The Singing Sectarians (3)

… be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, 20 giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ…(Ephesians 5: 18-20)

 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. (Colossians 3: 16)

The first sectarian Jeroboam led ten tribes of Israel to declare that they would have no share, no inheritance in David (cf. I Kings 12).  This was to leave Christ, whose type David was and is.  Those who legislate exclusive psalmody in the corporate public worship of churches today have in their worship in principle left Christ; they have sung their way north of the Church and joined and formed themselves into an elite sectarian choir.

These latter day singing sectarians leave Christ by ignoring and rejecting the full revelation of Christ.  In an almost idolatrous regard for the Psalms (Jeroboam’s golden calves are become now the golden psalms) they reject the rest of the Old Testament, commanding something Israel itself was never commanded: the singing in its worship of one hundred fifty psalms and not and never the song of the Exodus (Exodus 15), the ten commandments, David’s Song of the Bow (2Samuel 1), Isaiah’s “Comfort Ye” (Isaiah 40), or any composition of lyrics of doctrine, exhortation, and comfort derived and deduced from the Old Testament word of God.  Especially heinous is their ignoring and rejection, in their singing, of the New Testament, the word of Christ revealed there, the gospel of Christ fully revealed there.  For the strict psalmody people there may be no public congregational singing of the Songs of Mary and Zacharias and Simeon as allowed by the old Church Order of Dordt, Article 69.  Nor may the northern (Jeroboam/sectarian) congregated believers sing Praise God from whom all Blessings Flow, a doxology which, for centuries has been a beloved, God glorifying and edifying part of the singing praise of the people of God.  Off limits, as well is the singing of songs on New Testament passages such as Philippians 4: 4-8.  No call or encouragement must be heard from these words of the inspired Apostle through the Spirit-led, gospel loving singing people of God to “Rejoice in the (risen!) Lord!” No instruction, exhortation or encouragement may be derived or given from that passage in the singing of God’s redeemed so that they might dare to think, in their singing, upon whatever things are true in Christ Jesus fully revealed; whatever things are noble in their King and in his kingdom of heaven now come…and if there be anything praiseworthy, such as the truth of the crucified and risen and coming again Savior.  There also may be no singing heaven’s own song of angels and of the justified and glorified exalted Christ adoring saints: Worthy is the Lamb who was slain and hath redeemed us to God by his blood (Revelation 5).  Nor may there be any singing or composing of songs with words reflecting a new covenant understanding and appreciation for the doctrines we call “the faith,” that is the Faith of our Fathers.  There must be no singing, therefore, doctrinal, creedal, Reformed songs.

The Apostle who determined to know just one thing among the Corinthians, namely, Christ crucified (and, of course, risen), would not know this from the singing of a people calling itself, perhaps, The Reformed Remnant.  Such sectarian singersmay boast that their preachers preach Christ crucified (and risen, and coming again), and may attempt to pray in the name of Jesus, but the acknowledgement and power of Holy Spirit-poured-out-piety and grace is missing in the songs they sing and in the legislation of the singing of only psalms, word for word (as much as possible).  For in their singing they sing and pontificate about their exclusive brand of singing as if they have not received of the fullness of Christ, and grace for grace, as if grace and truth and all sorts of wonderful new covenant things did not, in fact, come through Jesus Christ (John 1:16, 17) that we may sing about them and celebrate them.   The law was given through Moses.  The law for singing is given by the singing sectarians.  Give us the 1912 Psalter (or some psalter) only.  And law for law.  Legalism.   And they who live by the law will die by the law, though they die singing.

-Rev. Dick