The Church Only and Ever Sang the Word of God

I've been floored to realize that for both Israel and for the apostolic church, the songs they sang—all the songs they sang—were inspired songs. These songs were each and every one written by God's appointed spokesmen, his prophets. These were the songs given to God's people to sing.

No one was free in Old Testament Israel to innovate in penning new songs for the people to sing. The songs of the Old Testament were all written inerrantly because they were written prophetically. Moses (Deuteronomy 31:19-32:44), Deborah and Barak (Judges 5:1-31), and of course King David, the anointed "psalmist of Israel" (2 Samuel 23:1) come immediately to mind. Korah and others who wrote some of the Psalms were also prophets. We know they were because in the Old Testament, "prophet" is the very definition of the one who inerrantly spoke God's words, words which became written Scripture ("in former times God spoke to us through his prophets, but in these last days he has spoken by his Son"—Hebrews 1:1).

Again, these were the songs, the only songs, that Israel was to sing. The Psalms were the songbook of the nation of Israel., and no command of God ever abrogated that. Where is the New Testament command that changes the command to sing only the words of God given through his prophets?

To our modern ears, Paul's command in Ephesians 5:18-19 and Colossians 3:16 to sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs sounds like a mandate to songwriters. We might get the idea from it that fresh new songs for the church to sing were being written. But it wasn't so. "Hymns" and "spiritual songs" were descriptions used in the headings of the Septuagint Psalms—the Greek Scripture that Christ and the apostles used, and from which they quoted. Paul's readers would have understood Paul, in speaking of psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, to be talking about singing what God's people would have always sung: the word of God.

Where does that leave us today with our song lists for Sunday morning filled with songs written by 20-year-old recording artists? I think it leaves us a good ways away from God's command, to say the least.

More later. I was simply struck, a while ago, by the stark fact that God commanded one thing—that his people sing his word—and that he never rescinded that command.