Featured What Is Unacceptable in Corporate Worship?

Let's just make a whole bunch of rules based upon commentaries of commentaries and then place the millstones on the necks of those who dare attend.

My goodness this thread reads like the Pharisaical rules to please God.

 

The Bible is full of grace. The regulative principle of scripture doesn't support you. You literally make up rules from thin air and point at verses that have no context for your contention. The normative principle is rejected by you.
Face it, you are speaking like a Pharisee. There is no other way of putting it as you make up laws to tie people down to your "wish dream."

 

John Wesley's "Rules for Methodist Singers" are instructive:

1. Learn the Tunes.
2. Sing them as Printed.
3. Sing all. If it is a cross to you, take it up and you will find it a blessing.
4. Sing lustily and with a good courage.
5. Sing modestly. Do not bawl.
6. Sing in time. Do not run before or stay behind.
7. Above all, sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing Him more than yourself or any other creature. In order to do this, attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually.

C.H. Spurgeon in the preface to "Our own Hymnbook' wrote:

'Whatever may be thought of our taste we have used it without prejudice, and a good hymn has not been rejected because of the character of its author, or the heesies of the church in whose hymnal it first occurred; so long as the language and the spirit commended the hymn to our heart we included it, and believe we have enriched our collection thereby.'

 

In fact there were rules for worship in the Temple. They were introduced by David before it was built.
In 1 Chronicles 25:1-7 we learn that the only instruments to be used in the Temple were harps, stringed instruments and cymbals (!). This was followed by Solomon in 2 Chronicles 7:6, Hezekiah in 2 Chronicles 29:25 and Nehemiah in Nehemiah 12:27, 36. The exception seems to be that on special occasions the priests (not the Levites) blew trumpets, but its not clear that these were used for the singing. Psalms 81:2 doesn't seem to contradict this.
It's important to rreember that there was no amplification in those days. So it is not surprising that very large numbers of musicians were needed to make the music audible.

Today of course, we are no longer in the Temple, nor under the ceremonial laws of the old covenant. We look in vain for any mention of instruments used in singing in the early churches. Ephesians 5:19 speakss of, 'In psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.'
Spurgeon in the Met Tab, had no instruments at all; the congregation sang a capella, which, of course, means "in the chapel." In the church I attend, we use only a keyboard to keep us in tune and in time, though actually, singing a capella can be a really good experience so long as the tunes are simple and well-known.

 

Gosh! That must be why the Salvation Army have all those brass bands playing in their temples!

 

Yes. It was a few years ago and I had forgotten with whom I was discussing it.

Ithink that Psalms 149; 150 are not speaking of Temple worship. Otherwise we would have to bring a bed into church (Psalms 149:6).
As for what God wants for us to do today, I believe that Psalm 98:4-6 definitively establishes that God wants us today to use musical instruments in worshiping Him corporately.[/QUOTE]
Please understand that I am not advocating a ban on musical instruments.. I would only say, 'Let all things be done decently and in order' (1 Corinthians 14:40). The lad who wants to play his guitar in church neds to understand that that he will be facilitating the worship of the congregation, not showing off his picking skills.

 

How do you actually know this? Have you observed every culture in the world from AD40 to the present?
You are projecting your culture of worship upon the entire worldwide church.
Sir, you are a Pharisee in your legalist spirit.

 

For those of us that sound more like a wheel that needs some grease it is better if we just think the words. God looks at the heart.

 

I am asserting that the use of drums to worship God has happened since the beginning of worship. I am asserting that stringed instruments have been used since the beginning of worship. I am asserting that 4/4 time is a time that has been in music for as long as music can be recorded. I am asserting that the term "rock music" is an American invention of the 1950's and it plays no part in this conversation since it's a coined term, not a musical term.

 

I’m a Baptist … we arrive early to sit in the back row.

 

*Romans 4:13-17,22-25*
For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression. That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

Grace is greater than law. Prove me wrong.