Mrs. Vaughan was a lovely senior lady and the grandmother of Cindy Hardin who was dating our oldest son. Because we adored Cindy, we came to know Mrs. Vaughan and to treasure her. She was white-haired, soft-spoken, and a member of the neighboring Methodist Church.

That morning, noticing her name on the hospital list as a new patient, I stuck my head in the door and asked how she was doing.

“Oh, it’s nothing, pastor,” she said.

“What happened is that I passed out yesterday. When I came to, I was lying on the floor. I live alone, you know, and so before pushing the LifeLine to summon help, I decided to take inventory and see if I might have had a stroke.”

“I pulled myself onto the bed and moved my arms and legs. They worked. I wiggled my toes and my fingers and they were all right. Then I began to sing. I knew if I could still sing, I was all right.”

I laughed, “I want to thank you for that incredible insight into life. If you can still sing, you’re all right.”

As your pastor, faceless/nameless friend reading this, I’ve come today to tell you something about your song you may never have known or perhaps forgot. I hope you will take this to heart.

One: God wants you to sing.

Singing is all through Scripture, beginning with the song of Exodus 15 on the heels of Israel’s triumph over Pharaoh and ending with the “new song” of Heaven in Revelation. Someone has said that ours is the singingest religion in the world.

No doubt you recall the well-known passage of Ephesians 5 which calls on believers to sing: “…speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord….” (vs. 19)

Perhaps you have heard the super-spiritual among us tell singers in church that “this is not a performance; you’re singing to the Lord.” They’re half right; it is to the Lord.

We are also to sing to one another. We provide the audience for each other’s songs.

God has so arranged His work that when we do something unto Him–whether it’s praying or praise or mowing the lawn or bringing an offering or singing–we touch each other and encourage one another.

So, go ahead and clap after the solo. You loved it and the singer needs the encouragement.

Two: God gives us the song.

Three times Scripture tells us, “God is my strength and my song and has become my salvation.” That line from Moses’ song of Exodus 15 is repeated in the 118th Psalm (vs. 14) and by the prophet Isaiah (12:2).

Everyone in this room will admit we knew the Lord was our strength and we certainly knew He was our salvation. But how many of us have given thought to His being our song.

The believer’s song is from God, about God, and for God. Without Him, there is no song. He is its source and its subject.

Let us pause here to state the obvious: for believers, Jesus is God. He’s not the Father, true, but the Son. Jesus is God, a full member of the Holy Trinity. We do not quibble over whether a particular song is about the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit. When we honor One, we honor All.

Three: God gives songs in the night.

That terrific line–“He giveth songs in the night”–comes from Job’s friend Elihu in Job 35:10. It’s alluded to in various Psalms, but Elihu says it best, so he gets quoted most.

In delivering that insight, Elihu was addressing a fellow, Job, who certainly knew about the darkness of the soul. With the loss of all his children, of his health, and of everything he had owned, with what appeared to be his impending death, and now with his wife nagging him and his friends dumping on him, Job was having a bad day. The young man Elihu arrived to do what young believers do best–ignore the complexities of Job’s difficulties and instruct his elder on “how to be a good Christian.” The fact that Elihu was correct on every count only made Job more miserable. Sometimes we need friends to sit quietly nearby and not try to teach us anything.

God giveth songs in the night.

In the deep of the night, only chronic drunks and serious disciples sing.

Four: The night-songs are the ones God uses most.

Paul and Silas had been arrested for preaching the message of Jesus and freeing a young woman from the hell of demonic possession and the abuse of her owners. A crowd seized the two disciples and the authorities had them beaten with rods. Finally, wounded and bleeding, they were thrown into a prison and their feet locked into stocks. (Acts 16.)

Along about midnight, Paul and Silas began to sing.

I wonder what they were singing. A Psalm, maybe. Which one? Wish we knew.

Wonder who started it. “Uh, Paul, would you like to sing?” Was that how? or did one of them begin humming under his breath and the other join in?

Wonder why they were singing. Were they hurting so bad it was either that or cry? Did they find singing helped? Was it a distraction or were they such incredible believers they felt God would use their testimony? Why do you sing, Paul?

Did they laugh at the incongruity of singing in such a hell-hole with open wounds on their backs? Were they delivering a little “in-you-face-rebuke” to the devil? Was it simply all about victory in Jesus?

It being midnight, did any of the other prisoners curse and throw something to get them to shut up? Luke tells, “And the prisoners were listening to them.”

We are left with the impression the bleeding singers had a respectful audience.

When God sent the earthquake, bursting doors and breaking chains and unlocking stocks, the jailer awakened with a start and thought his overnight guests had escaped. If so, he was in deep trouble.

Paul called out, “Don’t hurt yourself. We’re all here!”

The jailer yelled for lights and rushed in to the cellblock where the prisoners were held. Trembling, he dropped before Paul and Silas. “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

Interesting how the jailer connected the earthquake with their singing. Fascinating how the Holy Spirit used their witness to penetrate his heart and bring him to salvation.

Interesting why we don’t sing in our night more than we do.

“I don’t feel like singing.”

That’s beside the point. This is the very time we are to sing. It’s when we do our best vocalizing.

Five: Not everyone in Scripture got it right.

The singers and musicians of Israel were depressed. Abducted and carried off into exile when their country was destroyed by the Babylonians, their pagan tormentors now administered the ultimate insult: they asked for some music. The very idea!

“Come on,” the Babylonians pleaded. “Sing us one of the songs of Zion. We’ve heard of your great music. We’d like to hear.”

“We don’t feel like singing,” the musicians said, and hung their harps on the willows beside the river.

“The very idea,” one said. “How can they expect us to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

Their misery and depression are recorded in the 137th Psalm for us to see and feel and be amazed at, thousands of years after the fact.

C. Oscar Johnson was pastor of the Third Baptist Church of St. Louis, as I recall, when I first heard him speak on the 137th Psalm. He was leading a revival at Birmingham’s West End Baptist Church and I was a college student in the congregation. That was nearly 50 years ago but I have never forgotten the impact of his words.

“The strange land is right outside the doors of this church.”

“Anyone can sing in here where everyone knows the words and we all share your convictions. But out there is where they need the music. Go sing the Lord’s song in your strange land.”

In the night. In the strange land.

When we sing in such a time and such a place, we honor our Lord, we encourage one another, we attract the interest of outsiders, and we baffle the enemy. And in the process, it does something to ourselves.

That’s not all to be said on this subject. But it’s enough for today.

Go forth and sing.

Whether you feel like it or not is beside the point. Sing and you’ll soon make a discovery: singing changes your mood. It may turn out that no one is blessed by your singing more than you yourself.