Sing Already!

All right. Well, good morning everybody. Man, thank you so much for being here. Great to see everybody. Awesome. We’ll go ahead and start finding our seats as we come into our time of congregational prayer.

A couple things to note for you guys. One, I’ll come back to this in a second. Mr. Sam prayed a few moments ago for the Jewel family. Connor and Mary Hannah. They’re good, their kids are good. Mary Hannah though unexpectedly lost a brother on Wednesday. So few years younger than myself, just happened, tragedy just like that. So their service to honor him and remember him is this afternoon at 2 o’clock. It’s up in Lexington. If you guys at about 2:00 or 3:00, just say a prayer for Connor and Mary Hannah and the rest of their family. I mean they’re strong believers. Mary Hannah’s parents, strong believers, but oh my gosh, like nothing, being a believer doesn’t make death any easier, like in some sense. So, may we just pray for them.

On the note of prayer, I want to let you guys know, I want to use the bulletin to be a little more intentional with how we do prayer. You’ll notice there’s a note in the bulletin. Starting on March 1st, we’re going to start updating the prayer requests that are in the bulletin more regularly. I think what happens right now is every prayer request that’s in the bulletin at some point was an acute situation that we did need to pray for and might still be a chronic situation we still need to pray for. But what happens is a name or a situation gets put into the bulletin and we don’t really have any updates on what it is and at a certain point it I think just kind of gets lost in the jumble of everything going on.

So, here’s my request to you for us to be able to use prayer a little more intentionally and love our congregation a little more intentionally. Each month or every quarter, if you have an ongoing prayer request, can you resubmit it through the connect cards or through a conversation with Al, me, or Angela, and we’ll make sure that the prayer requests that are in the bulletin are up to date with information of stuff that’s going on. We just want to make sure that what gets put in the bulletin is being prayed for. And I think right now it’s more of just like a buffet of things that people kind of walk past, if that makes sense. So, we want to use that.

Well, you also might notice on the back flap of your bulletin, we’re starting to incorporate the giving updates. We want to use the bulletin not just to be more intentional with prayer, but also more transparent with our giving. So you’ll notice that we have weekly and annual giving updates in the bulletin. Now so what that is is both to give you an idea of where we are with our spending each month. How much we bring in versus how much we spend and as well how much we might need to increase our giving for us to be able to match the budget. I know that everybody in our church wants to contribute. You want to give. You want to sacrifice. You want what you do to matter. But it’s hard to do all those things if you don’t have a target. So we’re putting the target in the bulletin for you to have a better idea of what’s going on.

So as we come into our time of congregational prayer, want to offer you, you just kind of pick from a couple of things that I just mentioned. You can either pray for Connor and Mary Hannah and their family. You could pray for some of those prayer needs of our church that you might know about that are currently in the bulletin. You could pray for the giving of our church or even our monthly focus on prayer right now is the student ministry and you could pray for our students. So I want to give you all the freedom, all the autonomy that you could ever need with prayer right now. And you guys grab a neighbor, lift it up, and I’ll put a bow on it here in a second. Thank you guys.

Dear Holy Spirit, surely You love us, You care for us, You see us, and You are right here with us. Father, thank You for everybody that You’ve brought here today. You say in Your word, surely that no one seeks You. No one does good. You’ve got to draw them. Jesus Christ. You are the way and the truth and the life. And You have made a way for us to be forgiven and saved. You’ve made a way for us to have redemption and reconciliation, to have peace, so that we can sing. It is so sweet to trust in Jesus. We can call You the King of Kings, and not just be saying something, but actually mean it. God, get a hold of this time. Please do something over the next few minutes as I just try to say what You’ve told me to say. God, please get me out of the way. Deliver a better sermon to the people of this church than the one that I prepared. I need You to do this, Lord. We need You to do this. We need You to revitalize our hearts. We need You to give us a deeper love for You. We need You to work in us so that we can walk out of here not being reinforced or realoused in our own ways, but to be rejuvenated in the life of God Himself. Please do that. We love You. Amen.

Amen. Michael, I want to thank you, man, for the words you prepared a few moments ago. I was waiting for you to have three illiterative points and just put a conclusion on it. I said, man, we can wrap it and head on head on home from that, man. Just like Michael shared a few words, which to me felt a bit like a sermonet, I actually want to take a few moments and talk a little bit about singing. I did some research this week and looked at the history of singing in church worship services. It was really interesting. I learned that the early church, when I mean early church, I’m talking Pentecost Sunday for the next 200, 250 years. The early church didn’t use any instruments in their worship gatherings whatsoever. Those early believers, our fathers and our mothers in the church, they rejected instruments. They called them childish. They said that instead of instruments, we care more about the spiritual gifts and the sacraments.

In the 3rd century though, Rome was getting very wealthy and the church was getting wealthy because Constantine the emperor converted to Christianity. So churches got bigger and nicer. Also in the third century the pipe organ was invented. Man, a monumental development in instruments and musicality rejected by the church because believers thought it was sensual in nature. They said we won’t have anything to do with the organ in church.

Fourth century, the council of no of Nika actually said it would be better for churches if there was no singing by the congregation. The only people that ought to sing would be the pastors and the trained choir. Man, praise God we move past that because if it was just me and Al up here, that’d be a bad day. It’d be me, Al, and the Holy Spirit, and that’d be it, man.

In the ninth century, the church adopted what’s called a Gregorian chant. So instead of singing they would just be saying on that day Deborah and Barack and that’s how it would go. That’s just what it would be. Gregorian chants entered and all that they did they would chant the psalms that was worship that was singing for them.

It wasn’t until the 1500s with the Protestant Reformation that anything changed. There was a guy by the name of Oric Zwingley. He was in Sweden. He fought for simple worship that only did what the New Testament commanded. The New Testament doesn’t talk a whole lot about instruments, but it does say we ought to greet each other with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. So, the Christian Protestant movement in Switzerland and Sweden, that’s what I meant to say. They used very little worship. But at the same time, there’s a guy named Martin Luther, and he believed that Christians have freedom to do anything the New Testament doesn’t condemn. So he said, “Let’s bring anything into a worship service that helps us enjoy the Lord together.” Which actually birthed the German composure movement. If there’s no Martin Luther, there’s no Bach or Beethoven. That was the first time 1560 1570 in Germany that congregations sang with instruments.

17 and 1800s, the Puritan movement in England and in America came to the forefront and they actually removed all of the organs and all of the instruments. They go back to chanting the psalms because they believe that the organ was only about romance and sensuality that came back to the the forefront. Yet at that time there’s a guy by the name of Isaac Watts. Isaac Watts is what many people in church would have called secular and worldly because he Starts putting the psalms to the meter and the rhyme of popular poetry. He eventually starts writing his own hymns such as “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” and “Joy to the World.” Can you imagine being in a church business meeting and looking at Isaac Watts who pens these words about the glorious cross of Jesus and saying, “You are worldly. You’re bringing the devil’s music into here.” The pipe organ was a technological marvel at its invention, but rejected by many in the church for being new. The same thing happens today. Drums, guitars, keyboards, so forth. In fact, if you were to put on some headphones or some earbuds and listen to global Christianity right now, you would hear some churches in America that only use a piano in [inaudible]. You’d hear others in America that have a drum set or a guitar. You’d hear believers in Africa using tribal drums and chants. You’d hear multiracial congregations in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, worshiping in multiple languages at the same time.

The point is we as believers, we worship God with temporary forms, but we do so for timeless reasons. Who knows in 500 years what instruments or what musical styles will take the main stage in local churches? We don’t know that. We can’t possibly predict that. What we do know is if you look back in the history of Christianity, instruments in a church service have only been really accepted for about three or 400 years. And we’re still fighting. Churches fight and split every year over what they think is biblical worship because they confuse the importance of temporary forms with the timeless reasons behind why we sing. If you were with us last year, you would remember that we had our own drama and tension over this. What’s biblical? What’s right? What should we do in church? God’s Word speaks to everything. This morning, we’re actually going to look at this. We’re going to look at what a biblical worship song is.

Turn with me to Judges chapter 5 as we continue our series called “Broken Saviors.” You see, the story of Judges takes place in the history of Israel at a really crucial hinged doorway moment. Prior to the book of Judges, you’ve got what are called the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, on through Moses. Moses is the guy that looks at Pharaoh and says, “Let my people go.” Moses gets the people of Israel onto the doorstep of the promised land, but because of His own sin and disobedience, He can’t go in. So, a guy named Joshua is the next in line, and Joshua is the one that actually takes them into the promised land. Joshua dies, and then we have the time of the judges. The time of the judges is interesting because this is before the monarchy. Saul doesn’t become king yet. You don’t have King David or Solomon. After Solomon, he’s got two sons that rupture the kingdom of Israel. And that’s when some of the exile and all that stuff happens. We’re at an interesting time in the moment of Israel.

In chapter 4, what we looked at last week is this judgeship of a lady named Deborah. Deborah is a prophetess that would judge the people of Israel. She would sit under this oak or sorry, she would sit under the tree of Deborah and people would come to her and ask her to settle their disputes. And it was her job to listen for the word of the Lord for her to be able to instruct people on how to navigate their issues. So, she’s doing that. At the time you have a foreign army from a land or the people of Kaa or Canaan. This foreign army has invaded the Israelite territory. And Deborah looks at a guy named Barak and says, “Barak, hasn’t God commanded you? Lead our people and go fight against them. God has already promised that He would give you victory. Just go and do your job.” And verse or chapter 4 is all about God using Deborah to encourage Barak to defeat this foreign army led by a guy named Sisera. Sisera once he sees that he’s about to lose the battle escapes. He runs away and he is going to look for some shelter in the tent of a traitor named Heber. He has a wife named Jael. Jael takes matters into her own hands. She convinces Barak to lay under a carpet and that’s where Jael takes a tent peg and a hammer and drives it through Sisera’s head and kills the foreign general who’s oppressing the people of Israel. The battle gets cleaned up. Everything gets taken care of. Barak and Deborah reconvene and they Write a song. They start singing as a way to glorify God in response to what God has done. This song, Judges chapter 5, gives us five timeless reasons to sing. Five timeless reasons we sing.

Look at verses 1-5 with me as we begin. On that day, Deborah and Barack son of Abenome sang, “When the leaders lead in Israel, when the people volunteer, blessed be the Lord.” Listen, kings, pay attention, princes. Now, I will say, remember this is before the monarchy. Israel doesn’t have kings. They don’t have princes. Deborah is talking to foreigners. She’s talking to the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Amalachites. Deborah is talking to people that don’t glorify Yahweh.

She says, “Listen up y’all. Let’s sing to Yahweh. I will sing praise to Yahweh, the God of Israel. Lord, when you came from Seir, when you marched from the fields of Edom, the earth trembled, the skies poured rain, the clouds poured water, the mountains melted before the Lord, even Si before the Lord, the God of Israel.”

Man, you feel Deborah as she’s singing this song just comes to this incredible crescendo. It’s because the first reason that she sings is this. God is great. Man, God is great. Deborah is reflecting on this incredible victory that God had just given the people of Israel. You see, Cicora, he had 10,000 plus soldiers, almost a thousand iron chariots. God’s people were a much smaller force. Yet in God’s hands, the battle was completely one-sided. Not a single invader left alive. God’s people decimated them because God had gotten involved.

And because God is great, Deborah looks or she’s singing and she says, “Blessed be the Lord.” Pam, what in the world does that mean? How do we bless God? I’ll tell you because you’re asking. Okay. Blessing God or blessing takes two forms. When a greater blesses a lesser, what’s happening is the greater is giving the lesser anointing and power and benefits. When a lesser blesses a greater, the lesser is acknowledging the greater’s acknowledgment, priority, and greatness.

We put it this way. God is blessing Saul with new hunger for himself and new life. So, we bless him with our singing and our obedience. God the greater is blessing us with gifts. So, we the lesser bless him right back with our voice and our obedience. Deborah says, “God is great, so he is blessed.” And she remembers these moments in Seir and Edom and Mount Si where the greatness of God is revealed and the earth physically literally is trembling before him.

Man, when God comes on the scene, when God is physically present with his people in his creation, creation itself starts coming undone. The glue that holds things together starts just to melt in his presence. God’s creation quakes at his coming. You think about how great God is that with a whisper, with just a whisper, God could fling stars into the universe. With a snap, Jesus could look at the storm which was scaring those sailors witless and make it calm. With just a desire, just a thought, God could knit babies together in their mother’s womb. Man, God is great. And when God comes on the scene, everything changes.

I want to ask you a question. Do your actions respect a God who can end you with a snap? Do your actions respect a God who can implode planets with a whisper? Do your words and your thoughts respect a God who snuffs our lives out at his right time? God is great and he is worthy to be praised. That’s why we sing.

One of the ways God shows his greatness, though, is the second reason we sing. If you’re taking notes, I want you to write this down. Number two, we sing because he saves sinners. You see, it’s not just that God stomps us down. It’s not just that God ends our lives. It’s that God loves to save sinners. God loves to look at the disobedient and not just smite them. God loves to look at the disobedient and hug them and embrace them.

Look at verses 6 through 11 with me. In the days of Shamgar, son of Anath, in the days of JL, the main roads were deserted because travelers kept to the side roads. Villagers were deserted. Sorry, villages were deserted. They were deserted in Israel until I, Deborah, arose, a mother in Israel. Israel chose new gods. Then there was war in the city gates, but not a shield or a spear was seen among 40,000 in Israel. My heart is with the leaders of Israel, with the volunteers of the people. Blessed be the Lord. You who ride on white donkeys, who sit on saddle blankets, who travel on the road, give praise. Let them tell the righteous acts of the Lord, the righteous deeds of His villagers in Israel, and with the voices of the singers at the watering places. Then the Lord’s people went down to the city gates.

That reference in verse 10 to those who ride on white donkeys. Remember, Israel doesn’t have kings or princes. They also don’t have people that ride on white donkeys. A merchant would ride on a white donkey. A merchant would have shown their opulence and their wealth by riding on a donkey that numerically was more rare and thus more valuable. But the riders on white donkeys, they’re just going on these main roads. They are out to be seen.

Deborah in verse seven had just said, “The villages are deserted.” And in verse six says, “The main roads are deserted.” For you to be seen out in public when no one else is out in public means you got some confidence about you. You’re on the winning side of things. Israel is being oppressed. None of the Israelites are out on the main roads. These riders on white donkeys are.

Once again, verse 10 tells us Deborah is not just singing to be heard by Israel. She’s singing to be heard by the nations. She’s singing to be heard by the foreigners. The roads are deserted. The villages are deserted. Israel has chosen new gods. Man, this speaks of an incredibly desperate situation in Israel where the people have not even enough safety to travel from town to town, town to town, but they’re huddled together in their little nooks and crannies. They have no safety because these foreign armies are roaming the countryside. And it’s not just because God is testing them to see how pure they are. It’s because they have chosen new gods. The people of Israel have rejected God. They’ve chosen new gods. So God said, “Okay, you don’t want a life with me. Let’s see what that looks like for you.”

That’s why we have the book of Judges because the people keep doing what’s right in their own eyes instead of following the Lord. So God has to keep raising up deliverers. Deliverers like Deborah, deliverers like Shamgar, which we’ll learn about in a few weeks, even deliverers like Jael, wives of defectors and traitors who take the security of Israel into their own hands.

Here’s the deal. God has sent saviors to deliver His people. Israel has sinned against God in choosing new gods, but God has not given up on Israel. And you want to know some good news? God is still saving sinners. 1 Timothy 1:15 puts it this way. This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and I am the worst of them.

This is us. We are all sinners who need saving. You see, the Bible describes people in pretty bleak terms. The Bible says that there is no one that’s righteous. There’s no one that’s good. We’ve all gone astray. We’ve all gone against and away from God. We’ve all told the white lie. We’ve all hated or been grudging against people. We’ve all coveted or been gluttonous. We have all sinned. None of us against God’s perfect standard has any goodness to us whatsoever. And we can’t do anything to save it. We can’t do anything to change that. We can’t give enough money in the offering plate. We can’t attend enough church services. We can’t do enough Bible in the year reading plans. We can’t serve at enough soup kitchens. We can’t give enough of our time to a local church ministry. The scales are eternally tipped against us. And we need a savior.

So God said He’s going to take this problem personally. Not just seriously. He’s going to take the problem personally by sending His son Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ who would be tempted in every way that you and I are. But in every single moment would be perfect, perfect, perfect. Every single time Jesus being tempted to sin against God, every single time Jesus being tempted to go against the standard that God had for Him, Jesus would obey and follow the Lord so that Jesus would one day be lifted up on a cross as a perfect substitute for our sin, because we can’t do it on our own. We can’t fully satisfy God. We can’t in our own flesh even please Him. So Jesus comes and He dies a sacrificial death for us on the cross. But after dying that death and being laid in the grave, Jesus also comes back to life so that we can have freedom from our sin.

and freedom from death. So that one day when you take your final breath here, you will take your first breath in the presence of God and be fully reconciled and made right with Him. No division or disharmony with Him whatever. God is still saving sinners. May He raise up these deliverers and these saviors as a sign of His faithfulness and His kindness to Israel. And He has risen up the Savior Jesus Christ as a sign of His kindness to us. Man, if you are here today and you are not absolutely certain that you have surrendered your life to Jesus Christ, please do not get out of that pew before you have done business with God. The God who is so great, He made you before your parents even knew you. The God who is so great that He made this plan to save you before you even ever had a chance to disobey Him. The God who is so great that knew thousands of years ago that you would break His holy heart, but He loves you too much to let it stay that way. You know what’s unfortunate is that despite how great God is and despite how good the gospel is, we forget it all the time, don’t you?

The third reason we sing is this: people need to be reminded. We sing because people need to be reminded. Verses 12 and 13 talk about the situation where all of Israel has chosen new gods. So God is oppressing the people of Israel through these foreign armies. So then verses 12 and 13, the people of Israel are coming to Deborah. They’re coming to Barak. They’re saying, “Arise, deliver. Help us.” And then God using Deborah and Barak to raise up this impromptu army to go do battle with Sisera.

Then you have verses 14 through 18. Look at them with me. Those with their roots in Amalek came from Ephraim. Benjamin came with your people after you. The leaders came down from Achar. And those who carry the marshal staff came from Zebulun. The princes of Issachar were with Deborah. Issachar was with Barak. They were under his leadership in the valley. But there was great searching of heart among the clans of Reuben. Why do you sit among the sheep pens listening to the playing of pipes for the flocks? Oh, there was great searching of heart among the clans of Reuben. Gilead remains beyond the Jordan. Dan, why do you linger at the ships? Asher, you remained at the seashore and stayed in the harbors. The people of Zebulun defied death, though Naphtali also on the heights of the battlefield.

We sing because people need to be remembered. If you didn’t catch it, there’s three groups of people being listed right here as Deborah and Barak are singing about the clans of Israel who did battle against Sisera. There are the willing, the weasels, and the award-winning. The willing is Ephraim, Zebulun, and Issachar. When the problem was put forward, there were some clans that just came forward. They said, “Hey, we may not have all the resources. We may not have the courage or the experience, but we are willing. We will go and do battle with the enemy. We will stand with Deborah and Barak. We will go.”

But then you got the weasels. It starts in verse 15 on the tail end. It says, “There was great searching of heart among the clans of Reuben.” Now, that phrase, it could go either way. It could be a positive thing where God is presenting, you know what Michael was saying, like the revelation is the invitation and God is revealing a need and you’re searching your heart to figure out how exactly you’re going to respond to it. But what happens with Reuben and Gilead, Dan and Asher is that as they search their hearts, they stay out of the fight. Clearly, as they search their hearts, what’s happening is they are making their minds set to not fight against the enemy. They have determined to not go with God. They have determined not to go with His people. They have determined to stay right where they were, pretending the problem wasn’t theirs to deal with. There’s not enough safety in the country to take the main roads. Yet, the people of Gilead are playing their pipes. There’s not enough safety for people to go from town to town. Yet the folks of Asher are just sitting on the beach. They have weasled their way out of the responsibility. That is a group of people that needed to be reminded of who God is and what their job was under His leadership. You got The willing, you got the weasels, and you got the award winners. Verse 18, the people of Zebulun, they defied death. Nahali also on the heights of the battlefield. Man, they weren’t just willing to go to battle, but they fought in such a way that they are noted and recorded in all of biblical history for how they defied death and how hard they fought.

I wonder, do we have the same three groups in our church today where God is revealing things to us? And He’s saying, “Hey, I want to do a work in your midst. I want to do a work in this community. I’m inviting you into it.” And we might have some people that are willing to follow Him. We have some that I think are ready to be award winners for their sacrifices. And I fear that we may even have some that are just looking to weasel their way out of the responsibility of going with God.

We sing on Sunday mornings to remind us of who God is and fuel us for more work with and for Him. And I just want to say on a day like today, we don’t know each other’s baggage. We don’t know what we’re all carrying into here on a Sunday morning. You may have had a great week. You may have had a terrible week. And unless we pick up the phone or unless we run into each other, I don’t know that. But what I do know is when I hear you singing, it helps me press on.

We don’t know the argument that someone else just had with a family member on their way to church this morning. We don’t know the bad news that came with the diagnosis that someone got last month. You may not know the crisis that’s like going on in the Jewel family right now. I don’t know about the simple mistakes you may have made with your kids or your spouse yesterday. You don’t know about mine. I don’t know about your financial strain or how you might be wondering how you’re going to make ends meet this month. But when we sing and not mumble, when we sing, we help remind each other of who God is.

You think about that first song we sang this morning. Talk about how sweet it is to trust in Jesus. Those are pretty unconvincing words if you mumble them. Oh, I’ve learned. I’ve proven His faithfulness. Man, if you’ve seen God be great in your life, shouldn’t your emotion be a little more emotive than that, man? I’ve seen God be good in my life. I’ve seen how He’s provided financially for me. I’ve seen how He’s helped me navigate the rough waters of that situation. I’ve seen God do things time and time again. So when the song comes, man, God is calling me not to mumble. God is calling me to sing.

I believe this that singing to God turns even weasels into award winners in the kingdom because we listen to each other and we are snapped out of our malaise and our drudgery. And we are snapped into a vibrancy with the Lord that is ready to conquer whatever battle God might have for us.

We sing because God’s great. We sing because God saves sinners. We sing because we need to be reminded. We also sing because God fights for us. God fights for us. Look at verses 19 through 27. Kings, they came and fought. Remember that’s the nations. Nations, their kings, they came and fought. Then the kings of Canaan fought at Tanakh by the waters of Megiddo, but they did not plunder the silver. The stars fought from the heavens. The stars fought with Cicora, that foreign general. The river Kishon swept them away. The ancient river, the river Kishon, march on my soul in strength. The horse’s hooves hammered. Remember, Israel doesn’t have horses. This is the horses of the nations. The horse’s hooves were galloping, galloping. Curse Morazz, says the angel of the Lord. Bitterly curse her inhabitants, for they did not come to help the Lord, to help the Lord with the warriors.

Verse 24 though, most blessed among women is JL, the wife of Heber the Kenite. She is most blessed among tent dwelling women. He asked for water. She gave him milk. She brought him cream and a majestic bowl. She reached for a tent peg, her right hand, for a workman’s hammer. Then she hammered Cicora. She crushed his head. She shattered and pierced his temple.

Verse 27, in case we didn’t get the picture, he collapsed. He fell. He laid down between her feet. He collapsed. Say it again. He fell between her feet.

Where he collapsed, there he fell. Dead. Cisora’s mother. I’m not reading that right now. Okay. May we sing because God fights for us.

Look at what God is doing in these verses. It doesn’t matter that the kings came. God’s the king of all kings. It doesn’t matter that they crossed into their land. God rules everywhere. God is fighting for His people. He uses nature like the river Kishan. He uses angelic forces, the stars in the heaven. And God Himself takes it personally.

Verse 23, it says the angel of the Lord. If it said an angel of the Lord, that would just be an angel. It says the angel of the Lord who next Sunday in chapter 6, we’re going to see the angel of the Lord appearing and talking with the next judge, Gideon. The angel of the Lord even comes in the Old Testament. When it says the angel of the Lord does something, that is my man Jesus Christ before He comes on the scene as the carpenter’s son born out of Galilee living in Nazareth.

The angel of the Lord even comes and takes it personally through nature, through the angelic forces, through unlikely saviors, and through His own pre-incarnate presence. God was fighting for His people. And you better believe He is still fighting for us.

Now, Psalm 35:1 through 3 says this, “Appose my opponents, Lord. Fight those who fight me. Take your shields large and small and come to my aid. Draw the spear and the javelin against my pursuers and assure me I am your deliverance.” Sure, Jeremy. That’s Old Testament language. Whatever. Not whatever.

Romans 8:28 through 31 say this. We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God. All things, Rick. Not some things, not most things, Harold. All things work together for the good of those who love God who are called according to His purpose. For those He forneew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His son. So that we or sorry that He would be the firstborn amongst many brothers and sisters. That’s you, Donna. And those He predestined He called. Those He called He justified. Those He justified He glorified.

So what then? What are we to say about these things like cancer and debt and car wrecks? What do we say about it? We say this, friends. If God is for us, then who could be against us? God is still fighting for you. So why would we ever fight with each other about the music we sing? While we fight with each other about the stuff we do as a church if God is fighting for us in a battle that He’s already told us He’s won. He’s won. God’s fighting for you.

But man, we go through life like this thinking, “Woe is me. My problems and my inadequacy, we just buckle at the knees.” The people of Israel are on a battlefield and they see a force outnumber them by tenfold with weapons that would that make theirs look like literal sticks and stones. Not a shield was among them. Not a spear was among them. The enemy had iron chariots. You ever shown up to a gunfight with a knife? That’s what’s going on.

They didn’t have time to complain about their problems, their inadequacies, or how bad last week was, but they knew God fights for me. God fights for you. Man, do you believe that? We don’t sing like we could believe it. I’ll be honest. I’m not trying to shame anybody. We just don’t sing like we believe the holy God of the universe is a warrior who takes up His shield and His sword on our behalf.

May we sing finally because we know God will do it again. Verse 31. Lord, may all your enemies perish like Cicora, but may those who love Him be like the rising of the sun in its strength day after day after day, rising in its strength. And the land had peace for 40 years.

God maintains a covenant of promised love and care for His people. Even protection from the purposes of Satan to separate you from the love of God forever. God even conquers that. He could conquer anything you face this week.

So, as we close today, we’re about to sing again. How you going to sing? >> Yeah. Are we going to sing like people mumbling their way through life just waiting for God to rescue us from a vanilla existence? No, we’re not. Camden, let’s sing like people who believe God’s going to fight for us and He’ll keep doing it again.

Pray with me, please. Jesus, I hope I’ve done You justice and honor. You’re the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. And if I really believe that, then there’s not a single person in this world that ought to get in my way to accomplish what You have. But help us also to know that You are the holy God of the universe. And You’ve taken our unholiness so seriously that You sent Your Son to die for us. Let us sing like ransomed captives who know the cavalry has arrived. Please, Lord. Amen.