Hello everyone and welcome today to Trinity Sermons.
Here at Trinity, we are learning together to love Jesus, live like Jesus, and lead others
to Jesus.
Today we start our Summer Sermon Series where we will be walking through, and even singing
through, the Book of Psalms.
Today we read from Psalm 96, and Rob walks us through why we sing and why singing is
so important when it comes to prayer, worship, and praise.
Enjoy the sermon, and God bless.
Our reading today is Psalm 96, verses 1 to 9.
Sing to the Lord a new song.
Sing to the Lord all the earth.
Sing to the Lord, praise His name.
Proclaim His salvation day after day.
Declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous deeds among all peoples.
For great is the Lord, and most worthy of praise.
He is to be feared above all gods, for all the gods of the nations are idols, but the
Lord made the heavens.
Splendor and majesty are before Him.
Strength and glory are in His sanctuary.
Ascribe to the Lord, all ye families of nations.
Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name.
Bring an offering and come into His courts.
Worship the Lord in the splendor of His holiness.
Tremble before Him all the earth.
The word of the Lord.
Well, good morning, everybody.
It's great to see you.
According to CBC, the race is on for 2024's Song of the Summer.
What's your pick?
The article asks.
Some of the top candidates, the musical artists in that article say it could be Morgan Wallin,
could be Post Malone, could be Billie Eilish, could be Sabrina Carpenter.
You see, what seems to happen is every summer, people gravitate toward a certain song or
they gravitate toward a certain album and that becomes like their go-to music for the
summer.
Or maybe if it's not like that for you, at least what a lot of people do is they create
a Spotify playlist with all their favorite kind of summer songs and they put that on
shuffle and then they hit repeat and it's just, there's just something about music and
summer that goes together.
Are you guys with me?
Do you agree with that?
Yes.
We do.
Right?
Nod your heads.
Say yes, we agree.
We agree.
And there's actually also something about Christianity and music that also goes together.
I actually remember when I was first as a young man starting to take my faith a little
seriously and actually not a little seriously, but it was actually, I decided, you know what,
I actually really want to follow this Jesus.
You know, I've been dragged to church for years by my parents.
It never really became real, but at one point when in my high school years, I was like,
I want to follow Jesus for myself.
And I don't know what it was, but as part of that journey of becoming serious about
my faith, I said, you know what I need to get?
I need to get a guitar.
I'd never played the guitar before.
And so I think I mentioned to my parents one Christmas, I said, I would really love a guitar.
And so my parents brought me, bought me this guitar.
And to this day, I am not great on a guitar, but there was just something about my Christian
faith and this music that went together.
And I remember the very first song I ever learned on the guitar, the very first song,
G-C-D-C, G-C-D-C, was called Lord, I Lift Your Name On High.
Does anyone know this song, Lord, I Lift Your Name On High?
Yeah.
I lift your name on high, boop ba doop ba da ba doop.
Right?
You guys do do do do do do do do do do.
It was amazing.
All I can say is that it seemed like when I went deeper in my relationship to Jesus,
I realized I had to some, for some reason I had to start singing to Jesus.
My new relationship with God called forth some kind of new playlist, some new music
to go along with that relationship.
Well, today we're beginning this new teaching series.
We're calling it the Summer Playlist.
It's going to take us through the whole summer and we're going to be studying a different
kind of playlist.
We are going to be looking at 150 tracks known as the Book of Psalms, right?
The Book of Psalms is this ancient playlist located right in the middle of your Bibles.
It's songs that have been sung by God's people for thousands and thousands of years.
And every week what we're going to do is we're going to take a different one of the tracks,
a different one of those Psalms out of that playlist and we're going to hit play and we're
going to listen and say, what is this teaching us about life, about God, about me and all
that?
But the very first track that I want us to listen to is the one we just heard read by
Al this morning.
Psalm 96, track 96.
And not only is this an amazing song on its own, but it's ironically kind of a song about
singing songs.
It's a song about songs.
It really, it begins with these lyrics.
Sing to the Lord a new song.
Sing to the Lord all the earth.
Sing to the Lord and praise His name.
Now you can't talk about a summer playlist unless we first, this is why we have to start
here, we first talk about singing in general.
How do you feel about singing?
It's a strange thing these days for a group of people to gather in a building together
and stand up and all sing together the very same song.
That does not happen.
Any other places in your life besides here at Trinity Streetsville, does that kind of
stuff happen?
I mean, maybe if you went to a Taylor Swift concert, everybody's singing along with Taylor
Swift's song.
Okay.
Maybe you go to a Blue Jay game and during the seventh inning stretch, they play, take
me out to the ball game and everybody stands up and they're all singing along.
But that is different than what we are doing here.
We aren't just singing something this morning because we enjoy it.
We're singing to someone this morning, someone who we believe is actually present in our
midst right now.
So how do you feel about it?
How do you feel about singing?
We have to ask this question because my hunch is not everybody's 100% comfortable with this
whole idea of singing.
Some of you, you know, singing at church is hard and that's because life has been hard
or the past week has been hard.
And so when you come to church in the morning and there's a song up on the screen that says,
praise the Lord, you're like, I don't really feel like praising the Lord, right?
Because if you knew what was going on this past week, if you know what I've been struggling
with, my soul is heavy.
I can't sing to the Lord this morning.
I'm just not there.
Some of you might find it really hard to sing in church because actually you used to be
singing beside somebody else and that person's no longer here anymore.
And that hurts and there's pain associated with that.
And so when you get up to sing, sometimes your vocal cords just kind of tighten up and
the words don't come out quite right because it's kind of painful for you to sing.
Some of you, you don't sing because you're just pooped.
You're just tired out, you know, you spent the morning getting the kids all together,
dressing them up, getting them in the car, getting them to church.
And it was a late night last night and it was a long week and you're just exhausted.
And singing requires energy, requires strength in us and you just don't have any strength.
You showed up, you know, sleep deprived and over caffeinated, but you're just in this
place where I just need to rest.
I'd rather just listen than sing.
Some of you have a hard time singing and this is one of the things we say, we say, it's
not my type of music.
In churches there have always been these things we've nicknamed them the worship wars, right?
Like, oh, this is the only hymn book, but then the minister introduces a new hymn book
and you're like, I'm not singing anything out of the new hymn book.
Out of protest, I will not sing.
Or they add a drum kit and they're like, I will not sing anymore in church.
Out of protest, I disagree with that instrument or I disagree with that style or I disagree
with that instrument.
And so that is why you don't sing.
You pick and choose how you want to sing.
And some of you, I think, also have a hard time singing because, we're going to come
back to this, you don't think you can sing?
We need to talk about that.
And the last thing I'll say is maybe some of us don't sing because we find that in our
increasingly complex world, with all the issues that are going on, the stuff that we're wrestling
with, we come in and for some reason it just feels like maybe the words aren't resonating
with life.
You're not connecting to where you are and what's going on in your world.
And so for all these reasons, even though the Bible says we are to be a singing people,
more often than not, we turn out to be a mouthing along with the words kind of people.
We're not singing.
So why is that?
And we made it say, you know what, it's great.
We've got worship leaders.
We've got a great worship team.
I'll leave it up to them.
I'll let them make music for me.
And I do have to hand it to our worship team.
It is not an easy job to lead a whole congregation of people with all those maybe different things
on their hearts as they come to church each and every morning.
Why bother singing if it's so hard, right?
Even for worship leaders, why sing?
It turns out there's a lot of really good reasons that we should be a singing people
because the Bible's not just concerned with how the worship leaders sing.
The Bible's actually highly concerned with how you sing.
So whether you're a singer or not, whether you're a soprano in the shower or you, you
know, you couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, we need to learn today why singing is do re
mi fa so important.
So let's begin with the first point, right?
The first thing we need to know is we're created for singing.
We are created for singing.
Singing is just how God designed us.
It's like it's written into our DNA.
When you were a baby in the womb, sometime around the 12 week mark, these things started
to form in you vocal cords.
And it has been shown that those vocal cords were working long before you were even born.
So whether it was you or whether it was Bono or Pavarotti, we are designed with the ability
to sing.
The air rushes up from our lungs and blows over those vocal cords and they vibrate.
And then our mouth and our lips and our teeth and our tongue, they articulate and refine
that sound and create beautiful, beautiful music.
Singing is not like an accident.
It's not accidental that we can do it.
It was something that we were made to do, something we were designed to do and something
that human beings have always been doing.
Human beings have always been singing.
They have always been creating instruments to accompany them in their singing.
This is, archeologists say, the oldest instrument that has ever been found.
It is 60,000 years old and it is a Neanderthal flute that was made from the hip bone of a
cave bear.
And there's actually online a guy who makes this thing up and he plays it.
It's just amazing that we have always been singing and music has always been part of
who we are.
And that's probably because we're made in the image of God and God himself is a singing
God.
We read here in Zephaniah 3.17 that, that in his love, he will no longer rebuke you
but rejoice over you with singing.
Yes, the Lord rejoices over us with singing.
In fact, music is a gift that God gives to all creation.
Maybe the first sound you heard this morning when you woke up, if it wasn't like your alarm
going off or a 737 landing a person or if it wasn't, you know, a child calling your
name, maybe the first sound you heard was the birds singing, a dog barking.
It was the wind blowing through the trees.
Creation is musical.
Let the heavens rejoice.
Let the earth be glad.
The sea resound.
All that is in it.
Let the fields be jubilant.
Fields, yes.
Everything in them, let the trees of the forest sing for joy.
Let creation rejoice before the Lord.
So why is it so important that we sing?
It's because it's how God created us.
It's how God created everything.
We're created for singing.
But secondly, singing is important because we're connected through singing.
Singing is a fantastic community activity that just promotes that feeling of togetherness.
Studies have shown that after people sing together, they are able to bond more easily,
which means that because we sang this morning and we're singing, then when you go over to
coffee hour, you'll have an easier time, not a harder time, striking up a conversation
with someone.
It's because when we synchronize our voices, we somehow are able to synchronize our lives.
And you know that researchers have shown that singing together not only eventually causes
everybody to breathe in sync, but even our hearts start to beat with the same synchronization
as we sing together.
You see, it brings us together.
By singing, we become like one gigantic lung all together.
Psalm 96 says, ascribe to the Lord all you families of the nations.
That's a way of saying there's a whole bunch of different families here, a whole bunch
of different backgrounds, a whole bunch of different tribes and people and nations, and
yet singing connects us all together as one family.
And that's perhaps where churches have got it wrong when it comes to the worship wars.
Sometimes churches assume that the thing that unites us is this hymn book and not this hymn
book or this instrument.
That's what unites us.
Or this style of music.
That's what unites us.
But the thing that actually connects us and actually brings us together as a community
is just singing together, right?
The hymn book doesn't create community.
The guitars, the drums, the organ, that does not create community.
It is our joined voices that create community.
Plus, add to this, when we sing, it helps us see that we are not alone.
Singing in church isn't just about my voice.
It's about hearing the other voices around you, other voices of other people who are
living lives and going through struggles just like you are.
That's why Paul commands us.
He says, speak to one another how?
With psalms, with hymns, and spiritual songs, right?
Sometimes we should just stop and we should just listen to all the voices around us because
when they sing, they're singing to God, but they're also singing to you.
Corporate singing is not just about ourselves, but it's also for the person on your right
and the person on your left and the person behind you and the person in front of you.
It's God's gift that we give to one another.
It's how we build each other up.
It's how we encourage one another.
So singing is important.
So important.
We're created for singing and we are connected through singing.
But thirdly, we have to say that singing is also one of the primary ways that God changes
us as human beings.
There are some things that music does to our soul that words cannot do.
Singing is a primary way that God changes us.
You know, some churches, they might say, oh, you know where the real change happens when
we gather?
It's supposed to be the preaching, right?
It's the preaching.
It's the sermon.
God does His transforming work.
But no, music changes us.
Libby, when David, when Brooklyn, when Hannah, when Rachel, when anyone gets up here and
leads us in singing, they are doing every bit as much work as the preacher is doing.
In fact, you could look at it as we're working together in this role of being doctors, heart
surgeons, right?
The musicians come and they open up the patient by opening up their heart.
And then the preacher comes and the preacher does some healing and transforming work on
the heart with God's Word.
And yet, before we leave this place, the band gets up again and they sing and they stitch
us up and they send us back out into the world.
Singing is an essential part of the healing and transforming and changing work that God
is doing in your lives this morning and every Sunday morning that we gather.
The thing about song lyrics is they penetrate deep inside of us in ways that my words are
just bouncing off your head right now, right?
We just finished, for example, a series on the fruit of the Spirit, right?
Galatians 5, the fruit of the Spirit.
Now, if I were to ask you, hey, what are the nine fruit of the Spirit?
Some of you might have a tricky time recalling it, unless, like me, when you were a kid,
you learned a little song that said, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
So that's how we remember it gets into us.
How about this one?
You think that's good?
Watch this.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, and the letter to the Romans, first and second Corinthians,
Galatians and Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, first and second Thessalonians, first and
second Timothy, Titus and Philemon, Hebrews, James, first and second Peter, first, second,
third, John, Jude, and Revelation.
I just recited 27 books of the New Testament.
How?
It's because music has this weird way of getting inside of us that other ways just do not.
Small songs can teach us, profound and deep songs can teach us too.
Hymn writers wrote some of their hymns because they knew their audience was largely illiterate
and would never read a Bible for themselves, and so they jam-packed their hymns with so
much theological richness that they became teaching tools for people, right?
We know children learn better and faster through singing, and the same is true for adults.
In fact, studies even in hospice care have shown that dying patients who seem to have,
you know, no ability to communicate in their final days and final hours may still have
their minds awakened by songs.
One hospice worker says, we have a patient who barely speaks, but when our volunteer
comes and plays songs for her, she will sing every word.
How can that be?
It's because the word has been hidden in her heart through a song, and singing along with
Bible reading, along with preaching, and along with all that other stuff is a means by which
God hides His word in our heart, and once it's hidden there, it stays there, and it
changes us in lasting, lasting ways.
So we're created for singing, connected through singing.
We are changed through singing, but we also communicate through singing.
When we sing in church, you know what we're doing?
We are telling the world the story of God's marvelous deeds and works.
Our songs become little messengers of truth that other people can hear and understand.
Some people come to church and they say, man, man, man, when I heard the church singing
together, I was so moved.
I was moved to tears when I heard that message, not preached by that preacher, when I heard
that message sung by those people.
In other words, our singing says something.
Psalm 96 says that when we sing, we declare His glory among the nations.
We declare His marvelous works among all people.
Our act of singing is such a powerful declaration to the world of who we are as a people, of
what we believe as a people, but also it declares to the world, to a world that is full of division,
that is full of conflict, that when the people of Trinity come together and they sing in
unison, man, oh man, maybe peace is possible.
Maybe joy is possible.
Maybe God is real.
Maybe the gospel is true.
Maybe unity is possible.
Some churches are really, really worried about what non-Christians might think if they walked
into the church and heard their music.
And so the music that they pick is usually kind of very safe and very tame because we
don't want to offend people of different faiths.
We don't want to offend people of no faith.
But Psalm 96 says, no, singing is a declaration to the world of what we believe.
And the world, yes, the world does not believe, but that doesn't stop us from singing.
Listen to Psalm 96.
Psalmist says, for great is the Lord and most worthy of praise, He is to be feared above
all the other gods out there.
And for all the gods of the nations are but idols, but the Lord made the heavens.
Our praises proclaim God's name in the face of other gods, in the face of other idols
or other belief systems out there.
We mustn't be silent.
We mustn't stop singing because in singing we declare who God is.
And that's why I think so many new people are visitors who come to Trinity, many of
whom are not Christians.
They say, Rob, you know, no offense, but it's not the sermon that touched me, it's the
music, right?
They say, you see, I go my whole week and there's nothing much beautiful that happens
in my week.
It's a kind of miserable experience, if I'm honest with you.
But then I come and I hear the beauty of that music and I hear the beauty of those words
and I tell you, it saved me.
It changed me.
It spoke to me.
Our words, our singing is an invitation to others to have faith.
Singing is itself always an act of faith.
You're singing to a God you cannot see, that requires faith.
But we are inviting people every week to join us in just that, faith and singing to the
same God.
That's why Marva Dawn, she says, it's a major flaw in present-day churches when we don't
realize that our primary evangelistic tool is the corporate life of the believing community.
In other words, you.
In other words, what we're doing right now.
In other words, our singing.
Our neighbors need to see that in order to believe.
As we sing vertically to God, it reverberates horizontally into the world around us.
So why are we singing?
Why are we singing?
Oh yeah, we're created to sing.
It's how God designed us.
We're connected through singing.
Singing actually changes us and singing is how we communicate the gospel to the world
around us.
But there's one final one I want to end on here and that is to say this.
We're compelled to sing.
The reason we sing is that we have to.
You have to sing because once you come to know who this God is, once you come to realize
how much this God loves you, once you see what this God did for you and how Jesus laid
down his life for you out of love, right?
When you find yourself in the presence of that God, what else can you do except G-C-D-C.
Lord, I lift your name on high.
Lord, I love to sing your praises.
We're compelled to sing.
Worship isn't primarily about music.
It's not about techniques or songs.
It's about our hearts.
It's about love.
It's about God's love toward us that calls forth songs of love and songs of praise and
joy back toward him.
We're just compelled to do it.
Worship is like the natural response of a creature toward its creator.
The proper response of all moral, sentient beings to God is ascribing all honor and worth
to him precisely because he is worthy and delightfully so.
To get too picky about worship music or style is to miss the point.
The music's not for us.
It's for God.
And seeing God, we are compelled to sing.
And compelled might even be too soft of a word.
Commanded to sing.
Singing is not an option.
It's a command.
Look at this.
These words aren't written for worship leaders or musicians or people with musical ability.
Sing, sing, sing.
It is a command to all people who know and love God.
The Bible doesn't say, let those who can sing, sing.
Let those who have natural talent for singing praise God.
Over and over again it just says sing.
In fact, the Bible command to sing is repeated more often than any other command except the
command to love.
Now some people don't sing because they say, Rob, if you heard me sing, you wouldn't want
me to sing.
Guys, I just, you just heard me sing.
If I can do that.
No, but there's nowhere in the Bible that says sing to the Lord if you can.
Sing to the Lord if you have a good voice.
Because when God's listening to His church, He's not listening to the quality of your
voices.
He's listening to the depths of your heart.
We don't have the right to remain silent.
Lift up your voice, right?
Jesus says, if you remain silent, even the rocks will cry out and burst forth in praise.
So as we embark on this whole summer playlist series, right, I mean, we're going to be talking
about songs of joy and songs of hope and songs of love.
We're going to talk about some sad songs, songs of lament.
We're going to talk about all those songs, but we had to start here with a reminder of
why we sing in the first place.
I'm going to say it again because I think it's so important.
We sing because we're created to sing, because we're connected through singing, because we're
changed by singing, because we communicate the good news through singing.
And when we come to know who this God is, we can't help but sing.
We're compelled to sing.
So let's keep singing Trinity.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Thanks for listening, everyone, and make sure to come back again next week as we will have
a guest speaker with us to sing with us through another psalm.
Today's sermon was taken from the July 7th, 2024 service at Trinity Church, Streetsville
in Mississauga, Ontario.