Some people claim that music is a non-issue. They claim that it doesn’t really matter what we listen to. It’s only music; it’s just entertainment. Music is a personal thing; it’s all in the ears of the listener. It’s not all that important.

Music, of course, is not a fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith. It’s not an issue of eternal salvation or life and death. We don’t find much about music in the New Testament. Jesus didn’t say anything about it, and Paul mentions music just a couple of times. Christians have widely differing opinions on the issue. It is, to some degree, a matter of preference and personal judgment.

However, our understanding and use of music is important. It’s less important than other things, but it still is an issue we should think about and understand.

Music is important in church; we usually use quite a bit of music in our worship services. And music is often important at home and in our personal lives. Many of us have a good bit of recorded music, and we listen to music quite often. We hear music almost everywhere we go. The music we listen to has an impact on us; it has an influence, either good or bad.

The Bible is not a music textbook, but it does say a lot about music. One whole book of the Bible—the psalms—is a hymnal. Christians ought to be concerned about applying whatever principles the Bible contains that apply to music.

My message today is titled, “Why We Have to be Careful About Our Musical Choices.” Obviously, there is not a particular, single passage in the Bible that addresses that issue. But biblical principles certainly apply; biblical principles tell us that we need to be careful about our musical choices.

And we have a lot of musical choices today. From the convenience of your own cell phone, you can listen to virtually any kind of music ever produced. Our musical choices are almost endless. So we have to be careful about those musical choices.

Why do we need to be careful about our musical choices? I think there are several reasons.