Good morning. I'm Jill Beeler and Dave is my husband my best friend my partner in life and I have the privilege this morning of reading the scripture portion for today that we're looking at and it's found in the book of Psalms the last psalm the psalm of praise, Psalm 150, and I would like to encourage you to read along with me if you brought your Bible whether your physical Bible electronic Bible, whatever please read along with me if you don't happen to have a Bible with you you can find one looks like this and it's located Underneath one of the seats and one of the rows in front of you, so please follow along with me as I read some 150 praise the Lord praise God in his sanctuary Praise him in his mighty heavens Praise him for his acts of power Praise him for his surpassing greatness Praise him with the sound of the trumpet Praise him with the harp and lyre Praise him with tambourine and dancing Praise him with the strings and flute Praise him with the clash of symbols Praise him with resounding symbols Let everything that has breath praise the Lord Praise the Lord the word of the Lord Speaking of music, does God like this? Or does God like this? Good stuff. Or does God like this? Yes, the answer is yes, he does. That last piece was written by of course Johann Sebastian Bach. He lived 1685-1750 probably the greatest musician of all time. Certainly one of the most prolific he came from a family that over seven generations produced at least 53 prominent musicians. Bach himself composed over a thousand works. Written at the beginning of many of his compositions were the words, Jesus helped me. And at the end of his compositions he wrote, Soly, Deo, Gloria to God alone be praise. You see, Johann Sebastian Bach understood something. He understood that we ought to use whatever talents God has given us to spread the glory and the fame of God throughout all the earth. Music and art and dance and drama and photography and architecture and film and the list could go on and on. All the other visual and creative arts are gifts of grace intended for the pleasure of human beings, the progress of the gospel and the praise of Almighty God. I titled my sermon today, does God like jazz? And the reason I did that was just to kind of provoke a little thought on your part. But what I really do want to talk about today is the place of the arts in the Christian life and how we as believers in Jesus ought to engage the arts and reclaim the arts for the glory of God and the good of human beings. We've been looking at this series of sermons over the summer. Hasn't it been great? It's been an enjoyable series. We've had a lot of different people up here preaching. We've looked every week at another honest answer to an honest question and today's question is does God like jazz? In other words, what does God think about the arts and how can we begin to see them as a place to live out a Christian worldview? Why am I preaching on this topic? It's because for a long, long time, Christianity has had something of an uneasy or uncomfortable relationship with the arts. Many of us who believe in Jesus are kind of queasy when it comes to artistic expression. How did you feel, for example, at that first clip of the video? We sort of wonder, does that belong in my life in church? How am I to think about pop culture and the expressions of talents out there in the world? So many Christians really are uncomfortable with that. They think of it as a waste of time, perhaps the arts, that is. They think of it as a waste of time or something that is unspiritual or something that only pagans engage in. But I'm going to show you this morning that the Bible says otherwise. The Bible makes a compelling and a positive case for Christian engagement with the arts. What I want to do is begin with a little quick guided tour from Scripture about the arts. I want to go kind of quickly through this, so see if you can kind of keep up. First of all, let's go back all the way in the Bible to the book of Genesis. Do you know who the first artist mentioned in the Bible is? God, God is the first artist mentioned in the Bible. Genesis 1-1 in the beginning, God, what, created. See, God is an artist, He created. God could have made a very drab world. This world might have all been beige. God could have painted everything in apartment white. All foods could have been squash. All trees could have been pines. All birds could have all been sparrows. But God didn't make the world like that. Instead, it's full of different colors and sounds and smells and textures and temperatures. God is a fantastic artist. Job 38-7 says that when God created the world, there was music. It says, where were you, God speaking to Job? Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy. Music goes way back. In Genesis chapter 4, you meet several brothers who were descendants of Cain. Jabel, Jubal, and Tubal. How would you like to have those names in your family? Jabel raised livestock. Jubal played the harp and the flute. Tubal Cain made tools out of bronze and iron. These were what we might want to call the Fathers of Culture. That's where it began. Exodus 15 records the first Hebrew song in the Bible. It's the song of Moses and Miriam. They sang it right after the fantastic crossing of the Red Sea. The book of Deuteronomy ends with another song. It's called The Song of Moses, Deuteronomy chapter 32. Think of the worship centers in the Old Testament. That's what we call this building right here. But when you look at the worship centers of the Old Testament, they were artistic masterpieces. I'm talking about the tabernacle and the temple that the Jews used for worship. They were filled with gold sculptures and wood carvings and bronze utensils carvings and draperies and tapestries and colors and the scent of incense and candles filled those buildings. The first people in the Bible who were said to be filled with the spirit. Anybody guess who they were? They were artists. Bezilell and a holy ab were mentioned in Exodus 31 as filled with the spirit. What did the spirit fill them to do? He filled them to create things to design and to build all the furnishings of the Old Testament tabernacle. Think about the Levites, the priesthood. There were whole families of Levites in the Old Testament time whose only job was to sing and play musical instruments. That's what they were ordained to do. Sing and play music. They played harps and, as the kids were saying, liars and trumpets and drums and symbols. Music, in other words, became an essential component of worship in the Hebrew Church. The battles that the Jews engaged in against their enemies were often accompanied by music. For example, the battle Jericho and Joshua chapter 6 was won as the priests blew their trumpets and played music. And sat a couple of weeks ago, preached from 2 Chronicles 20 about that battle that King Jehoshaphat did or led against the Ammonites and the Moabites. That battle also was won as the people sang and worshiped the Lord. The key figure when we think of the arts in the Old Testament, that was David. David, the man after God's heart, right? He was a great king, he was a great soldier, he was a great leader of his people. But how in the Bible, here's a little Bible trivia, how in the Bible was David memorialized? He was called in 2 Samuel chapter 23, Israel's singer of songs. That's how God wants us to think about David. He was a singer of songs, he was a real rinsance man. This David was, he was a musician and an architect and a dancer. He organized choirs and musicians for temple worship. You know that out of the 38,000 Levites chosen for service in the temple, 4,000 of them were musicians. So David and of course God thought very, very highly of the role of music in the Old Testament worship culture. David even invented a few of his own musical instruments. David was a poet of course, that's another way we think of David. He wrote at least half of the book of Psalms, Psalms, what is that? But a song book of worship, many of the Psalms are given names of musical tunes that we don't even know anymore. 55 of the Psalms at the top of them in our Bible say, for the director of music. A lot of Psalms like this one that Jill read Psalm 150, name a lot of musical instruments that were used in worship back then. Then we go to David's son Solomon. Solomon was a designer and architect of the temple. He was also a writer of wisdom literature. And then we come to the prophets. The Old Testament prophets often acted out dramas. They acted out the things they were telling the people of God to communicate truth. They also wrote Hebrew poetry. And then we step over into the New Testament. And we find Jesus of course being what? A storyteller. He often employed drama and parables and figures of speech to communicate the gospel. Just before his death, what did he do? He sang with his disciples. They sang together Psalms of a cent from the Bible. And then we come to Paul. Paul we think of as kind of a serious missionary type of guy. But he was an artsy guy too. Paul was. He knew the poetry and the literature of his culture. He quoted pagan Greek poets like Epimenides and Aratus in Acts 17 and Titus I. He also knew about a Greek comedy by a man named Manander. You can see that in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul told us to speak to one another in songs and hymns and spiritual songs. So Paul saw the important role of the arts in worship. And then we come to the Apostle James. At the end of the letter of James, he says that if anybody is happy, let him sing songs of praise. And the Bible of course ends with the book of Revelation. What is the book of Revelation? A puzzle book that we're supposed to read to figure out what's going to happen at the end times. No, that's really not why it's there. It's a book of visions and sounds and smells and dazzling sights and light and fire and smoke and jewels. In other words, it's filled with art and the songs of heaven. And now that we've completed this survey, what is the Bible itself? It's a book. It's literature. The third of the Bible is poetry. A whole book of the Bible is called Song of Songs. Think of all the genres in the Bible. I mean, I can name poetry and narrative and proverbs and song and lament and parable and prophecy. Think of all the moods of the Bible, romance and mystery and intrigue and tragedy and comedy. It's impossible to read the Bible without envisioning pictures in the mind. In other words, the Bible is art. So enough of the highlights from Scripture. What can we conclude as we've taken that quick tour of Scripture from the perspective of the arts? I think we learned three things. Let me show you what these three things are. The first thing that we see from our survey of Scripture as it pertains to the arts is that they are a gift from God to His people. The arts are a gift of God to His people. And let me tell you five ways that I see them as gifts from God. The first way the arts are a gift from God is that they help us express our God-given creativity. You know, back in Genesis, chapter 1, it says that we've been created in God's image, right? What does that mean? To be created in God's image, it means that we are like God in some ways. God creates, we create. God sings, we sing. God designs, we design. We're like God. We reflect God's character. One Christians as well as Christians create beautiful art because of common grace and the image of God that's in us. I've often said that non-Christians make the best Christian movies out there because they're high quality and they communicate often biblical truth without the director even knowing about it. Some of our best known hymns are sung to tunes composed by ungodly people, Mozart, for example. Second way that I see the arts being a gift from God is that they help us enjoy life. They help us enjoy life. It says in 1 Timothy 617 that God has richly provided us with everything for our enjoyment. You know, it's biblical to enjoy life and God has given us the arts in order to do that a little bit better. I love what Johann Sebastian Bach said. He said this, the aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul. It's beautiful. Third way that I see the arts being a gift from God is they help us to understand our culture. As we go to movies, as we read books, as we listen to music, as we see music videos and so on like that, they help us to understand our culture a little bit better. Those things are like windows of the soul of our culture. They let us peer in to see how people feel and what they're thinking about and what their priorities are. By being familiar with the arts, we're much more able to relate in a meaningful way with people. That's what we mean partly by being incarnate in the flesh. You know, it says in John I that the word capital W became flesh and live for a while among us. Just as Jesus became one of us, so should we become one of our culture, not of the world, but yes, in the world. We've got to enter the world and understand it and engage it so that we can transfer the gospel to people who live around us. Fourth way that the arts are a gift from God to his people is that they help us to reach those neighbors for Christ. See, it's not enough just to understand our culture. We can also see how the arts help us reach out and influence our culture with the gospel. Think about it for a moment with me. Who are the people in our day? Who are the influencers out there? A bunch of them are artists. Actors, writers, filmmakers, TV producers, musicians and so forth. Those are people who are influencing our culture. As we engage the arts, we too can become influencers of our culture. Look at the platform that those artists out there have today. I'm talking about people like Christopher Nolan, director of the Batman series, Taylor Swift, Kristen Stewart, JK Rowling, Brian Cranston. You know these names, most of you, I suspect. Why don't we get some of our people who love Jesus out there who can reach the soul of our country like that? And the fifth and final way that the arts are a gift from God to his people is that they help us to glorify and enjoy God. Which is our chief end. Our main purpose in life is to glorify God to know Him and to enjoy Him forever. Our text says in 150 verse 6, let everything that has breath, praise the Lord. And that's what you've been created to do. That's what we're here for is to praise God with our life, with our art, with our speech, with our ministries, everything that we do. With our work, it's all meant for the glory of God. And as you live for God's glory, you find your own joy as well. But we've got a problem, don't we? We who believe these things about the arts, we've got a problem, we've got a challenge. And that brings me to my next point. The challenge is that many Christians, many of us, right here in this room, instead of engaging and celebrating the arts, have walked away from them and left them to be used and abused by people who don't love Jesus. Let me say that again. Many Christians, many people who say they follow Christ, instead of engaging the arts, instead of appreciating them like we've been talking about, have walked away, have abandoned the arts and allowed them to simply be snatched up by those who don't love Christ. In some ways, I think of it as regifting, you know what regifting is, right? You get a gift from somebody. You don't care for it. And so you wrap it up and give it away to somebody else. And that's what we've done to the arts, many of us. We've taken this good, wonderful gift from God, and we've sort of packaged it up and said, it's not for me. I'll give it away to you. I think what we've done is surrendered the arts to those who don't use them for the glory of God and the joy of people. Examples, do you need any? Some of the reality TV shows that are out there. I mean, who, I've often wondered, why did the Kardashians get to where they are? Really? Movies filled with gratuitous violence and immorality and brutality, pornography, perfect example, art that degrades human beings instead of dignifying them, music that objectifies women and celebrates drug and alcohol abuse. That's what I'm talking about. See, why are those things so prevalent in our culture? Partly, it's our fault. Partly, it's our fault as we've walked away from the arts. Others who don't love Christ have simply moved into the vacuum. I think the church has retreated to one or two or even three different places when it comes to the arts. Let me tell you what they are. Some of us have said that the arts are irrelevant. That is irrelevant to our mission. They have nothing to do with the Christian mission. You know, the business of the church is the salvation of souls, not art. Unless you sing in the choir or write books about Jesus, you shouldn't be involved in the arts, some would tell us, because they are secular. The Christian life is a spiritual life and that stuff is secular. Things like worship and Bible reading and prayer and church work. That's what we're here for. Art, it's inefficient, some would say. It's impractical. It's expensive. It's wasteful. Christians shouldn't be involved in those kind of pursuits. So, because of that kind of thinking, the arts being irrelevant, you know what's happened? The best artists, the best musicians, the best filmmakers, tend to be non-Christians. And when people today walk in most Christian bookstores, what kind of art do they see? There's stuff like this and this and this. I mean, this is called inspirational art. We can do better. We can do better. We've got to do better. If you want to see good art nowadays, where do you go? An art museum. You know where you should go? The church. I've been talking to Jack and this was a priority that Jonathan Noel shared and David Pete shared. One of our thoughts is that our space of worship here in the foyer and in this room needs to become more filled with art. I need to have more aesthetic beauty to it. Help us please. Help us if you have those talents and those skills and those ideas. Somebody has said that since 1900, artists have cut a rapid retreat from the church. And I agree with that. And the result is that evangelical Christianity has in many ways lost its voice. As we have rejected the arts as irrelevant to the kingdom, we've become irrelevant to a vast majority of Americans. We exist out there on the periphery of culture. We have our own radio stations that non-Christians don't want to listen to. Our own books that non-Christians don't want to read. And our own TV shows and movies that non-Christians don't want to watch. And it's killing our impact on the church. So the first way of thinking that's wrong is that the arts are irrelevant. Second way that I think the church has retreated as to the arts is if we haven't said that they're irrelevant, a lot of us have said they're dangerous. The arts are dangerous. The arts are subversive to our mission. That is artists are bad people. They are wicked. Only Christians are good. Only the church is a safe place. I think we got that form of thinking from the fundamentalist movement of the last century. It's the fortress mentality. It says we have to protect ourselves from the non-Christians out there. The gays, the liberals, the NEA, whoever you want to run away from. There's nothing redemptive or redeemable, they say, in the arts community. So the best thing for believers to do is run the other way. You know, that's actually part of my own story. Back when I became a Christian, I got rid of my guitar. I had a beautiful 12-string guitar. I got rid of it. I thought it was evil and wicked. I got rid of all my records. I thought they were evil and wicked. And I sort of ran away from the arts because I thought they were dangerous. I'm not denying that there are evil things available in the artistic world. But first Timothy four forces that everything God created is good. And nothing is to be rejected if it's received with thanksgiving. I'm going to talk about discernment in just a moment, but we'll hold that for later. But then there's a third mistake that many Christians have made when it comes to the arts. And that's sort of the opposite of that one. I'll call it uncritical accommodation. Uncritical accommodation. Many of us, in other words, have said to Hollywood, just entertain me. Just give me another movie to go watch. Who cares what it is or what it's about or what the rating is. Let's just go and have a good time. You know that mentality scares me too. It scares me because some of us are not careful enough when it comes to movies and TV and music and the like. Some of us have sacrificed our core values on the altar of pop culture. I want you to know that our calling to engage the arts, which is what I'm talking about this morning, does not mean that you buy all the music that your friends are listening to and watch all the TV shows that everybody else is watching and see every movie that comes around. I want you to know that some of those things can steal away your heart. You need to exercise discernment in what you allow to come in through your eyes and in through your ears. Just as something that looks like Mountain Dew might not be Mountain Dew, you shouldn't drink it. In the same way, everything that claims to be art doesn't mean you should look at it. Philippians 4.8 says whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable. If anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. Bottom line, here's what I'm saying. The church has in many ways abandoned the arts and let them become the possession of unbelievers. Some of us have done it by saying that the arts are irrelevant and so we're going to ignore the culture. Others of us have escaped the culture and still others of us have accommodated the culture in a sinful way. So what's the answer? Let me wrap it up pretty quick. Let me give you about four or five things that are takeaways. And what I'm going to challenge you to do is talk about these things in your home, in your life group, among your friends and with your Bible study and in your youth ministry and so on. Talk about these things and see what they're going to look like in your case. The first thing we need to do is, well obviously we need to reclaim the arts for the glory of God. That's the main point. Reclaiming the arts for the glory of God. First way we can do that is by reestablishing a biblical perspective on the arts. Reestablish a biblical way of looking at them. They are our friend, not our enemy. They're part of our kingdom calling. The cultural mandate is to be fruitful and increase in number. What that means to me is that we're to go out and fill every nook and cranny of this earth, including the art world. God likes jazz. He likes rock, he likes classical, he likes medieval, he likes. There I say rap. It can be redeemed and used for the glory of God. Second thing we can do is to find an avenue of artistic expression and develop it. This is why I said to the kids, are you taking music lessons? And I'm glad that many of you parents are making your kids do that. Keep it up, don't quit. Find an avenue of artistic expression and develop it. Thirdly, make your home a center for the arts. Make your home a center for the arts through your decor, through the music, through what you put up on the walls, through where you go for entertainment. Make your home a place, almost like an art museum. Fourthly, get out into the arts community. Get out there, visit a museum, go to a concert, go to the theater, listen and learn and talk to artists and so on. If you can't be an artist, be an art lover, if you can't be a musician, be a music lover and go to concerts, go with your biblical worldview and interact with it, discuss it, critique it, blog about it. Walk to the artists, get to know them, win their trust, and fifth and finally, think of the gospel as art. I think we've got to do that, and that will help us to really reestablish a biblical perspective. Think of the gospel as art. What do I mean? I mean that Jesus was an artist. You know, when he came to Earth 2,000 years ago, the human race was a mess. We were like a chaotic mess of colors. Because of our sin, we were miserable, we were enemies of God, we were enemies of each other, we had ruined the beautiful canvas that God had painted in the beginning. But when Jesus looked down at us from heaven, he imagined a beautiful recreation and a beautiful new world and a new you. He came and died on the cross that you might become fully alive, that you might be forgiven, that the pieces of your life might be put back in place. He brushed away the dirt and the filth of your sin, he added color to your life, he stamped his own name on you, and when he saw you as his redeemed child, he was very, very glad. What is the gospel? God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, that in him we might become the righteousness of God. And now Jesus calls us at UPC to take that message of redemption and reconciliation into the world, into the world of the arts. So let's go and show the world our beautiful Savior Jesus Christ and all of His glory and all of His color and all of His textures and all of His sounds. And as we do that, we do that with the motto of Johann Sebastian Bach. So Lee Deo, Gloria, for the praise of God alone, let's pray. I think of a hymn that I have always loved, the name of it is all for Jesus. It goes like this, all for Jesus, all for Jesus, all my beings ran some powers, all my thoughts and words and doings, all my days, and all my hours. Father, I pray that for us here at UPC, that we will use all of our talents, all of our skills, all of our experience, that we will not retreat but engage the arts world, that we will become people who love beauty, because you love it. That we will become people who love and make beautiful music, because you do, that we will become people who instead of fearing the arts will instead see it as a wonderful place to do mission. Lord, we think together this morning of the unreached people groups of this very country, Hollywood, Manhattan, Chicago, Orlando, the arts world. Father, we pray that you will use us. I pray for the children and the young people and the college students and the young adults of our church that they will become a new generation of architects and designers and web artists and directors and writers and painters and sculptors. Father, I pray that we will see this like boxed in as a way to glorify and enjoy you and I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.