This illustration may fall flat with the younger generation. Do you remember the analog radios and how you would turn the knob ever so slowly to dial in your station just right? Do you remember as you drove further from the signal how you might start to hear some other station playing completely different music but was mixed in with the song from your home station? Do you remember how frustrating that was and how irritating it was trying to tune out the static?
More than 2,700 years ago, God told His people, “Take away from Me the noise of your songs” (Amos 5:23). Why was God referring to Israel’s songs of worship as “noise”? While Israel was singing the right words in their songs, their lives (and hearts) had gone in a different direction. God was hearing their words, but their lives and hearts were creating static, for He could hear that their hearts did not match their words. Thus, what they were offering Him was “noise.”
Do you ever wonder how God hears our/your singing? Is there static/noise in our singing, when God hears our hearts going in a different direction than our words? Is it time for us to dial it in?