Joshua 24:14-15: “Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the Lord.  And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Imagine if Joshua had someone play soft or suspenseful music as he said these words.  That would be an extremely ridiculous thing to any sane person.  

Yet it’s normal in churches and evangelistic meetings now for music to be used to extract decisions out of people.  

If the goal is to move people emotionally in the moment to make an announcement that they will serve the Lord rather than really help them come to a resolve to serve the Lord from the depth of their heart, then using music in this way would make sense.  But that should not be the aim.

When the aim is proper, it actually makes a lot more sense to warn of the reasons why it is so hard to serve the Lord and to say you should not even bother saying you will do so unless you are willing to face great hardship in doing so.  

We actually see Joshua being even more drastic in expressing negativity towards the people who professed they would serve the Lord as Joshua chapter 24 continues past verse 15.

It is also evil to employ music at church meetings to extract money out of people.  There is a good reason to not even have a collection at all and just let those who choose to give money put it in a box before or after the meeting (see Matthew 6:1-4).  

Yet when a church takes up a collection and plays music which is obviously intended to create an atmosphere that induces people to give money, then that is deceitful.

A church which isn’t content to only receive the money which people would put in an offering box without others noticing, and without employing human compulsion (through music and/or in other ways), is not primarily concerned with leading people in the righteous ways of the Lord. 

Some might bring up Elisha calling for a minstrel to play for him in 2 Kings 3:15 to defend music in the way it is being rebuked here.  Yet Elisha didn’t call for the minstrel to help extract decisions out of others nor to help persuade himself to get his heart right with God.  

Using music in a calculated way to attempt to extract decisions and/or money out of people is manipulative and overall very ungodly.  

As crazy as it is to imagine the faithful men of the Bible doing this, there actually is an example of this in the Bible (which only further demonstrates that this practice originates from heathens pushing their Pagan, idolatrous religion).  

Nebuchadnezzar employed music to persuade people to worship the golden image which he had set up in Daniel chapter 3.  He even required that people fall down and worship his image immediately upon hearing the sound of the different instruments in the band which he had put together. 

Aaron’s email is: [email protected]

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