I stated in my sermon this week what many of you came as a surprised.  I briefly touched on the fact that there is very little evidence in the Bible that angels sing.  According to the Bible, the only place that suggests that angels sing in the Bible is a poetic reference in Job 38:4-7.  All the other places angels are mentioned have them speaking their messages and not singing.  Now certain modern translations do use the word singing, but it is a mistranslation of the word for speaking.  They translated it in this way because down through the years and in all manner of art forms and music, we have come to believe that angels sing.  I again want to clarify.  I am not saying angels do not sing or that they cannot sing.  I am just saying all the biblical passages about angels do not report them singing (with the possible exception of Job 38, which also has non-angelic interpretations).

   Let me give you a quote from David Jeremiah’s book What the Bible says About Angels.  He is quoting from W. A. Criswell, “Music is made up of major chords and minor chords.  The minor chords speak of the wretchedness, death and sorrow of this fallen creation (Romans 8:22).  Most of nature moans and groans in a plaintive and minor key.  The sound of the wind through the forest, the sound of the storm, the sound of the wind around the house, is always in a minor key.  It wails.  The sound of the ocean moans in its restlessness, in its speechless troubles.  Even the nightingale’s song, the sweetest song of the birds, is the saddest.  Most of the sounds of nature are in a minor key.  It reflects the wretchedness, the despari, the hurt, the agony, the travail of this fallen creation.  But the angel knows nothing of it.  An angel know nothing of wretchedness, nothing of despair, nothing of the fall of our lost race . . . Our sweetest songs with deepest sorrows are fraught.  Somehow it is the sorrow of life, the disappointment of life and the despair of life that makes people sing, either in the blackness of its hour or in the glory of its deliverance.  That is why the redeemed sing and angels just speak of it.  They see it, they watch it, but they know nothing about it.  For it takes a lost and fallen man — who has been brought back to God, who has been forgiven of his sin, who has been redeemed — it takes a saved soul to sing!”

    So maybe the reason why the Bible does not expressly say that angels sing is because they are unable to know and express the feelings we as redeemed people have that cause us to sing.  Think about it.