Here is a PDF of the melody notes, first stanza, and basic chords of Faith of Our Fathers played in the key of G. Because the song has 8 basic chords in it, it is a good song for advancing beginners to use to learn how to strum and pick a song that is a little more advanced than songs that use only three chords..
Copyright © 2011-2025 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
In three previous articles, I treated various broader aspects of the Golden Calf incident, such as the basic teachings of the passages concerning the incident and some of their various applications to believers today.1 This post focuses attention on the Israelites’ religious syncretism in what took place on that infamous occasion.
Through the plagues that He brought upon Egypt, God judged its gods (Exod. 12:12) and showed to His people as well as to others that He was the one and only true God (cf. Exod. 8:10; 9:14; 10:2; 14:4, 18; 18:11). He then gave the Israelites who came out of Egypt clear teaching that they were not to make any idols or images (Exod. 20:4, 23), as the Egyptians and other peoples did (cf. Exod. 23:24).
Furthermore, He instructed the Israelites about the feasts that they were to keep to Him (Exod. 23:14-19). He made known to them as well the altars (Exod. 20:24-26; cf. Exod. 27:1-8; 30:1-6) that they would build to Him and the sacrifices that they would offer upon them as part of their worshiping Him (Exod. 20:24; 29:1-30:38).
Before the Israelites, therefore, engaged in the Golden Calf incident, they had been thoroughly instructed by God about what they were and were not to do in worshiping Him. Nevertheless, in the absence of Moses, the people congregated around Aaron and demanded that he make for them an idol (Exod. 32:1).
Aaron not only cooperated with them in making the idol (Exod. 32:2-4; 35), but he also made an altar before it (Exod. 32:5a). Moreover, he declared that the next day would be a feast to the Lord (Exod. 32:5b).
When the people, therefore, rose early the next day and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings and sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play (Exod. 32:6), they purportedly were supposed to have been observing a feast to the Lord. In reality, however, they were engaged in religious syncretism that robbed God of His glory (Ps. 106:20-21) and was idolatrous worship that greatly provoked the Lord (Neh. 9:18).
Their feasting that purportedly was supposed to have been to the Lord was in actuality the rejoicing in the works of the hands (Acts 7:41) of people who had turned back to Egypt in their hearts (Acts 7:39). Their singing and dancing in what was supposed to have been a feast to the Lord (Exod. 32:17-19) was in fact not worship of the Lord at all but the unrestrained debauchery of people of whom even their enemies were ashamed (Exod. 32:25)!
While the people were supposedly observing what was supposed to have been their observing a feast to the Lord, the Lord informed Moses of the heinous sinfulness of what they actually had done and were doing (Exod. 32:7-8). God rejected their religious syncretism and purposed to annihilate them for their idolatrous perversion of His worship (Exod. 32:9-10; 1 Cor. 10:7).
Aaron had brought very great sin (Exod. 32:21) upon the people through the leading role that he played in their perversion of the worship of the Lord (cf. Exod. 32:25). God was intensely angry with both the people and him and would have destroyed them all had Moses not interceded for them (Exod. 32:11-14; Deut. 9:19-20).
In His great compassion and mercy, the Lord did not annihilate them nor forsake them in the wilderness (Neh. 9:18-19). In fact, He continued His goodness to them in leading them, instructing them, providing for them, and using them for His own purposes in spite of the great sinfulness of what they did in the Golden Calf incident (Neh. 9:19-25).
The Israelites thoroughly perverted the worship of the Lord on this occasion through their incorporation of an element of pagan worship (the idol) into what was supposed to have been a feast to the Lord. The heinous sinfulness of their religious syncretism should cause all believers to take heed not to incorporate elements of debauched pagan origin into any aspect of their worshiping the Lord.
1If you have not done so, please read the previous articles in this series before reading this article:
1. Toward Fully Understanding the Golden Calf Incident
2. More Insights about the Golden Calf Incident
3. Leadership Failure and the Golden Calf Incident
(See all the articles in this series under point 11 here)
Copyright © 2011-2025 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
Verse 3. Let them praise his name in the dance: let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp. Thus let them repeat the triumph of the Red Sea, which was ever the typical glory of Israel. Miriam led the daughters of Israel in the dance when the Lord had triumphed gloriously; was it not most fit that she should? The sacred dance of devout joy is no example, nor even excuse, for frivolous dances, much less for lewd ones. Who could help dancing when Egypt was vanquished, and the tribes were free? Every mode of expressing delight was bound to be employed on so memorable an occasion. Dancing, singing, and playing on instruments were all called into requisition, and most fitly so. There are unusual seasons which call for unusual expressions of joy. When the Lord saves a soul its holy joy overflows, and it cannot find channels enough for its exceeding gratitude: if the man does not leap, or play, or sing, at any rate he praises God, and wishes for a thousand tongues with which to magnify his Saviour. Who would wish it to be otherwise? Young converts are not to be restrained in their joy. Let them sing and dance while they can. How can they mourn now that their Bridegroom is with them? Let us give the utmost liberty to joy. Let us never attempt its suppression, but issue in the terms of this verse a double license for exultation. If any ought to be glad it is the children of Zion; rejoicing is more fit for Israel than for any other people: it is their own folly and fault that they are not oftener brimming with joy in God, for the very thought of him is delight.
—Charles Spurgeon, Treasury of David, http://www.spurgeon.org/treasury/ps149.htm; accessed 9/21/13
Copyright © 2011-2025 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
Did God ever make known how He wanted all the earth to worship Him? Has He changed His mind about that subject after the coming of Christ and His finished work of atonement?
Psalm 98 provides clear revelation that helps us answer both of these questions. Through an unnamed psalmist, God made known when Psalm 98 was written how He wanted all the earth to worship Him at that time:
Psa 98:4 Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise.
5 Sing unto the LORD with the harp; with the harp, and the voice of a psalm.
6 With trumpets and sound of cornet make a joyful noise before the LORD, the King.
God commanded that all the earth would sing unto Him with the harp (98:5) and make a joyful noise before Him with trumpets and a cornet (98:6). These commands make clear that God demanded that all the earth worship Him with singing accompanied by musical instruments.
All the earth has never obeyed these commands, and many of the peoples of the earth have never even known specifically that God has commanded them to do this. Are these commands still the will of God for all the earth or has He changed His mind after the coming of Christ?
Based on my study of Scripture, I do not find any basis for holding that these commands no longer apply. I also find no basis for holding that the coming of Christ and His completed work of atonement somehow has done away with these commands.
The lack of specific NT mention of instrumental worship in the first-century Church does not constitute proof that Christians today should worship God by singing without the use of musical instruments. On the contrary, Matthew 28:18-20 compared with Psalm 98:4-6 teaches us that it is part of the Church’s mission to disciple all nations to worship God with singing accompanied by musical instruments!
Copyright © 2011-2025 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
Be Thou My Vision is a wonderful hymn. This PDF provides the melody notes, chords, and first stanza of the hymn in the key of D.
See much more free guitar music and many other free guitar resources here.
Copyright © 2011-2025 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
Santo, Santo, Santo is a classic Spanish hymn. This PDF provides the first stanza, melody notes, and guitar chords for the song, and this audio MP3 file provides the melody so that you can practice both the melody and the chords while listening to the melody!
Copyright © 2011-2025 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
Highly skilled guitarists are able to play wonderful solos that are very suitable for preludes, offerings, and other forms of special music in church services. For many reasons, most Christian guitarists, however, will never attain the high levels of skill and musicianship necessary to glorify God with the skillful playing of guitar solos.
By contrast, many people who will never be great soloists can still become highly competent accompanists by learning the following five great ways to use the guitar to accompany others:
Strumming and picking are the two primary ways that the guitar has been used historically to accompany other musicians. The vast array of strumming and picking patterns available to skilled guitarists makes these accompaniment styles two great ways that the guitarist can complement other musicians nicely.
My friend Daniel Hendrix and I have recorded a video Symphony No. 9 “From the New World” that displays the use of the guitar to accompany another musician with these two accompaniment styles. In this video, I strum the chords the first and the third times that we play the piece and pick them on the second time.
In addition to strumming and picking, there are three other great ways to use the guitar to accompany other musicians. Developing skill in these other accompaniment styles makes a Christian guitarist far more capable of richly enhancing the musical ministry of both vocalists and other Christian instrumentalists.
Most guitarists learn to read notes from the treble clef and play them an octave lower than they are played and sung by other musicians. By learning to read both bass and treble clefs and to play the notes at the same pitches that they are played and sung by other musicians, a guitarist can accompany others very nicely.
I often use this accompaniment style with my students. For example, I often play the tenor part of a hymn while they play the melody.
Another benefit of learning to play from both clefs is having the ability to play multiple harmony parts at the same time. This accompaniment style provides a guitarist with another rich way to accompany a vocalist or another instrumentalist.
For example, the guitarist can strum on stanza one of a hymn, play multiple harmony parts on stanza two, and then pick on stanza three. I often accompany my students in their lessons by playing both the bass and tenor parts while they play the melody.
Another useful variation is to play the melody and the alto part of a hymn at the same time while another guitarist strums or picks. I use this style often (playing both parts an octave lower than written, as with the traditional guitar method), and I am also developing more skill at playing similarly the melody and the tenor part of a hymn together.
By learning these five great ways to accompany others, a Christian guitarist can still glorify God in music ministry even though God has not gifted him to be a skilled guitar soloist!
Copyright © 2011-2025 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
Here is a PDF that provides the guitar music for playing My Country, ‘Tis of Thee as a chord melody solo in the key of F.
Copyright © 2011-2025 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
Exodus 32 records at some length the Golden Calf incident, an infamous account of idolatry among God’s chosen people Israel. Because both the OT and the NT refer to this account more than once (Deut. 9; Ps. 106; Neh. 9; Acts 7; 1 Cor. 10), we must carefully compare all six accounts in order to fully understand this incident.
In this article, I treat the first four passages (Exod. 32; Deut. 9; Ps. 106; and Acts 7). In future articles, I will treat the other passages and correlate all six passages carefully.
Exodus 32
While Moses was meeting with God on Mount Horeb (cf. Exod. 31:18), the Israelites corrupted themselves (Exod. 32:1-6). Instigated by the people (Exod. 32:1), Aaron participated in their making a golden calf (Exod. 32:2-4). He also made an altar and declared that there would be a feast to the Lord on the following day (Exod. 32:5).
On the next day, the people sacrificed burnt offerings and peace offerings to the idol and then sat down to eat and drink (Exod. 32:6a-b). They then rose up to play (Exod. 32:6c).
God informed Moses about what had happened and told him to go down quickly to the people whom he had brought out of Egypt (Exod. 32:7-8). He then asked Moses to leave Him alone so that He could destroy them and make of Moses a great nation (Exod. 32:9-10). When Moses interceded earnestly with the Lord for the people (Exod. 32:11-14), the Lord relented of His intent to annihilate them (Exod. 32:14).
While Moses was coming down the mountain (Exod. 32:15-16), at some point he met up with Joshua. When they were yet at some distance from the camp, Joshua heard the sound of the people shouting (Exod. 32:17a). He said to Moses that what he heard was the “noise of war in the camp” (Exod. 32:17b).
Moses, however, discerned that the sound was neither the sound of victory (Exod. 32:18a) nor the sound of defeat (Exod. 32:18b). He declared that instead it was the sound of the people’s singing (Exod. 32:18c).
Arriving at the camp (Exod. 32:19a), Moses saw the idol and the people dancing (Exod. 32:19b). He became incensed and quickly acted to destroy the idol (Exod. 32:19c-20).
He then confronted Aaron about his role in the incident (Exod. 32:21-24). He further observed that the people were publicly (cf. Exod. 32:25c) behaving in uncontrolled lewdness (Exod. 32:25a) because Aaron had failed to deal with them to restrain them as he should have (Exod. 32:25b). Through their openly being so wicked, they were bringing themselves into shame with their enemies in some unspecified manner (“Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies” [Exod. 32:25]).
In response to Aaron’s sinful inaction, Moses asked whoever among the people was on God’s side to come over to him where he was standing in the gate of the camp (Exod. 32:26a). All the Levites did so (Exod. 32:26b). He then instructed the Levites to go through the camp and execute many of their own people (Exod. 32:27-28).
In the aftermath of this infamous occasion (Exod. 32:29-34), Moses’ intercession spared the people from complete annihilation at the hand of God. God, however, did still plague the people “because they made the calf, which Aaron made” (Exod. 32:35).
Deuteronomy 9
Some years later, Moses commanded the people not to forget, but to remember how they had provoked the Lord to wrath continually in the wilderness from the day that they left Egypt to the day that they arrived across the Jordan in the wilderness in the land of Moab (Deut. 9:7; cf. Deut. 1:1-5). He then recounted what happened at Horeb with the golden calf (Deut. 9:8-21).
This recounting adds that the mountain was burning with fire when Moses came down (Deut. 9:15), which indicates that these people committed this heinous sin while in the very visible presence of God in His fiery glory. The Golden Calf incident, therefore, was an instance of high-handed, presumptuous sinning against God’s visible presence among His people!
Moses also adds in this recounting that God was so angry with Aaron then that He would have destroyed him had Moses not interceded for him (Deut. 9:20). This information that the Exodus 32 account does not supply shows Aaron’s great culpability for what he allowed to take place on that occasion.
Psalm 106
An unnamed psalmist provides a brief recounting of the Golden Calf incident (Ps. 106:19-23). He emphasizes that the people exchanged “their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass” (Ps. 106:20) and forgot God their Savior who did such great wonders for them in Egypt and in the land of Ham and by the Red Sea (Ps. 106:21-22).
This recounting explains how the Israelites robbed God of His glory when they made and worshiped the Golden Calf. They were spared from total destruction only because Moses, God’s chosen one, interposed himself between them and God (Ps. 106:23).
Acts 7
In his marvelous defense before the high priest and those who were accosting him (Acts 7:1-60), Stephen related at some length the life and ministry of Moses (Acts 7:20-41). He included a brief recounting of the Golden Calf incident (Acts 7:39-41).
He specified that the people were disobedient to Moses, repudiated him, and “in their hearts turned back again into Egypt” (Acts 7:39) when they told Aaron to make for them gods to go before them at that time (Acts 7:40). None of the previous accounts specifies this information about what the state of their hearts was when this incident took place.
Stephen then added more information that is also not provided in any of the preceding accounts—in their idolatrous worship, the people “rejoiced in the works of their own hands” (Acts 7:41). This revelation illumines the Mosaic statements about their playing (Exod. 32:6) and their singing and dancing (Exod. 32:18-19) by showing the idolatrous character of these activities.
Furthermore, Stephen’s ending his testimony about Moses with information about the Golden Calf incident highlights the importance of that event in the Mosaic part of the selective history of Israel that he testified to at this time.
Conclusion
Based on our study of these four passages about the Golden Calf incident, we learn the following truths
1. Scripture provides 57 verses about this incident in these four passages (Ex. 32:1-35; Deut. 9:8-21; Ps. 106:19-23; Acts 7:39-41). The large number of verses about the incident and the multiple reports about it show its importance in Scripture.
2. Stephen’s climaxing his testimony about Moses’ life and ministry to Israel with material about the Golden Calf incident highlights its importance.
3. By comparing all the passages together, we learn more about the horrific nature of what took place on this occasion. In spite of visible testimony to the presence of God with them, the people returned in their hearts back to Egypt and engaged in idolatrous worship that featured wicked public lewdness. Doing so, they not only robbed God of His glory, but also brought themselves into shame with their enemies.
In future articles, we will see that the importance of this incident is even far greater than what we have seen so far.
See the rest of the articles in this series under point 11 here
Copyright © 2011-2025 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
Abide with Me is a classic hymn that is easy to play on the guitar because it has only seven different melody notes. This PDF provides the melody notes, chords, chord diagrams, and the first stanza of the hymn.
This PDF also provides a new feature that makes playing the melody simple: circled numbers above each note that tell you exactly where to play each note! All notes are played on the fret of first string matching the circled number except for the notes with circled numbers 2.1 and 2.3, which are played on the first and third frets of the second string, respectively.
Here is an audio mp3 of the melody of the song. You can play along with the audio to learn the melody. You can also practice strumming the chords as the accompaniment to the song while the melody is being played!
Copyright © 2011-2025 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
Rajesh Gandhi holds a Ph.D. in New Testament Interpretation from Bob Jones Seminary; he's a long-time member of Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Greenville, SC.
