Adult Sunday School: Our Church · Pastor Adam Wood · October 12, 2025

Transcript:
We are going to, we're gonna be looking at, I don't know how far we'll get, I'm hoping maybe we can finish this section on our church regarding our music. So the title of what, this is part six, six weeks, we've been looking at our church's music. And in this section, I'm hoping, as I said, to finish this section, and what we've been trying to do, for those of you that are visiting or are new, we've been going through, kind of methodically, going through different aspects of our church and why the things are the way they are. And we've been looking at different categories or different aspects of our church. And right now we're looking at music. And so last week we talked about Ephesians 519 and Colossians 316, which both are the main go-to verses in the New Testament regarding songs, hymns, and spiritual songs, and we looked at that in some detail. We also examined how those things, the use of music is related to being filled with the Spirit of God. And we also took some time to examine what it means to be a, when a song is a spiritual song. And we saw that a spiritual song is set in contrast to a carnal song. It's not, the Lord is not giving us a genre of music, he's describing a kind of song, which is a spiritual song, which relates back to Galatians chapter five and the fruit of the Spirit versus the works of the flesh. And so that's one way we can judge music. And that's one way that we, in our church, judge our music. So these things kind of overlap, that overlaps with our personal music, as well as the music that we use in our church. So we also examined and looked at our hymn book, and we examined why we use the hymn book, and why we have chosen to use it. And we saw how that hymns in a hymn book are generally speaking, rich in doctrine. And we saw also in Colossians how the songs are supposed to be, include the word of Christ, which is designed to admonish us and to teach us in song. And so that's where the hymns need to be substantial, and they need to affirm our faith and strengthen our faith. Not only that, but we also saw how the hymns, because of, primarily because of their age, provide a vital connection with the past work of God to generations gone by. And that's, I know it was definitely true in my generation, but the generation after me, like my kids' generation, there is definitely an element that seeks to dismiss prior generations and the wisdom, the accumulated wisdom, as if we just came here and everything was, we did it all. Our generation was the first one that ever was born on the earth. And so what the hymn book does is, and this goes along with church history. One of the reasons that church history is so important is because it provides that connection. We did not start this thing called Christianity. We did not start it. It was started by Christ. Well, you can even go further back than that with the Old Testament, but it was started by Christ, and then those who believed carried it on through the generations, and that's why we're here. We're here because of the word of God that was carried to us. So we're not islands. We owe a great debt to those who came before us, and we can't just simply wave our hand to dismiss that. And part of the hymn book is that the hymn book and specifically the songs in it provide that connection. When you can read a song that's 300 years old, or in some cases 500 years old, and it's saying the same thing that you believe from the word of God, that's significant. That's not something that's minor. The other thing we talked about, again, we're just looking at practical matters, is, looks like I got my notes mixed up here. We looked at the practical use of the notes in a hymn book, and why that's important, because it enables the congregation to sing as a congregation in parts with greater skill. That's why we have, that's why the hymn books are written in four-part harmony, that's why. They're designed to be sung as a congregation, and that's why they have them. So that's not something we're gonna get rid of, that's not something we're gonna change. I would like to see us move more in that direction of using that and singing with skill to the Lord as a congregation. And so that leads us to the question of congregational singing, congregational singing. So let's pray, and then I would like you to turn to 1 Chronicles chapter 15. 1 Chronicles chapter 15 is where we're going to begin this morning. Let's pray together. Our Father, we thank you for the opportunity to meet together as your people. Thank you for your people that have gathered here today. Lord, there's beautiful weather outside, crisp mornings and warm in the afternoon, and we're just so thankful for that. And thank you for the opportunity to share the gospel with people yesterday. And all the people that got witnessed to, got tracked, and we were able to speak to, and even just be counted to be present, Lord, but we know it's not by our own goodness or power, we're just weak, but the grace of God is what enabled us to give out the gospel, Lord. And as we go into Sunday School now and our service to follow, where we try to meet together and give you praise, we pray that you would oversee everything that's done, that Lord, we offer this time to you and ask for your guidance and your help. Lord, I ask for that directly from me, that I might be able to help your people, and also for your people, that we all might receive the word of God in great meekness. For we ask in Jesus' name, amen. All right, so while we're talking about hymn books, we're talking about congregational singing, which is the primary purpose of having a hymn book. And so, 1 Chronicles 15, verse number 16, and I could go to a number of passages. I'm not trying to be exhaustive with this, so you know, you could, of course, you can, when you have opportunity, you can look up the different references regarding this, but in the Old Testament, David, being a man who was a musical man, he was a man who was skilled with instruments, so skilled, in fact, that he was actually called to go play music in the king's court. I mean, so he wasn't an average music player. He was skilled in the harp, and so he was a musician himself, and so it's no wonder that once he rose to the throne and was established, those things were in his heart to do, and you know what he did? He established skilled musicians among the Levites to sing praise to God for the people of Israel, and he did it, and I mean, if you think about it, this was, a lot of things that David did were things that came straight out of his heart to God, just this overflow of his love for God, and this is one of them. And so he organized the Levites, because by the time you get to David's reign, about 1,000 years before Christ, by the time you get there, the Levites are, there's many, many Levites. They have courses, because there's so many. They have different jobs they're doing at different times of the year, because they multiply. Same thing with the priests. And so because of that, he organized them into musicians and singers. Look at chapter 15 of First Chronicles, verse number 16. The Bible says, and David spake to the chief of the Levites to appoint their brethren to be the singers with instruments of music, sultries and harps and cymbals, sounding by lifting up the voice with joy. And so that's what they did. So what I'm trying to establish here is there is a clear precedent in scripture for having skilled musicians, not what I am, but a skilled musician to lead the praise and the singing of God's people. And that's what you have here. There were skilled musicians who were appointed for that purpose. You might say it's a choir. You might say it's an ensemble. However you wanna put it to kinda translate it into our day, but you do see it in scripture. So that is a clear precedent. These were people of skill who could play inst...