Away With The Noise Of Your Songs

Our country is in a mess. It seems that everywhere we turn there is something gone wrong. What can a single citizen do to fix it? The answer we hear from religious people all around is that we should pray. It sounds like good advice but will it work?

We aren’t the first nation to have things go wrong. When we read the Old Testament we see that the Israelites had problems. Of course, we know the beginning and the ending of their problems so it is easy to say that they should have done such and such and their problems would go away. God gave us the Old Testament for our learning. We learn from studying it what God is like and how He expects His people to react towards Him. What can we learn from them?

We read in Amos 5 that God was very unhappy with His people. They were apparently still having religious feasts and assemblies, offering burnt offerings and praising God in song. What more could God want from them. Here is what He said in verse 21-23:

“I hate, I despise your religious feasts;
I cannot stand your assemblies.
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.”

He hated their sacrifices. He hated their worship of Him. What could possibly be wrong? They were worshiping Him the way they wanted to. They lived their life the way they wanted and then worshiped God when, where and how they wanted. This is not what God told them to do when He brought them out of Egypt. Over and over, throughout their history, God has told them that He wanted them to love, respect, honor, obey Him. He wanted their total devotion. He didn’t want a casual worship of Him that was done on their terms.

It’s easy to see where the Israelites went wrong but what does that have to do with us? God does not want to listen to our prayers if we are not obeying His will. God wants us to be completely His. How can we, merely the creature whose life is so inconsequential in the scheme of things, determine that we will tell God the way it needs to be done. We need to do a lot less telling and lot more listening. God has written down all the answers we need in the Bible. If we will study and learn and obey, then our prayers will go up to God as a sweet smelling sacrifice. If we choose to do things our way and worship God on our terms, our prayers will go up as a bunch of noise.

So, how does this affect our nation? God is in control. He puts the powers that be into power. We may be in for a rough ride ahead. If so, as a nation we deserve it. We have acted deplorably towards our God. If we will turn to God and give ourselves totally to Him, beg his forgiveness, walk in His paths, then He will listen to our prayers and comfort us.

Diana Dow
November 15, 2009