Last week, we looked at music on the mission field. Now let’s look at the use of music in worship services everywhere.
Music is used in every church service everywhere on earth. I actually can’t recall a single church service I’ve been to (which numbers in the thousands) where songs weren’t utilized and meant to be sung together. Isn’t that amazing? In fact, music and the singing of songs seems like a fundamental necessity to corporate worship. Why can’t churches worship our Father another way? Why haven’t churches formed another way of communicating praise to their Creator?
Christians have a long history of writing and singing hymns and songs together. This tradition was borrowed from the Jews and Israelites of the Old Testament. David, Israel’s warrior king, was also a poet and wrote the most inspiring psalms and spiritual songs to Jehovah, thanking Him for deliverance and praising His goodness. Those psalms also questioned God during times of stress and anxiety when God seemed to be hiding His face. Should we have songs like that to sing in our churches? Should we have songs questioning our faith, asking God why deliverance hasn’t come yet or begging for revelation? History tells us that the Israelites sang these psalms together sometimes and I can only imagine the intensity of the Jewish nation singing some of the more intense psalms, fervently asking God for deliverance or pleading for His intervention on their behalf.
I mention the psalms, but there are tons of other references to corporate worship in Scripture. Let’s have a topical study, shall we? Let’s study the Bible for mentions of corporate worship and any details offered about those instances. Let’s discuss whether or not singing certain of those more questioning psalms would be appropriate in church. Let’s seek out why music seems to be necessary to worship services in every culture on earth.
Let’s get our study on.