Every week as we say the Apostles Creed, we confess that we believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. This refers to the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, creation from nothing. Only God can create from nothing; it is one of the characteristics of deity.
But Genesis does not say that God created a glob of inchoate stuff, but rather that He created heaven and earth, sea and dry land, sun, moon, and stars. When He created the world, He designed it to run and function a certain way. The world is not just here because God put it here, and that’s all we have to learn from the doctrine of creation. No, every aspect of the world is engineered to certain ends. We learn what those “ends” are through careful study of the Scriptures, and careful study of the world itself in the light of Scripture.
The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in the world is good in itself. But to appeal to this unquestionable truth as justification for putting beans in your ears, smoking dope, or playing random chaotic noises that some call music, is to be guilty of a very elementary fallacy. God made the world, certainly, but He also wrote the manual. How could the fact that Kitchen Aid manufactured your mixer be an argument for working up a small batch of concrete in it?
The rudiments of music are embedded in the way the world is. We learn from both Scripture and nature that a certain kind of music is for dancing, and another for mourning. Another kind of music calms the spirit, and another kind rouses the spirit. If you were asked to make an heirloom cabinet for the queen, you wouldn’t use rough cut plywood. And if summoned to confess your sins musically before the Lord, you wouldn’t use a bouncy little ragtime piece.
This means that at the very beginning of our study of music, we have to start by rejecting every form of relativism. Every wise craftsman who seeks to exercise true dominion in the world knows two things: first, he has creative authority to arrange—he is the craftsman. And two, he must respect the nature of the material he is using. The craftsman does not just exercise authority; he also submits. This is true of all artisans, and of musicians particularly. And you, the congregation of the Lord, are musicians before Him.