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This is No Time for Singing, Yet the Singers Leave No Time for Preaching

For Timothy (Read his post)

Qualifier – I love music, especially music (not entertainment)  in church, but these quotes are pure gold.

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Two quotes from D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones pertaining to music in worship services:

1. This is no time for singing:

I am no opponent of singing, we are to sing God’s praises in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.  Yes, but again there is a sense of proportion even here. Have you not noticed how singing is becoming more and more prominent? People, Christian people, meet together to sing only.  “Oh,” they say, “we do get a word in.”  But the singing is the big thing. At a time like this, at an appalling time like this, with crime and violence, and sin, and perversions, God’s name desecrated and the sanctities being spat upon, the whole state of the world surely says that this is not a time for singing …We are just singing. We are wafting ourselves into some happy atmosphere. We sing together.  My dear friends, this is no time for singing. ‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’ (Ps. 137:4). How can we take down our harps when Zion is as she is?

This is no time for singing, it is a time for thinking, for preaching, for conviction. It is a time for proclaiming the message of God and his wrath upon evil, and all our foolish aberrations. The time for singing will come later. Let the great revival come, let the windows of heaven be opened, let us see men and women by the thousands brought into the kingdom of God and then it will be time to sing. Let us beware of this subtle temptation to entertain people, thinking that thereby we can attract them and save them, thinking that thereby we can keep ourselves happy…I ask you solemnly, is this a time for entertainment? Is it not a time, rather, for fasting, for sackcloth and ashes, for waiting upon God in an agony of soul? You cannot mix singing with that, these things do not go together. (Revival, pp. 63-64).

He may have overstated this a bit – but his point is well taken. What words could be more appropriate for us than, ‘let us beware of this subtle temptation to entertain people’?

It also brings to mind the words of Jesus:

  • ‘And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast'” (Matthew 9:15).

Perhaps this could be a case for an increase in the singing of psalms. Our modern music lacks the tone of lament so prevalent in the psalter.

2. The Singers leave no time for preaching:

Still worse has been the increase in the element of entertainment in public worship – the use of films and the introduction of more and more singing; the reading of the Word and prayer shortened drastically, but more and more time given to singing. You have a ‘song leader’ as a new kind of official in the church, and he conducts the singing and is supposed to produce the atmosphere. But he often takes so much time in producing the atmosphere that there is no time for preaching in the atmosphere! This is a part of this whole depreciation of the message (Preaching and Preachers, p. 17).

That one speaks for itself, I’ll spare comment.

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