(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

All right, so as I kind of mentioned in the announcements, I'm going to be preaching this morning on the right and wrong types of music, and this is going to be a two-part sermon, so this evening I'm going to be going more into the application of what we're going to be, I'm trying to lay groundwork this morning, and it's extremely important groundwork. There's kind of a lot of material I want to cover. I've preached multiple sermons on this topic. As I mentioned before, this is something that hits kind of home to me because music has always been a very large part of my life, and for a really long time I invested tons of time, money, everything just into worldly music when I was growing up. Always going to concerts, buying CDs and DVDs and rare stuff and bootlegs and just really into it, investing tons of money into a whole collection starting with tapes to CDs to MP3s, whatever, right? Whatever technology was available at the time that could record music, I loved it, I wanted to have it, and I also, while I did have certain favorite genres of music, I kind of went across almost all genres of music. That's how much I just loved music in general, I felt really strongly, but I still feel real strong about music, but I was deceived by the world's music and for a long time didn't think there was anything wrong with it and I just loved it, but there is something wrong with it, there's a lot wrong with it, and we need to first start off appreciating just the power of music and look at how God brings up music in the scripture and we're going to get a really good solid foundation and then take the principles from this morning's sermon and apply them this evening and start applying it just to what we see out there today. So we started off in 2 Chronicles 5 because it just lists some of the Levites that had positions within the house of God that were musical oriented positions and what we see in scripture, first of all, is that God doesn't institute like, you must do this with music, really ever. The introduction of the musical instruments came through David. David is the one who really got things going as far as the music worship type service and praising the Lord with the music, however, it wasn't just like David's idea, but it's not really from God, it's confirmed by God, it's confirmed through scripture that what David did was right, it's good, and we'll be able to see more evidence for that anyways, but when you look in the Psalms, the book of Psalms is the word of God just as much as any other book of the Bible is inspired by God, it's the word of God, it's a song book and many of those, you can go through those Psalms and find praise God, praise Him on instruments, praise Him on instruments with six strings, praise Him with the trumpet and with the harp and with the cymbals and with the psalteries and all of these commands to praise God with these instruments, with singing, with praise. God likes music and it's evident because God created us as musical creatures, that we respond to music, music has a big impact on us and we're going to get into that a little bit later in the sermon this morning, but it's obvious, every single human being knows when you hear music, it has an influence, it has an impact on you, even if you can't define it really well, everybody is influenced by music and that is because God designed us that way, it's not by chance, it's not by accident, God created us to be influenced by music and when you go back in scripture, you don't have to turn there, but music has been around, I would say probably as long as man has been on this earth. We don't have examples of Adam and Eve singing music in scripture, but what we do, if you go back to Genesis chapter 4, when it starts going through the descendants of Cain, it starts giving the different things that they would do, you know, one guy was a raiser of cattle and another guy was doing different trades, you know, they kind of do these different things and a worker and brass and iron and one of those people, it says in verse 21 of Genesis 4 and his brother's name was Jubal, he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ. So we see going way, way, way back to the very early generations where everyone that was, you know, where Adam and Eve were still alive and all that whole, you know, first generation of human beings were alive, you've got somebody who focused and was just dedicated to the harp and organ and musical instruments. So way early on from creation, all the way forward, music has been a part of human beings life, and God created us that way to be influenced by music and he incorporated it in worship and in learning. So in 2 Chronicles chapter 5 here, look at verse number 11, the Bible reads, and it came to pass when the priests were come out of the holy place for all the priests that were present were sanctified and did not then wait by course. Now before I even keep reading here, I just want to explain just real quickly, you didn't have these offices for the musicians when Moses had the tabernacle. So if you remember the children of Levi, God assigned the three descendants to various tasks, so you had the priests who had a job of doing the sacrifices and things like that, and then you had, you know, a tribe of Marari, the tribe of Kohath, you know, the Kohathites, Marari, they would have different functions of taking the tabernacle down and setting it up and responsible for the different utensils and things like that, so they all had their work kind of divvied out among the tabernacle, because the tabernacle is designed as like a tent, right? It's easy to set up and take down and mobile and wherever God wanted them to be, that was a concept. They're traveling through the wilderness, they're going around, but then there was ultimately a place where God was going to choose to set His name there, and it came into the heart of David to build a temple, right? So that he just figured, hey, why should God be in tents, right? Why should God's house be a tent? Why don't we make God a house that when we could build for Him, and that was something out of David's heart, but God established that. God said, okay, you can do that, right? God gave him, He said, but you're not going to do it, your son's going to do it. But what that did by establishing a temple as opposed to the tabernacle is that it eliminated some jobs, right? Because now you no longer have to worry about the setting up and taking down of a tabernacle, because it's all stationary, it's already in the temple. So now you've got a group of people that are going to have a different work, a different job assigned to them, and you've got people that become these musical officers within, you know, in the group of Levites, where it was their job to be singers, to be musicians, to lead the people, to do all this stuff, and we're going to see some of these people here. And it was work, and it was something that is God-ordained, that God wanted these people doing this stuff. You can say it might have come into the heart of David, some of these things, but God is not going to let David do something in the worship of him, in the worship of the Lord, that he's not giving approval of. Right? I mean, it only makes sense. And all of this is confirmed in Scripture. So look at verse number 12, the Bible says, "...also the Levites, which were the singers, all of them of Asaph, of Heman, of Jeduthin, with their sons and their brethren, being arrayed in white linen, having cymbals and psalteries and harps, stood at the east end of the altar, and with them 120 priests sounding with trumpets." So here, I just want to point this out, we're going to get into this probably later, maybe this evening, but we see the singers here, they also have musical instruments, it's not just singing, you know, we read the Bible, we see praise of the Lord, it's not just the voice, the voice is important, we believe in congregational singing, and singing out to the Lord, but they're using cymbals, they're using psalteries, they're using harps, they're using trumpets, there's many instruments that are listed. Now, some people have problems with particular instruments, I don't think the problem so much is in specific instruments as it is the type of music that's being played. There's certain, you know, and I don't get in debates about this, I'm not super dogmatic about it, but some people believe, you know, well drums are wicked, drums are evil, you shouldn't have any drums in any music. I don't personally take that stance, I don't think there's anything necessarily particularly wrong with a musical instrument, but the way that you use it and the type of music you play, absolutely. Because you can use any of these instruments to play what I would consider to be bad music, or wrong music, or music that's going to not glorify and honor God, but that's going to glorify and honor self, or the devil, or whatever. You can use instruments one way or another, it's a tool, it's an instrument, it's just like you could use many tools to do good, to do evil, I don't believe that these are really any different. So it's kind of my stand on that. We see lots of instruments mentioned here being used, and all of them apparently are just fine. Verse number 13, it came even to pass as the trumpeters and singers were as one to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord. So obviously this takes people working together, the trumpeters, the singers, to make a really nice sound working together to praise the Lord. When they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music and praised the Lord, saying, for He is good, for His mercy endureth forever, that then the house was filled with a cloud, even the house of the Lord, so that the priest could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of God. And if you read this, just envision what's happening here, is that they're performing this great praise of the Lord, and the instruments are playing, they're all playing in unison and harmony together, playing on their instruments, singing out with their voices, singing, for He is good, for His mercy endureth forever. And one of the reasons why I say, just real briefly, that this is ordained of God, this isn't just in David's heart, it's because we can read in other places where God has creatures in heaven praising Him with like the same words, right? For He is good, for His mercy endureth forever, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was and is and is to come, right? Things like this, God loves having that praise and He's already created creatures in heaven that have praise like that, and we're going to see in a little bit that God created creatures to be musical creatures. Satan himself was a musical being, we'll see that in a little bit. But thinking about this event taking place, there's this great music, praising the Lord, and kind of at a climax here we see, when everything's being done in unison, the house is filled with a cloud, and then it says that the glory of the Lord had filled the house so much that the priests that were there couldn't even minister because the cloud, and the glory just means like a bright shining, it's just really bright, so this glory of God comes upon the place where they're worshiping, upon the temple, and is just magnificent, right? And this happens, and I don't want to miss this, this happens, it says, then the house was filled with the cloud, and it was kind of this summary and climax of all this music being played. And music is extremely powerful, this is more of a subtle point to show us, like, wow, at the height of all this, this is when God is filling the house with his glory so much so that the priests couldn't even stand to minister by reason of the cloud. Flip over to chapter 25, you're in chapter 5 right now, 1 Chronicles, excuse me, you're in 2 Chronicles 5, go back to 1 Chronicles chapter 25. So what we saw there illustrated in 2 Chronicles 5 is just the impact that the music had from the worship of the Lord, from the music, then kind of bringing the glory of God down to the place where they were. And you know, everything that we do here, we try to do biblically based, right? The reason for doing the things that we do, for the most part, for the main parts of our service, for everything that we do, whether it be a public prayer, whether it be singing the hymns, preaching, even taking up a collection, all of those things, we try to do the way that is outlined in the scripture, the best of our ability to follow as closely as possible what God would have us to do. But that is why we have all the singing. And we have singing leading up to the preaching and enclosing in a hymn and all this stuff because it helps, I believe it not just helps with the worship, but it's going to bring honor and glory unto the Lord through this worship and praise of him by music. First Chronicles chapter 25 is where I had you turn, and we're going to start reading there in verse number 1, Bible reads, Moreover, David and the captains of the host separated to the service of the sons of Asaph and of Heman and of Juduthun, who should prophesy with harps, with saltaries, and with cymbals. And the number of the workmen according to their service was, and before we continue on there, notice it says that these people were prophesying. They're preaching. They're putting forth a message with their harps, their saltaries, and with the cymbals. So these songs aren't just empty, meaningless, vain songs that just sound good to the ears. They're prophesying. There's a bigger purpose behind the music, yet music is still incorporated with the message. Now we see teachers and preachers of God's word that don't use music, that are just teaching and preaching and giving the understanding, and we also see in conjunction with that people whose job it is to do the music in order to prophesy with the instruments. So God has us learning on multiple levels, not just from preaching like I'm doing right now, preaching, expounding on the word of God, but also through the music, through the people who are responsible for singing and playing with their instruments, it is to teach and to admonish. But let's keep reading. Verse number two, the Bible says, of the sons of Asaph, Zachar, and Joseph, and Netheniah, and Azariah, the sons of Asaph, under the hands of Asaph, which prophesied according to the order of the king of Juduthun, the sons of Juduthun, Gedaliah, and Zirai, and Josiah, Heshabiah, and Medithea, six, under the hands of their father, Juduthun, who prophesied with a harp to give thanks and to praise the Lord of Heman, the sons of Heman, Pekiah, Medithea, Uzziel, Shabuel, and Jerimoth, Hananiah, Hanani, Eliathah, Gedaltai, and Romam Taizah, Josh Bekasha, on and on. Look at verse number five, it says, and these were the sons of Heman the king's seer, in the words of God, to lift up the horn, and God gave to Heman fourteen sons and three daughters. All these were under the hands of their father for song in the house of the Lord, with cymbals, psalteries, and harps, for the service of the house of God, according to the king's order to Asaph, Juduthun, and Heman, so the number of them with their brethren that were instructed in the songs of the Lord, even all that were cunning, was two hundred four score and eight. Two hundred and eighty-eight people in, not just a choir, but this full, you know, orchestra. You had people orchestrating together with these different instruments, and these people too, these weren't just like hired hands, these were people, these were the Levites whose charge it was to be in the service of the Lord, just like we see when the disciples are to pick out helpers to help with the daily ministration in the New Testament, right? When they need to find people that are gonna help with the widows that need help and do these, what you might see as more menial tasks, they're still, who they're choosing are the people who are full of the Holy Ghost, great men of God, they're able to, they're not just taking the bottom rung, you know, just saved yesterday, maybe, person to do these tasks, they're finding people who are gonna be responsible, dependable. It's the same thing here with the musicians. This isn't just some small, no big deal, whatever, no, this is actually a position that is a very important position. It's an important position of teaching, of prophesying, and using their instruments to glorify God, and I would say this, you know, when it comes to our music within this church and anyone who's involved with music or anyone who wants to be involved with music in this church, you need to take it seriously and think of it as, hey, you are performing a big function here. The people that were chosen in the Old Testament, it says they were instructed in the songs of the Lord, they were cunning, they were able to play, they worked hard at it, it was a job, it was something that was looked at as a full-time job, it was something that was that important, it had that much gravity and weight, and if you were gonna play before the Lord, right, we shouldn't go half-heartedly. And hey, maybe you're not gonna be involved in music, how about your singing? Just singing praise unto the Lord, this impacts everybody. You know, what you're offering up, the Bible talks about the sacrifice of praise, offering up the sacrifice of praise in the books of Psalms, you're giving your voice as a sacrifice to God, you're singing praise unto his name, why don't you try to sing the best that you can? Now, not everybody is a professional singer. God knows that, we all know that, but how about you sing from the heart and you give your best? How about not just, you know, muttering with your lips or moving your lips to make it look like you're singing, so if anyone looks at you, you could look like you're singing, but you're not actually singing. Say, how do you know? Because that was me in the Presbyterian church where I grew up, I would move my lips and not sing, because I didn't, as much as I liked music, I didn't really like the singing in public, it was kind of something I would do in private, that was my personality, but it's not right. You know, if you're gonna come in the house of God, you ought to lift up your voice, you ought to sing to God and do your best, try, make an effort. Don't just say, well, I'm not good at it, so whatever, no, I mean, what you're offering your voice to God, you're singing praise on Him, make it worth something. And if you're gonna take on a position, leading songs, playing an instrument, you know, why don't you try to make it a point to do your best and to improve and to continually get better? Now, you may not be perfect, you may have room to grow, understood, but don't just let it sit and just be not that big of a deal. We always ought to be pushing forward to try to prove and make improvements and to do better to serve the Lord, because that is a capacity to serve God. It serves a very important function. When we do not have musical instruments and we do not have music in our service, there's something lacking. We're not quite complete. And I don't believe, like some people do in this a cappella only nonsense, we don't see instruments in the New Testament. You don't see it repealed either. And we see that the Psalms are confirmed in the New Testament, that we're supposed to sing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, so are we only supposed to sing about making a joyful noise unto the Lord and using instruments, but not actually use the instruments? What sense does that make at all? So yeah, we're gonna sing the Psalms and we're gonna sing a Psalm that says, praise the Lord on an instrument of six strings, but we're not actually gonna praise the Lord on an instrument of six strings. With a psaltery, with a heart, we're not gonna do that. We're just gonna sing it a cappella. It makes no sense, right? The whole doctrine is kind of silly, but we don't believe that here. It adds a lot to the service and it helps us to get in the right spirit. I'm gonna get into that a little bit later. It all has to do with the power that music has, not just on us physically, because there are studies done that physically, music has an impact on every single one of us, but spiritually, way more important is your spirit, your soul is influenced by the music, and the music helps us to get in the right heart, the right state of mind, to receive the word of God. It's extremely important, extremely important. And these people in 1 Chronicles, people of the Old Testament, they took their job seriously. It wasn't just, oh, this is what David wants us to do. No, they were performing for the Lord. Turn if you would to Ezekiel chapter 28. I'm just gonna read a couple of verses from the Psalms just confirming, obviously, music is a good thing. Music in and of itself is great. There's nothing wrong with it. God designed us to have music. Psalm 33, one, the Bible reads, rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous, for praise is comely for the upright. Praise the Lord with harp. Sing unto him with a psaltery and an instrument of 10 strings. Sing unto him a new song. Play skillfully with a loud noise. So what does it require to play skillfully? It means you gotta practice, right? It's not just, oh, I'm just gonna pick up this guitar and just whatever, and I'm just gonna come up with something and God's, you know, look, does God just accept any offering? Did he accept Cain's offering? What's what he wanted to offer? I mean, he's just saying, well, you're a God. No, he wants things done the right way. And if he's saying here, let's play skillfully. Let's learn to do good and offer that up. And you know what? If you have a heart, a desire, learn it, right? And God will work with you, but we ought to be singing unto him, playing skillfully with a loud noise. Don't hold back, right? Let it out. If we're gonna use an instrument, let's use the instruments. If you're gonna use your voice, let's use your voice. Don't go half-heartedly with the music. These are, you know, it's a song, yes, but it's a command too. It's a word of God, it's Scripture. Psalm 49 verse 3, again, we see just another reference of like prophesying with music. Psalm 49, 3 says, my mouth shall speak of wisdom and the meditation of my heart shall be of understanding. I will incline mine ear to a parable. I will open my dark saying upon the harp. The dark sayings, where else will we see dark sayings? Well, we've seen a reference in the New Testament and also with Proverbs, right? Book of Proverbs, a book of wisdom and truth, and the whole point is for people to understand the dark sayings, the things that are a little bit more mysterious, maybe harder to understand. God will open up that key and that wisdom and that knowledge. And one of the ways that he's doing it here is he's saying, hey, I'm gonna open up the dark sayings with a harp and help you understand through the music, through the teaching, coming through the song. And it's another tool that's used to help us to understand and learn and grow. Again, this is all foundational. All of this is gonna be extremely important when we transition, and I preach later on how we apply this to today's music. Don't forget these things, let them sink down because we need to use these principles and what we're seeing here when we determine later on what is right and what is wrong. We're seeing the right examples. We're seeing what the Bible teaches about music, okay, and we'll apply it later on. I had you turn to Ezekiel 28 because this is another fundamental truth or foundational truth to understand one of the reasons why this is so important. We know that Satan is, you know, the name for Satan is he's our adversary, right? Satan is continually working against the Lord, against God, but very subtly. What is it, you know, going all the way back to Genesis, we see the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and the Bible says that the serpent is more subtle than any of the creatures, right? So Satan's tactics are always ones that are subtlety to try to deceive people, and in order to be subtle, you can't just change just everything overtly and have it be completely different from what the truth is. If you want to deceive someone with a lie, you've got to have it really close to the truth in order to deceive the most amount of people. Now the extremely gullible people may fall for anything you say, but you know, people who are thinking, you need to have your lies lined up really close so it's hard to spot the difference between the truth and the lie. This is where Satan excels. This is the tactic he uses, just like when he questioned God's word, he didn't come right out and just say, hey, God didn't say that, right? First he says, well, did God say that? The huge difference in that approach and how that impacts your mind when you're, when you're approached. If he said, well, God didn't say that, you'd be like, well, no, yes, he did, right? But if he said, well, I mean, did God really, I'm not saying he didn't, but did he really say that? Now there's a different level of, I don't know, you know, it starts to make you question and wonder as opposed to taking more of a defensive stance. And this is the way that Satan works, right? It's obvious. We can see his tactics. The reason why I'm bringing all this up is because Satan is involved in trying to deceive people through music. Music is powerful. Music is important. People learn through music. Satan has his hand in music just as much as he tries to get his hand in the word of God and corrupt and pervert and change and change the truth of God into a lie. He's done that with the modern Bible versions. He's done that with questioning the word of God. He's doing it also with music. Ezekiel chapter 28, now we're going to see, we'll start reading in verse number one, and this is going to talk about the prince of Tyrus, okay? And then a little bit later in the same chapter, we're going to see reference to the king of Tyrus. And we're going to see there's a slight variation here. The latter portion is going to be talking about Satan himself. The first part, I believe, is referring to a physical king that's in power. We have multiple examples throughout scripture of people who are in positions of power being influenced by the powers of darkness. The Bible teaches us that there's spiritual darkness, spiritual wickedness in high places, that we're to put on the full armor of God because we're in a battle. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the spiritual wickedness in high places, against the rulers of darkness of this world, right? We know this. We know that there's angels. We know that there's devils. We know there's battles going on. And we know that there are supernatural beings, one, the angels will help to minister unto us, but two, you've got devils that are also trying to cause people to stumble and to fall. And if you're going to go, if your mindset, if your goal is to do evil, to do damage, to do harm, it only makes sense that a devil is going to target people in positions of high power, in high places, in prominence, because you can influence so much more by getting to the top. And this is a little bit of a sidetrack from the scope of the sermon, but if you think about this, we're aware of a coming new world order. We're aware of these dark forces that are at place. And there's a lot of people out there that will put forth different theories on who's behind what's going on, right? Some people say the Jesuits are behind it, the Jews are behind it, the Illuminati is behind it, right? They'll talk about all these various groups, which all of them in their own right, in their own place, I'm sure are involved in wickedness and doing bad things and bringing evil. But I don't think there's any one group that's just specifically responsible for all this corruption and evil in the high places. I believe all of those groups are just pawns. They are the human instruments being used that have been corrupted. I'm not saying that they're just ignorant and not knowing what they're doing. No, they're willfully doing wickedness, but they are being influenced by a darker force that has the master plan that's going to be played out. Because you could say, well, how can a plan go for over 100 years, cross generations? It just doesn't seem reasonable that you can have even a family dynasty, the Rothschilds or whatever, that they're going to be raising children to just continue down this same path and keep things. It just seems far-fetched that a family or whatever is going to keep these agendas going and they're working together. The reason why we have agendas following for so many years over a longer course of time, but still the same agenda, is because it's not just mankind behind it. Because there's darker forces at work behind it. You've got devils influencing people that they're not having these short lifespans like human beings have. They are continuing. They know the end game. They know what they're trying to get to. And if it takes 100 years to get there, they're still working at it. That is where the real fight is. That is where the real power and influence is. It's these demonic beings that are influencing the men that happen to be in positions of power. And we see the evil forces withstanding King David, standing up against people who are doing what's right, as well as influencing the people. And we're going to see here the King of Tyrus, who's physically in charge, being influenced by Satan himself. So let's read this chapter, verse number one. The Bible reads, The word of the Lord came again unto me, saying, Son of man, say unto the prince of Tyrus, Thus saith the Lord God, Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a god, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas, yet thou art a man, and not God, though thou set thine heart as the heart of God. Now what do we see here? A ruler that is full of pride. Now we know that this is an attribute of Satan, right? Satan's the one who wants to be as God. Satan's the one that wants people worshipping him. But we also see many men that have the same exact satanic attitude of wanting to be like a god. And many rulers throughout history will posit themself as being a god, and even to the point of being worshipped. You know, North Korea, they view their leaders as being like gods. Ancient Egypt, they viewed their pharaohs as being like god-men, right? This is nothing new. So here we have the king of Tyrus, which was a very, Tyrus was a very wealthy city, a merchant city, lots of wealth, so here you have a king now that's ruling and thinking really, really highly of himself. Nebuchadnezzar was another example, right? Look at all this stuff that I have done, and it all gets to their head, this wealth and power and fame, to where they lift themselves up and thinking that I'm like a god. So we see this man in charge here, and God's going to humble him. God's going to bring him down. Verse 3 says, Behold, thou art wiser than Daniel. There is no secret that they can hide from thee. With thy wisdom and with thine understanding, thou hast gotten thee riches, and hast gotten gold and silver into thy treasures. By thy great wisdom and by thy traffic, hast thou increased thy riches, and thine heart is lifted up because of thy riches. Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Because thou hast set thine heart as the heart of God, behold, therefore I will bring strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations, and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom, and they shall defile thy brightness. Now I do believe, even though we're seeing a lot of parallels with Satan here, I think that this first message is for the literal king, the human being that's in place, where he's gained a lot of wisdom. He's acquired this great wealth in this position of power, but God's saying because you've set your heart like the heart of God, you're going to be destroyed. So he's going to bring these nations, these foreigners, to come and to basically destroy and bring their swords against them. And for this purpose right here is one of the reasons why I think he's not, this isn't just talking about the spiritual power behind him, because it doesn't matter as much if that nation crumbles to the spiritual entity, right, as much as it does to the physical person there. But we're going to see now a transition in verse number 12, where we have the spiritual wickedness in high places that are influencing the people here behind the scenes, influencing the prince of Tyrus. Verse 12, the Bible reads, Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus and say unto him, thus saith the Lord God, thou sealest up the sum full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. Verse 13, thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God. And this is the big clue, right, that should slap you in the face and go, this is no longer talking about the physical king, because he wasn't in the garden of Eden. This is way, way, way after the garden of Eden. There's no way this human being could be in the garden of Eden. This is referring to Satan himself. We know that Satan was in the garden of Eden. We know the serpent was in the garden of Eden when he beguiled Eve. So let's continue on. This is now going to give us this description of Satan. Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the barrel, the ionics, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold. So this is describing Satan is basically has ornaments or he's ordained here with beauty. He's made a very beautiful creature, something that's going to be pleasing to the eyes. It's like he has all these stones that are just kind of magnifying this beauty that God created in this being. And then it continues on and says, the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. Now, tabrets and pipes are musical instruments. So it's referring to, you know, a tabret would be something similar to like a drum, a tambourine, and a pipe would be like a flute, right, just these different types of instruments, which again, I don't believe there's anything necessarily wrong with either of those particular instruments, but just God, I mean, God created this being, God created Satan to be a very beautiful creature and a very musical creature, that God made him that way. And then it says in verse 14, thou art the anointed cherub that covereth. So again, this isn't talking about a man, obviously saying he's a cherub, he's created an angel of God, he was anointed, he said that covereth and I have set thee so. Thou wast upon the holy mountain of God, thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire, thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created till iniquity was found in thee. God made him beautiful, great, he's this anointed cherub, a very special creature to God, very beautiful in music as well as in appearance, everything about him just is a very beautiful creature and that caused his heart to be lifted up and the only thing he was probably lacking in was being like God. And see, being in the position that he held wasn't good enough for him, he wanted to be God. That's when iniquity was found in him and he fell. Verse 16 says by the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence and thou hast sinned, therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Why did I have us turn there? One to show that there are dark forces at work in this world, very evident, very clear. Satan was at work here in Tyre at the time. Satan was influencing the king of Tyrus or the prince of Tyrus at this time to do evil, to do wickedly, but we also see a glimpse into the physical composition of Satan. He's made to be very beautiful. He wasn't made with red horns and a pitchfork and a tail and this creature that if you looked on you'd be like, yeah, of course, that must be the devil. The exact opposite. His physical appearance we never see anywhere in the Bible saying, well, his physical appearance changed the moment he sinned. Don't see that. He was still made to be a very beautiful creature. The Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians 11, you don't have to turn there, talk about false prophets. For such are false prophets, deceitful workers transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. So the same way that false prophets, people are going to pass themselves off as being good people, they transform, hey, we're prophets of Christ. They're going to claim the name of Jesus as they spew out all of their bad doctrine, indomitable heresy and cause people to go to hell, but on the outward they're going to try to make themselves look. You can trust me, I love Jesus, I love God, I'm just trying to do what's right, but inwardly they're full of wickedness and dead man's bones, but they come at you with the outside. Verse 14 in 2 Corinthians 11 says, and no marvel, so it shouldn't be a surprise that these false prophets behave that way, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. So Satan himself, he's going to look like a good guy, like an angel of light, hey, I'm here for the light, I don't like the darkness. This is also why the Illuminati is a satanic religion, it's what's illuminating, it's supposed to be light, it's a religion of light, and oh, we're going to give you knowledge, and they view Satan as being a good guy. Why? Because, well, he's just trying to bring the knowledge of good and evil onto Adam and Eve, right? What could be wrong with that? He's bringing knowledge. He's illuminating them. Satan is trying to pass himself off as a good guy. No surprise that his false prophets, his minions do the same exact thing. Any con man that is worth his salt of being a con man is going to work very hard at gaining confidence, gaining trust, and passing themselves off as being someone who can be trusted. You don't trust the guy with the pitchfork and the evil laugh, you're going to trust the guy that's well-dressed, well-kept, speaks eloquently, and can say all the right things, seemingly, right? That's who's going to gain your confidence, and that's how Satan works. Therefore, it's no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as ministers of righteousness whose end shall be according to their works. Satan takes things that are good and he perverts them. Just like he does with the word of God, he's going to make it close to make it sound good, but he perverts it just enough to make it a lie. He's also taken something good like music, very good, God-ordained, and perverted it to negatively impact people. We receive teaching from the word of God. What has he done? He's gone to try to corrupt the word of God so that we can't get the truth. We get teaching not only from the word of God, but through songs and hymns and spiritual songs. Doesn't it make sense? Doesn't it make sense that Satan has also infiltrated music to pass off music as being good, as sounding good, as something you want to hear, but he's driving home something that's much more nefarious and evil and wicked and bad for you. It makes perfect sense. I'm going over this foundation to give you the motivation. As we progress and get further, the reason why I spend so much time on this is because people have an emotional attachment to music. I understand this, and it's really difficult. It can almost feel like you're cutting off a limb when you're trying to remove the bad music from your life. Even if you can have this understanding and see that this makes perfect sense and not just say, oh, well, Pastor Berzins, I mean, he's just really extreme, and these Undefended Fundamental Baptists have all these crazy rules. There's nothing wrong with this music. It's just all in good fun. What's the big deal anyways? You have to see the motivation behind it. You have to see the tactics of Satan. We have to see that he's created a musical creature. We have to see how he attacks the things of God to understand, no, this is real. This isn't imagined. This isn't fake. This is real. So now when we start analyzing, well, what would be the music influenced by Satan? We can look at it with this understanding and try to separate our emotion, our attachment to stuff that, in the flesh, is going to feel really good to you because music impacts your emotions, your feelings. We need to be able to separate that to make righteous judgments. Every judgment you make needs to be without the emotion involved. It's the only way you're going to make good choices. Music is no different. It took me a long time to get to the place. Even after I knew it was wrong, that pull in my life was so strong, it took me a while to cut it out. And to be honest with you, I still struggle with it. It's just really powerful. Now I could say for the vast majority, the most, I mean, it's gone. I don't have stuff at home. I'm not just secretly, you know, but you hear it. It surrounds you everywhere. And the thing with music is that not only do you hear it elsewhere, it's that once it goes in your mind, it really doesn't leave. You can focus on other things and try to get other thoughts in your mind and whatever, but you know what? Sometimes, just seemingly out of nowhere, songs have a tendency to just come back up in your mind. When you open up that door one time to go back, it's going to open up the floodgates more. We'll get into more of that this evening, though. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. There's two aspects to music. One is the actual playing of the instruments, the instrumental part, the musical part. The other part is the message behind or contained within the music when you have lyrics. It's not just one or the other, and we're going to have to look at both when we consider whether or not music is godly, it's of God, it's something we should listen to or not. Because I would say that even instrumental music that has no words in it can still be bad music. It's not only about the message. There's two aspects. We're going to see the power. Turn, if you would, to 1 Samuel 16. We're going to close on this concept. This is the musical aspect. We're going to see the power that music wields with human beings and with spiritual things. It's not just the physical realm. I kind of wish I printed off some of the studies and the articles because there's a lot of scientific fact that's going to back up what we already see in scripture. We don't need it, but it's nice to be able to show this when I'm preaching these things. But there has been many, many studies, because you're all going to sit here and say, if you're honest with yourself, yeah, that makes sense. That's right. And because everyone, humanly speaking, we have the same human experience when you hear music, you know it has an impact on you. Like I said before, you may not be able to put your finger on it, but this is why many studies have been done, especially even in modern times with new technology being able to make brain scans while people are listening to music and different genres of music and music that they like versus what they don't like. And all these different variables you could add in with music, and studies have been done even just to see the activity going on in your brain so that they can try to understand more of just how does this work, because it is a big influence. How does this work? I mean, music has an impact on your, literally on the way that you think. First of all, it helps you to memorize things. Very well known, everyone should be fully aware of that, that you can remember things a lot easier when it's put to. That's why people try to sell you stuff, have jingles, commercials, they have these little songs that are going to get stuck in your head because they want you to buy their stuff so you're thinking about their product more often. I mean, money motivated, right? But they're using something inherent to human beings to try to sell you. That's an example, but it affects all of us. How about not even just the remembering of lyrics, music is also able to conjure up memories. You hear particular music, particular songs, it will bring you back to a time and place in your past where that, for whatever reason, that song, that music is tied in and gets linked in your brain to specific memories. It's a fact. You can't deny music has this power. It's an inherent power with music, even if we don't fully understand how it all works, because that's what people are trying to do, there's a lot of study out there where they're trying, because everyone experiences this. Why? They don't know. The reason why I think that they're not able to find out is because you're never going to be able to figure it out just physically speaking, because I think that the music goes deeper than just the brain activity and the neurons firing and the serotonin being released, because they go real deep on this and saying, you know, music can trigger the dopamine that will give you the feeling of euphoria. There's a different music that people will hear that will give them an elevated feeling, an emotional response, just hearing a song is going to make you feel different. That's one of the things that I loved about music. You actually feel it. I mean, it's just something playing and it changes your mood. It changes your attitude. You can feel euphoric. You can feel angry. You can feel sad. Music plays on your emotion. It wields a great power. Being able to take a step back and identify that, again, gives us all the more reason to take this subject seriously, because it's so powerful. Music will even cause you to want to move your body in particular ways. I don't know about you, but when we sing the hymns, it's not always a bad thing. We sing the hymns in church, I'll be tapping my foot with the beat of the song. Maybe you don't do that, but maybe some other songs play, you'll do the very thing. It's natural. This is something that's in us that music has the ability to do, and different types of music will cause you to try to move your body in different ways. The way that people, and just worldly speaking, the way that people dance, listen to hip hop, they don't dance that way to country western, right? The way they dance to country western, they don't do that in heavy metal. You don't move your body the same way. Why? Because it's inherent in the music. It kind of prompts you to, you know, the head banging of heavy metal. Why in the world would anyone choose to just say, you know what, this is the way that we should dance and move our bodies to this music, let's just see if we can injure our necks by nodding up and down real fast. Nobody consciously chose that this is what people who listen to this type of music are going to do. The music brought that on. The music did it. The lewdness in the hip hop is what causes people to have the reaction to move their body in such a way that's going to go with that music and dance inappropriately with other people in a highly sexualized way. Because that's the power, not just of the lyrics, of the music itself. You know this is true. Again, we're going to get into more of the application this evening. Music is extremely powerful. Let's look at a biblical example though, because the Bible shows us this truth. First Samuel chapter 16, we're going to see the power of music on your spirit. Not just physically, not just moving your body, going all the way down to your soul. First Samuel chapter 16, story of Saul, he's not right with God. Spirit of the Lord's departed from Saul and is resting on David, because David has already been chosen to be the next king. David is going to be the man after God's own heart. David is going to be the one because Saul failed. Saul started off right, but he ended up doing things that were contrary to God's law, contrary to what God told him to do, and he started getting lifted up with his own pride. So God said, okay, no more. I'm anointing David to be the new king. He's going to follow what I tell him to do. I'm no longer going to use you. Not only that, God decides to plague Saul with an evil spirit because of his disobedience, because he's still a child of God, because God does things to chasten us, to try to get us to repent and get back in good standing with him. He still loves Saul, so he sends the evil spirit to get him right. Finally, Saul hardens his neck and doesn't get right, but continues to go down the wrong path instead of the right path. But let's look at this story, and let's look at the power that music plays with this evil spirit that's sent from the Lord. Look at verse number 13. The Bible says, then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brethren, and the spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward. So Samuel rose up and went to Ramah. This is exactly what I'm talking about. David's anointed. Verse 14, but the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him. So no longer does he have the Holy Spirit from God just with him and blessing what he does and guiding him. Now that spirit's departed. He doesn't have that help, that assistance from God just in his life. And instead, he's being troubled. His soul's being vexed. He's having more conflict within himself because this spirit has come from the Lord to give him that conflict, to cause him to have these troubles. Verse 15, and Saul's servants said unto him, behold now, an evil spirit from God troubled thee. So they can identify this and say, yeah, Saul's got a spiritual problem here. They identify it correctly. To me, that's what's interesting is that they can see what's happening with Saul, and they've identified what the problem is. Unfortunately, the solution is completely wrong. If you have a spiritual problem, you need a spiritual solution. If your problem is with God and if God's doing something to vex you, you need to get right with God. That's the right answer. The root cause of the Spirit coming on Saul is because he was in disobedience. Get right with God. That solves the problem. But instead, they try to circumvent the repentance. And what's really interesting here is that because the way that they choose to do this with music, the music is so powerful, it actually works at first. Now, it's still a short-term fix because it's not the right solution. And the way that I would equate this fix is the same way that doctors will try to fix people with certain medication that have a deeper spiritual problem, like being depressed. Being extremely depressed, and then doctors will say, well, hey, here's some drugs. This will make you feel better so you're no longer depressed. But what ends up happening? It works temporarily. They're going to feel, oh, I feel great. Wow, I can actually do things now. I'm not as depressed. But that's not the root cause of their problem. The problem is the feeling is a symptom of the problem, not the root cause of the problem. They need to deal with the root cause of the problem that's making them depressed and making them upset in order to solve and cure their depression that they're experiencing and not do it with a Band-Aid, with this temporary means. This music, while it may be powerful, just like the Prozac may be powerful within your physiology, it's the wrong solution. But let's keep reading. I'm a little bit ahead of myself. Verse number 15, of course, the servants recognize it's an evil spirit. Verse 16, let our Lord now command thy servants, which are before thee, to seek out a man who is a cunning player on an harp. And here, harp is listed as a good instrument in the book of Psalms. We're not going to some wicked instrument, some device of Satan, right? He's saying, no, let's get a harp, and it shall come to pass when the evil spirit from God is upon thee, that he shall play with his hand, and thou shalt be well. And Saul said unto the servants, Provide me now a man that can play well, and bring him to me. Then answered one of the servants, and said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the Lord is with him. So they actually go to get a man that's a really great guy, God is working with him, God is using him, and it's going to be the right music, it's going to be the godly music. He's not gone off into the world to try to fix his problem here, speaking in the sense of the music. This will give you an idea of how powerful not just music in general is, but even the right music can be. That while God is plaguing Saul with this evil spirit, introducing good, godly, right music actually is able to quench this evil spirit from the Lord, at least for a time. We'll get into more application later, but just think about this and consider this. Having the right music in your life, well how powerful can that be? Is powerful enough here for an evil spirit to depart from Saul? Look at verse 19, wherefore Saul sent messengers unto Jesse, and said, Send me David thy son, which is with the sheep. And Jesse took an ass laden with bread, and a bottle of wine, and a kid, and sent them by David his son unto Saul. And David came to Saul, and said before him, And he loved him greatly, and he became his armor bearer. And Saul sent to Jesse, saying, Let David, I pray thee, stand before me, for he hath found favor in my sight. And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp and played with his hand. So Saul was refreshed and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him. It's pretty powerful. All through David playing the music, it had a spiritual impact on Saul. Evil spirit departed, he feels refreshed, he's good to go. Totally biblical example, we see this play out in the real world all the time. Don't deceive yourself into thinking that music isn't really that big of a deal. That it doesn't really matter what music I listen to. That who cares, it's all just the same, no it's not, no it's not. And don't judge whether or not a song is good or bad based on how it makes you feel. I've had someone tell me before, but when I listen to this music, it just makes me feel closer to God. How do you know? I mean the Mormons tell me that they feel a burning in their bosom when they read the Book of Mormon. Is that from God? I don't doubt you have a feeling. Don't make your decisions based on feelings. Some people like the feeling of being drunk. Some people like the feeling of having a physical relationship with somebody. It doesn't make it right. Within marriage it's right. Fornication, adultery, that's not right. Goodness isn't right. You may say it feels good, totally wrong reason to do it. And then what we see in 1 Samuel in chapters 18 and 19 is that even though this worked at first, it doesn't continue to work because it's not the right solution. So I'll just read this for you, verse 10 in chapter 18 says, and it came to pass on the morrow that the evil spirit from God came upon Saul and he prophesied in the midst of the house and David played with his hand as at other times and there was a javelin in Saul's hand and Saul cast the javelin for he said I will smite David even to the wall with it and David avoided out of his presence twice. So here we have two examples just in these two verses of this evil spirit coming upon Saul. David plays. Obviously the evil spirit's still there because he's trying to kill David with a javelin. He's still impacted by this evil spirit and the music isn't doing anything and then in chapter 19 verse 9 it says, and the evil spirit from the Lord was upon Saul as he sat in his house with his javelin in his hand and David played with his hand and Saul sought to smite David even to the wall with the javelin but he slipped away out of Saul's presence and he smote the javelin into the wall. David fled and escaped that night. So I mean so obviously this evil spirit's so bad I mean he's like ready to kill somebody but the music only I mean it has power but it only has so much power but also the warning that would derive from this is that you know sometimes music will make you feel a certain way for a while but then kind of fade and then you're always going to be seeking more and more different and more you know and it's one of those things you're never really fully satisfied. I know I was never fully satisfied with all the music that I had with the whole collection I was always looking for more always and that just opens up the door more and more depending on which music you're listening to right to more and more wickedness or to more and more righteousness. I still love music I like I like being able to hear new songs new hymns new spiritual songs things that I love it but the the the nature of music itself is extremely important understanding how powerful music is and that we can see that Satan was made as a musical creature we need to have the more earnest heed to protect ourselves from the satanic influences we'll get into all of that tonight now making the applications really needed to cover this this groundwork of all of the the the fundamentals behind music in the Bible let's borrow a word of prayer. Dear Heavenly Father Lord we thank you so much for all these examples in scripture thank you for giving us the blessing that is found in music and I pray that you would please help us to be able to make good righteous judgments on the types of music that we allow ourselves to listen to that we wouldn't be influenced by by dark forces by satanic forces dear Lord but that it would be used only for good purposes and to glorify you and to bring us true joy and comfort dear Lord and we love you we thank you so much for the for the wisdom and knowledge is found through your words in Jesus name we pray Amen.