The Manliness of Singing
It was once common knowledge that the burliest and manliest chaps among us were the ones most interested in song. For instance, when soldiers marched into battle or were training for it, they would often march to the rhythm of a rousing tune. When rowers on old ships would drop their ores into the frigid waters, they kept time with sea shanties and other melodies. When those same men gathered together for a pint at the local pub, they sang folk songs and bar tunes. When tradesmen were on the job, they were whistling while they worked. When music was being composed, it was predominantly done by men for men. Essentially, wherever you found the strongest and hardest working men, the most aggressive soldiers, and the saltiest sea dogs, you could guarantee that they were singers. Moreover, they loved it.
Now, one of the things I find the most peculiar, especially in the modern church, is how effective Satan has been in convincing men to remain quiet in public worship. For too many men believe that singing is a feminine action that grades against their masculinity. Even fewer have found the joy and utter manliness of participating at a rip-roaring level.
While this does not apply to all men, many no longer feel like loud thunderous song-singing is a masculine endeavor. In fact, who can blame them? When the Church, for the last decade or 12, has adopted overly emotive self-focused songs sung by attractive hip-swaying women on stage, with eyes closed, lights turned down, and maybe a few lit candles to accompany the emergent pop vibe, is it any wonder that testosterone rich men are not clamoring to participate in this? Instead of a Biblically qualified elder leading the saints in public worship of their triune God from the book of Psalms or a Biblically faithful hymnal, far too many churches have adopted the shallow style of the entertainment complex, catering to consumer-driven concertgoers who are looking to be entertained with an experience instead of worshiping the Living God.
The few men who do end up on these stages are usually dressed like estrogenated metrosexuals, droning through a seventh emo Christian chorus, nasally singing all the latest and greatest "Jesus is my boyfriend ballads," while touching his chest and pointing at the ceiling a few dozen times for no apparent reason. We wonder why godly masculine men have checked out and do not participate in this sort of thing.
Perhaps it is because corporate worship no longer looks like it did in Scripture. Instead of a hyper-emotive light show where a hundred-pound valley boy leads churchgoers into a tear-filled experience of self-soothed religious feelings, rubber-stamped with a veneer of Christianese, the Scriptures describes men, muscular and masculine military warriors, generals, kings, and courageous chieftains leading God's people with loud and boisterous worship. The Scriptures detail men with blood still wet on their swords penning songs to the glory of God and directing the people to celebrate Yahweh triumphing over His enemies.
This is not incidental sentiment. Scripture binds the song directly to the sword. The Psalmist does not separate worship from war when he writes, "Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand" (Psalm 149:6). Charles Spurgeon called that verse "a happy blending of the chorister and the crusader." The singer and the soldier are made one man in a single breath. David Chilton put it plainly: open the Psalms and you find them filled with "conquest, war, victory, and the dominion of the saints." And James Jordan said what every father ought to tattoo on his forearm: "If you start singing the psalms, you start getting iron in your bones." That is not soft language. That is the language of a man being forged.
In what follows, let me share a few examples.
MOSES AND EGYPT:
In the first example of corporate singing found anywhere in the Bible, Moses leads the people of Israel to praise God over the defeat of the Egyptians. Furthermore, by defeat, God had just rained ten paralyzing plagues onto the nation, killing countless Egyptians in the process and inflaming the prideful heart of Pharaoh, who lost his firstborn son in the battle with God. Even further, God provoked the Egyptians to chase the Israelites to the banks of the Red Sea, and come in after them to kill them, only for God to completely and utterly decimate them by drowning them under a torrent of crashing waters. The dead bodies of those soldiers were presumably washing up on shore as Moses began leading the people in a ballad of victory (Exodus 15:1-19). Imagine that they sang a song of triumph at the top of their lungs before they did anything else.
Notice too what they actually sang. Exodus 15:3 records the lyrics: "The LORD is a man of war; The LORD is His name." Israel's first hymn was not a ballad about feelings. It was a battle anthem crediting Yahweh with military conquest, sung by men who had just watched their oppressors' bodies wash up on the beach.
JOSHUA AND JERICHO:
Under the leadership of Joshua, 12 men of Israel were sent to spy out the land of Canaan, and then the nation was to follow the Lord's prescription in how to make war on the first city they came to called Jericho. That war would not be waged with siege ramps, chariots, or even newly gilded short swords. Instead, God assembled the soldiers into a male-only choir, commissioning them to howl and blast their trumpets to the glory of God, which caused the pagan city to be reduced to dust and rubble (Joshua 6:15-21). There was no hip swaying, no emotionally latent evangellyfish anthems. There were hordes of men singing to the top of their lungs, and an entire city fell down because of it.
BARAK AND DEBORAH:
After the Israelites got themselves into a whole heap of trouble, worshiping the demonic gods of Canaan, the Lord sold them into subjection to Jabin, who was king of one of the great Canaanite cities. Between him and his military commander, Sisera, this gaggle of Canaanites possessed a military force consisting of so many chariots and horses that it was unrivaled in bronze age levant. Nevertheless, when the people of Israel cried out to the Lord, God raised a woman named Deborah to judge the nation of impotent men and a military commander who would lead the people to throw off their bonds, killing with the sword all of Sisera's army. While the blood was still wet on their swords, ten thousand Israelite men broke out into a song of victory to the Lord (Judges 5:1-31). In their mind, the most manly action they could possibly do, after killing thousands of God's enemies, was to sing loudly and boisterously in worship to Yahweh.
SAMSON:
If you were to imagine the Biblical picture of a testosterone junkie, Samson might be your guy. He was a risk taker, loved attractive, exotic, and somewhat dangerous women; he killed a lion with his bare hands and then ate the honey from the carcass. By all accounts, this man was a dude. However, He was not too masculine to sing. In fact, he prioritized it. For instance, after killing a thousand Philistines with the Jawbone of an ass, Samson broke out in song, praising God for how many enemy bodies he had just piled up (Judges 15:16). Before Samson even took a sip of water, he determined that singing to God was most important.
GIDEON:
On the opposite end of the courage spectrum was weak-kneed Gideon, who needed a few signs and a bit of encouragement to take on the behemoth Midianite army that was accosting the northern tribes. Nevertheless, when Gideon was finally strengthened in mind and in heart for battle, he did not find himself the commander of Abrams tanks or a platoon of Special Forces types. Instead, he commanded three hundred water-lapping, pot-touting worship singers, whose ear-splitting harmonies set the Midianite armies to such chaos that they hacked apart each other through the night (Judges 7:19-23). When the sun's light arose, the valley was filled with dead bodies, circling vultures, and pools of iron-rich blood. While God could have used many different means to accomplish this, He used confident, jubilant, and victorious male voices, which should teach us something.
DAVID:
In one of the earliest scenes in David's life, while all of Israel's men were cowering in the presence of a mighty giant, David (a smallish boy at the time) was filled with the Spirit of God and bested the giant. After the victory, David chopped off Goliath's head, held the heavy decapitated mass up in the air by the hair, and then watched as all the men of Israel were suddenly filled with courage, shouting and now chasing down their enemies (1 Samuel 17:52). Instead of light shows, skinny jeans, and "get in touch with your feels songs," David sat down and wrote a manly hymn to God based on this incredible victory in Psalm 9. To David, singing was the epitome of masculinity.
Later on in David's life, after he paid 200 foreskins of dead Philistines for his bride (1 Sam. 18:25), and after killing more than ten thousand enemy soldiers in battle, David also became known as the most prolific Psalm writer in the Biblical canon. This man who was, perhaps, the most significant military general and warrior king in all of Scripture, a man who would rip you apart with his bare hands, was also the most prolific songwriter and singer in all the Bible. He, apparently, had no problem maintaining his masculinity while belting our praises to our God.
SOLOMON AND THE TEMPLE
When Solomon came to power, war-making was virtually over. David had delivered the entire kingdom into his son Solomon's hands, which were not stained with blood from a thousand battles like his father's were. Because of this, God called Solomon to construct the temple, dedicate it, and set it apart for the worship of Yahweh among the Israelite people. At the temple dedication, all the "sons of Israel came" (2 Chronicles 7:1-3). They beheld their all-powerful God, raining down a massive wall of fire from heaven, consuming the offerings Solomon assembled, and dedicating the House of God with holy panache. When the men of Israel saw this, they intuitively broke out in song, demonstrating that men who have seen God do great and mighty things sing powerfully back to Him.
JEHOSHAPHAT AND THE CHOIR THAT WENT TO WAR:
When a coalition of Moabites, Ammonites, and men from Mount Seir marched against Judah with a force King Jehoshaphat had no hope of matching, he did not call up his strongest infantry or his fastest cavalry. He gathered the whole nation, men, women, and children, and prayed, "For we have no power against this great multitude that is coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are upon You" (2 Chronicles 20:12). The Spirit answered through a man named Jahaziel: "Do not be afraid nor dismayed because of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours, but God's" (2 Chronicles 20:15).
Then Jehoshaphat made a decision no general in human history would make apart from the direct command of God. He appointed singers, and sent them out ahead of the army (2 Chronicles 20:21). Not the mighty men. Not the archers. The choir took point. Scripture tells us plainly what happened next: "Now when they began to sing and to praise, the LORD set ambushes against the people of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir" (2 Chronicles 20:22). The enemy armies turned on one another and annihilated themselves before Judah's own soldiers ever reached the battlefield. Judah spent three days hauling away the plunder.
If Gideon's three hundred singers were not proof enough for you, here is a king who put worship leaders in front of his infantry and watched God win the war before a single Israelite sword was drawn. That is not the strategy of a soft or sentimental religion. That is the strategy of a King who delights in making warriors out of worshipers.
OTHER OLD TESTAMENT EXAMPLES
Before concluding our little tour de force of the Biblical Old Testament examples for masculine singing, a few more instances deserve our brief attention. First, when the men of Israel returned from a paralyzing exile, they led their families in song as they marched home to rebuild their city and temple (Psalm 126). Second, when Ezra and the men of Israel finished rebuilding the second temple, the men, in proper masculine form, broke out in the hardiest harmonic hymn singing this side of Babylon (Nehemiah 12:39-47). Third, once the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt, the men joined together in song again (Nehemiah 12:27-43). And, who could forget that our God, known as our Holy Father, cast almost universally with the masculine pronouns, joyfully sings over us (Zephaniah 3:17) and receives our singing with great joy (Psalm 95:1-2)
Apparently, God and His old covenant men found singing both wholly natural and wholly necessary.
NEW TESTAMENT EXAMPLES
In case you were wondering, singing by masculine men is not limited to the Old Testament. When Jesus was born, the sky exploded to the glory of God, and legions of angels sang out before a group of terrified herdsmen (Luke 2:13-14). On the night Jesus was going to be arrested, falsely convicted, and murdered the next day, instead of giving into fear, Jesus led His disciples (all men) in joyful praises of Yahweh (Mark 14:26). After being beaten to within an inch of their lives and arrested on trumped-up charges, Paul and Silas sang songs in prison, which precipitated an earthquake that broke them out of prison (Acts 16). Paul also explicitly addressed the church, filled with men and women, and commanded them to joyfully and exuberantly sing the psalms, the hymns, and the spiritual songs (Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16).
That hymn Jesus sang in the upper room was not His last word on the matter. Hanging on the cross, in one of His final breaths, He quoted the opening line of Psalm 22, likely in its original tune: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" That same psalm, sung by a dying Messiah, ends with these words: "All the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before You. For the kingdom is the LORD'S, and He rules over the nations" (Psalm 22:27-28). Colossians 2:15 tells us what that dying song actually accomplished. Christ "disarmed principalities and powers," made "a public spectacle of them," and triumphed over them. And Hebrews 2:12 puts a jaw dropping claim on the lips of the risen Christ: "In the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to You." The resurrected Son of God is, at this very moment, the lead voice in the room whenever His men gather to sing. He is not absent from the choir. He is standing in the middle of it.
THE HUGUENOTS:
This masculine pattern did not end with the closing of the canon. When French Huguenot men were being hunted down and murdered for their faith in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they sang Psalm 68 as they died: "Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered" (Psalm 68:1). A man singing that verse while soldiers dragged him to his death was making a confession his executioners could not touch. They could take his land, his church, his family, and his life. They could not take the King off His throne. Martin Luther, watching the same spiritual battle play out in his own century, said it plainly: "Our songs and Psalms sorely vex and grieve the devil." Of course they do. Hell has never once been frightened by a wet noodle.
Every example above, from Moses to Jehoshaphat's choir to the dying Huguenots to the risen Christ Himself, points to the same reality. God has always put the sword of praise into the mouths of His strongest men, not His softest. Which brings us to you.
A CALL TO CHRISTIAN MEN TO SING
Dear men,
The most masculine, powerful, and godly thing you can do is bellow out your praises to God. If you fancy yourself a warrior, sing boldly to God in your bassy, baritone, and tenor voices. If you are like Gideon and are more of a coward, muster the strength you have and bellow out God's praises. Fill the room of gathered saints with the thunderings of your lower register. Demonstrate for the women and children how happy you are to be in the house of God, that Yahweh reigns over the earth, and that our songs hail His mighty victory.
Do not allow woke churches and effeminate modern worship to sideline you from one of the most godly and manly activities you can ever do. Join a church where the Psalms are sung, proclaim the monumental victories of your great King, cry out loudly like David and Samson, belt out like Barak and Moses, and let the rafters fear your rumblings.
Men, the Church needs your voice now more than ever. City gates once collapsed when men took singing seriously. I believe the gates of hell will also fein and fall over when our men recover this Biblical discipline once more. To God be the glory! Amen
