Ephesians 5:19

Speaker 2: Take your Bibles if you have them and turn to the book of Ephesians Ephesians chapter number five is where we're going to be this evening. Ephesians chapter number five, as you find your place, if you wouldn't mind join me in standing in honor of reading God's word. Our key verse in this message will be verse number 19, but I'd like for you to back up the verse number 15, and we'll read it down from Ephesians five 15 down to Ephesians five twenty one. The Bible says see then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise. Just think about that word circumspectly for just a moment. Circumference circle. Sparkly spectacles walk with your head on a swivel. Or you football players walk looking around aware of what's going on around you. Be aware of your circumstances redeeming the time because the days are evil. Do I have to spend any time at all convincing you that the days are evil? OK, maybe I do. This really isn't the message, but if you guys want to be here all night, we can go ahead and start here. I need to convince you the days are evil. No. OK. Wherefore because the days are evil being not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. Don't be a fool. Know what God wants you to do. What does God want me to do? Verse 18 Be not drunk with wine where it is excess, but be filled with the spirit of verse. 119. This is our key verse. Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. Giving Thanks always for all things the God, the father, the name of our Lord Jesus Christ submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God or we thank you for this day. Ask that you be with us now as we look into your word. I pray that you give me the words you got me to say. You hope the folks that are here to listen. Plow through here to their lives. It's in Jesus name. I pray you, men, and you may be seated. Everybody, any time something big starts happening in the world, happening in the world, especially Christians. They start talking about and thinking about the end times, what's coming next? Is this the end? Could Jesus be coming back? The answer is always yes. He could be coming back. He's been coming back since he left. I mean, all the disciples thought Jesus would come back in their day. Paul thought Jesus was going to come back in his day. There have been generations all throughout history that thought surely it is so bad Jesus has got to be coming back. Right? I mean, think about like the Black Plague in Europe, how many of them thought this has got to be the year Jesus will come back, so it can't get worse than this? You think about all of the preachers during the Civil War, America is fighting against itself, and it was a brutal, violent war. They had to have been thinking, man. It just couldn't get worse than this. Jesus has got to be coming back soon. Think about World War one, World War Two. The world is literally tearing itself apart. There had to have been people who thought at that time and Jesus must be coming back. We're not the first group of people to be convinced that Jesus was going to come back soon. Jesus has always been coming back soon. Maybe this is it. Maybe he is coming back for our lifetimes are over. If that is the case, which might be, then what Paul is saying is just as applicable to us. We are to walk circumspectly. We are to be aware of what's going on around us, where not to put our heads in the sand like an ostrich and just blot out the world and pretend none of it's happening. That's not God's will for us. Neither is it God's will for us

Speaker 4: to be

Speaker 2: controlled by anything other than his Holy Spirit. You see, in verse number 18, a passage where we have two different controlling, I'll say substances. Of course, the Holy Spirit is not a substance, it's person. We have two controlling forces that are battling for influence and and control of your life. And Paul says, Don't be drunk with wine where it is excess, but be filled or controlled by the spirit. Every Christian has the Holy Spirit living inside of them, don't they? Not every Christian is Holy Spirit control a lot of Christians that are so callous through the moving of the Holy Spirit, they almost don't even realize that he's there anymore. So I don't know my being controlled by the spirit of my, not being controlled by the spirit. I understand. I watch the news. I see what's going on around us. It's very sobering. If it's not discouraging or depressing, it's at least sobering. So how do I know if I'm really letting the Holy Spirit work in my life? I want to be a light. I want to be salt in a, you know, in a world that is that is decaying with sin. How do I know? What are some of the signs? Well, verse number 19 tells us one very clear sign as to whether or not the Holy Spirit is at work in your life. And it's interesting to me that in the midst of talking about dark evil days and sobering topics such as alcohol, that Paul immediately starts talking about music. Music is often a light topic of conversation, right? I mean, you know, I went to I wouldn't see Brother Kenny back, and it'd been too long since I'd seen him. And so we went we visited together for about an hour. And, you know, it's always sad to go into one of these homes, you know? And but here's really Kenny Bacon. He's got to share a room with another man, and he's there. And guess what he starts doing, can you? If you can his brother Kenny back and guess what? It didn't take long before we started singing. He pulled out his harmonica and he said, Pastor, my lungs aren't like what they used to be. I don't know if I can even play this thing. I'll know what he was talking about. He played it just as good as I've ever heard him play it, but he starts singing, he starts playing that harmonica and all of a sudden everything just felt a little brighter, a little lighter. But some levity to the situation, some some joy, some happiness, and even that crusty old sailor that was sitting across the room from me. Even he turned overlooked and smiled when Brother Kenny started playing that music. You know, brother Kenny back and you know that the Holy Spirit is definitely at work in that man's life. The change that the Holy Spirit made in his life is just absolutely phenomenal. His testimony is so encouraging. The Holy Spirit wants to work in all of our lives that way. So the Holy Spirit wants to work in all of our lives that way. And you cannot cannot divorce Christian music from the Holy Spirit's working in your life. And what Paul is saying is if the Holy Spirit is at work in your life, just as if alcohol is at work in your life, there will be signs. There will be some evidences that you can point to and say, Aha, I see the Holy Spirit is working in this person. Just like you would say, Aha, I see this person has been drinking and that that that sign that evidence we talked about last week is Christian music. There's two aspects of Christian music that we wanted to look at from verse number 19, the first one we looked at in more depth last week. That is the purpose of outward, audible Christian music, Christian music that I sing or play for others to hear that other people can hear in verse. 19, when he says speaking to yourselves in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. We see an audience that is around us and within us. We speak to ourselves in Christian music. Christian music has a purpose, and that purpose is to refocus our attention on God. Christian music is special in that it reminds us of what God has done and based on what he has done, what we can then expect, for example, when we were singing, the roll is called up yonder. I expect that because of what Jesus did for me. One day when those names are read out of the Lamb's Book of Life at some point in that exercise. Gary Lynn Boyd Jr. is going to get called out, and I'm going to get to say, That's me. I'll be there. So that song reminds me of that. It refocuses my attention on what God did for me. Reminds us of who he is, what he has done. There are three styles of Christian music that we see here in verse number 19. We looked at him last week. I'll just briefly remind you of what they were. We have a song. We have a hymn and we have a spiritual song. A Psalm is a song that is a most often a spontaneous outbreak or outburst from the heart. A song is something that is meant to be carried with you. It's a mobile song. A song is most closely connected to what we're going to talk about a little bit later as the inward song that we sing to the Lord. Usually, a song would be accompanied by a stringed instrument. You know, when you think of a stringed instrument, you might think of a big old piano. Or if you hear about a harp in the Bible, you're thinking of a sit down giant harp with like Bugs Bunny or maybe an angel playing on it. I don't know what Bugs Bunny, but I think I remember a Looney Tunes cartoon with him playing the harp. But a harp was a stringed instrument was small. It was something you could carry around with you. Throw it on your back, tie it to your donkey, put it in the cart with you so that you could have some form of musical entertainment no matter where you went. The song is meant to stick with you no matter where you go. If I say the lord is my shepherd, you say shall not want. It's ingrained in your memory. Blessed is the man walk is not the counsel of the ungodly. This is some of you even know that one. Yeah, I mean, it's it's supposed to be memorable. It's supposed to stand out and stick in your mind. So a song outburst comes from your heart. A hymn. A hymn was a festive celebration, a festive celebration of a hero or an pagan cultures a deity. It was the folk it's supposed to focus on the heroism and the victory of the song's subject. So whoever you were singing your hymn about, you were praising them. You were lifting them up. You were magnifying or making bigger the the facts about their heroism. Don't we have some songs that do that for Jesus or we magnify, we make bigger for other people to see the things that he has done to him. So I thought of him only referred to something written in the sixteen hundreds now at hymns before they had Christians, before they were called Christians. I should say a spiritual song, a spiritual song. Was was an ode, it was a poem. And if you listen to the message from last week, you knew that at Paul's time of writing, there were basically two types of odes. There were odes that were very high and lofty and very complicated and complex and very artsy fartsy. Can I say that? Sue lights out. But then there was another kind of owed. There was much more down to Earth, much more everyday life. I believe that that's what Paul had in mind when he was talking about the spiritual odes, the spiritual songs that talk about how my everyday life was changed by Jesus. You know how my, my, my living experience is different now that I've been changed by Jesus Christ? And so there are so many wonderful songs that that we can sing that fit into one of these categories. They strengthen us. They point our focus back to the Lord. They testify to others about what God can do. Christian music isn't unique outflowing of the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian. It's a sign. It's evidence that God is working in your life. If the songs that are coming out of your mouth, the songs that are emanating from your your life are Christian. If there are songs, hymns and spiritual songs, then other people look at you and say there's something different. We live in a dark evil day. How are you infusing this situation with light? Well, it's nothing to do with us. Has everything to do with the Holy Spirit that lives inside of us and is working in us. I would say this if you do not have a regular interaction with Christian music in your life, then that is a warning sign that you ought to pay attention to. That is a spiritual caution light. And if you say no, I, I do have Christian music in my life. Every Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, I sing Christian music. That's not what this is talking about. The only Christian music you have in your life is the Christian music you hear in a church service that something is not right. No wonder we get accused of being hypocrites when we have one type of music here, when we're around other Christians. Then we get in our car and we immediately turn on something else. What kind of a message does that send to our children, to our spouse? Now I have to say this too. This warning does come with a flip side to it is just because Christian music is a regular part of your life. It doesn't necessarily mean that you are being Holy Spirit fill. Is it possible for you to say your wife, I love you and then treat her like garbage? Is it possible for you to say, Oh, I'm very healthy? I really I focus on my health, I'm going to make sure that that I live a healthy lifestyle. Then you go through the McDonald's drive thru and you order three double cheeseburgers, a large fry and a large coke. Not even the Diet Coke. You not even pretending you just get a large real thing. Is there a conflict between what you're saying and what's actually true? Yes, think. Yes. Is it possible that we could be singing Christian music, that we could be performing Christian music? And yet the Holy Spirit is not really at work in our lives, it's just a performance. Yeah, it's possible. That's why I think Paul continues on. He doesn't stop halfway through verse number 19, but there's a comma there and he continues on and he says this singing and making melody in your heart to each other and who to the Lord. I can lie to you. I'm I'm a sinner, so I'm pretty good at lying. I've been practicing since I was nine months old and I started talking. And lie in all my life. You know, I can't lie to the Lord. So the inner music, the inner music that we offer to the Lord should mirror the outer music that we speak to ourselves. There ought to be a unity. There ought to be an agreement between what is coming out of my mouth and what is taking place in my heart. The two words that Paul uses to describe our musical offering to the Lord, not near as deep as the words we looked at last week. We were listening to the Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, and you're like, I don't like the definitions you use. That's not what I've always heard tough cookies because that's what those words mean. You don't like it. Take it up with God. He wrote the book. That's what this all means. That's what a hymn is. That's what a spiritual song is. He goes, use those words on purpose. So that's why I said what I said about them. I wish I could go into depth. You don't wish I could go into depth, but I wish I could go into depth about what it means to sing and make melody. But it basically just means sing and praise God. Sing and praise the Lord. What kind of songs do you think we should use to sing and praise God? What kind of music do you think God is interested in hearing? You think maybe the definitions we learned about last week would carry through into this week? I mean, it is the same thought, after all. I think Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs are all fitting musical offerings that we would send up to the Lord. These songs emanating from our heart can and should be used to praise God. Christian music, whether it be outward or inward, flows from the Holy Spirit working in our life. And so the songs that we sing, it makes sense they would be the same. Whether it comes from my mouth or it comes from my heart. The Holy Spirit working in our life reinforces the theme of the Christian life. You see, I don't sing to try and earn or produce something spiritual. I sing because of what I have already received and what I have already received gives me confidence to sing about what he will do for me in the future. As the roll been called up yonder. Yet, no, but I know what Jesus already did for me, so that gives me confidence about what he'll do for me in the future. Till the storm passes by as every storm in my life passed by, no wouldn't be a bad deal, though, you know, thirty three already dealt with all the storms of life. Smooth sailing from here on out. Probably not the case, but I know he's brought me through the storms of the past. So why should I think he'll fail me in the storms of the future? That's not Gary Boyd's flesh coming up with that. That's the Holy Spirit teaching me that, convincing me of that showing me from God's word. Facts and truths such as I will never leave you lo, I am with you all, even until the end of the world. Now, I want to talk to you about some things related to this inward music and just some facts about some of them are be encouraging. Some of them are going to be warning signs for you to be aware of. The first is a warning sign. You see, there is a super predator that is out there who aims to prevent you from fulfilling this command. This is not a suggestion. This command to sing and make melody in your heart to the Lord. You know this super predator is it's an earworm near worm. It's not one of those things I read about that like crawl into your ear and lay eggs while you're sleeping. No, that's not. That's not what I was talking about. Have you ever gotten a song stuck in your head? And it just plays over and over and over? For example, this is the song that never ends. Lamb chops? Yes. Remember that? Yes, it goes on and on, my friend. Some people stop listening in it, not knowing what it was, and they'll continue singing it forever just because this is the song that never ends. You guys never watch this show. OK, thank you for the look. I should have known. Now, can we be honest and say that probably most songs that get stuck in our head are not as innocent as the song that never ends? I thought I figured somebody had done it, but I looked up. What are the the most common songs that get stuck in people's heads? There's actually a formula for how likely a song is to get stuck in your head and has to do with the the B, the repetition, the the recette ability that you have for it you want to hit. The number one song was I only had to say, I just I'll act it out for you and you'll get it. OK. Number one song stuck in your head. I'm sorry if that's going to be stuck in your head now. When you get a song stuck in your head, you're trying to work. You're trying to focus. Or let's be honest, trying to read your Bible, you're trying to pray. Isn't that distracting from what you're trying to do? It's even worse if you get the tune stuck in your head that you can't remember the words. What is that song? You got like two two lines or two notes in your head, and Google even has a feature now where you can go bomb bomb bomb, and it will try to find what that song is and tell you so that you can be helped. There is no help for you that just repeats in your mind over and over again throughout the day. And unfortunately, so often the songs that we get stuck in our heads are not Christian songs. It may not be filled with profanity or anything, just, you know, like Super Wicked, but they don't direct our minds to the law, right? These songs may be from your past, and I think you understand. I know it's crazy how a song from a very long time ago can pop into my head with almost no reason. You know, these songs sometimes focus our minds on things we'd rather not think about. They take us back to a time or an activity that we probably wish we weren't thinking about. Rather than focusing on the Lord and keeping our mind stayed on him, we're thinking about the way our life used to be, where we were, where we would hear that song, where that song would be played. Music and smell have a way of sending us back in time to different places. The inner music of our soul should match up with the outer music of our mouths. And yet the music we've listened to in the past can be used by our minds and can be used by Satan to distract us and pull our focus away from the Lord. Get you thinking about things. Get you thinking about sin that you used to be involved with and like a trigger. Now you're thinking about, Hey, I wonder how so-and-so is doing? Hey, I remember when I heard that song at this place, I quit going there, but I wonder what's going on there these days. Your mind starts to wander to the inner music of our soul. Can either legitimize or delegitimize the audible music that we produce. Think about outward audible music is that it can be fake. If I sing, I surrender all. It's quite possible that I really don't surrender all. I can sing about things I don't really believe. The thing about this is that usually no one else can tell. I can sing how great thou art. And in reality, I treat God like how little thou art? There's one person we can't ever make it to, as one person will never deceive. That's God. He always knows whether our outward song is matching up to the inner songs that fill our hearts. And, well, Pastor, I certainly don't want my inner song to conflict with my outer song, then God will be angry with me, then God won't love me. That's not what we're shooting for here. God loves you before you were his child. Even nothing you can do. There's nothing anybody can do to separate you from the love of God, right? So if we're not motivated by fear, what are we motivated by when it comes to matching up our outward music with our inward music? Could it be that we gain some benefits personally when we are living in unity between what is happening on the inside and what is happening on the outside? I think that might be the case. You ever known somebody that was trying to live a double life? I knew somebody one time traveled a lot. Hardly ever home. Turns out, after several several years of living, this life actually had two families two wives, two sets of children, two houses. Neither of them knew about the other. Crazy is trying to live two lives. You know, what happens when you try to live two lives always falls apart. Be sure your what sin? We'll find you out. It's not natural for us to live in conflict with ourselves where the outer doesn't match what's going on in the inner. And so my question for you would be this how much better is it for us when the outward and the inner music match up? Go back to the Somme, what is part of the definition of assault when when Jesus was brought to the Temple and Elizabeth was there and Simeon Simeon sees Jesus and spontaneously, what does he do? He starts to break out in song that song. It's not like a musical number. You know where priests and Levites come out and do a little jig while he sings, No, he just he speaks what was on the inner in his heart, and he he he doesn't write it. But he he shares, and I believe Mary wrote it down later, a New Testament song that burst forth from his heart. We're going. We're going to get back into songs this coming Sunday night. We're going to look at some twenty two very difficult Psalm. It's long and it starts out. My God, my god, why has style forsaken me now? Is that some, you know, moody teenager that's sitting at his desk with all the lights turned off and just a lamp going, Oh my God, you know it's being melodramatic. Now David is speaking from what's inside of his heart, and it's just bursting out the inner song becoming the outer song. Our existence is always more healthy when it is based in unity. For example, you're trying to be active, trying to be physically fit, but you keep feeding yourself junk as conflict. It's not going to work out. You say you love your spouse, but then you treat her like trash. That's a conflict. It's not going to work. You have the Holy Spirit with you, lives inside of you, but you're always going and doing ungodly things. That's conflict. There's going to be consequences from that. These contradictions in living will always have consequences when the inner and the outer agree. It's like combining diet and exercise. You know how many of us can really put those two together? I can do one, not the other, and do this one, and not that one. And so I never get any progress. It's like combining diet and exercise, it's like saying to your spouse, I love you. And then proving it backing it up with action, it's like claiming to be a Christian and then also doing Christian things. Everything works better when we aren't living in contradiction. I had a friend in college, Isaiah. No thumb, no thumb. He did have a thumb, but that was his name. He had a Chevy Chevelle. It was blue and white racing stripes on it. And we all thought it was cool. I rode home from church with him one day and we were going down the highway. I don't know why he did this. I don't know what he was trying to do. He threw that thing into reverse on the highway, and you can imagine it was not a good outcome. Why? Because there was a contradiction. We were moving forward. And he put the car in reverse. There are consequences for that. So our inner music, the song that we sing to the Lord, needs to back up and legitimize the outward music that we sing to ourselves and to others. Also think for a second about a really great benefit to inner music. Inner music, the music that we sing to the Lord is not reliant upon human ability or performance. How many of you have ever listened to somebody sing and you say, Man, I wish I could sing like that. They give one of my appendages, be able to sing better, I mean, not this arm, maybe a finger, I don't know, man, I wish I had a better singing voice. You know, I hear some songs like, Oh, I love to sing like that. I'll get in my car and I'll turn it on and I'll I'll sing off the top of my lungs. We get home. One of the boys say, Daddy, that hurt my ears. Was it the volume or was that the quality both? Man, I wish I could sing. You know, when when I'm singing in my heart to the Lord, it's just between me and him. No one else is in on this performance. And when I am singing songs of praise to God in my heart, I am not hindered by the limitations of my voice. You say when I'm singing in my heart to the Lord, I can sing any part and every part simultaneously. You ever tried to do that? You know you're singing the song and you're singing bass and tenor and lead in the girls part. Even not supposed to do that with your real voice, but in my heart, I can do that. I can listen to someone else, sing a song, and I sing in my inner self and I can sound just as good or maybe even better than they do. See, inner music removes the excuse for not singing that people so often give. I would sing, but I just can't sing well. No one wants to hear me sing. That's not true, because God wants to hear you sing. In fact, he's here commanding us to sing. You go into the book of Psalms in over and over and over again. It says, Sing unto the Lord, sing under the Lord a new song. God most definitely wants to hear you sing. Why? Because listening to you sing, especially the inner song that emanates from your heart, is an evidence that you are submitting to him and allowing him to change you into the image of Jesus Christ. It's the inverse number 19, a very small verse. But in this verse, we have two powerful reasons to sing. No one outwardly, we're seeing for the good of ourselves and for the good of others, inwardly we sing to the Lord, we sing songs, we sing hymns and spiritual songs. We want to make sure our inner and outer music match. We want to make sure they agree. We don't want to be fake. There's nobody here that would raise their hands, say, I just want to be known as a hypocrite. This says that we want to be genuine. Music is a sign of the Holy Spirit's work taking place in our lives. He wants to do the work. All you have to do is let him let him change you. And if you are letting the Holy Spirit, work should come out evidences in signs that include music who created us with the ability to sing

Speaker 4: God

Speaker 2: did this and the reason that if he gave us that ability, he maybe intends for us to use that ability to honor him. Some of you may be disappointed that I haven't really talked about any genres of music when it comes to Christian music, but I would imagine if you took these three definitions and applied it to the Christian music that you're listening to, it would probably weed out some of the stuff that really doesn't qualify as a solemn hymn or spiritual song. I think I really have to get into beat counts and specific instruments, really only one instrument we've seen. That's a stringed instrument in this whole thing. I think if we're letting the Holy Spirit work, he will guide us into the kind of music we're supposed to be listening to. Wouldn't you agree? I mean, don't we believe in the priesthood of the believer? I'm not your spiritual dictator, am I? No, you don't want me to be that. Now we should be listening to Christian music. It should be a part of our life inwardly and outwardly pride everybody, father, we thank you for this day. Thank you for the good attention of the folks that are here. All. I pray that you help all of us to be convinced of the need for Christian music in our lives, or that we would not only sing it ourselves and for others. Think about the lessons that it teaches our children when we sing Christian music to them or around them. The Lord, the need also for an inner musical conversation taking place between you and us. And I pray that our inner music that we think on and in and sing to ourselves would be in agreement with the songs that we're singing outwardly. Or I pray that we would honor you with the musical abilities that you've given us. Lord, we thank you for this. We ask you to be with us now as we prepare to leave. It's in Jesus name. I pray. Amen.

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