WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.080 Let's read together from a passage that's a song, a song, a lyrics from the Old Testament, from Psalm 27. 00:00:09.060 --> 00:00:14.400 So it's printed there in your bulletin, and we'll reflect on it for just a moment, just a few minutes. 00:00:14.700 --> 00:00:17.280 Just the first four verses we're going to read. 00:00:17.280 --> 00:00:23.600 So the whole psalm you'll see printed, but just look with me at the first four verses, and this is God's Word. 00:00:24.500 --> 00:00:27.539 The Lord, David writes, is my light and my salvation. 00:00:28.219 --> 00:00:29.080 Whom shall I fear? 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:32.359 The Lord is the stronghold of my life. 00:00:32.679 --> 00:00:33.840 Of whom shall I be afraid? 00:00:34.439 --> 00:00:42.120 When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, my adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall. 00:00:43.039 --> 00:00:47.260 Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. 00:00:47.560 --> 00:00:50.799 Though war arise against me, yet I will be confident. 00:00:51.340 --> 00:00:58.799 One thing have I asked of the Lord that I will seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord 00:00:58.799 --> 00:01:06.640 all the days of my life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple. 00:01:07.640 --> 00:01:08.920 This is God's holy word. 00:01:11.319 --> 00:01:13.879 Just a few minutes to reflect on this passage together. 00:01:13.879 --> 00:01:19.399 In verse 1 to 3 there, David, who wrote this psalm, he is afraid. 00:01:19.719 --> 00:01:20.519 He's very fearful. 00:01:21.239 --> 00:01:24.859 We don't know all the circumstances going on in his life that brought him to such fear. 00:01:26.159 --> 00:01:27.140 But he's very afraid. 00:01:27.239 --> 00:01:27.959 He says things like, 00:01:27.959 --> 00:01:30.359 Though an army encamp against me, I shall not fear. 00:01:31.140 --> 00:01:34.379 So here he's talking to himself and trying to tell himself, 00:01:35.479 --> 00:01:36.559 Put away fearfulness. 00:01:36.679 --> 00:01:37.399 Don't be so afraid. 00:01:38.280 --> 00:01:42.379 And what's happening here is we're watching, we're listening to David write a song, lyrics, 00:01:42.799 --> 00:01:44.959 about his battle with anxiety. 00:01:46.419 --> 00:01:49.959 So later, we didn't read this far, but in verse 10 he says, 00:01:50.419 --> 00:01:53.339 For my mother, my father and my mother have forsaken me. 00:01:53.340 --> 00:01:57.659 And there's a way of translating that in Hebrew from the Hebrew to English that could say, 00:01:58.340 --> 00:02:01.219 If even my father and mother forsake me. 00:02:01.880 --> 00:02:07.460 So it could be that David is actually experiencing something like his own mom and dad rejecting him as king. 00:02:08.159 --> 00:02:13.060 But it also could be that David is thinking about all the ways life could go bad. 00:02:13.699 --> 00:02:15.199 All the worst case scenarios. 00:02:16.080 --> 00:02:18.120 And so he's afraid in his circumstances, 00:02:18.400 --> 00:02:21.840 but he is growing in fearfulness and anxiety in this moment. 00:02:21.840 --> 00:02:24.340 But we are fearful people as well. 00:02:25.379 --> 00:02:26.719 We are very anxious people. 00:02:27.060 --> 00:02:33.300 We live in a generation that is the most anxious society that many sociologists say has ever been. 00:02:34.560 --> 00:02:39.599 And we live in a world, as we sang in Amazing Grace, of danger, toil, and snare. 00:02:39.719 --> 00:02:41.900 There's lots of reasons to be afraid in this life. 00:02:42.340 --> 00:02:44.000 Lots of reasons to feel anxiety. 00:02:45.120 --> 00:02:51.500 The snowball effect of always imagining worst case scenarios that may be coming into your life. 00:02:51.500 --> 00:02:55.599 And letting that become a state of fearfulness that's ruling your soul. 00:02:56.659 --> 00:03:01.699 And here I just want to point you to two things David does to fight fear. 00:03:02.500 --> 00:03:04.780 To fight anxiety that can overtake your life. 00:03:05.520 --> 00:03:06.840 And maybe that's where you are right now. 00:03:07.460 --> 00:03:11.039 And one of the things he does, and this is why I chose this, is he makes music. 00:03:12.039 --> 00:03:12.879 He sings. 00:03:13.060 --> 00:03:13.860 He writes lyrics. 00:03:14.120 --> 00:03:14.879 This is a song. 00:03:15.420 --> 00:03:16.740 He's writing lyrics here. 00:03:16.740 --> 00:03:20.300 He's writing this out as both a song and a prayer. 00:03:20.659 --> 00:03:22.020 He's making music to God here. 00:03:22.620 --> 00:03:24.920 It's really well known if you know the Bible at all. 00:03:25.020 --> 00:03:26.320 David loves music. 00:03:27.040 --> 00:03:28.300 He sings a lot. 00:03:28.379 --> 00:03:30.840 He got in trouble for dancing one time even. 00:03:31.700 --> 00:03:32.820 He loves to make music. 00:03:32.920 --> 00:03:33.660 He loves to play instruments. 00:03:33.659 --> 00:03:41.020 He loves to write lyrics that we, in God's providence, sing today by the power of the Holy Spirit as God's word. 00:03:41.020 --> 00:03:55.640 And I just wonder, like him, if you find that in times of fearfulness, anxiety, stress, depression, maybe in times where you're struggling to even feel any emotions in your life at all, 00:03:56.060 --> 00:04:08.980 that it's music, singing, that often is the thing you need to come to, to break through the heart and to bring you back into a state of peace and calm and hope in the midst of fearfulness in your life. 00:04:08.979 --> 00:04:11.379 And that's not emotionalism. 00:04:11.459 --> 00:04:11.919 That's biblical. 00:04:12.859 --> 00:04:15.299 That's what we see all across the Bible, that we need singing. 00:04:15.780 --> 00:04:16.699 We need to sing. 00:04:16.819 --> 00:04:24.420 And singing is one of the gifts God has given us to help us so much, to bring the truths that we read about in the Bible down from the head into our hearts. 00:04:25.360 --> 00:04:27.259 And so singing gets God's goodness. 00:04:27.500 --> 00:04:28.259 It gets hope. 00:04:28.360 --> 00:04:34.920 It gets the love of God from a little spot in your memory, in your mind of what you've read on a page down into your soul. 00:04:35.279 --> 00:04:35.939 We need singing. 00:04:35.939 --> 00:04:40.680 And so that's one of the reasons we can come tonight and sing lots more than usual, and it's really good. 00:04:42.300 --> 00:04:43.759 Music is God's gift to us. 00:04:44.719 --> 00:04:51.519 Now, if you're here tonight exploring Christianity, I think we all have a sense of this, how much music can affect us. 00:04:52.699 --> 00:04:56.500 Kurt Vonnegut was a very famous author, U.S. author. 00:04:56.899 --> 00:05:00.819 He wrote a very famous book, a very controversial book, called The Slaughterhouse Five. 00:05:00.819 --> 00:05:09.219 And Kurt Vonnegut was also, for many years, the president of the American Humanist Association. 00:05:09.899 --> 00:05:12.339 So that's an association of humanism. 00:05:12.680 --> 00:05:14.639 Atheism is another word for humanism. 00:05:14.959 --> 00:05:21.439 So he was a very committed materialist, very committed to the idea that the belief, I would suggest, that God doesn't exist. 00:05:21.439 --> 00:05:40.959 And yet, biographers of him talk about the fact that in people that knew him, in the quiet moments of his life, he would say to people that he, throughout his whole life, even as the president of the American Humanist Society, was, quote, Christ-haunted, is how he put it. 00:05:40.959 --> 00:05:48.959 That he could never quite get away from the idea that he wondered in his heart if he did, in fact, believe in God. 00:05:49.959 --> 00:05:54.779 And twice in some of his published writings, he wrote phrases like this. 00:05:54.839 --> 00:05:55.579 Let me give you just one. 00:05:55.659 --> 00:05:55.959 He said, 00:05:57.560 --> 00:06:01.159 Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God. 00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:04.759 It is so extraordinarily full of life. 00:06:05.319 --> 00:06:10.500 And in the tough times of my life, I can listen to music, and it has made such a difference to me. 00:06:11.919 --> 00:06:13.859 He was haunted by belief in God, he said. 00:06:14.259 --> 00:06:15.120 And it was music. 00:06:16.699 --> 00:06:23.599 Now, there's not a person in here, I think, who doesn't know the experience of what music can do to your soul, life. 00:06:23.680 --> 00:06:24.779 You don't ever teach children. 00:06:25.019 --> 00:06:28.639 You don't teach children to dance in the kitchen when the tunes are playing. 00:06:28.979 --> 00:06:30.279 You know, it's just not. 00:06:30.339 --> 00:06:31.099 We know how much. 00:06:31.279 --> 00:06:32.279 It's such a gift to us. 00:06:33.019 --> 00:06:34.000 It affects us so much. 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:38.319 There's a black spiritual in the U.S. that has lyrics like this. 00:06:38.560 --> 00:06:40.939 Over my head, I hear music in the air. 00:06:41.459 --> 00:06:42.839 There must be a God somewhere. 00:06:44.120 --> 00:06:51.079 And so my invitation to you tonight is to do what David did, to sing to God more and more in your life. 00:06:51.139 --> 00:06:54.680 And even if you're not a Christian tonight, I would invite you to do that too. 00:06:55.680 --> 00:06:57.360 Try going out this week and singing. 00:06:58.120 --> 00:07:00.720 Singing to God and thinking, where did music come from? 00:07:00.959 --> 00:07:02.220 And so here's my second invitation here. 00:07:03.959 --> 00:07:10.019 Because you wouldn't like it if I took the next half hour to explain this or to talk about this. 00:07:10.019 --> 00:07:18.639 But I want you to invite you to go and look at a full-orbed argument for God's existence from the reality of music. 00:07:19.839 --> 00:07:22.639 This is very well developed and it's out there and it's all over the place. 00:07:22.680 --> 00:07:24.319 And Google it and you'll find good literature. 00:07:24.319 --> 00:07:34.420 But if you're a Christian or you're not tonight, can I invite you to go from here and to look at a full-orbed argument for the existence of God from music. 00:07:35.300 --> 00:07:37.019 Now secondly and finally, what does David do here? 00:07:38.279 --> 00:07:39.199 The reason... 00:07:39.199 --> 00:07:41.379 How does David fight his fears and anxieties? 00:07:41.500 --> 00:07:42.599 He sings, secondly. 00:07:44.500 --> 00:07:46.659 The second thing is in verse 4. 00:07:47.459 --> 00:07:56.839 And the reason that David sings, he knows that singing, the beauty of music, can help bring the truths of God's hope and God's security. 00:07:56.839 --> 00:08:01.180 The fact that God holds him down into his heart in a time of fearfulness and anxiety. 00:08:01.459 --> 00:08:02.319 He knows that. 00:08:02.819 --> 00:08:06.159 But what he realizes in verse 4, what he writes in verse 4, 00:08:06.160 --> 00:08:12.700 is that he realizes that the beauty of music, the beauty of music from our wonderful musicians tonight, 00:08:13.020 --> 00:08:19.120 is just a faint echo, a dim participation in the beauty of God himself. 00:08:20.720 --> 00:08:22.140 And so you see what he says in verse 4? 00:08:23.040 --> 00:08:25.879 He realizes that the greatest need he has in verse 4, 00:08:25.879 --> 00:08:30.379 one thing I ask for, one thing that I pray, and I hope this will be your prayer tonight, 00:08:30.760 --> 00:08:34.399 one thing I will seek is that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all my days, 00:08:34.399 --> 00:08:37.120 to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. 00:08:38.059 --> 00:08:41.279 So the greatest music you ever hear, the greatest art you ever see, 00:08:41.879 --> 00:08:44.019 all that is true and good and beautiful in this world, 00:08:44.079 --> 00:08:49.659 is just a faint and dim echo participating in the reality of the beauty of the Lord himself. 00:08:50.659 --> 00:08:52.039 He gives this gift to us. 00:08:52.620 --> 00:08:56.220 But it points to a much more beautiful one, God himself. 00:08:56.579 --> 00:08:57.079 True beauty. 00:08:58.120 --> 00:09:00.699 So older theologians talk about the beauty of the Lord. 00:09:01.139 --> 00:09:02.439 David says it right here. 00:09:02.860 --> 00:09:03.460 What do they mean by that? 00:09:03.460 --> 00:09:07.440 They mean something that's very hard for us as humans to even talk about. 00:09:08.440 --> 00:09:09.340 It's something like this. 00:09:09.400 --> 00:09:11.580 It's the fittingness of God. 00:09:11.940 --> 00:09:12.600 People have said that. 00:09:13.060 --> 00:09:13.900 What do they mean by that? 00:09:13.940 --> 00:09:15.280 They mean that, what is beauty? 00:09:15.400 --> 00:09:18.259 Beauty is when something is exactly as it should be. 00:09:19.600 --> 00:09:20.360 There it's beautiful. 00:09:20.480 --> 00:09:20.900 It's good. 00:09:21.060 --> 00:09:21.540 It's true. 00:09:21.639 --> 00:09:22.639 It's exactly as it should be. 00:09:23.200 --> 00:09:26.720 God is so beautiful because he is exactly as he should be. 00:09:27.560 --> 00:09:29.139 And there's a lot of ugly in our lives. 00:09:30.100 --> 00:09:31.840 There's a lot of ugly in this life we live. 00:09:31.840 --> 00:09:34.300 But God is the one who is truly beautiful. 00:09:34.420 --> 00:09:35.460 Exactly who he should be. 00:09:35.519 --> 00:09:36.120 Never changing. 00:09:37.220 --> 00:09:44.040 And David knows here that what he needs the most and what music points him to is a need deep down in his soul. 00:09:44.160 --> 00:09:51.300 And I wonder, no matter what you believe in tonight, if you felt this, a need deep down in your soul to hear the beautiful voice of God and to see the beauty of God's face. 00:09:51.299 --> 00:10:01.099 It's why J.R.R. Tolkien, when he was writing his stories about Middle Earth in the Chronicles of Narnia, in The Lord of the Rings. 00:10:01.339 --> 00:10:02.599 We'll come to Narnia in a moment. 00:10:03.419 --> 00:10:15.500 The Lord of the Rings, when he was writing his story, when he talked about God's creation story in the Silmarillion, that famous book, God created Middle Earth howl by song, the beauty of his voice. 00:10:15.500 --> 00:10:17.440 He sang it into being. 00:10:17.659 --> 00:10:19.039 He thought it's the only way. 00:10:20.000 --> 00:10:21.460 When God speaks, it is music. 00:10:21.720 --> 00:10:23.320 It's the greatest song you've never heard. 00:10:24.480 --> 00:10:24.559 Right? 00:10:24.720 --> 00:10:28.960 And then in The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis copied him a little bit. 00:10:30.139 --> 00:10:33.139 And Aslan sings Narnia into being. 00:10:33.320 --> 00:10:35.899 Aslan, this metaphor in the story of God himself. 00:10:35.899 --> 00:10:46.840 And it says in The Magician's Nephew, when that happens, it says that the children, when they heard Aslan singing, it was the greatest sound that they had ever heard. 00:10:47.799 --> 00:10:58.000 We all, we all actually, when we participate in music and enjoy beautiful music, we're actually realizing that we were made to hear God's voice and to see the beauty of God's face. 00:10:58.779 --> 00:11:01.639 And so what I want to, let me give you one more invitation as I close tonight. 00:11:01.639 --> 00:11:11.620 Can I invite you, no matter if you've been a Christian for 50 years or more, or you're exploring Christianity right now, can I invite you to do this? 00:11:12.120 --> 00:11:20.139 Go and explore the Christian message, the shock, the scandal of the Christian message. 00:11:20.199 --> 00:11:21.659 Because this is the Christian message. 00:11:22.519 --> 00:11:25.340 The beautiful Lord, the maker of all beauty. 00:11:25.340 --> 00:11:30.060 He made himself known in Jesus Christ. 00:11:30.519 --> 00:11:31.960 The Son of God became human. 00:11:33.620 --> 00:11:35.399 He, the maker of all beauty. 00:11:35.519 --> 00:11:36.620 He, the beautiful one. 00:11:36.700 --> 00:11:39.040 When he came to this earth, he came poor. 00:11:39.580 --> 00:11:41.120 He came despised. 00:11:41.280 --> 00:11:42.300 He came lowly. 00:11:42.700 --> 00:11:45.980 He came as a person that was not visibly beautiful. 00:11:45.980 --> 00:11:55.500 And at the climax of his life, he went to a very ugly cross and bore our very ugly sin. 00:11:56.000 --> 00:12:00.639 The beautiful one himself, the Lord, the maker of all beauty, the giver of all good music. 00:12:00.639 --> 00:12:07.139 He experienced something so ugly in our place so that we might taste true beauty one day. 00:12:07.200 --> 00:12:10.340 That we might hear his voice so that we might see his beautiful face. 00:12:11.139 --> 00:12:12.300 That's the scandal of the gospel. 00:12:12.399 --> 00:12:13.820 Let me invite you to investigate that. 00:12:13.820 --> 00:12:20.760 Number one, go out and explore the argument for God's existence from beauty. 00:12:20.840 --> 00:12:24.540 Number two, let that direct you to the scandal of the gospel. 00:12:24.680 --> 00:12:27.140 And know that in the scandal of the gospel, for every single one of us tonight, 00:12:27.620 --> 00:12:34.440 the Lord Jesus longs for you to come to him so that he may sing a new song over you. 00:12:35.020 --> 00:12:36.400 He wants to sing over you.