Psalmody. Singing the Psalms in worship without using musical instruments is one of the “distinctive principles” of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. While such beliefs could derive from fallible tradition, this conviction is dependent upon biblical arguments. God alone tells us how we are to worship Him—and He has commanded New Testament believers to sing Psalms.

God does good, and His commands are good. When God created the heavens and the earth, each day was pronounced to be good, and Adam was “good and upright.” God’s first commands were for the good man, Adam, and for that man’s good. Nevertheless, Adam wrongly decided that God’s commands were not good. Ever since Adam’s day, some have lived in outright rebellion against God’s good commands.

Believers’ struggle. Even believers struggle with knowing, understanding, and obeying God’s good commands. The Old Testament provides powerful testimonies to that struggle. God commanded Noah to build a massive boat. That good command took the hard-working man and his two sons 100 years to complete! Such a command would have been very difficult for the men and their wives to comprehend. God’s command to Abraham to travel all over would also have been intellectually perplexing. Even more so was the order to kill Isaac as a holy sacrifice. Abraham was to slay the beloved son of promise!

Thus, while all of God’s commandments are always good, they may not always appear very good to believers, and they may be difficult to perform.

God commands worship. One of God’s good commands for His people is to worship Him. When they worshiped Him at His temple, God gave specific commands concerning that worship, including singing certain words to Him with instrumental accompaniment.

While some of God’s commands are hard to understand, and harder to obey, His instruction to sing to Him was, and is, intellectually comprehensible. Singing to God in worship is presented within a beautiful overall theology of singing. One of the reasons why the Bible instructs about singing in worship is because it is also a common activity. God wants His people to fully understand this sacred duty.

First, God knows that it is good for men and women to sing. As emotional beings, people want to express the depth of their sorrows as well as the height of their joys and triumphs in appropriate ways—and singing provides such a medium.1 The Bible, and history afterwards, demonstrates that every culture uses songs that identify the people of that culture.2 Believers are no different from others in that they want to sing about all of those profound yearnings.

Second, the Bible demonstrates the conjunction between using musical instruments, singing, and dancing. The use of musical instruments, even though the Bible specifically records that they came from the line of the reprobate, is good.3 Also, God’s people sang when they were thankful to Him for divine deliverance.4 Thanksgiving expressed in accompanied song was furthermore connected to dancing. In 1 Samuel 18:6 we read: “As they were coming home, when David returned from striking down the Philistine, the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul, with tambourines, with songs of joy, and with musical instruments.”5 The Lord did not rebuke His people for such joyous celebration! Clearly, there is an intimate relationship between instrumentally aided singing and emotions.

Music gives expression to those emotions and sometimes even amplifies them.6 Third, besides being an emotional aid, the Bible demonstrates that song can be used in a teaching, or didactic, manner. God’s people sang when they wanted to make public statements. For example, we read in Judges 5:3: “‘Hear, O kings; give ear, O princes; to the Lord I will sing; I will make melody to the Lord, the God of Israel.” This was a proclamation to kings via divine song. In a similar vein, the Lord’s armies sang before their enemies that God Almighty was on their side: “When he had taken counsel with the people, he appointed those who were to sing to the Lord and praise him in holy attire, as they went before the army, and say, ‘Give thanks to the Lord, for his steadfast love endures forever’” (2 Chron. 20:21).

God also chose singing as a way to teach about coming divine judgment. Jeremiah spoke not of people, but of the creation itself singing at that time: “Then the heavens and the earth, and all that is in them, shall sing for joy over Babylon, for the destroyers shall come against them out of the north, declares the Lord”(Jer. 51:48).7 The eschatological coming of the Lord in judgment was to be greeted with singing: “Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion, for behold, I come and I will dwell in your midst, declares the Lord” (Zech. 2:10).

Since singing can play such an important role in life and is a powerful way to instruct, we can better understand why God commanded singing specific words during worship.8 God’s Word is good to speak, to keep in our hearts, and to sing!

Continuity. We know that God does not change, and we observe continuity in God’s special revelation between the Old and the New Testaments. There was salvation by perfect obedience to God’s law in the garden of Eden (eating the forbidden fruit meant death), at King David’s court (who sang of God’s judgment according to law as well as gracious salvation), during the time of Jesus (“I have not come to abolish the law…”) until today. Since the Fall, no mere man, not Moses or David, could keep the law perfectly himself. The patriarchs of old relied on the coming Christ—as we rely upon the risen Christ for eternal life.

There are connections between the Testaments concerning God’s worship because God is just as interested in our worship after Christ’s coming as He was before. There are connections between the sacraments. The Passover becomes the Lord’s supper, and true circumcision develops into baptism. Likewise there is continuity when it comes to singing. New Testament singing retains its emotive, didactic, and eschatological qualities. Paul told the Romans: “… in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, ‘Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles, and sing to your name’” (Rom. 15:9). In Hebrews 2:12, using a psalm, the author said: “‘I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise’”.

Like the Old, the New Testament teaches that only certain words are to be sung in worship. Some disagree, but the New Testament teaches that the words to be sung in worship are limited to “songs of the Spirit,” that is, the psalter.

Reformed Presbyterian’s Struggle. While we know that all of God’s commands are good, and that God has commanded singing Psalms, many godly believers disagree with us. Such discord is always unpleasant. Since we are not a majority, it is natural at times to question our position and to feel inferior to the big churches. Nevertheless, as long as we walk on this side of the vale of tears, we will disagree with other godly believers. We may hope for unity on issues like eschatology or infant baptism, but I don’t expect it during my lifetime.

Reformed Presbyterians need to be confident in their position on worship. First, remember that God is good and that His commands are good. He has commanded all churches to sing the Psalms! To not sing Psalms in worship violates God’s specific New Testament commandment.9 Since God has commanded believers to sing His Word back to Him, we need to be confident that the Psalms are adequate for New Testament worship. They are! The Messiah of the Psalms is King Jesus who alone redeems. The Psalms’ eschatology, view of the end, is just like New Testament eschatology. The Psalms, like God’s revelation after Christ’s coming, are theocentric or “kingdom” eschatology. They are also deeply spiritual and missiological.10 In fact, Psalter eschatology is normative for the New Testament church.

We should try to understand a few of the arguments made against our position. One is that since redeemed saints in Revelation sang words not found in the Psalter, then believers on earth can do the same.11 There are a number of ways to answer this objection. The best is to acknowledge that while Psalm quotations in the New Testament do not follow the Hebrew text precisely, Revelation 15:3 comes from Psalm 86:10 and 10:6, and that we can hear the message of Psalm 2 and the words of 19:9 in the following verse. Echoes of Psalms 111:2, 22:3, 86:9, and 139:14 resound as well.12

Another objection is that since we allow free prayer during worship, then we should also allow for free singing. This is the theological reason why many Presbyterians sing amen at the end of their hymns. In fact, they assert that they are not really singing but rather praying. While an ingenious argument, the Bible has a theology of singing as well as a theology of prayer and does not confuse the two. While someone may privately sing their prayers to God or chant the Psalms as their prayers, the New Testament commands both singing and praying as separate parts of worship.

While exegetically incorrect, there are reasons why evangelicals sing human compositions in God’s worship. Cultural analysts have demonstrated that music and song help to create religious identity and reflect the culture. Thus, post-WWII churchgoers felt too constrained by earlier hymns. There was a further shift in church music taste in the late 1960s. Analysts have also demonstrated that church music was viewed as a key to “success,” and dissatisfaction with old music was a reason given for people to leave one church and flock to another. Many pastors felt that they had to change their congregation’s music or become marginalized.13

Another reason why non-Presbyterian evangelicals sing hymns is wrong theology. Those evangelicals see “praise and worship music” as an aid for the worshiper to enter into God’s presence. Studies demonstrate that certain music types produced this feeling better than others.14 One scholar said, “Access to the ‘holy of Holies’ for many evangelical Protestants now depends on the praise band, overhead projectors…and worship modelers stationed behind microphones at the front of the church.”15

What many evangelicals do not perceive is that this theology is similar to Old Testament practice, rather than worshiping in the freedom of the New Testament. In a sense, Old Testament musical instruments imitated the Holy Spirit’s coming work. Individual Old Testament believers needed the emotional excitement of instruments because they could not themselves enter into the holy of holies. Now, both men and women have bold access! God abolished the use of instruments because there is no more need for them. Their purpose was fulfilled in Christ! Old covenant believers came to the temple to worship. Now we are the temple of the living God!

Believers sing God’s Word back to Him because He commands it. We sing with confidence knowing the theological adequacy of the Psalms for Christian worship. We don’t use instruments in worship simply because we don’t need them any longer—we have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and walk in the fullness of that marvelous work!

—Dr. Gamble is professor of systematic theology at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pa. He is author of The Whole Counsel of God (P&R, 2009).

Endnotes

1 For example, Job lamented how the wicked seem to prosper. “Why do the wicked live, reach old age, and grow mighty in power?” He added how they expressed that prosperity with music. They send out their little boys like a flock, and their children dance, they sing to the tambourine and the lyre and rejoice to the sound of the pipe” (Job 21:7, 11-12).

2 Modern nations have “anthems” that express the hopes and visions of the people. Those anthems can be controversial—thus after World War II their conquerors insisted upon changes in the German and the Japanese national anthems.

3 See Genesis 4:19-22. For more on the sons of Cain, music, and God’s common grace, see The Whole Counsel of God (P&R): 1:233-37.

4 Exodus 15💯 “Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord, saying, ‘I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.’”

5A few chapters later, in 1 Samuel 21:11, we read: “And the servants of Achish said to him, ‘Is not this David the king of the land? Did they not sing to one another of him in dances, “Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands”’?”

6 For example, Ezekiel 33:32: “And behold, you are to them like one who sings lustful songs with a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument, for they hear what you say, but they will not do it.”

7 I Chronicles 16:33 is similar: “Then shall the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth.”

8 II Chronicles 29:30: “And Hezekiah the king and the officials commanded the Levites to sing praises to the LORD with the words of David and of Asaph the seer. And they sang praises with gladness, and they bowed down and worshiped.” For more information on musical instruments and the words sung in Old Testament worship, see WCG 1:562-69.

9All Presbyterians agree that Paul commanded singing the Psalms in Colossians and Ephesians. The exegetical disagreement concerns what may be sung in addition to the Psalms.

10 For more on Psalter eschatology, see WCG 1:548-55.

11 For example, in Revelation 15:3: “And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, ‘Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations.’”

12 For more on the psalter’s role in believers’ lives, as well as the relationship between the Psalms and book of Revelation, see WCG 1:556-62.

13 An example of pastors wanting people to choose worship according to taste is when there are “contemporary” and “traditional” offerings. The presupposition is that neither is better and worshipers can choose where they feel most at home culturally.

14 D. G. Hart, Deconstructing Evangelicalism, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004, 363-365: Music was the “means by which worshipers entered the very a of God.” “…to generate feelings and emotions that worshipers and their pastors often associated with the movement or work of the Holy Sprit.” “…an encounter with the Third Person of the Trinity was possible through music that animated believers.”

15 Hart, Deconstructing, 364.