As the prophets clearly rejected the corruptions of the outward forms of worship, so they also spoke of the hearts of God’s worshiping people. Amos reminds the people that God expects them to return to Him (Amos 4:6) and God calls to them: “Seek me and live” (Amos 5:4), a call very much in the context of worship. God expects worship to be correct and sincere. Even in the midst of the most serious warnings of judgment on Israel’s worship, the prophets offered hope for forgiveness and renewal.
Many Christians have expressed disappointment and frustration in the last few weeks about not being able to gather for worship because of the COVID-19 crisis. I am one of them. I very much miss the preaching, the singing, the prayers, and the fellowship. I, too, wonder when we will be able to return to worship. But last Sunday, a new question came into my mind: Does God miss our worship?
God is sovereign over all things. “Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?” (Amos 3:6). So He is the One who has stopped our worship as the gathered body of Christ on the Lord’s Day. Perhaps we should ask if He is teaching us something that we are not yet learning. Whenever calamity strikes, I think about Jesus’ teaching that is recorded for us in Luke 13. Calamity should direct us to consider the judgment of God and lead us to repentance. Should the calamity of closed churches lead us to ask if we need to evaluate our worship and perhaps repent?
Various prophets at different times criticized the worship of God’s Old Testament people. Paul criticized worship in the Corinthian church. Do we ever pause to ask if the worship that our churches offer to God is pleasing to Him? Do we hold worship up to be evaluated by the standard of God’s Word? Perhaps God is tired of those churches that have priests offering sacrifices that God has not approved. Perhaps God is tired of hearing preachers who present teaching that contradicts His Word. Perhaps God is tired of the noise of our false, invented praise. Perhaps the outward forms of our worship are proper, but our hearts and lives as worshipers are not right. Perhaps I am being too critical. But surely we can agree that we need to listen again to the prophets, particularly Isaiah and Amos, as we think about worship.
Isaiah, in the first chapter of his book, complained about Judah’s worship as one of the key elements of God’s controversy with His people (Isa. 1:10–20). He begins by calling them to listen to the Word and teaching of God (Isa. 1:10). Then he rehearses the sins of their worship. He rejects their many sacrifices (Isa. 1:11) and their crowded gatherings for holy days (Isa. 1:12–14). He refuses to listen to their prayers (Isa. 1:15). “I am weary of bearing them” (Isa. 1:14). As they abandoned godly worship, so they abandoned God: “Their land is filled with idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their own fingers have made” (Isa. 2:8).
