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Leadership & Life
Why The Devil Doesn't Have All The Good Music
Mal Fletcher
Excerpted from "Get Real!" by Mal Fletcher
Published by Word Publishing 1993 Copyright Mal Fletcher 1993
We don't know much about how Jesus sang. Perhaps the disciples had a really good choir happening. Maybe they featured Peter, James and John with a kind of Beach Boys harmony pattern. Who knows?
Musicologists know very little about the way Hebrew music worked in the time of Jesus. He did sing, though. He knew the power of music as a form of expression - both for contemplation and for celebration. 'Probably had a rich baritone voice too.
Good news! Even in the 90s, the devil definitely does not have all the good music. Wherever spiritual revival is breaking out throughout the world today, new music is there lifting God's people into a fresh adoration of their Father.
I know, there is also a lot of profiteering going in the Christian music scene and we have a right to feel angry about it. Some parts of the so-called international Christian music "industry" exist for the sole purpose of selling records to pay the wages of people who sell records and so on ad nauseum. The industry has become, as the very word suggests, a self-propagating, self-serving machine which is more often about turning over product than it is about real ministry to people's needs. Somewhere in all that the music gets buried under promotional hype.
The French Christian thinker Jacques Ellul could have had the Christian music industry - not the music itself - in mind when he said: "[Today] everything has become 'means'. There is no longer an 'end', we do not know where we are going...we set huge machines in motion in order to go nowhere." (Jaques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom, Helmers and Howard, 1989, p. 53)
Don't get me wrong here - there are some very good and godly people in Christian music circles. It's sad that they have to be part of what is such an ungodly system at times. It's sad to read some of the pre-tour material which goes out to concert promoters on behalf of Christian artists. I mean, how seriously can you take someone who is asking for a certain type of confectionary back-stage before a "show"? How interested in serving humanity are people who insist on flying everywhere first class and being chaffeur driven to each "gig"? Where's the Christian distinctives in all this - what makes us any different from the money-crunchers in the pagan world?
I'm not saying we shouldn't protect and look after prominent Christian musicians. Life in the public eye can get pretty demanding I guess. I am saying that we should all grow up and look for super servants instead of superstars!
THE POWER OF PRAISE
Some of the most exciting advances in Christian music right now are being made not in the fields of entertainment or even evangelism - which are both valid and important - but in local church worship and praise. It seems that many young leaders who are in the forefront of what God is doing know how to bring people together in corporate praise. What does it take to be an effective, even exciting, worship leader?
Before we answer that we should understand just why praise is important. Most of us go to church week in and week out; we sing the the right songs and say all the right words, but we don't often ask one of the most important of all life's little questions: "Why?" When we stop asking the why question in any area of life, we stop striving for a better way and reaching for excellence. We sink back into mediocrity. We'd all be better equipped for praise and worship if we knew why we do it in the first place. So let's start there.
1. We Praise God Because He Deserves It - And Requires It!
God gets a kick out of our praise. God has put within everything he made a song of praise and celebration. The Old Testament is filled with lively references to trees that clap their hands and mountains that get down and boogie (Isaiah 55:12)! All creation was originally designed to party and, while sin has spoiled the fun in many ways, you can still hear the music flowing through if you listen hard enough.
Man is the pinnacle of God's created order on spaceship earth, so you'd expect he'd have the greatest capacity for praise. We were created for God's pleasure (Rev. 4:11; Col. 1:16). Show me a person who knows how to put God's pleasure first and I'll show you a person who gets a buzz out of living.
Modern man lives pretty much for himself. He considers the idea of pleasing anyone before himself some kind of restriction. He lives as if God were made in his image. Surrounded as we Christians are by this humanistic positivism, even we tend to do things because we enjoy them, or because they're healthy or beneficial for us. Ultimately though, we should do what we do because God wants it done.
The word "worship" comes from two words in the old English: "worth-ship", the assigning of value or worth to someone. Life only really takes off when we assign ultimate value to God our Creator. When Peter made his great confession, "You are the Christ the Son of the living God" he was met with this response from Jesus: "And you are Peter, [the rock]" (Matt. 16:18). It's only when we recognize God in his proper place that we discover who we really are. A man devalues himself to the extent to which he values - and gives himself - to anything above God.
2. We Praise God Because We Love His Presence.
The Psalmist had a way with words. He said that God "inhabits" the praises of his people (Ps. 22:3 KJV). The Hebrew word used there means to sit down, to settle into. Think of yourself sinking into that favourite bean bag chair at home, or getting cosy in you water bed. That's how God resonds to loving praise.
The Japanese have a great understanding of these. Traditionally, the emperor would be carried through the streets as his adoring people bowed to him. I'm told that one Japanese translation of Psalm 22:3 has it this way: "When God's people praise him, they build him a throne and he comes to sit in it." Fantastic!
In the Old Testament, the ark of the covenant represented the presence of God with his people Israel (Num. 7:89; Ex. 25:22). As the tangible symbol of God's presence the ark brought the Hebrews victory in battle (Josh. 6:6-21). It brought them guidance whenever God spoke from the mercy seat (Josh. 7:6-15). It brought prosperity - one guy called Obed Edom made some great business deals while the ark rested in his home (2 Sam. 6:11-12)!
Today we do not have an actual, physical ark to look to, but the presence of the Holy Spirit still brings victory, guidance and blessing. Praise is a vehicle through which we see come into a sense of God's nearness. The problem in many churches is not dry services but dry servants! We need to spend more time drinking in God's life-giving presence.
3. We Praise Because It Is A Powerful Weapon In Our Armoury.
When you read Judges 6, you begin to wonder why God went to so much trouble just to get Gideon to blow a trumpet. This guy was hiding in a winepress yet God set him aside to muster the men of Israel for war. Certainly he's an unlikely hero.
Somewhere underneath the layers of fear and defeatism in Gideon's heart, however, God saw a desire to fight back under the pressure. When Gideon eventually blew his horn he was calling the Israelites to recognize the strength of their God. He was declaring that, although they were mightily outnumbered, they would come out the winners because, and only because, God was with them.
Today many Christians are hiding in winepresses, afraid to really let their dreams out lest they be squashed. So many have lost their resolve to fight back when in a corner. In those pressure times we need to resound the trumpet of war, declaring that God is on our side.
In a sense praise is blowing of a trumpet which declares that, whatever the enemy does, God and his people will be victorious. Spiritual battles cannot be fought with natural weapons (2 Cor. 10:3-4) and praise, being a spiritual weapon, is powerful to frustrate the works of Satan (Ps. 149:6-9). Praise is a faith activity because it gives thanks for the victory before it arrives.
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