Music plays a vital role in our world and lives. It accompanies life’s celebrations—birthdays, weddings, and even funerals. Music is said to “calm the savage beast” and helps those who are mentally and spiritually troubled.1 Throughout history, musical instruments have been used to summon people to battle and urge troops forward, even when the odds were against them.2 Music touches the heart as it expresses love, beauty, patriotism, majesty, and a wide range of other emotions. Therefore, it’s no surprise that music is mentioned throughout the Bible and the history of Israel and the Church. In Israel, music was crucial in celebrating victories, dedications to the Lord, and as part of feasts and festivals to remember God’s mighty works. Music is powerful, but it is often underestimated, which can lead to its misuse and manipulation.
Music is so important to God’s people that the largest book in the Bible is a songbook, not only meant to help them worship in song, but also given by God through His Spirit to shape their thinking and guide their emotions. In this divinely inspired songbook, our God speaks to both heart and mind, theology interacting with human experience and emotion. It is this aspect of doctrine and the power of music that we need to consider for our personal lives and the life of the Church as we gather to worship in our local assemblies.
To understand this connection between theology and music, we need to establish some biblical foundations.
Worship Is Theocentric
Although there is a place for music that speaks to our human experiences and allows the singers to express their hearts, we must be cautious that our worship doesn’t begin to become man-centered as it loses sight of the majestic God we are worshiping.
Psalm 96 gives us a good balance, instructing the singers of Israel, “Sing to Yahweh a new song” (Ps 96:1). Notice that the songwriter guides the worshipper not simply to sing about the Lord, but to personally and directly address the Lord in song. This is derived from a heart that longs to express the emotion of a heart filled personally with love, gratitude, passion, and a new life that needs to respond to these experiences. At the same time that the worshippers are directed to allow song to be directed to God, it is not the emotions that are primary, but God.
We must recognize that in properly ordered biblical worship, the people of God do not gather primarily to focus on their wants, needs, feelings, emotions, or desires. When God’s people come together, they do so in the presence of the Lord Himself, and He should be the object and focus of everything that takes place. We pray, sing, confess, and proclaim the Word of God.
I have had the unfortunate experience of attending worship services where little to no prayers were spoken, little to no Scriptures were read publicly, and the Scriptures were not preached with any purpose other than to be a second-rate self-help talk. In each of these instances, the music focused on emotionalism and was driven by feel-good lyrics that often lacked more depth than the latest pop hit on the radio. I imagine that any Christian who had to endure a steady diet of that kind of “worship” would become spiritually anemic and starved for truth.
Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well,
But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (Jn 4:23–24, LSB)
Spirit and truth are what Christ highlighted for this woman seeking truth. The Jews had form, and intense emotions (Paul called this “zeal without knowledge” Ro 10:2). However, they were so far off that even with zeal they still rejected Christ.
When the curtains of heaven are pulled back to reveal the nature of worship before the throne of God, it is abundantly clear who is being worshipped. Gone are the vague generalities of so much contemporary Christian music that seems ashamed to name the name of Jesus Christ. Gone are the effeminate “Jesus is my boyfriend” type of lyrics. Instead, the heavens resound with majestic, even thunderous sounds of words like,
Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created. (Rev 4:11, LSB)
If heaven’s worship is theocentric now, and it is what we will hear and proclaim in His presence, then we should be echoing the sounds of theocentric praise on earth now in the church of Jesus Christ, the conquering and victorious King.
(Part 2: Biblical authority must guide worship.)
