Rehearsing For Heaven

Rehearsing for Heaven

Excerpted from “Heavenly Worship”

Sermon #110, December 28, 1856

Music has a great power to connect us to God. There is music in Heaven, but if we want to be part of the great song, we’ll need to start practicing the melody now.

The voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps, and they were singing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders. No one could learn that song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. Revelation 14:2-3

Spurgeon • It is said of all the worshipers in Heaven that they learned the song before they went there. At the end of the third verse it is said, “No one could learn that song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth.”

Brothers and sisters, we must begin Heaven’s song here below, or else we shall never sing it above. The choirs of Heaven have all had rehearsals upon Earth before they sing in that orchestra. You think that, die when you may, you will go to Heaven without being prepared. No, Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people, and unless you are “qualified . . . to share in the inheritance of the saints in light” (Colossians 1:12), you can never stand there among them.

If you were in Heaven without a new heart and a right spirit, you would be glad enough to get out of it, for Heaven, unless a man is heavenly himself, would be worse than Hell. A man who is unrenewed and unregenerate would be miserable in Heaven. There would be a song—he could not join in it. There would be a constant hallelujah, but he would not know a note. And besides, he would be in the presence of the Almighty, even in the presence of the God he hates, and how could he be happy there?

No, you must learn the song of Paradise here, or else you can never sing it. You must learn to sing, “Jesus, I love Thy charming Name, ’tis music to my ears.”^a

Take that thought, whatever else you forget. Treasure it up in your memory, and ask God for grace that here you may be taught to sing the heavenly song, that afterward in the land of the hereafter, in the home of the blessed, you may continually chant the high praises of the One who loved you.

Alcorn • Music is a bridge between this world and another. Spurgeon says, “We must begin Heaven’s song here below, or else we shall never sing it above. . . . Ask God for grace that here you may be taught to sing the heavenly song.”

It’s not that we should literally learn to sing; it’s that our lives here on Earth should be so in rhythm with God’s will and plan that music will well up in our souls long before we cross over to our eternal home. In other words, learn how to praise him now. James says, “Are any of you happy? You should sing praises” (James 5:13, NLT).

The Bible is full of examples of people praising God with singing as well as with musical instruments. In the Temple—a representation of God’s presence—288 people sang and played a variety of instruments (1 Chronicles 25:1-8). The psalmist instructs the people to praise God with trumpets, harps, lyres, tambourines, strings, flutes, and cymbals (Psalm 150, NIV). Hezekiah says, “We will sing with stringed instruments all the days of our lives in the temple of the LORD” (Isaiah 38:20, NIV).

Jesus sang with his disciples (Mark 14:26), and the apostle Paul instructs Christians to sing to the Lord (Ephesians 5:19).

On Earth, creative, artistic, and skilled people sing and play instruments to glorify God. The apostle John speaks of trumpets and harps in the present Heaven (Revelation 8:7-13; 15:2). If we’ll have musical instruments in our pre-resurrected state, how much more should we expect to find them on the New Earth? Scripture songs will endure, but other music from Earth may also be preserved. Consider Handel’s Messiah, Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” the spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” and Isaac Watts’s “Alas! and Did My Savior Bleed?”

What about the thousands of great hymns and praise songs from every world culture? Imagine a remote tribe singing praises in a beautiful language you’ve never heard. God is honored by our thankfulness, gratitude, and enjoyment of him. And these acts of worship now prepare us for worship in Heaven. Have you ever sat in stunned silence after listening to music beautifully performed? If you’re like me, you don’t want to leave the presence of greatness. On the New Earth we, the redeemed, never will. Our great God will be above all, beneath all, and at the center of all. Our praise will well up from within us, and we will sing!

^a From the hymn “Jesus, I Love Thy Charming Name,” by Philip Doddridge, 1717.