The Invention of a Sacrament

In the New Testament, God established two sacraments (or ordinances) for the Church, namely baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The following is the transcript of a brief excerpt from part 4 of Dr. Robert Godfrey’s newly released series from Ligonier Ministries entitled “The Necessity of Reforming the Church”:

“I think if there is one ‘sacrament’ we have tended to invent in our own time it’s the sacrament of music. In many churches there’s an awful lot of time spent singing to bring us ‘close to God.’ Now I am all in favor of singing. I think music can be very helpful and very powerful. But music is not a sacrament. Its not where God has planted His promise to bring grace to us. Music is not primarily God’s movement to us, which is what sacraments do, but music is our movement to God, bringing our praise, our thanks, our glorification to Him. And again, we have to be careful not to confuse things – not to think that by my singing stuff I really, really like I have a transcendent experience of God – that’s sacramental. No, we sing as an intelligent act of a rational soul to bring praise and glory to the Creator.”