Sing and Loud

One of the things that the Bible clearly commands the people of God is to sing, and specifically it urges us to sing Psalms. In Ps. 105 we are commanded to thank the Lord and to sing to him. In Js 5 he says that if we are cheerful we should sing psalms. Paul says that we are supposed to speaking to one another with Psalms. Surely this means singing them, for if we don’t sing them, we’ll never know the right words we’re supposed to be speaking to each other. In another place, the apostle says that the Word of God is to dwell in hearts richly, and we are to do that by singing Psalms and hymns. By God’s blessing, we have already begun to recover this, but as a minister of this gospel, I exhort you to fill your days with singing psalms and hymns more and more. If you are not regularly singing the word of God together, you are disobeying. If you need a psalter or hymnal, ask for one or buy one. Fathers you are responsible to see that your homes are growing in this. Sing a psalm at breakfast, sing a few at dinner time, and maybe another when the family is retiring for the night with your evening prayers. Sing when you have friends over, sing when you’re all by yourself. But take care: the point isn’t that you need to go home and start singing “because the Pastor said we have to. So I guess we better do it.” That’s all backwards and upside down. The point is that we have been forgiven, we have been delivered. We have family, we have health, we have eyes for sunsets and stars and lips for kissing and tongues for ice cream and teeth for steak and bodies for dancing and sex and hard work, and the list goes on and on. God is good! And God’s goodness has been dumped all over us: how can we not rejoice in that. We are to be thanking the Lord constantly, making melody in our hearts because we just can’t get over how kind God has been to us. People sing when they’re in love; they can’t help singing, it just spills out of them. So get over your pride, get over your arrogance. God loves you, his people. He can’t get over you; therefore sing and do it loud.