Reading
SAA Notes
You find God’s heart in 5:4-6. Verse 5:24 is a good motto for police detective work and our lawyers and judges. God Himself and belief in Him is the foundation of good justice that is for our common weal! Complacency was and still is a besetting sin for believers.
SJA Notes
* Holy God, please put a right spirit within us, a true heart after Your own heart.
“I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.”
We see here the stupidity of false religion – God hates it.
Unbelief manifests itself in hypocrisy.
Look at the Pharisees, Chief Priests and Teachers of the Law in Jesus’ time.
And deeper.
Look within our own lives.
The Lord is not speaking here to pagan societies of the day, not the idol-worshipping unbelievers in surrounding lands.
No.
The warning here in Amos is to the CHURCH!
“Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.”
Why is God speaking this way to His people?
Remember the previous passage,
“… Yet you did not return to me,”
Israel had rejected her King, her Lord, her God – Her FIRST LOVE (see Revelation 4).
How then could Israel resolve her complacency, her unbelief?
How can we today resolve our complacency, our pride in self and human achievement, our own dipping in and out of false religion?
The answer lies at the beginning of the passage,
SEEK ME AND LIVE.
This is it. Right there. The heart of the matter.
Let us seek God today.
* Righteous and Holy God,
Please help us to seek You in our lives, to follow You, to do what You tell us.
Thank You that in Jesus we find rescue and salvation, hope and assurance.
Please bind us up in You Lord, with cords that cannot be broken.
Amen.