In his sermon 'Teach Them How To Sing,' Scott Brown emphasizes the critical role of singing in Christian life, particularly within the church and family settings. Drawing from Colossians 3:16, he highlights the responsibility of parents to teach their children to sing as part of their spiritual upbringing, ensuring they avoid a meaningless life. Singing is portrayed as an intellectual and joyful act that teaches doctrine, fosters community, and unifies believers. Brown addresses common concerns such as children or parents not being naturally inclined to sing, encouraging parents to inspire and engage their children by setting joyful examples. He underscores the importance of singing in conveying God's truth, admonishing one another, and expressing emotions in a balanced way, contrary to self-centered or purely emotional expressions. Singing is also a means of personal prayer and can impact unbelievers by showing the church's beliefs and feelings. The sermon concludes with an exhortation to teach children to sing with understanding and joy, as part of their broader Christian education.

Please open your Bibles to Colossians chapter 3 and find verse 16. Colossians 3 verse 16. The title of this message is, Teach Them How to Sing in church particularly but teach them how to sing Colossians 3 16 reads 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. Let's pray. Oh, Father, You've given us such good direction.

You've taught us the paths of life, and here they are before us now. We're a grateful people for You delivering to us such good admonitions, which are so helpful and so life-giving and so preserving and we praise you for all these things Lord amen this message is specifically meant to equip parents in the raising of their families, but it has broad application to every one of us. Married, single, empty nester, if you don't have a family you can easily apply every point nearly that I make in this message here. A proposition, parents have a responsibility to instruct their children to bring them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord. And this admonition that we find in Scripture to sing.

It fits along those lines. This means that parents have a very distinctive responsibility to help their children to avoid a meaningless life. Because through singing, we teach our children how to live both thoughtfully because singing is an intellectual enterprise and joyfully because the ways of singing that God's designed take us to joy. It's one way that we protect our children from living thoughtlessly and lifelessly and joylessly And so you need to teach your children to sing because the Bible teaches you how to sing. And of course this is consistent with everything we're hoping for in our churches and our families that the Word of God be governed by Scripture alone.

Scripture is sufficient for everything and we don't sing primarily because we've, in the church at least, because we've discovered some new great tool to you know, make your church grow. We don't sing that for that purpose. We sing because God has commanded us to sing. He has ordered His church to be a singing family. So it's very important that parents teach their children to participate fully in the singing life of the church.

Well, but what if your children don't sing? What if your children don't like to sing? What if your children aren't good at singing? Oh, well, what if the father is not good at singing? What if the mother is not good at singing?

Well, there's a can of worms here that can be discussed. Let's take the matter of if your children don't want to sing. The first impulse of a parent is to help their children to love the things that are good. And children need help to love the things that are good. They don't naturally love the things that are good, so you're going to find them falling into traps that they really do need to be delivered from.

So parents, when they think about teaching their children to sing, especially when they have a child that doesn't like to sing or won't sing, is to inspire them to sing. That means that parents have a job to do. They have to, you know, get on their toes and think outside the box and try to inspire their children. One reality that we all are aware of is that generally if you love it, they'll love it. Often our children are a reflection of us and they sing listlessly because that's all they've ever seen they haven't seen joyful happy exuberant and thoughtful and moving kind of singing fully engaged Parents should bring beautiful music into their homes, that's my conviction.

Parents should take opportunities to sing with all their hearts. There are lots of natural opportunities that we have that are just part of the warp and woof of the rhythms of life. Our family sings at the dinner table 99% of the time. We'll sing a song. If I have little kids around my table, I'm going to I'm gonna want to sing a really wonderful fun song.

I Don't know what it is about children, but every two-year-old's favorite song is holy. Holy. Holy You can always hit that one. You know if you have young children with you. Sing at bedtime, sing in the car.

The most important thing is really a foundational thing and that is make it a joy And you know children love to sing funny songs. Have you ever noticed that? Some of the favorite songs of my grandchildren are the craziest songs you've ever heard. And I love them, but they really love them. And what we do in our house is that we get our grandchildren all hyped up with these songs, and then I send them home with their parents.

But there are, Well, it's critical that we inspire our children to love the things that are beautiful and we play beautiful things and we sing beautiful songs. There is more. They need actually to know that there are commands to sing. Now, when a parent commands anything, the children should do it. And God gives very clear instructions about singing particularly in the context of the church And Paul the Apostle Taught two fledgling churches how to sing We don't know what kind of singer Paul was but he taught two churches how to sing And God teaches us that the church is a singing community.

And we do it almost every time we get together. It's a wonderful thing. I hope this message has repetitive value because I'm talking about something that we do over and over and over and over again as a church. My view is that, you know, children need to know that they're not allowed to simply make up their own version of their life. They are being led.

They're being led by parents into living waters. And parents are charged by God to make a life, to build a culture, and to set forth godly patterns. This is one of the most wonderful things about getting married. We just had a wedding a few days ago. One of the most wonderful things that I was telling Adam about before he got married was, you're gonna get to join together with a really neat girl and go build a life.

You're gonna go build a world. What a joy. It's so much fun. But parents have a responsibility to create that world. You can't just let the world happen to you.

You've got to create a beautiful world that you know is beautiful in the eyes of God, and that has to do with setting forth godly patterns. So, it's easy for children to Be uninvolved and unengaged and listless and pointless and thoughtless singers. Parents, it's your job to pull them out of that hole. It's a hole. And you shouldn't let them go the way that they want to go.

Solomon said, a child left to himself will suffer harm. So you don't want to leave your children to themselves in almost everything. You lead them. You take them into the promised land like Moses did with the children of Israel as you're leading your children down the way. But make sure that your children understand that the Bible teaches us how to sing.

Singing is very powerful. It moves the heart. It teaches doctrine and When it's done in the church It's a means of a very self-conscious unity. All of us are saying the same thing together We're declaring things with one voice When we were singing just a minute ago, I stopped and listened. It's the most beautiful sound to hear singing.

I love that sound. But singing puts you in a disposition of praise. It casts you into a sea of hope. It helps you deal with your fears, with your hurts, with your cares. It teaches people to be thankful, because they speak praise and thanksgiving, even when they don't feel like it at the moment this is one of the great things about singing when you start you might not feel like it but you can be moved to feel like it by the end of the song if your heart is really toward the Lord.

So, singing in the church is a team effort. It's a community thing. We do it with others, and we do it for others in the church. While it has a profound impact on us, what the Bible says about singing makes it very clear, particularly the New Testament, is that we're not primarily doing it for ourselves. We'll get to that in a minute because the Bible is very clear that we do this for one another.

We actually have responsibilities toward one another in the church. Singing is one of those responsibilities. We actually have a duty to sing. There are many commands in the New Testament about the one another's and This is all part of that mix of how God has designed us to function in the church. We do it for one another.

And if you walk into church and you're just hanging down low in your own pity party, it's going to be difficult for you to be much benefit to your brothers and sisters. So God wants to pull you out of it. What happens though is you often have a hundred or hundreds of voices to help pull you out of it. That's one of the most wonderful things. It's very important that we enter into his gates with thanksgiving and that we know what we are doing and why we are doing it.

So when we gather to sing, we're declaring what we believe. We're declaring what kind of God we worship. We are explaining the distinctive elements of the kind of gospel that we preach and the kind of family that we are and what kind of unity we have in terms of our thinking because singing unifies us in our thinking that's why it's very important that the lyrics of the songs are true and right because we're being united around something when we sing I'm gonna give you seven ways that God wants to grip our hearts while we sing in the Church of Jesus Christ And I would encourage you to teach your children with these things in your mind. Help them to understand somehow these seven things that God commands, so that they will grow up singing in keeping with the richness that God has supplied in this matter of singing. Okay, seven things.

First, we sing to each other God's truth. We sing to each other God's truth When we sing God is teaching us through one another 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. That's Colossians 3 16. When we sing we are teaching one another from the Word of Christ and this is referring to singing biblical truth. It's the best thing you can sing.

We sing to teach sound doctrine. The words dwell richly. Let the word of Christ dwell richly indicates the depth of the saturation of the Word of God in the soul, letting it take root, drinking in its richness, and then singing it out to your brethren. So it's critical that the church is a singing church so that it can be a teaching church. The teaching doesn't just happen in the preaching.

The teaching happens in the reading, it happens in the prayers, it happens in the preaching, and it happens in the singing. If you want to have a teaching church, you must have a singing church, singing sound doctrine. It's not peripheral, it's central to church life. Now this is, this can be in sharp contrast to some of the manifestations of Christian worship services where you get lost in your own emotions. We all acknowledge the blessing of God moving our emotions, but when the mind is turned off and all you have is emotions, you don't have Christian worship.

Not the way that the Bible defines it anyway. In pagan worship you lose yourself in kind of a self-centered altered state of mindless repetition and It can be nothing more than just self-centered emotional ecstasy and a lot of people Judge their singing or their worship service on how emotional they were than when they were singing Not by the truth they were proclaiming. Not glorying in the truth, but glorying in their own feeling. I'm not here to argue that you shouldn't glory in the feeling that God gives you when you sing the truth. It's a matter of emphasis.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, and when the Holy Spirit is moving on a congregation, it is through the truth. Emotions come and go. They flop around. They escape you. They're not solid enough to rest anything on, but the truth you can stand on forever.

So pagan worship makes an idol out of emotions. Lifeless, conservative, reformed worship can make an idol out of doctrine to the absence of the emotions. So, but God has designed us to need both and this is why he commends both to us. God calls for the whole man to participate and True Christian worship is both thoughtful and it is emotional. That's why there are commands that say, praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord. You start praising the Lord and your emotions start to follow, even if you're as dead as a doornail spiritually. So first, we sing to teach one another. Secondly, we sing to admonish one another. Paul says that we sing admonishing one another.

He uses a very interesting Greek word, nutheteo, it means to admonish, to warn, and instruct. It's the word, if you ever heard the term, newthetic counseling, biblical counseling, that's where this term comes from. It means to correct one another and to warn one another. So in this sense, singing is an action that seeks to move a person from one position to another position. If you come into the worship of God on the Lord's Day and you're in a bad position, let the singing take you out of that position.

It's designed for that. It's warning, it's redirecting. Our hearts need redirection so often. Third, not only do we sing to admonish one another, and by the way many of the songs are written like this, where the words to the songs are written in the form of you're singing to one another. Like for example, a mighty fortress is our God.

You're singing that to one another. You're saying God is a mighty fortress. He's a bulwark never failing. You're in the flood. God is there.

So singing is implicitly admonishing so that we'll move from one position to another position. Thank God that He's so kind to give us something in the church to do to move us from where we were to where we really need to be, where we really want to be. Okay, thirdly, we sing in the Spirit. Paul describes a certain particular type of singing that is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. He, he writes, when he writes, be filled with the spirit in Ephesians 518 he's introducing a new subject in Ephesians where he's explaining what it looks like to be filled with the spirit and first you began speaking to one another how singing and making melody in you with your heart to the Lord You're singing and making melody to one another.

A manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the church is you're singing to one another, not just yourself, not just lost in your own emotions you're singing to one another a spiritual church has its mind on the other members of the church to be a blessing to them singing to one another this is spiritual singing Paul says you begin speaking and singing to one another and then you submit to one another and then the wives Submit to their husbands and the husbands love their wives and the children obey their parents That's the string of logic in Ephesians 5 and 6 But it starts with be filled with the Spirit the scene The singing that we do is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Fourth, not only do we sing in the Spirit, we sing to God personally. Paul directs the Colossian Church to sing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to the Lord, to the Lord. So we're simultaneously teaching one another by the Spirit and we're also singing to the Lord. It's a complex thing that God has brought us into.

Paul's telling the Ephesian Church to make melody in their hearts to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we are singing directly and personally to the Lord. It's very much like prayer, which is why singing is a little bit like prayer, And when you're teaching your children, help them to understand that while they're singing, they can also be praying. It's a way for them to pray. You can teach your children to pray by singing and helping them to pray more by singing songs.

Augustine said, he who sings, prays twice. Not only do we sing to God personally, fifthly, we sing to the unconverted among us. We sing to the unconverted among us. This might be surprising, but when we sing, we are confessing the name of Jesus Christ to those who are unbelievers among us. Here's the scripture, Romans 15, 9.

Paul says, I will confess you among the Gentiles and sing into your name. I will confess you among the Gentiles." He also speaks to the Corinthian Church about how harmful it is to speak in a way that cannot be understood by unbelievers in the meeting. He says, they come in who are uninformed and they will say you are out of your mind if they don't understand. But rather they should be able to understand what is spoken through a psalm, through a teaching. And then Paul says, then the unbeliever, or as he calls him, the uninformed person hears it and is both convinced and convicted by all.

In other words, what the unbeliever hears makes them feel convicted and convinced by all. I think singing can do that. So we should sing it out. When the unbeliever comes in the church, he's checking things out. He's looking around.

He's making judgments. He wants to know what makes these people tick. And the singing shows him what they love, what they think, how they feel, how they tick. How they tick. And what the Apostle Paul is saying is that when they come in they should see a display of Christian doctrine, Christian emotions, Christian love.

So when you're singing you're declaring to the unbeliever what makes you tick and what you're thinking and feeling. In many ways it teaches others how we deal with our problems, because so many of the hymns are directed to help us with our problems, mostly emotional problems and thinking problems. So when we're at church we should lift up our voices and sing to the Gentiles, belt it out. We shouldn't let one note be lost for the sake of the lost among us. And by the way, again, when we sing together it's not just about us.

We have something to sing to the Gentiles Let them see that his praise is glorious Let the unbeliever see that he makes you happy Let the unbeliever see that he makes you happy. Let the unbeliever see that he carries your sorrows. Let the unbeliever see how much he loves you and how thankful you are for that. David said he has made me glad in Psalm 122 verse 1. Shout it out.

Shout that he's a healing salve. Let it flow out of your heart. Let it come because you love lost people. It's such a beautiful thing to sing songs to others in their time of need. Has that ever happened to you?

Have you ever had somebody come and sing to you when you were really in a dark hour? To be sung to is a beautiful thing. Sixth, not only do we sing to the unconverted among us, we sing to our own souls. We sing to our own souls. Well we need this.

This is Psalm 103. You find David, he's singing to his own soul. He's singing to himself. You ever talk to your own soul you can catch David speaking to his soul why are you cast down oh my soul David said bless the Lord oh my soul and all that is within me bless his holy name. He's commanding his soul.

He's commanding his soul to bless the Lord. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget not all his benefits. He's telling his soul, don't forget, don't forget the benefits. Who forgives all your iniquities, he's telling his soul that. And then he tells his soul who heals all your diseases.

And then he tells his soul who redeems your life from destruction. And then he tells his soul who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies that ought to be enough to get you out of a pity party sometimes we just need to sing to our own souls David he's referring to the inner man and we need to sing to our inward thoughts and our attitudes, and we need to tell our innermost being, bless the Lord, oh my soul. Instead of meditating on our own troubles and sorrows we need a soul adjustment that's why Martin Luther said music drives away the devil and makes people happy If you ever read the writings of Martin Luther, his commentaries, like his technical commentary on the Gospel of John, He'll launch into these long paragraphs preaching to the devil telling the devil what a loser he is And how the gig is up, you know, he might as well just give up Luther needed to sing to his soul from time to time, I'm sure. Seventh, finally, not only do we need to sing to our own souls, we sing from a new heart. This makes all the difference in the world.

Jesus was speaking to the woman at the well trapped in her ritualism, her formalism, her ungodliness, and he says God is calling worshippers to worship Him in spirit, which refers to the genuineness of the worship and in truth, which refers to the content of the worship. So the worship is based on revelation, on the true knowledge of God. It's focused on the true God, which comes from true faith done in the way that God prescribes. We sing from a new heart. Oh, I love the song, Jesus Shall Reign by Isaac Watts.

He makes it very clear in the song that singing is for children, little children. People in realms from every tongue dwell on His love and His love with sweetest song, and infant voices shall proclaim, infant voices, their early blessings in His name." Singing is for children, And it's for parents to teach them in the ways of joy, in the beauty of it all. Okay. Let me give you a couple admonitions. First, teach your children that they have a responsibility to sing, but inspire them to it.

If your kids are mumbling the songs, they're not singing at all, then you ought to teach them that they must sing. They can't just do whatever they want. In the same way that they need to say please and thank you, they also need to sing. And they don't get to do their own thing in the church either. Nobody gets to do their own thing in the church because God governs His church by His Word and by His word alone.

Don't let them be selfishly silent in the church. God has commanded them to lift up their voices for the benefit of the whole church. So first, teach your children they have a responsibility to sing. It's appropriate to say, the Browns sing in church. Fathers can do that.

They can create a culture doing such a thing. But they have to be very careful to inspire them that way as well. It's one thing to command someone, but if you don't have it in your heart yourself, it makes it very difficult. Secondly, teach your children to sing in the voice of the song that it's written. Now, of course, this will be progressive.

Children at the beginning will just kind of, they'll sing the tune, but they won't really know the meanings of the words of the song. In fact, they'll have the funniest interpretations of some of the words of some of the godliest songs, which really makes raising children fun. But as they grow, help them to sing the song in the voice of the teaching or the admonition. Is it, and here, here's some questions. Is it sung personally to God, or is it a personal and corporate testimony about God?

You find both. Is it a song that you sing to your own soul? There are many songs that are like that. Or is it a declaration of truth to the unbeliever? Is it something that you sing to encourage your brethren on a matter of life and doctrine?

Help them sing intentionally, thoughtfully, relationally, and evangelistically in the voice that the song is written. So are your children singing when the church sings or are they unengaged? Is there anything you need to do to increase their joy and therefore their involvement and therefore their understanding and therefore their vigor in singing? Is there anything that you need to do to lead them? You don't want to just let your children, you don't want to be passively going through this life and just let them be whatever they want to be.

That's not what Christian parents do. They bring them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord. And we don't have the option to do our own thing with our children, nor do our children have the option to do their own thing with anything. We must lead them. So the Bible teaches that singing Christianly is to sing with depth of understanding and feeling.

It is self-conscious and intentional. It is relationally connected and emotionally rich. It is intellectually deep, theologically sound, and evangelistically self-conscious. It can be literally soul-transforming. It is explicitly pedagogical.

So teach your children to sing. Teach them to sing well and think about what they are singing. Singing helps us to be a thoughtful people and a joyful people and a serving people So God has given parents the responsibility to instruct their children to bring them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord, not leaving our children to themselves, to protect them from a thoughtless, lifeless, joyless, humdrum, meaningless, self-serving life. Teach your children to sing. Let's pray.

Father, you are such a kind instructor to take us beyond ourselves, beyond the philosophies of our day, the ways our thinking has been mangled, so that we would think rightly about how we ought to do everything. We thank you that all of your ways are pleasant ways and all of your paths are peace. And I pray that for all of us here in this church, that we would sing with vigor and joy to one another, for one another, for all of our joy, in our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us. Amen.