That's for certain. Exodus chapter 14, if you will, Exodus chapter 14, Exodus chapter 14. And I need to make this announcement, I keep forgetting. And if you have anything in the kitchen left over from the funeral, you can get them from the kitchen. And otherwise they'll be donated. No, I'm just kidding. But anyways, if you could do so. Do I sound a little different? Am I whistling a little weird? Alright, we'll work on that. Exodus chapter 14. Exodus chapter 14. Did everybody see that rag in his hand as he was giving his presentation? 90 degrees, 100% humidity. And it was a little chilly today, but I'll take this, any day over 100% humidity at 90 degrees. So anyways, what an exciting work that is. Exodus chapter 14, and we're gonna read just a couple verses there in Exodus chapter 14, and then we'll read a little bit in Exodus chapter 15 as well. All right, Exodus chapter 14, look if you will at verse 30. But thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore. And Israel saw the great work which the Lord did upon the Egyptians, and the people feared the Lord and believed the Lord and His servant Moses." Verse 1 of chapter 15. Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider he hath thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song, and he is become my salvation. He is my God, and I will prepare him in habitation, my Father's God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a man of war, the Lord is his name. Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea. His chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea. The depths have covered them, they sank in the bottom as a stone. Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in power. Thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy. I want to speak tonight, if I may, I don't know if I'd call this a preaching, maybe a little teaching time that we have together here for the next few minutes, and why good music is good for you, and why good music is good for you. Now, I am not a music major. And I'm not going to try to dissect it a whole lot if I can. But I'm going to do the best I can and why good music is good for you. Let's ask the Lord to bless. Father, we're so thankful for this time you've given us. We're thankful for your blessings, thankful for the opportunity that we have to look at your word. I pray as we do so tonight and as we look at this thought, I pray that you would encourage us, Lord, that you'd instruct us and maybe we could take something home tonight that will be a blessing to us as we desire to live for you. And again, Lord, we'll thank you so much for it in Jesus' name. Amen. As you come to Exodus chapter 14 and Exodus chapter 15 here, we see that the Lord has delivered his people from the tyranny of Pharaoh and the land of Egypt. The Jews have miraculously crossed the Red Sea. I like how it says that there in Exodus chapter 15, that Pharaoh's chariots, in verse 5, have been sunk there. They have been drowned in the Red Sea. I was reading not too long ago, or looking this up, and a lot of skeptics of the Word of God, and what the Word of God has to say, say that the Egyptians did not drown in the Red Sea, but rather there's a little body of water called the Reed Sea that's nearby that and that they had drowned in that. The problem is that the Reed Sea never gets more than about three feet of water. And so the reason that the Israelites were able to cross was because the water was never more than three feet deep. But I don't know about you, the Bible says the Red Sea. I believe what the Bible says. And could you imagine the miracle if you saw thousands of people dying in three feet of water? And that'd be an extreme interesting movie, wouldn't it? And people drowning in three feet of water. But the Bible says that it was the Red Sea. And we see here that they have crossed the Red Sea and they have watched the Egyptians drown. They've watched their enemy and their oppressor drowned in that water that they had just crossed. Could you imagine how excited they must have been? For many, many years, a few hundred years, they had been oppressed. They had been, they had lost their freedom and they were under the bondage of Egypt and we know all the things that took place during that bondage and now we see that they have been freed. Their enemy that had been chasing them now had had been destroyed. And so we see that they were excited and they were encouraged at what had just taken place. And now that they were free and now that they were out of bondage, the Bible says in Exodus chapter 15, excuse me, in verse 1, that they begin to sing. In fact, chapter 15 and verse 1, the Bible says, "...then sang Moses and his children of Israel this song unto the Lord, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously, the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea." The people of Israel had expressed their joy, they had expressed their thanksgiving by singing a song of praise to God. Now as far as I can tell, this is the first scriptural account of song that we see in the Word of God and it sets a precedent for centuries of music for God's people. So we look at this passage here and we see why they sang. The first reason that they sang was because they were happy. They were joyful. And can I say this? A happy Christian is a singing Christian. A happy Christian is a singing Christian. If you cannot sing, then there's a problem. And we'll get into that a little bit as time goes on, but can I tell you something? As we begin to sing the songs in the psalm book, what excitement, what joy to be able to sing about our redemption. to be able to sing about Christ's love for us. And so, a singing Christian is a happy Christian. And so, sometimes we get caught up, and I know our mind is somewhere else, sometimes we are distracted, but may I say something? We come to church, we should enjoy singing. We should. And it should be a joy to sing. You say, well, I can't sing very well. Well, join the crowd. There's a lot of us that can't sing very well. But it's a joy to be able to sing about the goodness of the Lord. So, they sang because they were happy. They sang because they were joyful. They also sang because they were thankful. Now may I say this, a thankful Christian is a singing Christian. If you're thankful tonight, you should be able to sing about it. You really should. And you should be able to, in fact, sometime if you get a little bit of time, just go to your songbook and just look at all the songs in our songbook about being thankful. And the importance of thankfulness in the Christian life. And so we see that music is a integral part of our modern society. It's an important part of man's life and it has been for thousands of years. Man expresses himself in song. He makes political statements with music. He makes protests with music. He talks about wrongdoings with music. He speaks of opinion in song. In fact, you can tell much about an era by what kind of music comes out of that era, out of that time. And so music has always been an important thing in man's life. As I was preparing this, I began to think about when I was a child. Do you remember the commercials that were on TV that were set to music? Maybe like a cereal commercial? And I was starting to think about that just a little bit. And it's interesting, I can remember certain cereals as a kid by the music that was played on the commercial. And I thought I'm going to sing a few of them, but I'm not going to do that. And you can think of that. And so music is an important part of our life. And by the way, it's an important part of our worship as well. We can think of Fanny Crosby, we can think of Ira Sankey. These are men and women that have used music to worship and to petition and to praise God. So music is used for worship. Music is a part of human life. We enjoy music. And so music can be used for a good thing, but may I say this, music can also be used as a bad thing as well. It has been used to further the work of Satan. It has been used to spread wickedness and immorality in this world. And that's why it's important that we as individuals, as Christians, desire to have good music in our life. Because good music is an opportunity for us to praise the Lord. It's an opportunity for us to worship the Lord. It's an opportunity for us to just to sing praises and be thankful for what God has done in our life. And so good music is good for us and bad music can be bad for us. It prohibits the work of Christ. But good music is essential in the Christian life. So I'm gonna give you just a few reasons tonight for the importance of Christian music and the importance of good music in our life. The first thing is this, good music helps us praise the Lord. Good music helps us praise the Lord. Look, if you will, at verse 1. The Bible says this, Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord, and Spake saying, I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider he hath thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and song, and he has become my salvation. He is my God. I will prepare him in a habitation, my Father's God. I will exalt him. They were singing because they wanted to praise the Lord. And by the way, can I say tonight that we are commanded to praise the Lord. And I think if we were honest with ourselves, oftentimes, the only time we think about praising God is on Sundays. We come to church, we open up our songbook, we praise the Lord, but can I tell you something? It should be a continual thing in our heart to just praise the Lord for how good He is to us. How gracious He is to us. I don't know about you, but I make mistakes on occasion. Don't raise your hand. Sometimes I don't do the things I should do. Sometimes the opposite. And sometimes I know that in my life I'm not the Christian that I should be, but I'm so thankful for His graciousness and His grace and His mercy, and as a result of that, I should be able to praise Him. Let me give you a few verses. You can turn there if you'd like to. You don't have to, but Psalm chapter 33. Psalm chapter 33. Psalm 33, verses 2 and 3. Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous, for praise is comely for the upright. Praise the Lord with a harp, sing unto Him with a psaltery, an instrument of ten strings. Psalm chapter 40 verse 3, the Bible says, And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God. Many shall see it and fear and shall trust in the Lord. And so, we should be able to praise God. Psalm 148 verse 1, the Bible says, Praise ye the Lord. Praise ye the Lord from the heavens. Praise Him in the heights. Twenty-three times in that psalm, we are told to praise the Lord. And sometimes we just forget to do it. Sometimes we forget about how good God is and we get busy with everything else going on in our life and we forget. We just need to pause sometimes and just to praise Him for who He is. But oftentimes the reason we cannot praise God is because there's something in our life that should not be there. And so good music will help us to praise God. Not only that, but we see this, but good music will help your spirit. It will help your spirit. Good music will enable you to, will encourage you. It will strengthen your spirit when you are down, when you are discouraged. We have a good example of that, and that example is that of David and Saul over in 1 Samuel 16. In verse 22, the Bible says, Saul sent to Jesse, saying, Let David, I pray thee, stand before me, for he hath found favor in my sight. And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took a harp, And he played it with his hands, so Saul was refreshed and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him. It's important that we as individuals control our spirit. And so that's why it's important that we control what we hear. We control what we see. It controls who we are, and so it's important that we guard those things. We live in a, let's say this, we live in a sin-filled world, do we not? There's things all around us. There are things out there that want to harm us. There are things out there that want to trip us up. And so it's important that we guard our eyes. It's important that we guard our ears. And so good music will help your spirit. Why is it that some individuals are oftentimes discouraged? Why is it that oftentimes there's individuals that just can't keep their minds on the things of God? It's because they're allowing the wrong things in. They're allowing the wrong type of influences to permeate their mind and their body. So we see that good music helps your spirit. Not only that, but good music Will it teach you and admonish you and others as well? Read an interesting thing from D.L. Moody. He once said this. D.L. Moody once said that one of the reasons, and if anybody here know who D.L. Moody is, and saw thousands of people come to Christ there in Chicago, and he said this, he said, one of the reasons for so many souls being saved during his ministry was not from his preaching but rather was the result of Ira Sankey's music. Ira Sankey was his song leader. And so spiritual music is a powerful method for teaching the word of God both to ourselves and to others. One of the things that I have discovered is that when you put scripture to music, you memorize it better. Have you noticed that before? You put something to music, you just, you seem to remember it. I go back to being five and six years old, seven years old, sitting there, and a TV commercial comes up about some cereal, and there I am, 47 years of age, and I can still sing the song. Haven't eaten the cereal in 35 years, 40, maybe never eaten the cereal. And yet, because of that song, because of that music, I can remember those things. And can I say tonight that music will teach and will admonish others. Colossians 3, verse 16, the Bible says, Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And so good music will teach and it will admonish you and others as well. Not only that, but good music enables you to obey God. Psalm chapter 30, verse 4, the Bible says this, Sing unto the Lord, O you saints of His, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness. Psalm 96 verse 2. Sing unto the Lord. Bless His name. Show forth His salvation from day to day. And so the Bible says that we are to sing unto the Lord. And by the way, it's not a suggestion. God commands us to sing. One of the things that I think about oftentimes is this, and again, we can all be guilty of this, but we come to church and right before the preaching gets up there and we open our psalm book up and we begin to sing, I don't know about you, but it prepares my heart. It gets me ready for the preaching of God's Word. It softens my heart. And as I sing these songs, and sometimes, I'll be honest, I think we're all guilty of this, sometimes I'm easily distracted. Anybody here easily distracted? That's why I gotta, if I sit in the back, I watch, I'm a people watcher. And I watch people, and so I'm easily distracted. And sometimes my mind's thinking about this, and sometimes mine's thinking about that. But I'll tell you, it's just wonderful to start singing the great songs of the faith, and to get my heart prepared. And you say, what's the big deal about singing? You know, when we get to heaven, we're gonna do a lot of singing. I think it's good to get some practice now. Why not get some practice now? I'm looking forward to that heavenly choir. I got kicked out of the choir when I was in second or third grade. I'm looking forward to when I get to join the heavenly choir. And so good music enables us to obey the Lord. And how sad it is that oftentimes people just cannot sing like they should. and there could be reasons for it. So good music teaches us and admonishes us. Good music enables us to obey God. When I say this, good music helps to renew our mind. Renew our mind. Anybody ever heard of the old phrase, G-I-G-O? Garbage in, garbage out. Garbage in, Garbage out. Why is it that some Christians struggle with their thought process? Why is it sometimes that Christians struggle with their speech? And the reason is simple, if you let garbage in, then garbage will come out. One of the things that we try to do, and we're working on it, and we've been trying as time goes on, I think a lot of folks are doing the same as well, is trying to eat healthier. Trying to do better. I remember years ago, the dollar hamburger at McDonald's was cheap. But the dollar hamburger at McDonald's is not very good for you. And Taco Bell, a couple weeks ago, I took some of the guys, they were helping out, and I took them to Taco Bell. And the lady said, what would you like? And I said, I don't want anything. No Taco Bell for me. And so, you know, we're trying to eat healthier. And the reason is because when we eat healthier, when we treat our bodies well, it'll treat us well. And when you eat bad food, you get sick. And so we try to feed our kids healthier. But the reason why oftentimes Christians are so weak is because they're just taking garbage in, garbage in, garbage in. And so it's important that we renew our mind. It's important that we allow good things into our life. Not the bad things of this world. Of course, we can talk about music, we can talk about what we see and what we think upon, but can I say something? Good music renews our mind. Philippians chapter 4, the Bible says this in verse 8, Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, Whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things. And so it's important that we as Christians, we think on the right things. It's important that we as Christians allow the good things in and keep the bad things out. So good music will renew our mind. Not only that, but we see good music will protect you from bad music. You say, what do you do if I have a problem with bad music? Put good music in its place. I'm all about replacing that which is bad with that which is good. 1 John 2, verse 15, the Bible says, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Romans 12, verse 21, be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. Remember that worldly music can hurt you, and so it can hurt your spiritual walk with God. And so it's important that we keep the right things in, that we listen to the right things. So good music will keep us away from bad music. Good music is also a good testimony. Look, if you will, at Psalms chapter 40 real quick, and I'll be done in just a few minutes. Psalms chapter 40 in verse 3. Psalms chapter 40 in verse 3. The Bible says, "...and he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God. Many shall see it and fear and shall trust in the Lord." I think I've told this before, but I got saved at a young age. Saved at the age of ten. It's hard to believe. That was a few years ago. But can I tell you something? When I got saved, something happened to me. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things have become new. I am a... I'm a child of God. I belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. I am His. And as a result of that, I should have a different lifestyle than the world. I should have different desires. I should have different likes. It should not be my desire in life as a child of God to get all the gusto out of this world. As a child of God, it should be my desire to please and to glorify Him in everything that I do. Revelation chapter 4 and verse 11, the Bible says that we were created to bring pleasure to the Lord Jesus Christ. That is why we were created. And so as a child of God, I should have different desires. Not the things of this world, but to please the Lord Jesus Christ. And so with my life, I should be a testimony to others. When I go to the grocery store, when I conduct business with other folks, when I talk to other people, my conversation, the way that I speak, the way that I talk should be a testimony to the lost and dying world. And good music is an opportunity for me to be a good testimony to other people as well. I can give an example of this over, I believe it's in Acts chapter 17, I think. But you remember Paul and Silas, they were out preaching the gospel. And as they were preaching the gospel, for some reason, they got thrown in jail. Remember that? And the Bible says that while they were in prison, that they were sitting in the prison cell, and they were moaning, and they were groaning. They were discouraged. They were complaining. That's not what the Bible says. The Bible says that they were singing. They were singing. Now, let me ask you a question. You know, sometimes we use the excuse, it's hard for me to sing, I'm going through a rough spell. Now, Paul and Silas were going through a rough spell too. You know, I think that some people here have been to some of the modern prisons, but the prisons back then were not quite as good as they were. I don't want to be in prison here either, but I mean, the prisons there were rough. They were cold and damp and they were chained. And yet we see these two individuals that were singing. They were singing. They were singing of the goodness of God. I don't know what they were singing. But the Bible says that they were singing and they were praising the Lord. Acts 17 to Acts 16, the Bible says, and at midnight Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God. But that's not the end of the verse. The end of the verse says this, and the prisoners heard them. Now think about it. Here's some other prisoner. He's in there and he's miserable just like Paul and Silas is. And he's thinking to himself, how in the world can these two individuals be praising God? They're in the same predicament that I am in. And I'll tell you something, good music and a testimony tells folks around us that, hey, you know what, God is good. And not only is God good, but salvation is a wonderful thing. Being a child of God is a wonderful thing. And so we as individuals need to realize that good music is a good testimony to those around us. That we're different. And that God is good. So let me ask you a question tonight. I'll close with this. How's your music diet tonight? Are you eating junk food? Are you suffering from malnutrition, or do you have a healthy diet of godly spiritual music? I know you aren't gonna believe this, but I've been trying to lose some weight. And I have realized that if you lose, trying to lose weight, you have to give up some things. And so I've been giving up vegetables, I've been giving up. No, no. I found out I had to give up some things that my flesh likes. I like sugar. I like all forms of sugar. White, brown, whatever comes, little Debbie snacks, and those are my favorite kind, you know. Someone said, you like maple syrup. Only the real stuff. I mean, you know, put it in my, I like, I mean, I like it all, right? But I found out that I can't have a steady diet of sugary items and high carbohydrate items and expect to lose weight. And really, to be honest, even if I wasn't losing weight, I realized that I can't have a steady diet of junk food and expect to get up and, you know, just have the gusto to go at it during the day. What does it take? It takes, as an individual, it takes some realization that, you know what, I gotta get rid of some things, I gotta do what's right, I gotta eat what's right, and the same thing applies in the Christian life as well. We gotta make sure we have a healthy diet of those things that, spiritually speaking, will help us, not hurt us, not harm us. Bible says speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making a melody in your heart to the Lord. So let me ask a question tonight. How's your diet? How's your diet? Are you allowing those good things to be a benefit to you? Good music is good in so many ways. And so it's important that we put the right things in. Remember, garbage in means garbage out. Let's bow for a word of prayer. Father, we're thankful this day you've given us. We're thankful for your blessings. And Lord, I pray that we as individuals, and we could take this in so many different directions. But I pray that we as individuals will make sure that we're putting the right things in our life, realizing that there are things out there that can harm our walk with you and can hurt our effectiveness for the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, help us to seek those things which are above. Lord, help us to gather those things that will help us spiritually speaking. And again, we'll thank you so much for it. In Jesus' name, amen.