Anyway….We have built a strange fusion of Roman Catholic practices, Old Covenant worship and relatively contemporary notions that lead many people to think that there is a proper way to do “worship music”, perhaps with no instruments or only piano or organ or…well you get the point. Many people think that because a music form seems religious to our ears and eyes and contains elements of our cultural understanding of worship, it is pleasing to God. When the early church gathered, there were certainly no performance oriented choirs or praise bands, opposite sides of the same coin. Of course there were no monologue sermons or passing of plates with crumbled crackers and sips of win. Most of the trappings of institutionalized church gatherings are entirely absent in the Scriptures but that doesn’t stop us from arguing about them.

The fighting over worship music styles amounts to an argument over which deviation from Biblical Christianity is better.

Scripture’s teaching with regard to worship is not limited to commandments or even to prescriptions (i.e,. “You must/should do this”). It also includes indications of what is well pleasing to God.

And one of the things that pleases God is the use of musical instruments. Nowhere in the Bible are we ever told about people singing a capella; all singing in the Bible that we know if was accompanied by musical instruments, and even the word “psalm” suggests as much.

Furthermore, while Mosaic worship didn’t involve singing or instruments, Davidic did.

Following the same pattern, there are no instruments in Revelation until the king takes his throne, and then they pick up their instruments.

And that, too, follows the pattern of the sacrifices: no singing or instruments with the sin offering (confession of sin) but singing and instruments beginning with the Ascension offering.

(For more on all of this, see Peter Leithart’s From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution, which presents, among other things an exegetical study of the tabernacle of David, a consideration of the liturgical significance of that tabernacle and its musical worship, and an application to contemporary worship, with the suggestion that a “regulative principle” approach ought to lead to the use of instruments rather than their abolishment.)

Does God like instruments in connection with singing? Apparently he does. Worship in Scripture is an audible glory cloud around God’s throne, and the glory cloud is nothing if not loud. God apparently likes lots of instruments, loud instruments, joined with his people’s singing.

Sometimes, of course, we can’t do all the things that Scripture indicates are pleasing to God. Sometimes we live in catacombs and can’t build cathedrals, even though Scripture does indicate that God likes beautiful architecture.

So sometimes, you don’t have instruments. But if you do, then following the indications of Scripture about instruments, it seems best to use them.

Well, I’m a sentimentalist, I suppose.