Part 4: The Church and Worship
Is my way of worshipping God what He wants? It is He not we who must be pleased by our worship of Him. Is the music we use in worship pleasing to Him? Most of the churches in our land and the world use instruments of music, organs, orchestras, pianos, etc., but does this, alone, make it right? Only the Word of God, the Holy Bible can advise us in this and all other matters of Christian living and worship. There are no other revelations given to mankind.
Does the music within our Christian worship please God? Remember it is possible that our worship, or parts of it, might originate only from rules made by men. Isaiah 29:13 reads, in part:
These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.
God has shown, in the New Testament, what kind of music He wants in Christian worship. It is singing! Colossians 3:16 reads:
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.
Ephesians 5:19 repeats this same thought:
Speak to one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.
In this scripture, the heart is clearly the object of the verb, making melody. Those wishing to please God should use no other instrument of music than the human voice accompanied only by the spirit, or heart. Thus, the use of mechanical instruments of music during worship comes from the ideas of men.
There are, at least a half-dozen scriptures in the New Testament that show singing to be what God wants. There are no scriptures in the New Testament showing that mechanical instruments are to be used.
We must conclude that these inspired writers of the New Testament knew the will of God. We are also assured that the thoughts of the original writers of the New Testament have been accurately translated into our modern languages.
Because God has requested singing, His people in the first century did not include instruments of music in their worship. New Testament Greek was the language of Christ’s followers in the first and second centuries. Clearly they did not use instruments and, of course, they well knew the Greek language. They did not use the instrument because they understood that God’s Word specified singing and not singing and playing. This was done then and it is done now in obedience to His will: It is a demonstration of love and faith in God.
Historically the practice of the New Testament church excluded mechanical instruments of music well beyond the tenth century AD. This is a provable, historical fact and it must not be ignored.
Without close attention and obedience to the scriptures, the worship of the Lord's people will deteriorate into a whirl of conflicting opinion. This will give birth to doubt. Our ways of worship must come only from the Holy Spirit through the Word of God, the Bible.
We need not “jump through hoops” to deal with the Greek verb psallo from which the English verb to chant or to sing is derived. Some say that it means to sing and play and others insist that it means only to sing. This verb has been translated in many ways. The bulk of Greek lexicons in use today show psallo, as it was used in the New Testament, as meaning to sing. It is never used to mean sing and play. The “proof of the pudding” rests in history—the early Christians did not use instruments. They were taught almost directly by the Holy Spirit—too, they knew very well the meaning of the verb psallo.
The use of an instrument of music is never implied except as proclaimed by the translation of Ephesians 5:19 . This is of singing accompanied only by the human heart (or spirit).