Featured What Do You Believe about Instrumental Music?

Interesting. If you think that Psalm 98 is revelation about the Law, that thinking is another major theological difference between our different understanding of Scripture that we are not going to come to any agreement about.

 

"Psalm 98 is a metaphor." Sure, whatever you say. With that kind of hermeneutic, the Bible can be made to say whatever anyone wants it to say.

 

God gave Jesus the book of Revelation to give it to John to reveal to believers what God wants us to know (Rev. 1:1). Revelation shows that harps are central to the worship of God and Jesus in heaven (Rev. 5:8-14; 14:2-3; 15:2-4) so, yes, Jesus has taught us that God the Father must be worshiped with harp music.

Of course, you have ways of explaining those passages such that they supposedly do not reveal anything about the use of musical instruments in heaven so there really is very little common ground that we are going to have on this and many other issues.

 

This is solely your opinion and nothing more. Using insulting language does not bolster your position; it only shows that you lack the good character needed to interact properly with people who disagree with you.

 

1 Corinthians 15:36 Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: 37 And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: 38 But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.

Divine revelation teaches that God gives to every seed its own body as it has pleased Him. He has made every seed that we sow in the ground exactly in the way that pleases Him.

Because He has made the bodies of even seeds to be pleasing to Him, we know that those seeds are not "neutral" seeds that neither please Him nor displease Him. He made them with bodies as it pleased Him, and even such things that are not used in worship please God because He made them exactly the way that pleased Him.

The belief that "No instrumental music pleases God. It's all neutral--it neither pleases Him nor displeases Him" is a faulty belief that the NT shows to be false. Any instrumental music that God Himself makes or has made is music that itself--regardless of context, setting, use, etc--pleases Him. It is not neutral in the sense that it neither pleases Him nor displeases Him.

Furthermore, the instrumental music itself that God has made pleases Him because He made it!

 

Yes, you are correct that those offerings served as a memorial before God, but those offerings could not have properly done so without the playing of the silver trumpets in obedience to God. The music was a necessary aspect of the memorializing that took place when those offerings were offered because God commanded that it be so.

 

There are at least three passages in the NT that are explicitly about instrumental music that was/is not music that was/is played in heaven:

1. Matthew 11:17
   And saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.
   
   
2. Luke 7:32
   They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept.
   
   
3. 1 Corinthians 14:7-8
   And even things without life giving sound, whether pipe or harp, except they give a distinction in the sounds, how shall it be known what is piped or harped? 8 For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?

 

It is best not to take lack of mention of something in a narrative account as proof of absence. Just because the passage does not say anything about musical instruments being played does not prove that there were no instruments used.

Especially for the singing recorded in Matthew 26:30 and Mark 14:26, it is entirely possible and I think even arguably likely that they sang the hymn to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument.