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#7 Who Can I Count On?
What matters Most
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as
you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms,
hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.
(Colossians 3:16)
When you pick a church to join (horrible thought that we do
it that way, but let's accept it), make absolutely certain you know its
priorities. Is it a community of believers that holds high the Word of Christ?
Is it committed to allowing that Word to dwell richly within it and among it?
Find a church that deviates from the Word, and you've found a church on the way
out.
Praise is another element which ought constantly to enrich
the community of believers. The fellowship of believers is a praising community,
where people who can sing beautifully, sing beautifully; and those who just
sing, just sing; and those who have voices like crows with laryngitis croak to
the glory of God. But nobody just sits there like an old sourpuss, looking as if
they had lost their last friend, having had their breakfast of onions.
Some have tried to differentiate between "psalms" and "hymns"
and "spiritual songs," but I think such distinctions are more a work of
creativity than of fact. We know that the Lord Jesus and his disciples, after
the first Communion, sang a hymn and went out to the Mount of Olives. And we
know exactly what they would sing at that particular time - it would be Psalms
115, 116, 117, and 118. The "hymns" they sang were psalms.
We also know what songs will be sung in heaven, because
Revelation tell us. "They sang a new song," it says, and even gives the lyrics.
At other times when we read the word hymn in our English Bibles, it's
actually from the Greek word for "psalm."
Still, Paul gives us one interesting insight into this issue
from 1st Corinthians 14. In that letter he told the Corinthians that when they
came together, some would have a word, some would have a hymn, some would have a
prophecy, and some would have a tongue. Small groups of Corinthians got
together, and in the free-flowing worship time that ensued, someone might step
forward and announce, "I wrote a hymn. I'd like to sing it." And so they would
all sing the hymn.
It would take a long time for churches with thousands of
attendees to invite everyone to come up to the platform one after another and
sing the hymns they'd written that week. That's the idea in this passage,
though. It's an invitation for everyone to get involved.
"Oh, I couldn't write a hymn!"
You couldn't? Have you ever tried?
"Oh, I couldn't write a song!"
You couldn't? Have you ever tried?
"I could never sing!"
You couldn't? Have you ever tried?
Listen, the community of believers is a praising community.
It is a group of people, rooted in the psalms and in the Scriptures, who love to
join together to sing God's praises with a heart of gratitude. Enrichment is the
natural result.
In your life and in your church, how important is praising him through music?
How can the Word of God "dwell in you richly"?
Father, thank you for the gift of your Word, for the gift of music, and for
how these gifts help us to worship you, Amen.
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Meditations on Life in the Pew
1. Read prayerfully through Acts 2:42-47, thinking about what made the early
church grow so rapidly, and praying that the Lord would help you think of how we
today might imitate its practices.
2. What does 1st Corinthians 12:12-31 say about what it means to work
together as the body of Christ?
3. Read Ephesians 2:11-22 out loud, slowly, a few times. What does it mean
when it says that "he himself is our peace" (verse 14)?
4. Write down Hebrews 10:24-25 on an index card and tape it up on your
dashboard, on your wall at work, or on your refrigerator - somewhere you can see
it often as you think of ways to carry it out.
5. As you read through 1st Peter 2:4-12, think about what Peter states is
one of the purposes of the church.
~Stuart Briscoe~
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