Real Worship

[On a personal note - sorry I missed yesterday and I'm late today. Hopefully life will balance out a little in the near future.]

Amos 4:4-11

4 “Come to Bethel, and transgress; to Gilgal, and multiply transgression; bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days;

5 offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving of that which is leavened, and proclaim freewill offerings, publish them; for so you love to do, O people of Israel!” declares the Lord God.

6 “I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and lack of bread in all your places, yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord.

7 “I also withheld the rain from you when there were yet three months to the harvest; I would send rain on one city, and send no rain on another city; one field would have rain, and the field on which it did not rain would wither;

8 so two or three cities would wander to another city to drink water, and would not be satisfied; yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord.

9 “I struck you with blight and mildew; your many gardens and your vineyards, your fig trees and your olive trees the locust devoured; yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord.

10 “I sent among you a pestilence after the manner of Egypt; I killed your young men with the sword, and carried away your horses, and I made the stench of your camp go up into your nostrils; yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord.

11 “I overthrew some of you, as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were as a brand plucked out of the burning; yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord.

Self deception is one of Satan’s best weapons. If he can get you to believe you are doing everything right, when in reality you are not, he wins. And chances are, you won’t even know you’re in trouble. This is the problem faced by our friends in the book of Amos in today’s reading. This section of Scripture is actually almost sarcastic. Amos is telling them, “Go ahead. Bring your empty worship before God. See how He likes it.” (My paraphrase.) The challenge is pretty ugly.

But God is very serious about our empty worship. And honestly, empty worship is so very easy to bring. Going through the worship motions happens every Sunday morning on some level for each of us. Perhaps we simply drift during the hymns or songs. Maybe we think about lunch during the readings. Maybe we fall asleep a little during the message. All point to a heart that just isn’t completely committed to sincere worship. And how many Sunday’s do we come to church expecting to get something without bringing something (and I don’t mean money.)

It is easy to throw around a few accusations. But God is so very interested in our worship lives that He takes the time to talk to us about it on more than one occasion in the Bible. This passage challenges us to take a few moments and examine how we approach our worship of the living God. It is something to be taken seriously and to be approached with intentionality and sincerity. When we bring less than our full attention to the Lord, when we come into worship out of habit rather than love, we bring with us confession of the sin and receive the forgiveness that only Jesus is able to bring. But that doesn’t mean we can’t take it a little more seriously and bring more of ourselves to the experience. The rewards with be a deeper relationship with the Lord and a greater love for that hour (or hours) of worship that are given over to the Lord every week.

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