We've all been hurt.
We all have scars.
And through a relationship with Jesus Christ, we can all overcome and we can all be healed.
Welcome to Healing Scars with Pastor Burton.
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Sanctuary.
Now before we get started, there are a couple of announcements that we have to make.
Really they're just reminders.
If you happen to be in the Albuquerque, Rio Rancho metro area, you can come out and join me personally every Wednesday at 8.30pm at Muzzle Guitars located at 701 Unser Boulevard in Rio Rancho.
Every Wednesday, Muzzle has been extremely generous in allowing us to use their space after hours so there are no sales whatsoever.
And we just have a little gym session, which is great.
So if you have a guitar or a ukulele or whatever kind of instrument you want to come on in or even if you just want to sing or enjoy some fellowship, come on in, join me.
The more the merrier.
I love the company and I'm there every single Wednesday.
Next, there are a couple of you who have already asked, you know, how do I make a donation or give a gift?
Well, there are two ways that you can do so.
The first one is you can go directly to BuyMeACoffee.com forward slash healing scars and you can give there again.
That's BuyMeACoffee.com forward slash healing scars.
Now, there is a link.
Really, it's a button that is on our website as well, which will take you there as well.
And of course, our website is Be The Light Sanctuary dot org.
Again, that's the ministry website, you know, that, you know, houses, you know, not only our podcast, but, you know, our actual ministry and everything as well.
So, again, go to BeTheLightSanctuary.org.
There's a lot of information there, even tells you how to get in touch with us or BuyMeACoffee.com forward slash healing scars.
Now, I really want to take a moment here and say thank you.
Thank you all.
I truly appreciate, you know, coming back and tuning in week after week.
I appreciate the questions, the prayer requests, the encouraging messages that have been coming in as we've started this podcast and have been moving forward.
And of course, you know, I've been finding my podcast voice because it's very, very much a different animal as opposed to when you're standing in the pulpit talking with people.
So thank you so much.
Please keep it coming.
I do personally see each and every single one of them, whether it's coming to the email or through our Facebook page there.
Of course, on Facebook, just do a search for Be The Light Sanctuary and you'll find us.
And reminder, if there's something you'd like to hear me talk about or if maybe there's something I have talked about, but you need me to kind of expand on that a little bit more or give some more information, please send a message.
Love getting that feedback.
OK.
Now, with that said, let's get into today's message.
I think I've taken up enough time already.
All right.
For those who follow what their Bibles, go ahead and open them up to Psalms 98.
For those of you who are just taking notes, it's Psalms 98, verse four.
And this translation I'm actually looking at comes from the King James Version.
The Bible says, Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth.
Make a loud noise and rejoice and sing praise.
Underline a joyful noise.
That is actually the title of today's message.
And it's such a perfect description of what it is.
Noise.
It's music.
Think about it.
Throughout the Psalms, it talks repeatedly about making a joyful noise unto the Lord.
And it is all noise, all of it.
We all have a style that we love.
Matter of fact, some of us can't carry a tune despite our best efforts.
You know who I'm talking about here.
All right.
And depending on where you live, where you're from, or even where you are in the world,
your taste in music is going to be different.
Even in our country, our predominant form of music changes from one area to the next.
Heck, you don't even have to leave the city.
You go to work, maybe even within your own household.
The taste in music changes from one person to the next.
And it changes wildly sometimes.
The sound of individual genres change as well.
You think of where blues is today versus where it was 40, 50, 60 years ago.
But to God, all of this sounds beautiful.
All of it.
And that is what we're looking at.
Now, it's been here since the very beginning.
And I do mean the very beginning.
If you open up your Bible to Genesis chapter 4, verse 21.
So that's Genesis chapter 4, verse 21.
The Bible says, his brother's name was Jubal.
He was the father of all who plays stringed instruments and pipes.
Now, depending on the translation you're looking at,
it may say harp in Oregon or something else very similar along those lines.
Now, flip ahead just a little bit to Exodus chapter 15, verses 1 through 20.
Now, for time's sake, I'm not going to read the whole thing.
But in Exodus chapter 15, verses 1 through 20,
here is where we find the song of Moses and Miriam.
Now, this is believed by many scholars to be the oldest recorded song.
And this song, it is about God's victory.
You see, music is an expression of so much.
Moses and the Israelites, they used it to praise the Lord,
to sing about his glories as a way to preserve and to pass on the oral traditions.
Now, to some of you, this might sound familiar.
You're like, oral traditions?
That's ringing a bell.
Well, if you think back to when you were in school,
and probably when you were looking at mythology and that sort of stuff,
they were talking about the Iliad and Homer and all that.
They were talking about the oral traditions and how things were passed along,
and song and poem and everything.
And you see, even then, it wasn't new.
It goes all the way back to the very, very beginning.
Music was a method that was used to show their love and their thanks.
And you see, even then, it was used very, very much the same way that we use it today.
Well, how do we use it today?
Well, we use it to express relief, praise, joy, stress, troubles,
even to help heal from pain.
Music takes us back in time.
It reminds us of places.
It reminds us of people.
It reminds us of events.
It connects us emotionally.
And it can change our very state of mind.
For example, here, my wife, she knows if I'm stressed
or if I just had a really rough day, I want to crank up some rock or some metal music
and just jam out.
I put my blues and everything else off to the side,
because on those days when I'm really rough,
I need something that just helps me go, ah, and blow it all out,
or even just put my bass guitar through some paces.
And that's a common occurrence in and of itself.
I've got this little device.
I plug it in.
I plug in my headphones.
I'm not going to disturb anyone in the house, let alone the neighborhood.
And I can just play as long and as hard as I want.
And music itself, it's not just what many services start with,
but it's something that is part of our daily lives.
It's much like the soundtrack in a show.
Music, it's all around us.
We actually have a soundtrack in our life, and that soundtrack connects us.
Think about it.
You go to a concert, and you are surrounded by strangers, absolute strangers.
They don't know who you are.
They all look different.
They all act different.
They all dress different.
They all talk different.
Not a single one of them cares who you are.
None of them cares where you're from.
It doesn't matter what you do or what your social or working class is.
Yet as soon as that first note hits, you are instantly surrounded by friends
and extended family, and everyone is feeling good.
Those of us who have served or are serving in the military,
we have our cadences and our shanties.
Heck, even a trumpet or a bugle call is enough to have a standing to attention
and saluting or even bidding farewell to a fallen brother or sister in arms.
Thus, music, it's referred to by many as the great uniter.
Now, we may not always agree on music styles or how loud that music should be played,
but we all love it.
You would be hard pressed to find someone who says that they don't like music
and is being honest about it because everyone loves some sort of music.
And throughout history, every single known society and every single known culture has had
some kind of musical expression.
In one form or another, everyone has had it.
Now, you look at most worship services today, most of them open with music.
It's a pretty common occurrence.
Heck, you look at what I do.
I go to service every Sunday.
What am I doing?
First thing you're going to see is me standing up on that stage with my bass guitar.
You're going to see our music director standing up on that stage with his guitar.
The only person up on that stage that you're not going to see standing is the drummer
because he's sitting on his throne.
The keyboardist, everybody is standing.
It's normal now.
It's a common part.
Where does it come from?
Well, we're going to go into that.
First Chronicles chapter 6, if you look at First Chronicles chapter 6, specifically verses
21 and 32, the Bible says, These are the men David put in charge of the music in the
house of the Lord after the ark came to rest there.
They ministered with music before the tabernacle, the tent of meeting, until Solomon built the
temple of the Lord in Jerusalem.
They performed their duties according to the regulations laid down for them.
So you see this right here, this is where David brought music in, not just as an individual
form of worship or as just a way to give thanks and praise, but combined it in as part of
the whole.
David was the person to do this.
Why?
David was an accomplished musician.
If you refer to 1 Samuel chapter 16 and you look at verses 15 through 23, you'll see
he was commissioned to play the harp for King Saul.
This is a professional musician.
This is exactly the guy.
Think about it.
He was commissioned to play the harp for King Saul.
Who gets to just go and play for the king or the queen or the president or whatever?
These people, they have to be vetted.
They better know what they're doing.
So like I said, this right here, David was a professional musician and this is exactly
the guy who you want to go in to establish things, to set things up, to put song leaders
in place and choirs and so on to perform and worship.
Not only that, but he also wrote many of the songs that we find in the book of Psalms.
Now if we go through and we look at Psalms 81, this one was not written by David.
This was actually written by one of his top musicians, Asaph.
Verses two through four sing and yes, sing because it's a song.
The Bible sings, begin the music, strike the timbrel, play the melodious harp and leer.
What is this?
It's the opening of worship.
In the words of the cars, let the good times roll.
Okay, I probably dated myself a little bit there and if you guys actually heard that
song in your head, well I just dated you as well.
Music and worship, they go hand in hand.
Music reaches deep down into our emotions.
It lifts our thoughts.
Music helps us to get out of ourselves and to lift up our worship completely, fully you
might say.
Others might say body, mind and soul and others yet might still say hearts and minds.
Now let's contrast that a little bit here.
There are people out there who say that modern music has no place in our worship.
Let me read you a couple letters and you may have heard these before because these are
not new.
The first one says, I am no music scholar but I feel I know appropriate church music
when I hear it.
Each Sunday's new hymn, if you can call it that, sounded like a sentimental love
ballad one would expect to hear crooned in a saloon.
If you insist on exposing us to rubbish like this in God's house, don't be surprised
if many of the faithful look for a new place to worship.
The hymns we grew up with are all we need.
This was a letter written in 1863 and it was about the song Just As I Am.
Now here's another letter and this one says, what is wrong with the inspiring hymns with
which we grew up?
When I go to church it is to worship God, not to be distracted with learning a new hymn.
Last Sunday's was particularly unnerving.
The tune was unsingable and the new harmonies were quite distorting.
Pretty harsh there too, huh?
And this right here, this is a letter that was written in 1890 and the hymn in particular
was What a Friend We Have in Jesus.
You see, there are many out there that they reflect back and they want the music and the
hymns from their youth, possibly to even go back to the hymnals that they used to know.
You think about it, a lot of us, we grew up in those churches where you would go and you
had a hymnal sitting next to a Bible right there in the pew and they would say, take
out your hymnal, open it to page such and such, we're going to sing this.
Maybe you had an organist playing along with it, maybe not.
But that's what a lot of people even today still use.
Now on a side note, the music that these people want to go back to, as much as they're complaining
about what we have now, the music they want to go back to was controversial back when
it was new as well.
See the people that we're talking about here, these are the legalists and legalists are
everywhere.
They get more wrapped up in their traditions that do this and do that, this is the way
it has to be, than the actual worship.
And unfortunately because of this, they're missing the whole point.
Ecclesiastes chapter 7 verse 10, the Bible says, do not say, why were the old days better
than these?
For it is not wise to ask such questions.
See we hear this a lot in a lot of different things.
People cling to those good memories and they forget about the rest.
And perception changes a bit over the years too.
However there were troubles back then as well, the good old days.
But people forget about those troubles.
They get so locked in on how they remember things and how good that they remember it
being that they think if we go back to the way it was, that everything is going to be
great.
You want a good example of that?
Look at politics.
See what happens here is people, when they get so wrapped up in this, they forget that
the focus is not on us, it's not on our wants, it's on Him, it's on Jesus.
Not how the world has changed and the world is going to change whether we like it or not.
In Mark chapter 7 verses 4 through 23, Jesus actually talks about this type of hypocrisy
as well and how the legalist placed tradition just as high, if not higher, than God's
Word.
Now don't get me wrong, traditions are good and fine.
We all have traditions that we like to keep, things that we like to do.
So traditions are good as long as they shine a light on good service and they serve to
encourage, as long as they point the way to God.
They need to point the way to God, shine the light on His good, His grace, His love and
His mercy and let it serve to encourage.
See once something becomes more important than God's Word, even traditions, once they
become more important than God's Word, guess what?
They have become an idol.
Now do musical tastes have some influence here?
Yes, but not much.
It's widely accepted that Christian music is different.
Does it need to be?
No.
That doesn't mean, by saying that, not saying it all needs to be pop or country, this kind
of poppy stuff that we have there now because we list the most Christian music, even contemporary,
it is kind of a poppy, kind of pop rock type tune.
But it can be rock, it can be punk, it can be blues, it can be metal, it can be rap,
hip hop, R&B, so on and so forth.
All genres, all of them, they can all be used to the benefit of the Lord and getting His
Word out to the world.
They can all be used to help spread the Gospel.
They can all be used to point the way to Jesus.
Now earlier I mentioned how music impacts so many different parts of our lives.
It helps us to cope.
If you look at the book of Acts, chapter 16, verses 22 through 25, Paul and Silas were
wrongly arrested.
They were stripped, they were beaten, and not only were they jailed, but their feet
were put in stocks.
Most times people think of stocks, they have this image of the guy kind of leaning over
with his head in his hands, locked in the little wood plank thing.
But let's paint the picture here, and it's not a pretty picture.
Paul and Silas, they're arrested, their clothes were taken from them, they're taken off,
probably ripped off, and then using rods, they were flogged.
They were beaten mercilessly basically.
Then they were sat down on a jail, most likely on a surface that wasn't very comfortable
to begin with, and then locked in the stocks around their ankles.
Their backs were in severe pain.
They couldn't really lean back on anything.
Not only that, but they were locked in place.
So trying to adjust, to try to find some way to get comfortable.
Think about it, when we sit on something that's uncomfortable, what do we do?
We shift around, we move around, side to side and all that, trying to find at least something
a little bit more comfortable, even those uncomfortable chairs that we all sat on in
school.
Prisoners in these positions, well, you could probably imagine how they had to relieve themselves
when they had to go.
Not a pretty sight.
I mean, they're locked in place.
They couldn't just go up and go to a corner or use a bucket or whatever.
They were set in place.
So this is one of the worst positions imaginable.
It's a very gruesome, horrible position to be in.
But what did they do?
They sang.
The Bible says it right here.
It tells us in verse 25, they prayed and they sang hymns to God.
They used music to help with their situation and to continue to praise God, not to beg
for help or mercy, rather just to praise Him, to praise Him.
Something continued on in praise for other prisoners to hear.
And it demonstrated that no matter what's going on in our lives, we should still praise
the Lord.
See, they knew God was with them.
And the music took their focus off of the torments and the pain and the troubles.
It helped them to elevate and to change their mindset so that it was above what was happening
to them and to focus on what the most important thing was, which is God.
That, that right there, that is the power of music because of the glory of God.
Colossians chapter 1, verses 16 through 17.
So Colossians chapter 1, verses 16 and 17, the Bible says, for in Him all things were
created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or
rulers or authorities, all things have been created through Him and for Him.
Music was created by Him and for Him.
So how can using it to worship Him possibly be wrong?
It can't.
Point blank, it can't.
You're worshiping God.
That's what you're supposed to do.
And in Colossians 3, 16, just a little bit later here, the Bible says, let the message
of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through
Psalms, hymns and songs from this Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.
Gratitude.
It's a thankful heart, one that opens up readily and easily to the Lord and it praises Him
with cheer, not discontent.
You know, that, that constant devaluation of what's wrong in your life and trying to
compare yourself to others.
And you think about it, comes to music.
Jesus was a rebel and He stood for what was right.
Rock music and other forms have always been widely regarded as rebellious forms of music
as well.
So I'm here to tell you, raise your hands, raise your voice, raise your instruments and
raise a hallelujah to the Lord as the song says.
Put up your rock fist if you're feeling it when I drop this.
God bless y'all.
Thank you for tuning in to Healing Scars with Pastor Burton.
If you'd like to know more about our ministry, you can find us on Facebook at Be the Light
Sanctuary or you can visit our website at BeTheLightSanctuary.org.
Thank you so much for listening.
We'll catch you next time.
God bless.