Discernment in Music

Well, we're gonna transition tonight, and I guess I'm the bridge to that transition, because I have the privilege of meeting with them and serving with them and learning with them in Impact Young Adult Ministries. And I also have the privilege of serving with many of them in music ministry. And so, for the rest of tonight, I wanted to talk with you about something that I intended to talk about last year.

I had the privilege to speak a couple of times last year, and I talked, and I shared a couple of messages entitled, Worship by the Word. And I talked about, from scripture, what is worship? How do we define it, okay? How do we understand it as, what does it include? And so, that was a much more definitional look at worship. But what I didn't quite get to was a little more practical, and that's where I'd like to go tonight.

When it comes to music, everybody has an opinion, right? Everybody has a taste. Everybody has things, well, I assume everybody has things. I assume you like music.

Is there anybody here who doesn't like music? Just out of curiosity. Sorry to out you, okay. All right, we've common ground there, it's good.

So, everybody has some music that they enjoy. And I just think that points to God's design in each of us. That music is not just something that is invented by man.

It's something that is really woven into the very fabric of creation. That when you get into the nitty gritty of it, and you study far beyond what I've studied, but people have explained to me, music and sound, the way sound is built, is built into creation. It makes sense.

There's math and numbers, and it works together, and it stacks, and it lines up. And so, it's incredible to see how humanity, over millennia, since creation, has understood more and more about music. Now, that doesn't mean that our style of music, that the music that we enjoy, is the end all be all to music because we do see different styles of music in different cultures, okay? In Asian cultures, you see a very different understanding of music.

It sounds very different. It's built on a different understanding of the relationship between the steps, okay? Mathematically, there's the different smaller steps in the frequencies. So, they have a little bit different take on it, but still, there's common math.

I don't know a better way to say it. Sorry, I'm not that educated in all that. But the little that I've gotten to understand, it's just incredible to see how God has made music for us to enjoy, for us to study, and ultimately, he's given it to us as a tool so that we can sing to him, so that we can worship him.

And music is a way, a God-given, a God-commanded way for us to express back to God truth. So, it's difficult to look at music sometimes because everybody has an opinion. But the reality is, and I know you know this, is that we must view everything based on God's word first.

And so, the issue that I wanna talk about tonight is discernment in music. Whether it's music in the church, whether it's Christian music you listen to outside of church, whether it's secular music or instrumental music, we need to have discernment. When we look at scripture, it does not prescribe what style of kind of music that we should listen to.

But scripture does dictate what we should fill our minds with using our eyes and our ears. So, the question, does it matter what I listen to? The answer, of course, is an easy yes. Colossians 3:16 tells us that we are to let the word of Christ dwell richly within us.

That God's word is always to be at home in our hearts. We're always thinking about it, okay? We're always bringing it in through our eyes and our ears. Okay, it's always coming out of us in our speech and in our singing.

So, tonight I wanna talk about discernment in music paired with Christian liberty. The first point I wanna make in reviewing last year is this, worship is not the same as music, okay? Worship can be defined as a right response to revelation. MacArthur said, worship is our innermost being responding with praise for all that God is through our attitudes, actions, thoughts, and words based on the truth of God as he has revealed himself.

God in scripture explains what true worship is. He explains clearly what he expects of us. John 4:24 says God requires worshipers that worship in spirit and truth, okay? Worship from a heart of reverence and obedience and according to the truth of his word.

Romans 12:1 says, our only rational or reasonable expression of worship is offering our entire self as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. So, that's worship, is that my life I see as a sacrifice. It's given over, it's continually giving, it's living, it's not ending, as long as I live.

And the Bible uses words of attitude, gesture, and activity to describe worship. So, worship is not the same as music, okay? You can draw two circles and there's a little overlap in the middle, but they are two separate things. So, if somebody was to say today, worship was great today, ah, worship was really good, forgive me.

What that really means is that your offering of your entire self since you woke up, including your thoughts, your heart attitude, good works, and obedience to the Lord, plus all the activities of the corporate church, gathering together, which includes reading and preaching the word, praying, serving and using spiritual gifts, and giving financially, plus also singing was great. To which I'd say, great, I hope it was great. But ultimately, I hope more that the Lord was pleased with your and my life worship, and that God would say it's been great.

Now, forgive me, I don't mean to sound snarky or obnoxious in that way. I know what people mean when they say that, the worship was great. They mean that the time of corporate worship, especially the singing, the singing is something special.

It was impactful and appreciated. And I appreciate it when you and the congregation come to me with that feedback, when you comment to me about particular things. It helps our ministry serve you better.

But focusing on music, worship is not the same of music, but they are tied. Singing is significant because God made it that way. God commands the singing of his truth because he created music as a creative and appropriate vessel to communicate truth and for us to express our right response back to him.

So tonight, I wanna talk to you about evaluating. Worship is all of our lives. Music is a small part of our lives.

Music through worship is a small, but very important part of our lives. And tonight, I wanna talk about how do we work through those things? How do we show discernment? Tonight, I'd like to provide some principles for evaluating music, because we live in a time unlike any other where because of technology, we have access to anything and everything. If somebody writes a song on the other side of the world, they can record it, or they can put down lyrics, or nowadays, you can ask AI to make a version of that song and put it out.

So we have such a wealth, that's probably not the right word. There are so many options. It's not necessarily that they're good options, that it becomes a challenge and it becomes a matter of wisdom for us to choose.

So we have to make choices in everything. And I would encourage you tonight to think about the choices that you make in your music, specifically the choices that you make in music that speaks about the Lord, in music that claims to communicate the truth of God's word. These principles, I've thought about for many years because it's my job to evaluate and choose what we sing right here.

But they're principles that are useful at home and our families, and for looking at all music. I wanna give you four principles tonight, okay? I wanna give you four things that we need to evaluate. So if you wanna take notes, you can.

If you wanna just listen, I encourage you to think about these things. When we evaluate songs, we evaluate it really beginning with like we would a sermon, everything comes back to truth, okay? We have four areas that we wanna evaluate when we're looking at music. And I'm gonna speak about how much we need to avoid, how much really is dangerous.

If you've been with us the last four Wednesdays, then you have seen firsthand the kind of churches that are out there, the kind of churches that do not preach the true gospel, that corrupt the truth of God's word and twist it and make it into something for their own benefit. They turn it into something crazy and creepy that has nothing to do with the God of the Bible and the truth of the gospel. So I want to encourage you to evaluate everything four ways.

The first is content, okay? We have to be careful what content is there, and that's an obvious thing. And I wanna give you four words, four principles for evaluating content, okay? And if you want, you can use the acronym CARE, okay? Four words, four letters, take care, nothing's missing there, okay? So when we look at content, when you're looking at a song and you're evaluating, would this be a good song to sing in church? But not only that, you have to evaluate, is this a good song for me to listen to? Is this a good song for me to play when other people are around? Is this a good song for me to play when my children are listening? So the first and most important step of evaluation is we wanna look at the content. We wanna make sure we follow four principles in content.

First, the C, we wanna make sure the content is complete. We wanna make sure the content is not lacking or omitting key truths. Acts 20:27, Paul says that I did not refrain from speaking to you the full counsel of God.

And so we can be very discerning when it comes to a sermon, okay? We understand when somebody leaves something out, okay? I think we've been trained a little more that way. But when it comes to music, it's just a catchy song, right? It's over in three minutes, I don't have to live my life by it, does it really matter? I would encourage you to think about the fact that it truly does matter. And the first pitfall of so many songs, the first way that we cannot be discerning enough is that we don't realize that there's something missing.

The content is not complete. That doesn't mean every song has to contain all of theology and everything true about God. But the first question you wanna ask when you're evaluating a song, okay? A song that's by a Christian artist, maybe a song that's on Christian radio, is what's missing? I've had the privilege of teaching a couple worship classes at Christian high schools.

And I always, one of my favorite things to do is point out to them, okay, what's missing in this song? Does it talk about sin? Does it talk about the nature of salvation? Okay, because there's always keywords that you realize, oh, if they're going weak, if they're going vague, they're gonna leave certain things out. The content needs to be complete. That means it needs to be specific, not vague.

It needs to have depth and meaning. That means when you look at a song and it's talking about God, you shouldn't be able to sing that song about Buddha. You shouldn't be able to sing that song about Allah or whatever God.

It should not be a song that you can just slot in whatever and it would work. And that is a huge issue with so many songs today. The content is not complete.

It is missing key truths that tell us who God is and what his truth says. Psalm 86, verses 8 and 9, say, "'There is no one like you among the gods, O Lord, "'nor are there any works like yours. "'All nations whom you have made "'shall come and worship before you, O Lord, "'and they shall glorify your name.'" So our God, the true God, is not like anybody else.

And the things that he has done is unlike anything else. It's unlike anything that man could make up and come up with. So the first thing we have to ask is, is the content complete? Okay, is it a song that doesn't really talk about who God is? It doesn't tell us about his nature.

It doesn't mention Jesus or it doesn't really tell us who Jesus is. It doesn't talk about sin. So many songs talk about my shame, my guilt, or all these difficult things that I struggle with.

The reality is that you and I need to be saved from our sin. We don't need to be rescued from anything other than that primarily, it’s our sin and God's judgment on sin. So that's an example of content that's not complete.

Second principle in content is, is it accurate? Songs we sing can't be false, misleading, or obscuring any truth.

So many songs nowadays, you listen to it, it's great. It's talking about God's faithfulness. I wanna praise him. It excites me to sing this song. And they just slip in one phrase in there.

They slip in one phrase here or there that just twists the song and makes it all about you. Or it gives us a wrong impression about God's character. And we'll talk about that later.

We're gonna look at some other songs. So is it accurate? Content has to be complete. It has to be accurate.

It has to be reverent, okay? We can't listen to songs and sing songs that are disrespectful, that are flippant or trivializing. Jeremiah 10, 6 through 7 says, "There is none like you, O Lord. You are great, and great is your name in might. Who would not fear you, O King of the nations? Indeed, it is your due. For among all the wise men of the nations and in all their kingdoms, there is none like you."

There are a lot of songs that seem to have a lot of joy, but are they missing a reverence? If they are, that's a serious issue. Is the content complete? Is it accurate? Is it reverent? And ultimately, is it edifying? When we're concerned about exalting God, what happens is that the church is built up.

Truth honors God. Truth builds you and me up. It helps us.

It instructs us. God's word, his truth is what changes us. And so we have to ask, summing up, ultimately, is the content of this song edifying? First Corinthians 14:26 says, "'What is the outcome then, brethren?' And again, Paul's talking about misuse of spiritual gifts in the church.

He says, when you assemble, each one has a psalm, a teaching, a revelation, a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification." So everything we sing, everything we practice, everything we do should be exalting God, and it should be helping people. And how does it do that? It reminds you of what God says.

It reminds you of who he is. Now, remember, we have these four principles in content, and that's the first of four ways of evaluating.

Content is the most concrete to think about, because it's the least subjective. We literally look at the words, and we say, what does it mean? If a song uses language we recognize from scripture, then that's not only a good thing, that's a necessary thing. You should be able to look at a song and recognize, oh, that's a piece of that verse, or that's an echo of that part of theology, okay? We're not commanded to let vague metaphors about God make you feel good. Don't let that dwell richly within you.

We're commanded to let God's word dwell richly within us. So we wanna evaluate the content, and we'll do that with some songs soon, okay? We'll go a little more quickly through the other ones. When we evaluate, we wanna evaluate content.

We wanna evaluate the source, okay? It starts to get a little less objective here, and that's where we see there is some Christian liberty, okay, there's some leeway, there's some discussion that we need to have. When we think about the source, that means the author, the place where it came from, we need to think about the public identification. What does this person or this group claim to believe, and what churches or organizations are they immediately connected with? So much of the music on Christian radio today comes directly from heretics, false teachers, false churches, places like Bethel.

And if you didn't see the documentary we showed the last four Wednesdays, you need to see it. You need to understand what they're saying, what they're teaching, because if you see one of their songs, it doesn't always seem so bad. It's easy to see, when you look at a song, to justify it and say, you know what? Maybe they just weren't very informed.

Maybe they're young in the faith. Maybe they don't really understand what they're writing. Maybe they have good intentions.

No, most of these people know exactly what they believe and what they're writing about, okay? We need to think about their public identification. We also need to think about their public affiliation. Who do they associate with, tour with, write songs with? There are so many artists, Christian artists nowadays, that on their own, you think they're all right.

But then you realize, ooh, they've actually toured with heretics. They've actually written most of their last album with heretics, with people who teach things directly contrary to the gospel. So we need to be wary of their public affiliation.

And third, we need to be careful of their personal reputation. How do they live, and how does their testimony honor or bring reproach? I'll remind you of what 2 Corinthians 11 says, verses 13 through 15. It's talking about false teachers.

It says, such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore, it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds.

Hillsong, Elevation, Bethel. These are all churches that you need to know do not teach the true gospel. And in fact, they teach things that we would shudder to hear.

They teach things that, when you heard them teach, you would not let them in your home. You would not let your family be around them. You would have absolutely no association with them in your life.

You would not allow anyone you care about to be anywhere near them. So, we wanna be careful then. When they have an agenda and they're writing music, we want to be wary and understand who they are and where it's coming from.

The documentary about Bethel pointed out so many things about them. They have a false gospel. They don't teach repentance.

They are a mystical new age cult that takes everything occultic, literally, and tries to wrap it up in a covering of Christianity. And it creates something new and awful and heretical and dangerous.

They teach that Jesus lost his deity at the incarnation. He was incapable of anything divine during that time. They teach that Jesus received an anointing of magic power at his baptism. You can receive the same anointing, the same power.

And they tell you, you should, if you're a real Christian. They teach about waking sleeping angels of power. They claim that God always wants to heal and raise the dead.

They practice grave soaking, where they go and visit the graves of people that they think were influential and try to receive some sort of power from the grave, from being in the area of the grave. They claim that gold dust and angel feathers appear in their services and as an expression of God's presence. They claim Christians can see into the spiritual realm, that they can become mystics and seers.

They have their own translation, the Passion Translation, which is 50% longer than the scriptures, because they've added so much new. It's not even the Bible anymore. It's entirely rewritten.

They have a school of supernatural ministry, where they teach you to do the Bible, to practice Jesus' presence, to heal the sick, to prophesy, to cast out demons. Their church prayed for the resurrection of a two-year-old daughter of a worship leader. They spoke judgment against COVID and declared in 2020 that it would be destroyed.

That didn't happen. And so we need to be careful of sources. There are so many names, Cody Carnes, Brandon Lake, they're worship leaders from those churches.

There's people like Phil Wickham, who now tours and writes most of his songs with Bethel and with the lead pastors of Bethel. There's so much to say. I just want to sum it up and give you a simple warning.

When we look at Christian radio, when we're thinking about these sources, we want to be warned against where that's all coming from. And we need to recognize that Christian music, Christian radio is an industry built on entertainment, not edification. They're seeking profit, they're not seeking truth.

And the temptation is to water down the truth, the content, in order to appeal to a wider audience. There are very few trustworthy and reliable musicians with character. Because guess what? The industry doesn't care about character.

It cares about the bottom line. When you look at the most popular, the most money-making songs in Christian music, and it's recorded by a copyright company, CCLI; the majority of the top 100, and 8 out of the top 10, are written by, associated with, or copyright owned by these churches. Bethel, Elevation, Hillsong, False Teachers.

And if you sing their songs in church or you listen to them at home, stream them online, they receive royalties from that. So as we evaluate, we want to be careful of two things. We want to be careful of the content first.

That's objective. But we want to be aware of the source, because that matters. Third, we want to be careful of the presentation, okay? This is something that is neither fully objective nor subjective.

It's a wisdom issue. When we look at music, we understand that instruments cannot be evil or good, okay? They can't. No instrument can be inherently evil or good.

They're tools. But musical expression can be. We are never commanded about certain instruments or styles, except the example is made of their use in places like Psalm 150.

I apologize. I have way too many notes. This is always my problem.

When we think about presentation, at the end of the day, we want to think about the fact that music in the church is different than the culture and should intentionally be so. Music in the church should sound different, even in its presentation, because it's emphasizing different things. I've read some really interesting books that talk about how music communicates so much.

Music can communicate a timelessness or a triviality. And when we think about that, I think that's undeniable. When we think about certain great compositions that have been passed down and that we still listen to from centuries ago, that's because there is a timelessness.

There is a value. There is a wonder there. There is something that's difficult to articulate.

When we look at the music today, it is literally just an avalanche of triviality. All music today is written just so that people will listen to it for the next month or six months, so you'll make some money, and then you just need to write some more music so you can make some more money after that. Okay, there's very few people concerned about creating something that lasts.

When it comes to music in the church, which should we pursue? Should we pursue a music that's trivial, that's passing, that's based on my taste this year or next? Or should we seek to pursue a music that is timeless, that goes with the faith? Our faith is timeless because God is eternal. And so I wanna encourage you to think about that when you examine music in the church and out. The fourth concern, okay, we talked about fourth concerns in evaluating, is the context.

The context matters when I'm evaluating a song. Okay, it's obvious. There's a difference between using a song on Sunday morning and there's a difference in using a song when I'm singing in the shower, right? We're not required to hold them to the same standard.

And so there's degrees of that. The Sunday service, the gathering, is regulated by scripture. It's very strict, okay? But as we go to the rest of life, we are allowed freedom.

And it just reminds me that it's really wonderful to be a New Testament believer, right? It's great to be here after Jesus came. Not only do you get to understand the full gospel, but you get to eat bacon. You don't have to wear tassels on your clothes, okay? You don't have to worry about becoming ceremonially unclean, okay? You don't have to go to Jerusalem every year for special worship of the Lord.

There are so many ways that we are freed. When we look at the Old Testament, everything set apart is real. It made Israel unique.

It set them apart from a world of nations who were idolatrous. And so God used them and everything in their culture to set them apart, to say, you are not like them because I am not like their gods. And so they were set apart.

They were different. It was to convey the nature of God and to focus God's people on the coming Messiah. In the New Testament now, these former regulations are superseded because Christ has come.

Now we live by broader principles. Romans 12 one, we offer ourselves as living sacrifices. First Peter chapter 2, we are chosen people. Our job is to proclaim the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into marvelous light. First Corinthians 10:31, whatever you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. So we have a great freedom from these specific laws, but we have a great responsibility.

We have a great liberty, but there is a great need to be wise in that liberty, that still we represent our God, that we still honor him, that everything we do still points to him. In Romans chapter 14, Paul talks about Christian liberty. Our aim should never be to cause another Christian to stumble, to go against their conscience, but we can work together to understand how we can honor the Lord.

Paul used the example of food offered to idols. So some Christians back then believed, hey, this food was put on an altar and offered to a false God. Then it was put in the market at a discounted price.

Some Christians said, I'm uncomfortable with that. That's been offered in a false temple. I don't want anything to do with that.

And that was not wrong. Other Christians said, this temple, this idol is nothing. It doesn't mean anything.

It's false. So if I can get a discount on my meat and save money for my family, I'm gonna do that. And the point of the chapter is saying, Paul is saying, have convictions.

Each person, in verse 5, he says, must be fully convinced in his own mind. If you eat it, if you don't eat, you do it for the Lord. If you practice the old Jewish festivals, you don't have to anymore, but if you do, you do it for the Lord.

Verse 12 of Romans 14, so then each one of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore, let us not judge one another anymore, but rather determine this, not to put an obstacle or stumbling block in a brother's way. So I wanted to sum up these principles.

We evaluate, okay? We think about the content, okay? Is the content complete? It's not missing something? Is it accurate? It's not misleading? It's not false? Is it reverent? Okay, it's not disrespectful or flippant toward the Lord? And it's edifying. It's full of truth and it builds up the church. Have I considered the source? Where is this coming from, okay? Because once I look at the source, it's gonna give me a hint about, well, what the content is probably really like or what they really meant in writing it.

Have I considered the presentation, okay? How is the music style coming across? Is this something that honors the Lord? Is it something that trends towards timelessness? Although again, we're getting further from objective principles and this is where we can exercise Christian liberty. And then we also have context. You have more freedom to listen to things in your own home than we do on Sunday mornings, okay? But we still wanna honor the Lord and I would encourage you to evaluate them the same way.

I will not tell you what to listen to at home. I will make some recommendations to you based on what I believe is wisdom from God's word, based on these principles that I've taken from scripture. And so what I wanted to do tonight in the fleeting time we have is to look at some actual songs because I've skimmed over so much of my notes.

Trust, and would you put some up, okay? Let's work through this. Let's talk about this. Let's understand what they're saying.

Song, what a beautiful name. Very famous song. Most of the song honoring to God, a little vague.

Problem numero uno. You didn't want heaven without us. So Jesus, you brought heaven down.

Now the problem is we have to step aside and we have to look at the words, okay? Because if you take a song and you listen to it, it's very emotional. This is a very emotional song. It is a powerful song with a powerful melody and it is arranged and sung beautifully.

But we have to begin with the content. What does it say? It says, you didn't want heaven without us. So Jesus, you brought heaven down.

What is it saying? What is it missing? Is it complete? Is it accurate? It's not. It is implying that somehow, first of all, that God is insufficient without us, that God was pining for us. But the scripture is clear that God is eternal, complete, sufficient, consent.

God does not need anything from you or from me to be completely sufficient in himself. He did not create us because somehow, he pines for us and he's just so sad like when we're not saved or when we're not walking in obedience. Now, I don't wanna be trivial about the fact that God hates sin and he is grieved by sin.

But somehow God in his nature is sufficient in himself. So whether I sin or I do not sin, that does not have an effect on God's character, on his sufficiency. God didn't need us.

God doesn't need us for anything. And so this song is implying that somehow God was like, oh man, none of these people are gonna go to heaven. What am I gonna do? I'm gonna bring heaven down to them.

That's not the gospel. The gospel is that God created us, we rebelled, God had every right to condemn us to hell, and yet in his love, because of his mercy, he chose to save some. And those he saved have no merit.

Okay, 1 Corinthians actually says that God has chosen the foolish, the weak of the world, the things that by human standards, people look at and go, ooh. So this song is teaching the opposite of that. And so we have to be mindful of that.

Here, we'll keep going. Just a quick reference. Another one of my favorite things when teaching, Jesus is my boyfriend songs, okay? Pet peeve, okay, if a song is sung like Jesus is your boyfriend, and you have some Song of Solomon language, absolutely irreverent, absolutely unbiblical.

That is not our relationship with the living God. Song of Solomon is not about us and Jesus, okay? It is a picture of the marriage relationship and the joys of that. Moving on, next song.

Gratitude. Great, it's a song saying thank you, Lord. The problem with the song is it doesn't tell me what I'm supposed to be thankful for.

And it's a song that's all about an experience, okay? It's an experience of worship. I throw up my hands, praise you, all I have is a hallelujah. Keep going.

And I know it's not much, but I've got nothing else except just raising my hands and singing hallelujah. That's not true. Actually, what you have to offer is what? Yourself, your life is a living sacrifice, right? So this song is absolutely wrong.

Keep going. Oh, this is the bridge. My one response, saying thank you, this.

That's all we got? Keep going. Goodness of God, number one song in Christian music, okay, whatever that means, okay? I'm singing of the goodness of God. His mercy never fails me.

Okay, we're getting vague. Keep going. All my life you've been faithful.

All my life you've been so good. I will sing of the goodness of God. What about the gospel? What about how has God been good to you? How about the fact that he chose to save you, Ephesians 1, before the foundation of the world, and he worked in your and my heart to regenerate us so that we could understand, so that we could respond.

That's good. That's faithful. That's something that I wanna respond to.

Now, this is so vague, and the bridge talks about, he's running after me, he's running after me, he's running after me. God doesn't have to run after you. Guess what? He calls you, and you turn, because that's the power he has.

Keep going. I wanna speak the name of Jesus, okay? This is one of those false teachings that's using the name of Jesus as a magic word, okay? It's a magic phrase. I just wanna speak the name of Jesus.

Jesus, name of Jesus, boom! I win, okay? Over fear, and anxiety, and addiction, okay? Every soul held captive by depression, it says, I speak Jesus, okay? It's not a magic creed. God is the one with the power, okay? You don't get to just make things happen just because you say the name of Jesus. That's not how it works.

We pray to a God who is sovereign, and we ask that he work, and if he elects to, he does by his power. Keep going. All these songs blur together.

Can't remember what it said. Waymaker, this is Waymaker, those two connected? Okay, okay, it's focusing on miracles. Again, this is the experiential part, the false miracles, okay? That's what these churches are focused on, having some sort of experience.

You wanna work a miracle. We want wonderful things to happen. That's great.

We're not talking about sin. We're not worried about the spiritual condition of our hearts, okay? Keep going. It says you're touching every heart.

You're healing every heart. What does that mean? Okay, that's extremely vague. Okay, that's not helpful, and the sad reality is that God's not, okay, I wanna be careful how to say that.

God is always working by his word, okay? But not everybody's responding, right? Not everybody in our church on Sunday mornings is responding in worship, so we have to be careful about what we're singing. Next, oh, a favorite, reckless love, all right? Here's God coming after you again. Reckless love, it's not reckless.

Sorry, people. God's love is not reckless, okay? It is intentional. It is perfect.

It is boundless. It is beautiful, and that is not a word that we should use to describe the love of God because it sounds like God's just like, ah, forget it, I'm going after him. That just misconstrues, that just gives us an absolutely false picture of who God is.

Keep going, okay? And you gotta be careful because there's little truths in here, okay? They'll throw in the little truths. They'll sprinkle in little things that you say, oh, that's true, that's true, okay? But that doesn't justify the whole thing, okay? That doesn't mean that everything in it is true. Battle belongs, okay? It's misconstruing the presence of God in spiritual battles, okay? These churches, they just say, again, Jesus is just kind of a magic word, and I get some sort of power, and then I get what I need in my life.

I can overcome whatever I need to. It's vague. I'm fighting the battle.

God, the battle belongs to you. But the way they're singing, is this the next one connected to this? Keep going. Man, if God's for me, I can do whatever I want.

This is gonna be great, okay? When all I see are the ashes, you see the beauty, okay? When all I see is a cross, God, you see the empty tomb. That's just totally obscuring the picture of the cross, okay? It's not just God is saying, I have the power of resurrection, okay? It's the cross is the symbol of bearing our sins, and that's just totally misconstruing and obscuring it. Keep going.

Build your kingdom here, okay? It's a song that's encapsulating the wrong theology that was talked about in the documentary of how they say we are gonna have influence over this earth, and God wants us to basically take over everything and put Christians in positions of power everywhere, so that eventually all of society, everybody's a Christian, and we wanna see that happen here. But scripture says, actually, things are gonna get worse and worse and worse and worse until Christ makes them right. Okay, so there's a lot of songs that are talking about God's kingdom here, but what they're really singing about is their kingdom, the influence of their church and their own personal power.

So again, I gave you the four criteria. We have just a couple minutes left. Forgive me, I'm gonna do a song we've sung in this church, okay, because we have to look at everything the same way.

We have to evaluate with the same criteria, okay? In the garden, okay? Now, in this, it's not teaching heretical theology, okay? It's not saying God's gonna build his kingdom here by his church, but when we look at it, what is it expressing? It's expressing an emotional experience that pictures being in the garden, like Adam and Eve were in the garden with Jesus. So it is an emotional, it is a metaphorical expression of our walk with the Lord, okay? So it's not a sin to listen to that song. It's not a sin to enjoy that song.

But we don't sing that song anymore. And so when people have asked me about it, I've said, no, we can't do that, and here's why. It's not because we're here to just say no and to criticize songs and just crush people's hopes and dreams.

That's not what it's about. We're here, first of all, because in the church, everything needs to exalt and display the truth of God and his great character and his great work and the great worth of Christ. So we don't have that many songs to sing. We don't have that much time. So we have to evaluate critically.

And I would encourage you at home to have a similar critical, discerning, dividing, because that's what the word discern means, dividing attitude.

Remember that in your own heart, in your family, and with the people that you're around, you have the opportunity to lead them. Music is powerful. And so if we fill our homes and our minds with songs that are weak and worthless, or worse, teach the wrong thing about God, that's not beneficial.

That's not allowing Christ's word, his truth, to richly dwell within us. And I wanna exhort you that way. Evaluate the songs that you normally listen to.

Pick a few, print out the lyrics, or look at them on your phone. Understand what you're filling your ears and mind with. I wanna encourage you to familiarize yourself with the music of the church.

We said before, it should be different from the world. And sometimes it takes time to acquire a taste for it. That's okay.

It's different, okay? All the music in the church isn't written to be catchy. All the songs that we sing are not intended for you to enjoy the tune of every one of them. But there is a variety, okay? And everything comes back to the truth of God's word, the content, and everything beyond the content needs to just support that and point to that.

So I apologize, we're out of time. There's so much more I wished I could say, but I hope that I encourage you with those principles, with those thoughts. If you have more questions, I would love to have a conversation with you and talk more about that.

Again, my desire is not to be critical or to pick on anybody for the songs that they've listened to. It is to encourage you. There is so much that is good.

There is so much to listen to that is edifying, okay? There's so much that reminds you of the gospel, and there's so much that helps you in your Christian walk when you listen to it. Grasp that, find it, and we in the church are here to help you and to encourage you in that. I would love to hear from you if you have any questions or feedback.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you that it is complete and sufficient and perfect, and it's everything we need for life and godliness.

Lord, I pray that, Lord, you would give us a desire, a taste for heaven, for things that are eternal, and, Lord, I pray that you would grow us and help us to see, even if it's not sinful, the triviality, the foolishness of so much that we fill our lives with. You've given us so much to enjoy. So much is not sinful, Lord, but we pray that you would give us discernment, that you would grow our minds, our consciences, that we could better please you, that we could better lead our families, that we could better minister to and witness to other people.

We want to honor you. We want to glorify you. We want all of our lives to be worshiped, Lord.

And I thank you for this time to reflect on these things and to hear from your word. In your name we pray, amen.