They can remind us of the awesomeness of God with words like, O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the world thy hands have made. I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, thy power throughout the universe is laid. And they can help us better understand some of the most complex theological doctrines that there are with words like, amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see. And they can help drive home some of our most basic beliefs as Christians, like, Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
Of course, I'm talking about the songs that we sing in church, which we sometimes refer to as hymns. And St. Augustine explains that hymns are songs that contain praise to God. And these hymns have been integral parts of our worship for practically as long as Christians have been gathering together to worship.
And these hymns, we see how important they are as we look at Scripture. We see it in Jesus' life. In Jesus' life, when he gathered together in the upper room to share his last supper with his disciples, after they finished eating their meal before they went out to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray, we're told that they sung a hymn together. We see again in books like the Book of Acts, where when Paul and Silas were out on their missionary journeys and they were arrested and thrown into jail for sharing the good news of Jesus.
What did they do while they were in prison? They sang hymns together. But hymns are so important to our faith that within 50 years of the founding of the church, there were already historians like Pliny the Younger who described Christians as being people who sang hymns to Christ as if to God. And our relationship with hymns has only grown in the centuries since then.
In the early centuries, the church was known as people who sang hymns together with one voice to God. We also see hymns, like a hymn that was written by St. Ambrose. It's called O Splendor of God's Glory Bright.
This hymn was written over 1,700 years ago, but you still hear this hymn sung in churches to this day all around the world. By the time of the Protestant Reformation, some of our greatest, most renowned theologians in history, theologians like Martin Luther and John Calvin, were spending hours each day writing hymns so that their congregations could sing them in an ever-changing world. By the 1700s, church music was dominated by church leaders like John Wesley, who wrote over 6,500 hymns. By the 1800s, one of the most prolific hymn writers of all time, Fanny Crosby, was writing thousands upon thousands of hymns, which continue to include some of our favorite hymns to this day.
Hymns like To God Be the Glory or Tell Me the Story of Jesus or Blessed Assurance. But why? Why did people like Fanny Crosby and John Wesley and Martin Luther devote so much of their lives to writing hymns? Why does the church need thousands upon thousands of hymns that we can pick from every week when we're trying to decide which songs and what music we want to sing in church?
Why was it so important to the early church that they would be known as people who sang praise to God together with one voice? I'm going to ask the question as simply as I can. Why do we sing in church? Why do we sing in church?
Because when you stop and you think about it for just a minute, you realize singing in church is kind of strange. Because church is one of the few venues in the entire world that actually invites you to sing out as loud as you want to sing, even if you can't sing at all. Like in church, when you're singing out, when we're singing songs at the beginning of the service or the end of the service, you don't have to worry about the person sitting in the pew, sitting in the seat behind you, tapping you on the shoulder and saying, hey, can you give it a rest? Although I know some of you, and somebody's going to do that during the closing hymn today, I guarantee it.
But just try. Just try to walk onto the stage at a place like Radio City Music Hall or the Grand Ole Opry without actually being able to sing and see how far you make it. But that's not all. It's not just kind of strange that we invite you to sing out in church, even if you aren't really capable of singing.
We also invite you to sing even if you don't know the words to the songs that we're singing. Because whenever church you're in, whenever you're picking out the music that they're going to sing that week, they know that there are going to be times when the words that you're singing are going to cause you to stutter and they're going to cause you to stammer. There are going to be times you can't quite keep up with the rhythm, and there are going to be times when your tongue gets a little tied with it. But we still invite you to sing, even if you can't keep up, even if you don't know all the words.
And all this kind of boggles my mind. And it boggles my mind because I am the kind of singer that can't carry a tune in a bite. I'm the kind of singer that couldn't find the right note if you drew me a map. I'm the kind of singer that only sings in one key consistently, and that's off key.
So the fact that the church actually wants me, someone like me, to sing, it boggles my mind. But it also shows how important singing must be to the church, if the church wants even people like me to sing. So why is singing so important in the church? Why do we sing in church?
Well, this is kind of what we're talking about right now in Melbourne Heights, because right now we're working our way through a series of sermons called Church Explained. And in this series, we're talking about why we do some of the things that we do in church. So last week, we started this year by talking about why we worship. And in the coming weeks, we're going to talk about why there's a sermon, and why we call the worship service a worship service.
But today, we're going to be talking about why we sing in church. So why do we sing in church? Well, the easiest answer to that question is we sing in church because the Bible tells us that we're supposed to sing songs to God. Like in the scripture passage that I want us to take a closer look at today.
So if you've got a Bible closed by or Bible app on your phone, I encourage you to open it to Psalm 96. Psalm 96. And I want us to read the psalm together to see what it tells us about singing. Psalm 96, we're going to start reading in verse 1.
And here's what the psalmist writes. The psalmist writes, Sing to the Lord a new psalm. Sing to the Lord all the earth. Sing to the Lord.
Bless his name. Share the news of his saving work every single day. Declare God's glory among the nations. Declare his wondrous works among all people.
Because the Lord is great and so worthy of praise. He is awesome beyond all other gods. Because all the gods of all the nations are just idols. But it is the Lord who created heaven.
Greatness and grandeur are in front of him. Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Give to the Lord all families of the nations. Give to the Lord glory and power.
Give to the Lord the glory due his name. Bring gifts. Enter his courtyards. Bow down to the Lord in holy splendor.
Tremble before him all the earth. Now you may have realized something just a minute ago when I told you that the easy answer to the question, Why do we sing in church? Is because the Bible tells us who. You may have realized that that is like the pastoral equivalent of what your parents tell you because I said so.
It's kind of the answer that we give when we don't really want to answer a question. And it kind of keeps us from having to do the hard work of finding the answer to that question. But this question, why do we worship it, deserves a deeper response than that. So let me ask again.
Why do we sing in worship? Well, if you can get past the declarative statements at the beginning of Psalm 96 where we're told, Sing to the Lord a new song and sing to the Lord and sing to the Lord multiple times. When you get past those declarative statements and you actually read the rest of this passage, you start to see, you start to understand why it is that God wants us to sing when we gather together for worship. Like at the beginning or like in verse 4.
Did you notice what verse 4 said? Verse 4 said, The Lord is great and so worthy of praise. He is awesome beyond all other gods. So this verse, verse 4 tells us that we sing in church to praise and exalt our God.
Part of why we sing in church is so that we can praise and exalt our God. We've already done that in the Psalms that we sang today. But when you stop and you think about it for just a second, you'll probably realize that you can praise and exalt God without singing. There are other ways that you can praise and exalt God.
So why is it that singing is so important to us? And I think we get a little hint of why it is that singing is so important to us at the end of Psalm 96, verse 4, when it talks about God being awesome above all other gods. Now, I know that you and I would never say that we are gods. But there are times when we act like it.
There are times when we think of ourselves a little more highly than we should. So I think part of the reason why we sing in church is because singing lifts God up and it brings us back down. Singing lifts God up and it brings us back down. Because none of us are perfect singers.
None of us are perfect singers. It doesn't matter how many hours you spend rehearsing. It doesn't matter how many years you have been in a choir. It doesn't matter how many times you have sung a particular song.
None of us are perfect singers. There are always going to be notes that we just can't hit, whether they're too high or whether they're too low. There's always going to be words that get a little jumbled when they're coming out of our mouths. There's always going to be rhythms and tempos that we just have a tough time keeping up with.
So when we sing praises to God, the words of those songs remind us of the greatness of God and our singing reminds us of our own limitations. So we sing to lift God up and to bring us back down. But that's not the only reason why we sing in church. It's not the only reason that Psalm 96 talks about.
And verse 2, this is what we're told in the psalm. Psalm 96 verse 2 says, Share the news of his saving work every single day. So we sing to share the news of God's saving work every single day. We sing so that we can share the story of God.
And that's not something that's always easy for us to do. Because remember who we're singing to. We're singing to God. We're singing to a great and powerful God that is way above and beyond our ability to understand.
Or even begin to be able to explain. So sometimes when we're thinking about God, we just can't find words that are adequate to talk about who God is or to express our faith. And if you don't believe me, then just think about this for a second. Think about how you would try to explain how big God is to a three-year-old.
You probably have to think about that for a minute. To come up with any answer that would even begin to feel like it might work. But songs give us a way to talk about these things that we can't always easily find words for. Like, he's got the whole world in his hands.
That's a pretty good job of explaining how big God is. This is part of what hymns do. Hymns give us the ability to articulate and explain who God is to explain our faith. But they also give us the ability that we can more adequately explain and articulate our own struggles.
As well as the assurance that we find in our faith. Even when we can't always find the right words for it ourselves. And I think a great example of this is the song, It Is Well With My Soul. Now, It Is Well With My Soul is a song that if you grew up in church, you would probably sung more times than you can count.
You may even consider it to be one of your absolute favorite hymns. But you may not be aware of the story behind this particular hymn. So let me tell you the story behind this hymn this morning. So this hymn, It Is Well With My Soul, was written by Horatio Stafford back in 1871.
And it was written when Stafford and his family were going through an incredibly difficult period of time in their lives. Earlier in that year, in 1871, Stafford and his wife had lost their only son. And a few months later, the Stafford family's business was completely destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire. So after those two tragedies, after losing a son and losing their business, the Staffords decided that they needed to take a little bit of a break.
They needed to get away from life. So they knew that a good friend of theirs, the White Al movie, was going to spend the summer of 1871 preaching all across England. So the Staffords decided that they were going to go to England and join with the White Al movie. They were going to spend their entire summer there.
But some things came up, and Horatio Stafford wasn't able to board the boat with his wife and his four daughters as they sailed across to England. He had to stay home and take care of some important last-minute details that came up, but he promised that he would join his wife and daughters later. But as his wife and daughters were sailing across the Atlantic, their ship was struck by another ship. And the ship that Stafford's wife and daughters were on sank in about 12 minutes.
And 226 people lost their lives, including all four of Stafford's daughters. Only his wife survived. When she made it to England, she sent a solemn two-word message back to her husband that read, Save the loan. Well, as you can probably figure, Horatio Stafford got on the next boat that he could get on that was taking him to England.
But when his boat that he was on approached the spot where it was believed that the ship carrying his wife and his daughters had sunk, the captain pointed that area out to Horatio Stafford. And then that night, as he was sitting in his cabin, he wrote the words to this hymn that so many of us love so well. He wrote the words, When peace like a river attendeth with my way, When sorrows like sea billows, massive waves roll, Whatever my lot that was taught me to say, It is well. It is well with my soul.
Now, I've been in ministry for a long time. I've been in ministry for almost 19 years at this point. And even after all this time spent in ministry, I would still have a hard time articulating and explaining how you can hold on to your faith after the kind of tragedies that Horatio Stafford went through. But in this hymn that so many of us love so much, Stafford explains that to us eloquently and powerfully.
The words that he uses in the song gives us words that we can use, even when we can't find them ourselves. Even when they express emotions that we couldn't ever find the right words for. And that's what singing does. Singing allows us to express our feelings and our faith when our words just aren't enough.
Singing allows us to express our feelings and our faith when our words aren't enough. And there are times when our words alone will never feel like they are enough. So we need help from other people to find the right words. But again, this still isn't all that Psalm 96 tells us about, why it is that we sing in church.
So look again at Psalm 96 verse 3. This is what we're told. Psalm 96 verse 3 tells us, Declare God's glory among the nations. Declare his wondrous works among all the people.
So this verse tells us that we are supposed to sing to all people. We're supposed to sing to declare the works among all people. But why? Why are we supposed to sing to all people?
Well, part of the answer to that is we're called to share the story of God. And sharing the story of God, we can do that when we sing songs together as one voice. But it's not the only reason why we're called to sing to all people. You may or may not realize this, but music simply has a way of bringing us as people together in ways that few other things in this world can.
Music draws us together and unites us together in ways that not many other things do. And I can show you an example of what I mean. That's why I brought this with me today. Now, if you don't recognize this, this is a hymnal.
And hymnals are... Books that contain songs and scripture readings and responsive readings that we use as part of our worship services. And if you were to take your time and look through this book and just count all of the people that were involved in making this hymnal a reality. The people who wrote the words of the songs that we sing, the people who composed the music, the people who translated some of these songs from the original languages they were written and into English.
You would see that there were over 600 people involved in putting this one hymnal together. And these 600 people are about as diverse of people as you can possibly imagine. You see, some of the hymns that are in this hymnal were written by men. And some of the hymns that are in this hymnal were written by women.
Some of the hymns that are in this hymnal were written by senior adults. And some of the hymns that are in this hymnal were written by teenagers. Some of the hymns were written by Germans. Some of them were written by the French or by the Dutch and countless other nationalities.
Some of the hymns in this hymnal were written by Baptists like us. Some of them were written by Methodists and Catholics and Episcopals and basically every other branch of Christianity under the sun. Some of the hymns in this hymnal were written by people who were working on slave ships. Some of the hymns in this hymnal were written by former slaves.
So when you look at this hymnal, it is about as diverse a book as you can possibly imagine. And no matter who you are, no matter what you're going through in life, that means that there's somebody who put a hymn in this book who was a whole lot like you. And even though all the songs in this book revolve around one common theme, that theme of sharing the story of God, you'd be hard-pressed to find a book that contains much more diversity than we find in the people who work together to make our hymnals a reality. And that's because music just has a way of bringing us together.
Music has a way of drawing us together. Music gives us one voice to worship God with, one voice to share God's story with. So we put all this together and we start to understand why we sing in church. So why do we sing in church?
Well, we sing in church so that we can praise God and so that we can remember that we are not God. We sing in church so that we can share God's story. And we sing in church to help us find the words to better articulate God's story and our faith to others. And we sing in church because it brings us together with one mighty and powerful voice that we share not only with people we worship with inside of the sanctuary, but it gives us one mighty and powerful voice to sing and share God's story with the world around us.
But what does this actually mean for us? How does this all impact you? Well, the biggest thing that this means to you, the biggest way that it should impact you, is that you should sing. You should sing.
When we gather together, when we worship, you should sing. Whether you think you are the best singer in the world or the worst singer in the world or someplace in between, you should sing. Because it's only when all of us are singing together, when we raise our voice as one, that's when we're really worshiping God. Because remember, all of us are created in the image of God.
And God wants to draw all of us back together into one body that is the body of Christ. And when we sing, that's what happens. We're drawn together as one. And it gives us a chance to better encounter God when we're in the space.
And you've probably had those moments. We've been sitting in a worship service at some point along the way. We've been standing with the rest of the congregation and singing a song. And you've probably had one of those moments where it just felt like something different happened in this place.
Whether it was the harmony that everyone reached, the words that were being sung, or just the spirit moving amongst you. You've had those moments where you've encountered God as we sung together in church. So we should sing. But I know that there are probably still some of you that are sitting here thinking, that's all well and good, but you really don't want me to sing.
You think you can't carry to me a bucket preacher, but you need to hear me sing, and you'll find out pretty quickly I'm way worse than you are. Well, if you feel that way, there's something that you need to understand. No matter how awful you think you are as a singer. You, when you're in church, you should always be able to sing out in confidence.
And you should be able to sing out in confidence inside of the church, because when you are in church, when we are worshiping together, you need to realize that you are not performing for the person who is sitting behind you in church. You're not performing for the person who is sitting in front of you in church. You're not performing for the person who is sitting beside you in church. You're here singing praises to God.
Not anybody else that's around you. And God gave you your voice. Even if you don't love it, God does. God gave you your voice.
So sing. Remember, you're not singing for anyone else in this room. You're singing for God. So let's sing for all the reasons we've talked about.
To exalt God, to lower ourselves, to share God's story, to find words, to articulate our faith. Let's sing together. But first, let's pray together. Oh God, as we come to you in this time of prayer, we are thankful that you invite and want all of us to sing to you.
But God, you know that there are people in this place right now who are a little self-conscious when it comes to singing. The preacher in this place included. But God, you love our voices. You want us to raise our voices and sing out to you.
You want us to praise you and exalt you. You want us to share your story. You want us to come together with that one voice. So help us to do that, God.
And remind us that when we sing in church, it's not about anyone else around us. It's all about you. So let us sing for all the things that you have done for us, all the blessings that you have given us, all the work that you continue to do in us and through us. For you, God, are the only one who is worthy of praise and celebration.
You are the only one who is worthy of our worship. So let us sing praises to you. Amen.