Why Sing? | Page 6 of 11

Redeemed people are a singing people.  Remember John’s vision of heaven from Revelation 5?

And they sang a new song:  "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth."

Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they sang:

"Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!"

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing:

"To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!" The four living creatures said, "Amen,"

and the elders fell down and worshiped.

Singing praises to God is what redeemed people do. 

Ralph Martin says that “the reality of God and Christ and creation and salvation and heaven and hell are simply too great for mere speaking; they must also be sung.

Philip Schaff, the church historian from the 19th Century, says that “the Song, a form of prayer, in the festive dress of poetry and the elevated language of inspiration, raises the congregation to the highest pitch of devotion, and gives it a part in the heavenly harmonies of the saints.

“The singing Paul talks about is more than a duty.   It’s more than warm-up.  It’s a sacred activity, by which God’s life and ours interpenetrate.  When we sing, we are not alone.  We join a song our savior is singing, and our singing is a sharing in his reclamation of our lost race.”  (Reggie Kidd WITH ONE VOICE page 22)

The reality of God and his work becomes so much on our worship “radar screen” that we don’t just stop at thinking rightly about truth, we press on until we feel appropriately about it. How often do we mouth the words of songs, and neither our heart nor our minds are engaged even in the slightest bit?

Jonathan Edwards marveled at the ability of the heavenly multitudes to be “employed” in the ministry of praise.  Concentration powers are perfect up in glory of course, but Edwards gives a glimpse of what they know to be true that so profoundly energizes the worship of heaven:

There is a more profound sense of the greatness of the fruits of God’s mercy than we have here in this world. They will not only have a sight of the glorious attributes of God’s goodness and mercy in their beatific vision of God, but they will be sensible of the exceeding greatness of the fruits of it; the greatness of the benefits that he has bestowed. They will have another sense of the greatness and manifoldness of the communications of his goodness to his creation in general.

They will be more sensible how that God is the fountain of all good, the Father of lights, from whom proceeds every good and perfect gift. We do now but little consider, in comparison with what we should do, how full the world is of God’s goodness, and how it appears in the sun, moon, and stars, and in the earth and seas, with all their fullness, and wheresoever we turn our eyes, and how all ranks and orders of being, from the highest angel to the lowest insect, are dependent upon, and maintained by, the goodness of God.

These the saints in heaven clearly see. They see how the universe is replenished with his goodness, and how the communications of his goodness are incessantly issuing from God as from an everflowing fountain, and are poured forth all around in vast profusion into every part of heaven and earth, as light is every moment diffused from the sun. We have but faint imperfect notions of these things, but the saints in heaven see them with perfect clearness.

They have another sense of the greatness of God’s goodness to mankind, and to the church, and to them in particular, than any of us have. They have another sense of the greatness of God’s goodness in the temporal mercies which God bestowed upon them while they were here in this world, though they know that spiritual mercies are infinitely greater. But especially they have an immensely greater sense of the exceeding greatness of the fruits of God’s grace and mercy bestowed in redemption.

They have another sense how great a gift the gift of God’s only-begotten Son is. They have another sense of the greatness and dignity of the person of Christ, and how great a thing it was for him to become man, and how great a thing it was for him to lay down his life, and to endure the shameful and accursed death of the cross. They have another sense how great the benefits are that Christ has purchased for men, how great a mercy it is to have sin pardoned, and to be delivered from the misery of hell.

They have another sense how dreadful that misery is, for the damned are tormented in the presence of the holy angels and saints, and they see the smoke of their torment; and have another sense what eternity is, and so are proportionably more sensible how great a mercy it is to be delivered from that torment. They have another sense how great a fruit of God’s grace it is to be the children of God, and to have a right and title to eternal glory. They are sensible of the greatness of the benefits that Christ has purchased, by their experience.

For they are in possession of the blessedness and glory that he has purchased. They taste the sweetness of it. And therefore they are more sensible what cause they have to praise God for these things.

The grace and goodness of God in the work of redemption appears so wonderful to them that their thoughts of it do excite them to the most ardent praise. When they take a view of the grace of God and of the love of Christ in redemption, they see that there is cause that they should exert the utmost of their capacities, and spend an eternity in praising God and the Lamb. It is but a very little that we at best can conceive of the greatness of the benefits of redemption, and therefore we are but little affected by it, and our praises for it are low and dull things.