Sinclair B. Ferguson

And with a hymn book, you probably get almost 20 centuries of hymns, not just the last 20 years.

When you sing your way through a hymn book, you begin to appreciate that in your praise, you belong to the vast company of believers through the centuries.

And that's so important for us today, because then you'll realize that the church is far bigger than you ever imagined.

There's perhaps never been a day when that's more important, because the contemporary church's thirst is to be exactly that, contemporary in everything.

And that often means that Christians are deprived of the wisdom of the ages.

Please don't misunderstand me.

This is not an attempt to demean all modern song and hymn writers and modern songs.

But if that's all we sing and all we know, we're rejecting a wisdom practice of the church throughout the ages.

And actually, we're the first generation in 300 years to do that.

And frankly, we're not a smart enough or a spiritual enough generation to be able to afford to do that.