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Based on Zeph. 3:14-20
Knowing the Bible is the best education life has to offer, for not only is it the light by which we come to see our Savior and enter into His salvation, it is by its light that we get insights into all areas of life that other books cannot give us. If you do research on the origin of music, you will be taken back to the ancient world and told of instuments on Egyptian hiroglyphics and in caves. Gen. 4:21 will be quoted about Jubal, the father of all who play the harp and flute. All of the books will assume that music had its source in man.
Even so scholarly a book as The Guinness Book of Music will tell you that the earliest surviving hymn text goes back to the 8th century B.C. to a poet in Corinth. All authorities stop far short of the Biblical record that tells us that music is eternal because it is a part of the nature of God. It did not have its origin in man, but in the God who made man, and made him to love music and singing, for God has enjoyed it for all eternity.
Music and song are as timeless as the nature of God. If you consider God's singing as sacred music, then sacred music has no beginning, for it is just as eternal as God is. It was a surprise to me when I first discovered this text in Zeph. 3:17 which tells us clearly that God delights and rejoices over His people with singing. I guess I never thought about it before. Man made in God's image could hardly live without music. It is so basic to His joy and happiness. But I never considered whether or not God has delight in singing. When I found this text and gave it some thought, it seemed a very logical thing to assume that God would love music. He is the source of all music, for He created man with the gift of creating it, enjoying it, and using it to praise Him. If He did not enjoy music, it would be a strange thing to want it used in the worship of His people.
We should know that God loves music, and that He has been singing for all eternity, even if this text was not in the Bible. But I am delighted it is here, for it opens up some exciting windows into the nature of our Lord, whom we praise in song. This text about God singing led me to search the Bible to see if there is any other evidence that God enjoys the same things that we do. What I discovered is that all three persons of the Godhead are very happy persons, and they delight in singing, and in all that is joyful.
We have a terrible misconception about Jesus because of the great suffering He had to endure to atone for our sin. He was called the man of sorrows and one acquainted with grief. This label stuck to Jesus, and most of the artists of the ages pictured Jesus in His agony, and this has been the image people have had of Him. The larger portrait of the Bible has been ignored, which is the portrait of Jesus as the happiest man whoever lived. The Lord of laughter; the life of the party, and the lover of singing. Joy was the dominent emotion of His life, and it was the joy of eternity that kept Him going to the cross. Jesus was spirit-filled, and joy is a fruit of the Spirit, which He displayed constantly.
We are blinded to the bright side of His joyful life by a focus on His tears and blood, which is truly a vital focus. We can never forget the blood He sweat in Gethsemane, and that which He shed on Calvary. Our salvation depends on that shed blood. But let's not lose the life He died to give us-the life of joy and abundant living-the life He lived Himself. The book of Hebrews makes it clear that Jesus was histories happinest man. Heb. 1:9 says, "You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness, therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy." Jesus was anointed with the oil of joy, and was set above all others by this unique anointing. In plain language, Jesus was the most joy filled person to ever walk this planet.
Spurgeon said, "I suppose there never lived a happier man than the Lord Jesus. He was rightly called the man of sorrows, but He might with unimpeachable truth, have been called the man of joys." It would seem to follow, that if singing is one of the key ways by which joy is expressed, that Jesus would, like His heavenly Father, be a singer. And sure enough, the book of Hebrews reveals Jesus to be just that; like Father, like Son. Just as God rejoiced over His temple in the Old Testament, and sang songs of joy, so Jesus in the New Testament sings the praises of His heavenly Father to His bride the church. We see this revealed in Heb. 2:11-12. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. He says, "I will declare your name to my brothers in the presence of the congregation I will sing your praises." Just before Jesus went into the garden of Gethesmane He sang a song with His disciples, but this text tells us He sang the praises of God on a regular basis.
James makes an interesting distinction between praying and praising. Praying tends to be for the negatives of life, and praising for the positives of life. Listen to James 5:13-14. "Is anyone of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise." Singing songs of praise is a sign of a happy heart, and thus, we know God the Father and God the Son are happy, for they both sing songs of praise. But what about the Holy Spirit? There is no question about the joy of the Holy Spirit, for He is the spirit of joy, and the one who produces the fruit of joy in our lives. He is the one who inspired all the joyful songs of praise in the Bible, and to be filled with the Spirit is to be filled with joy.
Paul wrote in I Thess. 1:6, "You welcome the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit." In Rom. 14:17 he wrote, for the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." Joy is actually another name for the Holy Spirit. In Acts 13:52 we read, "And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit." All the songs of praise and joy through history are songs inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Jesus was a man of joy because He was filled with the Spirit. In Isa. 61 we see the passage Jesus quoted and fulfilled in His life when the Spirit of God came upon Him to preach good news to the poor; to bind up the broken hearted, and to set the captives free. Then it says in verse 3 what He came to do for those who grieve: "To bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of morning, and a garment of praise instead of despair." The work of the Holy Spirit was to, through Jesus, eliminate the negative and accentuate the positive, that God's people might be clothed in a garment of praise. The Trinity is a trio of praise singers. All three persons of the Godhead are happy, delighted, and joyous singers.
This explains why the Bible is so full of praise. Praise is God's signiture. No wonder the Psalms have the entire creation singing praises. Everything God made was made to praise. When anything or anyone ceases to praise God, it is no longer what God made it to be. It is broken and not functioning for the purpose for which it was created. When man ceases to praise God, He is broken and doesn't work. Being saved is to repair that brokenness and renew the ability to praise.
There is no praise in hell, for hell is the junk yard where all go whose praise compacity is broken beyond repair, because they did not call upon the only one who could repair it-the Lord Jesus. By the power of the Holy Spirit the praise compacity is restored so that men can again be praisers of God. Men are never more like God wants them to be then when they are praising Him. The goal of this life is to get into God's choir which will sing praises forever. The only way to qualify is to let the Holy Spirit into your life by opening the door to Jesus Christ. He will give you a song that will never end.
Joy is the emotion that leads to singing, and this is an emotion that we see in Jesus who was filled with the spirit of joy. When the 72 came back to Jesus all excited about their power in His name to cast out demons, Jesus said, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven," but He urged them not to rejoice that the demons submitted to their power, but that their names were written in heaven. Then Luke 10:21 follows immediately: "At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, 'I praise you, Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.'"
We get a picture here of the disciples here like little children finding a room full of new toys. They are so excited and full of joy at the victory of good over evil, and Jesus is feeling like you and I feel when we see our children tickled with delight when they receive the gift of new games. Jesus knows the joy of the parent and grandparent, and He praised God for that joy. Jesus is a joyful praiser of God. When you have the joy of Jesus you have the ultimate joy. All other joy is partial, but His is complete. Jesus said in John 15:11, "I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete." There can be no joy higher than that of Jesus, for He was the joyest man whoever lived.
The Shepherd who finds the lost sheep calls his friends and neighbors and says, "Rejoice with me, I have found my sheep." Jesus said there is rejoicing in heaven over every sinner who repents, but He was doing plenty of rejoicing on earth as well. It is the same story with the woman who finds her lost coin and is rejoicing. The Prodigal's father threw a great party with a feast, music, and dancing because he was so full of joy that his son was restored. Jesus is joyful beyond words over every person who is saved and restored to fellowship with God, and this happens hundreds of times everyday. This means Jesus is in almost perpetual praise inspite of a fallen world. But we must get back to the first person of the Trinity-the Father. Our text tells us He is also full of joy, and in that joy He sings over His people.
This is the basis for the great love song called the Song of Songs. The heart of God is full of love songs for His bride. There is no escaping the reality that all of life, as we know it, is one great romance. God is the hero and man is the damsel in distress. Satan is the villian that seeks to spoil the relationship of God and man. It is a long hard struggle, but the story ends with the wedding feast of the Lamb. God wins His bride, and the feasting, celebration, and the songs go on forever. Every story has three parts: a setting; the setting is upset; and the setting is reset, either successfully, and then there is a happy ending, or unsuccessfully and there is a sad ending. God's story has a happy ending with love and singing that lasts forever.
There is so much unfaithfulness on the part of the bride, and thus, so much judgment that we tend to miss all the joyful scenes of God's delight in His people. God is a happy God. He is a God in love, and He sings as a lover, and He rejoices in His bride. I studied all the words for happy and joyful emotions in the Old Testament, and I discovered that all of them apply to God. God has a great deal of pleasure and enjoyment as He interacts with people and His creation. It can be a lot of fun being God. Listen to some of the evidence. God is always promising Israel He will make them prosper if they obey Him, and in Duet. 30:9 He says, "The Lord will again delight in you and make you prosperous just as He delighted in your fathers." The Hebrew word for delight is the same word for rejoicing, being glad, making mirth, and being joyful. It is used again in Isa. 62:5, "As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you." God has the same emotion as the groom who feels he has the girl of his dreams for his own. The word is used again in Isa. 65:19, "I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people."
There are others, but we want to look at just one more that gives us an insight into the emotions of our Maker. In Psa, 104:31 we read, "The Lord shall rejoice in His works." God said, after He made the universe, "It is very good." He was happy with His works just like an artist who gazes on His finished painting and says, "That is good. It is the best I can do." God was happy, and no wonder all the angels sang at creation. God was no doubt leading them, for God sings when He is delighted, and He was delighted in His works. He will also be delighted in the final heaven when the story of salvation is complete. So the point is, we will hear God's singing forever, and we will sing with Him forever. Song will be a part of our eternal life. Music is forever, for it is a part of God's very being.
Music beautifies sound, and singing beautifies language, and the purpose of music and singing is to do just that: add beauty to life. It enables us to say on a higher plain what we cannot communicate in words alone. Poetry is a step above pros, and poetry to music is a step above that. There is no higher step of communicating love, joy, and all the emotions, for when we reach the level of song we are on the highest level, where even God is not revealed to go any higher. The Song of Songs is saying by its very title, you cannot go higher than a song to communicate love.
It is also Godlike to rejoice over our works. For all we know God whistled while He worked, or hummed a tune as He said, "Let there be light." He enjoyed what He was doing, and when you enjoy your work you have the potential of singing over your work. The work itself can be a song we offer to God as a sacrifice of praise. Galen, the famous second century physician, said of his professional life that he regarded it "As a religious hymn in honor of the Creator." Life is on the highest level when we can do all we do for the glory of God. When we do, all of life is a song of praise to God, and this is what leads God to sing over us.
Maclaren, the great English preacher, wrote in his Expositions of Holy Scripture, "Zion is called to rejoice in God because God rejoices in her. She is to shout for joy and sing because God's joy too has a voice, and breaks out into singing. For every throb of joy in man's heart, there is a wave of gladness in God's." God loves to sing, and we give Him reason to do so when we sing and make our life a cause for praise. The Living Bible makes this text come alive. "Is that a joyous choir I hear? No, it is the Lord Himself exalting over you in happy song." The questions this raises are many, and we will have to wait till heaven to have our answers. 1. Does God write His own songs? 2. Does He sing solo, or always as a trio of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? 3. Does He have the angels sing backup? 4. Is it recorded so we will be able to listen to God's love songs for His bride?
It is so hard to imagine God singing that most never try for they never see this text in Zeph. and never explore the joy of God in His people. Spurgeon, however, usually discovers the gems of the Bible that others pass by. Listen to his excited comments on this text. "Think of the great Jehovah singins! Can you imagine it? Is it possible to conceive of the Deity breaking into song: Father, Son and Holy Spirit together singing over the redeemed? God is so happy in the love which He bears to His people that He breaks the eternal silence, and the sun and moon and stars with astonishment hear God chanting a hymn of joy." It is interesting that Spurgeon would say the sun, moon and stars hear God's song. The Bible and hymnology are full of this idea that the whole universe listens to God's song, as if all of its orderly and beauty of movement is its dance to God's tune. Psa. 148 says the whole universe praises God, and other Psalms have the trees clapping and the mountains skipping to God's tune. Jesus even said on Palm Sunday, if the people had not praised Him, the very rocks would have cried out. That would have really been Christian rock music had the literal rocks broken into songs of praise for their Creator. We sing at Christmas, "Angels we have heard on high sweetly singing o'er the plains, and the mountains in reply echo back their joyous strains." Do the mountains really sing back in reply to this heavenly song? D.L. Moody, the great evangelist, took it literally, and he preached a sermon on praise in which he said, "Did you ever stop to think that the heart of man is the only thing that does not praise the Lord? The heavens declared His glory, the sun praises Him, the moon and stars praise Him; as rain falls from heaven it praises God; all nature praises God-the ver dumb creature gives Him praise, and it is only the heart of man that won't praise Him."
Now I know what it means when God says He looks not on the externals but on the heart. God is looking inside man to see if their is a song of praise there. That is what matters to God, for if there is praise in a man's heart, he is alive to God and has great potential. When Samuel went to chose a son of Jesse as the new king of Israel, he thought for sure the oldest son would be God's choice. He was big and handsome and seemed a great follow-up to Saul, who was head and shoulders above most all men. God however rejected all of the older sons and chose the youngest, which was David. He was just a mere shepherd boy, but God saw in David what no one else could see. Everyone saw a mere lad, but God saw a king; a king who would be the greatest leader of God's people in praise. He wrote most of the songs God's people sang all through the Old Testament, and all threw the history of the church up to the last couple of centuries. Many of the popular songs today are going back to the Psalms, and many Christians have never ceased to sing the songs of David.
The words of David have gone up in praise to God from all over the world. God saw the heart of praise in David. He was a man after God's own heart, for there was a song in his heart. That is what God looks for in all His children. That is why Paul, who could sing a song even while in stocks in a dungeon, wrote to the Ephesians and said in Eph. 5:19, "Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord."
God has a musical heart, and He loves to see a song in the heart of all His children. He intends to sing with His family of the redeemed forever, and so one of the best ways to prepare for the heavenly culture is to fill your heart with songs of praise. That is what God saw in David. Others saw a shepherd boy, but God saw a king. Don Mcminh, in his book Entering His Presence writes, "God sings! What a delightful thought! When God thinks about His love for us, it impels Him to sing. When God wants to rejoice, when He wants to praise, He choses music to express Himself. Music is a part of the eternal existence of God; how wonderful that He has given us the joy of music as a tool to express godliness in our lives." One of the major questions we need to ask of ourselves is, Does God see a song in my heart? God loves to see a song there because He is ever looking for partners to sing, for God loves to sing.
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