All guilty of revolt from God, corrupting pure religion, either by following general custom, or the impious consent of antiquity.

13. Hence we must hold, that whosoever adulterates pure religion, (and this must be the case with all who cling to their own views,) make a departure from the one God. No doubt, they will allege that they have a different intention; but it is of little consequence what they intend or persuade themselves to believe, since the Holy Spirit pronounces all to be apostates, who, in the blindness of their minds, substitute demons in the place of God. For this reason Paul declares that the Ephesians were “without God,” (Ephesians 2:12,) until they had learned from the Gospel what it is to worship the true God. Nor must this be restricted to one people only, since, in another place, he declares in general, that all men “became vain in…

Sing praises with understanding. (Psalm 47:7)

I struggled about publishing this post because I know how much we love our old school Gospel songs. And, yes they ARE GOOD SONGS, but some contain some lyrics that aren’t completely aligned with scripture. Okay, I already know this may upset some people, but God wants us to speak the truth.

There are some old school Gospel songs that we love…that encourage us…that we sing in worship, but they contain some lyrics that aren’t biblically sound.

These particularsongs are more common in some church cultures than others, but I persuaded to believe that all church cultures have them.

We’ve heard our parents and grandparents sing them…

Yes, they make us feel good…

Yes, they we enjoy them…

Yes, those who wrote them were anointed…

This isn’t to diminish the anointing of the song writer(s), but to remind us that when we are using…

“Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?”  Mark 12:24

I made an error  awhile back.  I realize that will shock many of you.  We were traveling to my son’s flag football game in a nearby small town.   We turned right rather than turning left and proceeded several miles in the wrong direction.  My wife had gotten on-line and printed out the directions; we diligently followed the direction but still ended up in making an error.  The consequences of having bad directions was for us to get a little lost and either be late to the flag football game or to miss it entirely.  I would argue that getting on-line and printing off the directions was probably a reasonable amount of effort given the potential consequences.

Now, consider if the potential consequence would have been…

And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in. -Genesis 7:16

See Noah and his family entering the ark! I do not think I should have selected the ark as a place of residence myself, nor would you have chosen to live in a place pitched within and without with pitch, with only one door and one window to it, and a great menagerie of birds, and beasts, and reptiles inside it. Whether that window ran all round the top just under the roof, so as to let light into the whole structure, I cannot tell; but I have no doubt that the jeering world said to Noah, “Well, old man, you have built a prison for yourself, and the sooner you go inside and shut yourself in the better; for we have had enough…

“Perhaps we should contemplate the words of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, delivered in a Lord’s Day sermon on December 24, 1871:

“We have no superstitious regard for times and seasons. Certainly we do not believe in the present ecclesiastical arrangement called Christmas: first, because we do not believe in the mass at all, but abhor it, whether it be said or sung in Latin or in English; and secondly, because we find no Scriptural warrant whatever for observing any day as the birthday of the Saviour; and consequently, its observance is a superstition, because [it’s] not of divine authority. Superstition has fixed most positively the day of our Saviour’s birth, although there is no possibility of discovering when it occurred. …

“It was not till the middle of the third century that any part of the church celebrated the nativity of our Lord; and it was not till very long…