RPW, No Instruments, Psalm 150

[Ryan&Amber2013]

First, I don't think you are taking the reality of OT stated public worship into your picture. The people most definitely did not play instruments in Temple worship. The people were not even permitted beyond a certain point in the many barriers to the sanctuary. Yet, they were part of the worship through their mediators who did the worship-work for them. What I do for you, you can be said to do, if it is done on your behalf, and this is 100% the case in OT worship. When the priests played those instruments, the whole people were playing them. The encouragement of "the righteous" to do and to thank as they are commanded happened in the context of Temple worship through the people's representatives; their instruments were the Levites playing instruments.

We have to read the encouragements of the Psalm through the facts of how it was done if public stated worship is the topic. And that work was not done by the people, but for the people. Outside of that strict RPW governed situation, the righteous had other personal liberties they might be able to exercise in respect of handling instruments for honoring their God.

Second, we are New Covenant people. We do not take our instructions on what is the acceptable elements and their forms directly from the OT. In anything. We take them all from the NT. There are analogous practices and forms contained in the OT, to that which we now gather to fulfill. There are elements that show the continuity going all the way back through the Old Covenant ways and means, and even further before the Old Covenant to the patriarchs and back to Noah and Adam. But the ways we are directed to worship now come through instruction by the apostles. When they tell us to sing the Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, we obey. We make use of the Psalter, but we don't do the sacrifices the Psalms tells the singers to do; nor follow any other particular that belongs exclusively to the previous age, except that it is filtered through the NT on its way to us.

Does God ordain the instruments for NT worship, the way he ordained them for OT worship? Just reading about them, or even singing (obediently) about them from the Psalter won't answer that question for a NT Christian.

This is a very thoughtful and persuasive response. Thank you so much!

 

[Santos]

Nobody here is suggesting that. And a piano is a stringed instrument.

Not only is a piano a stringed instrument, but it is also a harp or series of harps struck by mallets.