say of him that he was a low and vulgar man at times in his life but his music was not so don't look at the man don't worry about the man consider the god who created music consider the god who at his discretion however he wants to is okay with me gives these incredible gifts of music if you've never seen the movie amadeus i certainly recommend it to you because it's a real interesting parable as it were of a man who wanted to do the music so bad whose heart initially was in the right place into the glory of god and wanted to do all these things but never got the gift that was given to a cheap and vulgar man what an it's a fascinating study the gift to make great music to glorify god does not always fall on noble men or even on converted men there is an incredible religious snobbery that says well a people who is not a person who's not a member of our church can't write music that is worthy for us to sing but let me help you understand that sometimes deeply flawed human beings can praise god deeply flawed human beings can do great things for god people who don't understand a lot about god can still occasionally on a narrow front say some very profound things about god because they come out of their life they come out of their heart and they come out of a unique experience of god sometimes sinners can write great music name one david there's another genre of music praise music i think to some degree what is today termed praise music is a reaction to traditional religious music and hymns and songs some people would consider traditional music stayed and stuffy that's what our hymnal is some people tend to be disturbed by emotional music by hand clapping by dancing and this type of thing that people do and yet the clapping of the hands is quite biblical and says as is the slapping of a tambourine these things which people would often may some people would find uncomfortable it would all clap as we sing a song or that somebody would whack a tambourine against their hip as we sing along with a song would make some people uncomfortable it would be very odd if we were to be found to be swaying to some piece of music and yet the tambourine is in the bible clapping your hands in joy as is in the bible these things are not wrong to do these are just our traditions that we get going from time to time now at the feast this year the music portion of one service one day will be devoted to the genre of playing a praise music the purpose of doing this is to open up our minds to different and greater expressions of worship to something different from what we have always done before to expand our horizons and make us realize there are more ways to worship god now there are those who believe that praise music is better than traditional hymns and so i prefer praise music rather than the traditional hymns that we have there this is just another kind of a musical snobbery you know you have snobbery and you have reverse snobbery that's there are people who are proud to be poor and look down their nose at rich people you know it's the way life goes some praise it praise music to me is like a chocolate bonbon it's very nice but i wouldn't want to make a meal out of it at a crc not long ago they they had set up the music for it and it was all praise music it was tapes that we could sing along they had song sheets and so forth i like the numbers i don't think there was a song they sang that i didn't like and enjoy the process of singing but at the end of the service i felt unfulfilled and i was kind of puzzling over myself as to why that was so and i realized some praise music is like a jalapeno pepper some praise music is like a salad some of it is like dessert but i find that not very much of it is meat and potatoes and this to me is there's an allegory that girls are an analogy i should say that grows out of this and the realization that there is a place for the jalapeno pepper there is a place for the salad there is a place for the dessert there is a place for the little chocolate bon bon but there has got to be somewhere along the line some meat and potatoes in this meal something substantial so that we feel when we go away that we have worshipped god across a broad front maybe in our line of worship and our tradition we have been lacking the salads or maybe we have been lacking the bon bon maybe we have been missing the little jalapeno from time to time these are things that we want to explore in the praise music service at the feast this year the reason why praise music is not enough on its own is probably best exemplified by the psalms i'm not going to take you to any particular psalms today because i won't have time i think ultimately to finish what i want to say if i do but some some psalms are praise some are a lamentation some of them david when he wrote those psalms i mean he was in the pit he was all the way down some of them are admonitory i mean they admonish you about just like he said teaching in admonition some of them tell you where you're wrong and you need to change some of them teach and listen there is a different musical idiom required for each of these kinds of psalm you need different approaches to different times of life circumstances of life crises of life joys of life you need different music for all these and you need to have in yourself the capacity to love and enjoy them all as you do then there is contemporary christian music there's one thing i should say before i get into this very brief section every hymn in our hymnal was contemporary at one time and there were people who didn't like it in fact if you go back and look at the dates on some of the hymns at the bottom of the page and some of the hymns in our hymnal you'll find you know the time in which this hymn was written what you may not realize is there were hundreds perhaps thousands of hymns written in that same period of time which have not come down to us today you might find them in a library somewhere but they exist in hardly any hymnals anywhere because no one ever sang them or if they sang them they sang them for a little while there are some songs that are fun for the moment and pleasant for the moment and uplifting for the moment but they don't wear well they may be too sweet they may be too strong they may be depressing they may be destroyed i mean who knows they may serve for the moment but when the moment is passed the song just doesn't register anymore contemporary christian music is a lot like pop it's here today and it's gone tomorrow what is contemporary today this is an important thing for you to understand if it is contemporary it means with the times if it is contemporary today it will be passe tomorrow and in fact if you go back not that many years you can find all kinds of contemporary christian music that has gone passe and nobody ever sings it anymore and unfortunately too much of it is commercial some contemporary music is good most of it is is mediocre some of it is downright bad and maybe one in a thousand may last and be sung a hundred years from now if there are people still here to sing it then there is this new genre called christian rock to my mind christian rock is problematic and has not found its voice i think there certainly is a place for drums in christian music there is a place for rhythm the rhythms of rock uh that i would not rule out in any shape or form but i don't find music that was designed for teenager for a teenage mating ritual to be suitable for divine worship and if you think about it most of most rock music you listen out there really what it really boils down to it's it's music designed for teenage mating rituals now taking that idiom and turning it to christian worship is a highly problematic exercise music is a language of its own it's important to be careful what it is that the music is saying he got words that say one thing and one of the biggest problems with with christian rock is it's very hard to understand the words but apart from that music says something apart from the words some rock music is plainly sexual in its language and its message and it's a real joke to take that music and try to use it for worship one young person commented that he thought church music was dull and boring and needed perhaps to be changed i have a bulletin for all the young people i find your music dull and boring just because it is loud and has a beat doesn't make it interesting or better music that people with sophisticated musical tastes will listen to it okay if it has a good christian message that's fine but they will find no joy in it we'll find no pleasure in it or find no worship in it because it's just loud it's got a beat and the music isn't that is it isn't music certainly true of rap now this may be just my opinion but to all the young people i say you are just as obligated to consider my taste as i am to consider yours in all these forms of music all of them classical country let's say southern gospel black gospel in all of them there is a temptation to turn it into a performance and a showcase for the talents of the performer and that is something we have to really watch out for in ourselves and the music we listen to and so forth where is this music coming from and where is it going is it coming from the heart and is it going to god is it teaching us is it admonishing us is it a spiritual song or is it just so much noise music has associations and rock is just one example of those associations another example is christmas the problem with christmas music or christmas carols is not with the music the problem is with some people who have been taught to hate the music i want you to think very carefully about that the problem is not the music the problem is inside people who have been taught to hate the music they have a conditioned response like pavlov's dog to loathe anything that has ever been associated with christmas if it's ever been even near december 25th it's suspect anything having to do with it has ever been sung in the presence of a christmas tree it's suspect if it's ever been around any of that type of thing it's considered wrong the problem with this is that the birth of jesus has been associated with christmas and people have been conditioned to loathe to hate and despise music that rejoices at the birth of the savior now what do you think about that people have been taught to hate music that rejoices at the birth of the savior of the world what can i tell you the problem is not with the music the problem is with those people who have been brainwashed against it and they need to get over it that attitude is impoverishing their worship of god there is a time and a place for everything there is a time to acknowledge the birth of jesus both in sermon and in song we would acknowledge everything great that god has done in sermon and in song we will be excited and sing praises to god for all the great events in god's history we will sing praises about the passover we'll sing praises about trumpets but here jesus christ is come in the flesh the one great confession that we must make is that jesus christ has come in the flesh we'll sing about it won't sermonize about it you know it's interesting mark didn't mention the birth of jesus but matthew and luke remedied that oversight and through research we are sure that jesus was born in the autumn and almost certainly between the feast of trumpets and the feast of tabernacles if not on one or the other of those days my own inclination is to think he was born on the opening night of the feast of tabernacles but i wasn't there so i can't tell you but the songs that we sing are so powerful and so rich and you know there's a funny thing about this i really believe that the birth of the savior the entry of the messiah into human flesh the the the coming of jesus christ in the world is such a powerful inspiration to musicians that the greatest some of the greatest music they have ever written has been made in honor of that event and there are some people who will not sing it no one won't sing it they won't listen to it they rushed to turn off the radio or turn off the television set if it comes on and yet you have a song like number 140 in our book oh come all ye faithful joyful and triumphant let's come to bethlehem let's let's rejoice over the birth of our savior i don't know if you realize maybe even how many of the songs in our book have to do with this event what we did when we put the hymnal together we felt it was time we started breaking people loose and helping people to turn loose of their prejudices and their hatreds that they have built up this to to change the conditioning you know finally you can retrain pavlov's dog well maybe we can re-change some of us to this conditioned response number 124 come thou long expected jesus born to set thy people free from our fears and sins release us let us find our rest in thee israel's strength and consolation hope of all the earth thou art dear desire of every nation joy of every longing heart born thy people to deliver born a child and yet a king born to reign in us forever now thy gracious kingdom bring by thine own eternal spirit rule ruin all our hearts alone by that all sufficient merit raise us to thy glorious throne these are great songs beautiful words incredible music that people have written and some of this music as we learned fits an awful lot of different different kinds of of words that people have put together some of the greatest music i said it was ever written was written to honor the birth of the savior to acknowledge that jesus christ is come in the flesh and probably one of the greatest hymns the most beautiful hymns ever composed by any man at any time is probably the one most loathed by some people who won't observe christmas i mean not of course we none of us observe christmas but who won't have anything to do with the music that used to be associated with christmas you know what it is don't you silent night silent night holy night all is calm all is bright round yawn virgin mother and child holy infant so tender and mild smiled sleep in heavenly peace sleep in heavenly peace but you know i i it this this song cropped up in the middle of a a cd i bought called hymns triumphant done by the london philharmonic and the london philharmonic choir and i had never really paid attention to the third verse of that hymn until i heard these people do it and it what brought me back to it was they did a change of it wasn't a key change it was a harmonic change moving the harmony to a different line so that i i came back listening more attentively as a result of it a silent night holy night son of god loves pure light radiance streams from thy holy face with the dawn of redeeming grace jesus lord at thy birth jesus lord at thy birth now i know we observe the passover as one of our most important days we celebrate the death of jesus christ the truth is there would have been no christ to die had he not first been born had he not come in the flesh and you know we really need to let go of some of the prejudices that we have built up some of the religious snobbery that that has turned us off to some really great music which can worship god honor god lift our hearts help us through the hard times help us to rejoice in the good times we we have our we we've given all that up in some cases given a lot of it up just simply because of our own religious or musical snobbery nothing else one of the great sonnets my favorite of all i think of of the sonnets began with these words which i memorized years ago how do i love thee let me count the ways we could easily you know say this to god and we could count the ways that we can sing praises to god from the heart

Channel: BornToWinCEM

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Keywords: Born to Win, Ronald L. Dart, CEM

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Length: 51min 34sec (3094 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 27 2020