Category: Singing

We should remember that during certain times in her history, Israel’s worship, though correct in form, was nevertheless not pleasing to God. In Zechariah 7, the Lord asked His people, “When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months during those seventy years, did you really fast for Me — for Me?” (vs. 5). The principle is simple. When we worship God, we are to do it in the way we do it because it is the way He said to do it, not because it is what we prefer. When we sing He asks, “Do you do it ‘for Me — for Me?’”

Men have long subordinated the directives of God to their own will and desires. Simply put, mechanical instruments exist in modern worship because men want them there, not because God authorized them.

Happily do we join hearts and hands in the work and worship prescribed of God with all who “in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, both theirs and ours” (1 Corinthians 1:2; 4:6, 17; 11:2). However, until we are shown from the Scriptures that instruments of music are authorized as part of the worship of the church, we can have neither part nor lot with them and shall oppose them as we would any other human tradition and innovation (Revelation 22:18, 19).

You can ask almost anyone what the definition of “a capella” is and they will say something like, “Oh, that just means to sing without using instrumental assistance.” And while that is correct, very few people know that “a capella” is a Latin phrase which actually uses different words than we think when translated. Literally translated, “a capella” means “as in church.” It is a term that comes down through history and into our language from the Catholic Church. The term was used to differentiate the kind of proper music that was used in Catholic worship for many centuries from all other types of music which had little to do with worship and mostly to do with entertainment. So we see that “a capella” was the use of the voice as the only appropriate music for worship in early Catholic history.