I recently watched a performance of Toby Mac on Fox News.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know for sure if he claimed to be a Christian, but evidently he did.\u00a0 The song he performed was very good…if his goal was to stimulate the flesh.\u00a0 It had no spiritual value whatsoever.\u00a0 It caused the reaction in people that it was designed for.\u00a0 Mac verified that fact when he asked the crowd to dance.\u00a0 Many were already dancing.\u00a0 And dance they did\u2014the women moving sultrily and provocatively.\u00a0 I think I heard Mac\u2019s song on a secular station (where it appropriately belongs) when I was in a department store.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t go into the origins of CCM, its birth out of the Jesus Movement, which came from the Counterculture Movement, whose offspring are now destroying Christianity and the United States.\u00a0 Instead, I will deal with Mac\u2019s and similar music on the basis of scripture.<\/p>\n
Ephesians 2, the old nature defined.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cAnd you\u00a0He made alive,\u00a0who were dead in trespasses and sins,\u00a0in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience,\u00a0among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.\u201d \u2013 Ephesians 2:1-3<\/p>\n God considers individuals dead who are in trespasses and sins, because they are in subservience to the flesh and cannot accept life.\u00a0 They choose death over life, darkness over light, and flesh over spirit.\u00a0 Such an individual has a carnal mind, which is a mortal enemy against God.\u00a0 The flesh is very creative when it has control of the mind, but it only produces what is pleasing to itself.\u00a0 Everything the flesh produces is an affront to God.\u00a0 Just as He did not accept Cain\u2019s offering, or the offerings of Nadab and Abihu, God does not accept such offerings<\/p>\n If there were a \u201cHoliest of All\u201d on earth, and Mac waltzed into it playing his song, he would be instantly cremated.\u00a0 The tired, old excuse, \u201cBut it is reaching the lost,\u201d is invalid.\u00a0 Satan is reaching the lost.\u00a0 He is reaching the lost who have rejected the Gospel of Jesus Christ.\u00a0 He does so by one major method of music designed by the flesh, for the flesh.\u00a0 The many professing Christian musicians joining him in his paradigm are a great assistance to his efforts.\u00a0 They are also reaching the lost in the same manner and with a diabolical message.\u00a0 That message is, \u201cYou can have God and the world system.\u201d\u00a0 That is synonymous with a call to worship Satan.<\/p>\n For those reasons I would call Mac\u2019s music, and most CCM, \u201cdead\u201d music.\u00a0 It has no life for the spirit, but only the flesh.<\/p>\n The Carnal Mind is God’s enemy:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cFor those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those\u00a0who live\u00a0according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.\u00a0For to be carnally minded\u00a0is\u00a0death, but to be spiritually minded\u00a0is\u00a0life and peace.\u00a0Because the carnal mind\u00a0is\u00a0enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.\u00a0So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.\u201d Romans 8:5-8<\/p>\n The contrast to Ephesians 2:1-3 is Ephesians 4:17-24<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThis I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of\u00a0the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind,\u00a0<\/sup>having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart;\u00a0\u00a0<\/sup>who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.\u00a0 But you have not so learned Christ,\u00a0if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus:\u00a0that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,\u00a0<\/sup>and be renewed in the spirit of your mind,\u00a0<\/sup>and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.\u201d \u2013 Ephesians 4:17-24<\/p>\n A true Christian must be focused on building up the spiritual mind.\u00a0 That cannot be accomplished if one returns to subservience to the flesh.\u00a0 Further, such reverting can open the door for old bondages and proclivities to return.\u00a0 Maybe that is why the Christian Music Industry is fraught with homosexuality and other tawdry lifestyles.\u00a0 It is an unaccountable industry\u2014arrogantly and defiantly so.<\/p>\n The problem is that we now have generations that have never known otherwise.\u00a0 Born and raised in a time of apostasy, they believe the aberrations in Christianity are normal.\u00a0 Those generations have been cheated out of a genuine relationship with Christ and God.\u00a0 I have been praying for years that God would raise up an army of Christian musicians that write and produce exclusively Christian music. \u00a0\u00a0It may or may not happen.\u00a0 The absence of it must not lead one to turn to the \u201cToby Macs\u201d of the industry for entertainment.<\/p>\n Christians do not need music, but they want it.\u00a0 We do not need many things that we believe are essential to our comfort and emotional well-being.\u00a0 We need God\u2019s word.\u00a0 We need to pray.\u00a0 We need to stand up for truth.\u00a0 We need to keep ourselves unspotted from the world system.\u00a0 We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit.\u00a0 We can use music that feeds the spiritual person.\u00a0 But we don\u2019t need Toby Mac.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I recently watched a performance of Toby Mac on Fox News.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know for sure if he claimed to be a Christian, but evidently he did.\u00a0 The song he performed was very good…if his goal was to stimulate the flesh.\u00a0 It had no spiritual value whatsoever.\u00a0 It caused the reaction in people that it 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