Unlocking the Heavens: Release the Supernatural Power of Your Worship (16 page)

…Be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart, always and for everything giving thanks in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father
(Ephesians 5:18-20 RSV).

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God
(Colossians 3:16 RSV).

The Hebrew origin of word
psalm
means “to strike or twang or pluck the notes on a musical instrument.” This says to me that God likes musical instruments of all types. The word
hymn
is derived from the Greek word
humnos
which means “a sacred song or song of praise,” including a song of praise for heroes and conquerors. This says to me that God likes it when we sing the old songs of the forefathers of our faith. The phrase
spiritual songs
in the Greek is
pneumatikos
, which relates to the human spirit, which serves as God’s instrument or organ in an unrehearsed manner. God likes us to sing songs that are unrehearsed and spontaneous, inspired by the Holy Spirit, in the same way that He likes us to pray in the Spirit, as Paul teaches: “Pray in the Spirit at all times with all kinds of prayers” (Ephesians 6:18 NCV).

Until believers take worship out of the church box and pursue the pleasure of God as the highest aim of worship, the sound of Heaven can never be released in the earth. This why I say that the Church needs to break the sound barrier!

Chapter 14

NEW SOUNDS ADVANCE NEW LIFE

Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth! I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders which he has wrought
(P
SALM
78:1-4 RSV)
.

T
he whole purpose of a coming generation is to praise the Lord; in other words, to release a sound into the heavens. I believe that we are that generation. Based on the obvious fact that a new sound of worship from the people of God has preceded every great move of God, we must—if we want to see another great move of God in these days—find the new sound that has been reserved for this moment. Our generation is the forerunner of a great move of God, and if we want to participate, we must draw the life of Heaven down to earth through our Heaven-inspired worship.

IT IS NEW

The Church has tended to greatly underestimate the power of sound, so much so that we have missed some of the sounds that God wanted to bring to the Church. We have allowed the devil to keep them in the world, stealing them and perverting them and taking our children into bondage. As you may have noticed, the Church always seems to be about twenty years behind the cutting edge of what the Spirit of God is doing in the earth. Whenever God begins to do something new, people react negatively to it, often deriding it and rendering it inactive in the Body of Christ simply because it’s new. We prefer the old, familiar things, and we get suspicious of something new and unusual. If it doesn’t sound like something we have heard before, we will put it in a box and label it “unscriptural” or “ungodly,” only to find out ten years later we should have grabbed hold of that new sound. (By that time, of course, because we are already ten years behind and we will spend the next ten years trying to learn how to do the new thing, we will be twenty years behind by the time we get it down.)

We have been circling around this idea of reestablishing the tabernacle of David. James quoted the prophet Amos when he predicted to the leaders of the early church that the time was coming for the Church to restore the practice of day and night worship so that the glory of God would once again dwell with the people of God (see Acts 15:16). Davidic worship is not silent. It is not limited in scope. It is extravagant and it is loud—and it reflects back to Heaven the praise and adoration of God that originates in Heaven.

From the original tabernacle (tent) of David issued forth many sounds: the sounds of many kinds of instruments, singing voices, prophetic pronouncements, praise and thanksgiving, and declarations of truth. The psalms that we have collected in the Bible comprise David’s Hit Parade of the songs that were written in the presence of God in the tabernacle. Every day it was a new sound, a new praise, a new declaration, a new prayer coming out from that place. The Bible says that as long as that sound went forth, David’s enemies were at peace with him.

The actual tabernacle of David is long gone, but the glorious sounds of worship have been reintroduced by the Spirit in every generation in which the Church has experienced revival. Even from the early years of the Church that promise of revival has applied not only to Jews but also to Gentiles, non-Jews like us who belong to the Christian churches today. This is why we can take hold of this idea with both hands—the tabernacle of David belongs to us, too!

THE SOUND OF DAVIDIC WORSHIP

The Old Testament is filled with examples of how God brings victory, liberty, and revival to Israel after Davidic worship has been restored. One of the best examples can be found in the story of Nehemiah:

Now at the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem they sought out the Levites in all their places, to bring them to Jerusalem to celebrate the dedication with gladness, both with thanksgivings and singing, with cymbals and stringed instruments and harps. And the sons of the singers gathered together from the countryside around Jerusalem…. So I brought the leaders of Judah up on the wall, and appointed two large thanksgiving choirs…. …Ezra the scribe went before them. By the Fountain Gate, in front of them, they went up the stairs of the City of David, on the stairway of the wall, beyond the house of David, as far as the Water Gate eastward. …So the two thanksgiving choirs stood in the house of God, likewise I and the half of the rulers with me; and the priests, Eliakim, Maaseiah, Minjamin, Michaiah, Elioenai, Zechariah, and Hananiah, with trumpets; also Maaseiah, Shemaiah, Eleazar, Uzzi, Jehohanan, Malchijah, Elam, and Ezer. The singers sang loudly with Jezrahiah the director. Also that day they offered great sacrifices, and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women and the children also rejoiced, so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard afar off. … Both the singers and the gatekeepers kept the charge of their God and the charge of the purification, according to the command of David and Solomon his son. For in the days of David and Asaph of old there were chiefs of the singers, and songs of praise and thanksgiving to God
(Nehemiah 12:27-28,31,36-37,40-43,45-46).

Other Old Testament champions of effective corporate worship include Abijah (see 2 Chronicles 13:14-15), Asa (see 2 Chronicles 15:12-15), Jehoshaphat (see 2 Chronicles 20:18-22), Joash (see 2 Chronicles 23:12-15), Hezekiah (see 2 Chronicles 29:25-30), Josiah (see 2 Chronicles 35:15), and Zerubbabel (see Ezra 2:65-3:10-13). In every generation, the restoration of the sound of God in the earth brings with it the glory of His presence.

Starting on the day of Pentecost, Davidic worship once again returned, this time to the early church. We have seen ups and downs over the centuries since then, and I believe that we are currently in the middle of a time of increase. Once again we need to heed the advice of Paul in Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16 in which he urged the people of Ephesus and Colossae—and thereby every believer who would hear those words—to sing “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” at all times. If we go back to this kind of worship, if we let God reestablish worship in us and if we find His new sound, then the presence of God will be released in a new way in our midst.

If we want to be part of a revival of biblical proportions, we need to seek the sound of Heaven that God wants to release in our generation. We should understand that God is not going to release a new sound only in one dimension; He will always release it in numerous dimensions. Thus, as we sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, we find new ways to express our love and gratitude to God.

SONGS OF THE HEROES OF THE PAST

I am convinced of the importance of the old hymns in addition to David’s psalms and new songs. We cannot rebuild from scratch in each generation; we need the benefit of the anointing of previous generations. We need the release of the old into the new.

In spite of plenty of preaching and teaching to the contrary, the book of Proverbs clearly states that we should not tear down the ancient landmarks. “Do not remove the ancient landmark, which your fathers have set” (see Proverbs 22:28 and Proverbs 23:10). Landmarks in the Spirit need to be renewed in each new generation.

Sometimes we need to sing “How Great Thou Art.” We need to remember, “What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.” We need to let our spirits soar with heavenly lyrics: “Holy, holy, holy; Lord, God Almighty!” “All hail the power of Jesus’ name! Let angels prostrate fall; bring forth the royal diadem, and crown Him Lord of all.”

Something about singing those old songs brings a fresh presence of God. For one thing, they remind us where we have come from. Those songs have stood the test of time. They need to be sung because they have worked; they have secured people’s faith; they express stable doctrine. (Now I don’t think that every single old song needs to be sung. Some of them are not even scriptural: “Just build me a cabin in the corner of Gloryland….” And I’m not advocating that we slip into worshipping the songs themselves, or the styles of music, which can happen, as evidenced by “worship wars.”)

The Bible says that one generation will praise God to another generation: “One generation shall laud thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts” (Psalm 145:4 RSV). This makes it possible for us to discover the sounds of a prior generation. The songs of heroes from days gone by will release the spirit of prophecy of that generation upon the people who sing their songs.

We are told that whenever a new high priest would be anointed in ancient Israel, they would purposely
not
provide him with a brand-new priestly garment. When the previous high priest’s term of service came to an end and a new high priest was anointed, they would take the garments that had already been anointed from the most recent high priest and put them on the new priest and then they would pour fresh anointing oil on top of the old anointing. Thus the high priestly anointing was compounded from one priest to another, from one generation to the next.

This is something like what we do when we sing the old, already-anointed songs. God can add a new anointing to the old one, which is a powerful thing. The prophetic sound of the older generations can get released into the current generation. The combination of the old sound with a new one will increase the anointing, thus potentially making every generation more anointed than the generation before it.

HEARD ANY GOOD ODES LATELY?

When Paul endorsed the singing of spiritual songs, he used the Greek word
ode
for song. An ode follows a particular structure, and it usually has three parts, the
strophe
, and
antistrophe
, and the
epode
. A classical ode was usually also accompanied by instruments.

The word
strophe
implies turning one foot for the other or to the other, which indicates that a spiritual song makes your feet want to move, even to dance. The word
antistrophe
means to go the other way. In the midst of the music, you would have somebody over here doing one thing, and somebody over there doing something else. Then the
epode
part means “everybody go the same direction.”

The early church followed this literally. Starting as early as the time of the writing of the New Testament, the Christians would put one group on one side and another group on the other and have the two choruses sing back and forth. This is almost like one generation declaring its praise to another, strophe to antistrophe. Call and response. Then they would all join together in singing the same song to Heaven (the epode). Part of their inspiration might have come from the sixth chapter of Isaiah, in which the activity of heavenly worship is being described. The seraphim (a special kind of angels) on one side of the throne of God cry out, “Holy!” and then the seraphim on the other side respond, “Holy!” Back and forth they cry out, until it all becomes one sound. In the same way, Christians’ unrehearsed spiritual songs inspire movement in different directions. Then at a certain point, the unity of the Spirit will come upon the singers and all will start moving together.

NEW SOUNDS MAKE THINGS HAPPEN

In Chapter 1, I described three of the primary results of a new sound. Here is a summary:

1. New sounds break old cycles: Moses wrote new songs just before he led the people out of Egyptian captivity into the wilderness and again just before they entered the Promised Land, leaving the wilderness behind. The first one broke the cycle of captivity and the second broke the cycle of wandering in the wilderness.
   
2. New sounds release strategy: Gideon reactivated genuine worship and afterward God gave him a unique strategy for overcoming the Midianite army.
   
3. New sounds break the spirit of division: Gideon destroyed the Midianites whose very name means “strife and division.”
   

New sounds matter greatly; they can affect major changes in both the spiritual and physical climate of a place.

Before Gideon tore down the altars of Baal and reestablished proper worship, he did not know what to do about the oppression of the Midianites. (The story is in the sixth and seventh chapters of the book of Judges.) God told him that in order to defeat the Midianites’ large army (too large to count) he would need only three hundred handpicked soldiers. Three hundred? It seemed impossible. Yet with the God-ordained strategy, those three hundred men succeeded.