(Friends: Most Saturdays for the duration of this year, I plan on sharing a message that relates to the character and nature of God, and our response thereunto. I hope you will find it helpful, and as always, thanks for allowing us to send the devotionals to you. Glen).
The Saturday Series - 27
"The Song of God"
The musical interest, capability, and enjoyment that characterizes our human experience begins with the One in who originally made us in His image. The Apostle Paul confirms this truth, declaring that the filling of the Holy Spirit in believers will be accompanied by song that glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ.
"Be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Ephesians 5:18-20).
Certainly the existence of music, with all its beauty, technical structure, emotional content, and expression of information in poetry and prose, speaks to something - Someone - beyond humanity. We did not invent music. Nor, interestingly, did God. Music rather exists as a part of His eternal character, nature, and disposition. The first mention of music in Scripture speaks to this sublime reality in our Creator:
"Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the LORD, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the LORD, for He hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea. The LORD is my strength and song, and He is become my salvation: He is my God, and I will prepare Him an habitation; my father's God, and I will exalt Him" (Exodus 15:1-2).
Note that Moses and God's people not only speak of the Lord as their strength and salvation, but as their song. He acted mightily on their behalf in delivering the Jews from Egypt, revealing Divine power and deliverance. He also filled Israel with music, even as Moses affirms, "The Lord is my… song." The redeemed sang not only because they wanted to beautifully express appreciation to God for His redemption. They also sang in response to His Spirit's moving within their hearts. To experience God thus leads to song as His presence and working on our behalf makes melody within us. Again, "the Lord is my song" wrote Moses rather than merely declaring that God gave Israel a song. Music is being in God, or a part of His being. Thus, to know and experience Him leads to music in our heart, as proceeding from His heart - "singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord."
The expression of such grace will be different in each believer. Some merely sing in the heart, rarely opening their lips to move sound waves in audible resonance. Others sing often, their activities accompanied (where appropriate) by voiced expressions of "making melody." Either way, the God whose very nature consists of song works in His children to one degree or another, leading us to obey the many commands of Scripture that call us to "sing unto the Lord." The gift is so powerful and profound that battered Paul and Silas, their freedom taken and the very skin of their bodies savagely torn, nevertheless "prayed and sang praises to God" in Philippi (Acts 16:25). Their feet were "placed fast in the stocks," but their hearts nevertheless soared with song into the Heavenlies. The Holy Spirit birthed and gave such music, the Holy Spirit who expresses to us and within us the song of God, the music that He not only sings, but that He is.
"The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; He will save, He will rejoice over thee with joy; He will rest in His love, He will joy over thee with singing."
(Zephaniah 3:17)
Weekly Memory Verse
Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
(John 14:27)
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