I hate, I
despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Though
ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace
offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs;
for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. – Amos 5.21-23
Just in case we have missed it anywhere along the
way we need to know that God hates false worship that is only a show and not
the result of a change of heart. In Revelation we read about a church where God
says ‘I wish you were either hot or cold, but you are lukewarm and it makes me
sick!’
That is the way Israel was here. They were
feasting their feasts and offering their offerings and singing their songs, but
there was no heart behind it.
How sad it is when people go to church and just
go through the motions. Dead, lifeless, meaningless singing is sad. I was in a
church this summer that sang ‘Before the Throne of God.’ I can’t sing that song
without tears, and yet the song was sung without any life or emotion. I
certainly can’t judge hearts, but the feeling made me sad. How can we worship
without any sign of fire or emotion? It can seem often that God’s people are
just going the motions.
God wants our worship to be real. There needs to
be a genuineness about our worship. Worship should stir us. I realise that we
are not all the same emotionally, but there must be something there.
Another aspect of this, and probably the most
important one, is that God hates worship which is not backed by our everyday
lives. Today we call them ‘Sunday Christians’ who you would never know are
believers outside of church. Their faith and their business don’t match up.
Their faith and their politics don’t match up. Their faith and their words and
actions don’t match up.
Everything about our lives should be all,
everything, completely about glorifying God. All we do, whether we eat or
drink, or whatever we do must glorify Him. Our faith must join us all week, not
just for a few minutes on Sunday morning.
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