"One Another"

 Greetings to you all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,

     Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.”

     I owned both a Strongs and a Youngs concordances and always did enjoy looking up individual words and using the dictionaries associated with each of the books.  It was a bit difficult looking up a two word phrase.  Now, I just  use my Bible program on my comput er to look up as large a phrase as I want.  One of the most interesting phrases was “but God.”  It can be found around 39 times in the Bible and for the most part, when it is found, there is a large contrast when God steps in and solves a problem.   The computer has made some things a lot easier especially for me in my later years as I can make the font as large as I want which helps in reading and writing.

     The phrase in the passage for today is, “one another.”  It can also be found a number of times and in the New Testament is usually connected with the life of the believer.  The two word phrase is often preceded by one word, which is the action that is to be taken by the believer.  In this case, the word is “admonishing.”  The meaning is to “warn” or to “exhort.”  One would not think that music could be used to warn or to exhort but that's what it says.  The three types of music appear in most hymn books.  We do sing the Psalms at times and when y ou look at the index, you can find the list of Psalms that have been set to music in your hymn book.  The hymns are those pieces of music that are sung to God and usually are found in the first fifty or so pages of the average hymn book.  Such hymns as “How Great Thou Art” and “Holy, Holy, Holy” are some of the examples.  The spiritual songs take up a large portion of the book and will usually have a personal pronoun in them such as “It Is Well With My Soul”  “Victory in Jesus” begins with, “I heard an old old story…”  For the most part, there is a large amount of theology in  many of the hymns.  Fanny Crosby wrote over  3,000 hymns that were set to music such as, “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine.”   One can be warned by the hymns in the way that, we know the truth of the words and if we are not walking in that way, then the song will not be for us to sing.  If you are lost you can’t sing, “It is Well With My Soul.”  or “Amazing Grace”  Admonishing one another is only one of several “one another” commands in the New Testament.  One of the most frequent is to “love one another.”     As you go through the Bible, it might be good for you to make notice of each of the various commands.as this is what makes the church function.  Praise God for the music o