THE SONIC FELLOWSHIP OF THE SPIRIT

Voice With One Another Spiritual Songs

Pastor Jeff Wood
June 4, 2023

If I wanted to know if you had chicken pox, I would look

for what signs? Yes, red spots. If I was looking for signs of
wealth, it could be a Maserati sports car or ten carat dia-
mond. Yes? If I was looking to see if someone is well-bred,
you might tell me the signs would etiquette. How about signs
of the Holy Spirit indwelling a group of people – and, by the
way, that is how the Holy Spirit is most often described in the
New Testament … as indwelling a group of people – what
would be the signs of a Spirit-filled church?
One day you may move to another city, and you will look
for another church. How do you know which church you
should join? Shouldn’t it be Spirit-filled? So how will you
know if it is? One day you may be a ruling elder whose key
job it is to take the ruler of scripture, the measuring rod of
scripture and try to ensure this congregation is biblical. You
will want to look for signs that it is Spirit-filled. What are
those signs? We’re going to see one that is overlooked and
very beautiful.

Pray.

We’re in a series of messages about the Holy Spirit. He’s

a he, not an it. There are pronouns for he, she, it and the Ho-
ly Spirit is always referred to as a he. He brings Christ to,
from, and among us. He brings Christ through us to others.
Today, a particular sign he is among us -- that sign is in a sec-
tion in the Bible that is pretty well-known, sort of. One the
front end there is, “Be not drunk with win but be filled with
the Spirit” and on the back end, “Wives submit to your hus-
bands.” So, we’re in a place of the Bible where right next to
each other are -- excited charismatics and upset women lib-
bers. In between are a couple of sentences. Are they throw-
away sentences just lost between these more noticed ones?
Absolutely not. Let’s bring them out of their obscurity for
they will give us something significant - a specific and special
sign of healthy, powerful, Spirit-filled church. Let us pray.
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Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be
filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking (voicing) to one another with
psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, melody-making from
your heart to the Lord, 20 always giving thanks to God the Father
for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 Submitting
to one another out of reverence for Christ. Eph. 5:18-21

Endure with me for a moment some grammar that trans-

lators must deal with in these verses. There are only two
verbs in the Greek in these three verses – “do not be drunk”
and “be filled.” What follows “be filled” are four participles –
speaking (I prefer, voicing), melody-making, thanks-giving,
and submitting. These four are qualified as voicing from the
Spirit, melody-making to the Lord, thanking in the name of
Christ, submitting out of reverence for Christ.
And while the four participles sound different, they are
not completely so. They overlap. If you are thankful,
through the Spirit, one the things that happens to express
that thanks is to sing. If you sing, through the Spirit, you
could sing, I suppose just to one another with your lips, but
wouldn’t it be likely that you are also singing to the Lord in
your heart? And, if you are singing, like in a choir, would you
be ignoring the director or would you be submitting to his
lead? So, the four participles are different, but they overlap.
At bottom is this simple truth a healthy church is harmonic
from its soul outward. It doesn’t just sing or play music with
lips and hands, but it expresses with music a heart of faith
and devotion.
 Here’s what is going on. When a group is filled with
booze, one of the things that commonly happens as a result is
drunken bar songs. True? So, if you heard a group of people
singing drunken bar songs, you would not be far wrong to sur-
mise that they are filled with booze (alcoholic spirits). But
now, in contrast, when a group of Christians is filled with the
Holy Spirit, one of the things that commonly happens as a re-
sult is spiritual songs. And melody-making in the heart to the
Lord. And thanking in everything. And submitting in signifi-
cant relationships. Something (alcoholic spirits) or someone
(the Holy Spirit) outside of us, moves inside and among us,
facilitating expressiveness, in this case, singing.
Marj Carpenter is a retired newspaper woman from a
small town in Texas. She has travelled the world supporting
Presbyterian missionaries. I remember her once talking about
going to an orphanage in Africa and entering its crowded
room. There was something startling there that should have
been there but wasn’t! There was, in a room packed with chil-
dren, nothing but silence. There should have been the sounds
of giggles, fidgeting, fussing … laughing. That’s what you nor-
mally have with healthy kids. But these were starving kids.
And there was silence. Healthy churches are not silent
churches, they are God-based and because they are God-
based, they are … according to this passage … musical and po-
etic. No spiritual health, no song. No saving faith, no song.
No Spirit, no song. Hell is silent. Heaven is song. If there is
faith and Spirit, there is song.
This is going on right here in the Bible. It happened in the
early church. Look at the header of the bulletin – I Cor. 14:16:
When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word
of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Eve-
rything must be done so that the church may be built up.
Their together-life was a musical-building up life.
Pliny was a first century AD Roman author and friend of
the emperor Vespasian. In one place he wrote about how

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Christians “recited one to another in turns hymns to Christ as
God.” Tertullian, lived in the second century AD and wrote
how when the Christians gather, “each is invited to sing to
God in the presence of the others from what he knows of the
holy scriptures or from his own heart.” The apostle John,
when he wrote the last book of the Bible, in between proba-
bly when Pliny and Tertullian wrote, revealed what was re-
vealed to him – that heaven and Christians are throngs of
singers. No, the church of Jesus Christ was and is to be a
singing church.
The song the Spirit gives us does seven things. (Tired of
three point sermons? Here’s seven. There are seven notes
on a musical scale, so….) One, and we have already said this,
the song shows the Spirit. It is a sign, a proof. Joy is the flag
that flies over the castle when the king is in residence, so
they say. That’s for the eye. Musical notes wafting over the
walls like musical fireflies is for the ear. When the Spirit of
the king is in and among, there is music.
But does all singing prove the Spirit’s presence? No. No
more than a marriage certificate proves love. But more
often than not when a couple is in love, they marry and have
a certificate. Song can be present without the Spirit but the
Spirit cannot be present without song.
Two, it unifies. What do soldiers do sometimes as they
march? They sing. The cadence gets them in step with one
another. It moves them from being walkers to being a troop
moving. In a church where the Spirit is people come togeth-
er and when they come together, they come together. It is-
n’t a collection of individuals but a choir.
Three, it instructs. If I were to go through this sanctuary
one person at a time and ask each one to speak about grace,
how long before someone would say, “I don’t know but it is
just like the old song goes, ‘Amazing grace, how sweet the
sound that saved a wretch like me’? It probably wouldn’t be
long at all. More people know more about grace from that
hymn than from a hundred sermons they have heard on the
topic. The song of the Spirit instructs. 1
And He instructs in a way that it sticks. John and Charles
Wesley, who perhaps penned more hymns than any other per-
sons in history, would do so that the miners and laborers, who
often could not read, could get the sermon from Sunday into a
lyric attached to a tune and sing it on the way to work. We
memorize better with a tune. We remember better with a
tune.
Four, it expresses. The Bible talks about a groaning too
deep for words. But we like words. We need words. Some-
times to express our sorrow, our next step, our love (ask the
guy who serenades his sweetheart), … to express our need, our
happiness, or our faith we need a song. How many times have
I seen the sunrise and full of it needed the hymn, “When morn-
ing guilds the skies my heart awakening cries, may Jesus Christ
be praised”?
Fifth, it ministers. After Hurricane Katrina there was a pro-
found image on the news. At a hospital when it no longer had
electricity or water or food or medicine, the medical staff gath-
ered around a patient’s bed and sang songs of their faith.
When technology stopped and medicine wasn’t available, their
hearts still had a song to give. They had a way to send their
love, and faith, and hurt, and prayer … in the notes of a song.
Six, it encourages. One pastor shared that one of her pa-
rishioners confessed there was a hymn in the service she hat-
ed. But she decided to sing it joyfully anyway. After worship
the woman standing next to her said, “I was really feeling dis-
couraged when I came to church. I’m dealing with a lot of per-
sonal problems. But when we started singing those hymns and I
heard you singing so joyfully next to me, you sounded like you
really meant what you were singing. I started thinking about
the words of that hymn, and it made me feel better.” Brothers

1. This is a good reason to memorize hymns and the lyrical quality aids in
memorization.
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and sisters, you’re not here just for you. (Big-time truth –
you’re not here for you but for the person next to you, for
the choir; the choir isn’t here for themselves but for you;
the coffee hour isn’t for you for you but for you for others.)
Part of what you do is help me or him or her. Part of what I
do is help you. And that goes on every time we meet … even
in the singing.
Seven, it illustrates. Yes, the church is a body with differ-
ent parts working together like an eye, foot and hand. But it
is also a choir where we have different parts but one song
and one leader. We can’t have altos hating tenors. Or the
pianist not caring about the conductor. We come together
with many different tones in order to express love for God,
be strengthened, and help others. What picture of the
church guides you as you come here and as you relate to
other Christians? A people filled with the Spirit and his song
is to illustrate the life of the church to us and guide us in how
we are together.
There’s an interesting story in II Chronicles 20. The Am-
monites and Moabites were coming in an overwhelming
mass against King Jehoshaphat. He goes out with his smaller
force to meet them. But then he does something amazingly
strange. Verse 21. “Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to
the LORD at the head of the army, saying: ‘Give thanks to
the LORD, for his love endures forever.’ Do you get this? At
the front end of the troops, at the point of first engagement
on the battlefront, is not the archer, not the chariot, not the
horseman, not the foot soldier … it is the singer. And as they
sing guess what happens? The enemies fall apart and run
away. It takes Israel three days to handle all the plunder.
They name the spot, “The Valley of Blessing.” It was a valley
of fear and because of God and his song sung by them it be-
came the Valley of Blessing.
Four quick applications – one, do your Bible reading turn-
ing some verses into song; two, do your prayer time using
the hymnal; three, at church don’t be on autopilot when
singing the hymns, notice them; four, when you are anx-
ious take simple chorus (“Jesus loves me this I know”) and
sing it over and over and over and over and over so as to
soothe yourself in a musical balm from the Spirit.
The Spirit comes down and the music flows out. Let
everything with breath, with inspire, with aspire, with Spire
– Spirit, praise the Lord.

If you would like to talk with someone about this message

or your spiritual life, or to have someone pray with you, the
pastor and elders of the church would welcome your call.

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FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH of SEBASTIAN
1405 Louisiana Ave. Sebastian, FL. 32958
Phone: 772-589-5656
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