“David also commanded the chiefs of the Levites to appoint their brothers as the singers who should play loudly on musical instruments, on harps and lyres and cymbals, to raise sounds of joy…"
(1 Chronicles 15:16)
When it came time to bring the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem, David assembled a team of singers and musicians to accompany it. The ark represented the very presence of God Himself among the people, which is the end goal of the entire redemptive plan of God. This was an occasion of significant joy to the Israelite people. The presence of God was everything. It was their identity. It was what set them apart from every other nation on earth. It had been gone from the center of their culture for some twenty years. Now it was being restored to its proper place: the very center of their entire lives.
To celebrate appropriately, David commanded a worship team be assembled. I want everyone to notice this: He established the percussion section FIRST! Guess what? God likes drums in worship. And He wants them played loudly. If you don’t like that, guess who has to adjust? (I didn’t write the Bible; I’m just showing you what it says.) Next he brought in guitars. He even designated lead guitarists! Six of them! There was a horn section, too. And a musical director who “understood” how to arrange it all. (1 Chron. 15:19-24)
David’s job description for the worship band was simple: “play loudly on musical instruments… to raise sounds of joy.” The volume of the music is directly tied to the hearts of the people. Consistently throughout scripture, when the people were overwhelmed with the greatness of God, they declared that His praise by making a loud and joyful noise. It was believed that it was due Him – that He deserved it by right – and to withhold it was an offense.
Look, everybody has an opinion when it comes to church music. We all have our preferences and tastes. The problem is when we kid ourselves that what we think actually matters. It just doesn’t. What we ought to be asking is, What does kind of worship music does God like? Does He have a preference? Because if He does, and if we elevate our traditions and opinions and preferences over His direct commands, then whatever else we think we are doing, we are not worshiping. We are merely singing religious songs about God to make ourselves feel better.
David knew worship music. He was not only a man after God’s own heart (God’s words, not man’s), but he wrote a significant portion of the worship music we find in scripture. David seemed to know what God wanted from our worship music, and it can be summed up in one word: LOUD. Not for the sake of being loud, or trying to be relevant to the culture of the day, but because loud is what joy sounds like, based on the authority of scripture.
Christians have a lot to celebrate – more than anyone else in the history of the world, in fact. When people celebrate, they throw a party. So, because the Bible commands it, Sunday mornings at The Ridge will continue to be more like a wedding reception than a funeral.
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