The Sabbath was a day
of REST. At the festivals it was held on the first and
seventh days. They were commanded to hold a HOLY
CONVOCATION. That meant to read or rehearse the Laws of
God.. This is the only meaning of worship in the place of
the SPIRIT as it gives heed to the words of God and not to
divisive preachers.
The pagan or Saturn Sabbath originated
in Babylonia. The people "worked at religion" on the
Sabbath to feed, clothe, house, entertain and have sex
with the gods. Only the gods got to rest. Giving the
Jew's the Sabbath forced them not to participate in
pagan rituals but to rest. Restricting travel and other
work may have been a sincere effort to keep people away
from places like the Jerusalem Temple which, as in
Nehemiah's days, had become a giant fertility ritual
(karen Armstrong) and a den of thieves or house of
merchandise.
Bible 101aaa knows that the Sabbath
was for the rest Jesus died to give from the clergy who laded burdens on people and used them
like pack animals. Musical rituals are really offering
the works of human hands as a sacrifice. Worship teams
even claim that "we are mediators between man and God."
COME, and let us
return unto the Lord: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he
hath smitten, and he will bind us up. Hos 6:1
After two days
will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us
up, and we shall live in his sight. Hos 6: 2
Then shall we
know, if we follow on to know the Lord: his going forth is
prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the
rain, as the latter and former rain
unto the earth. Hos 6: 3
Ephraim, what shall
I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee?
for your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the
early dew it goeth away. Hos 6: 4 O
God sent Job, Amos,
Isaiah and Ezekiel to "hew" the people for replacing His
Word with musical performance. Amos specificially
connects musical religious festivals as the cause for
the ignorance of the people so that they hungered and
thirsted while the "clergy" played instruments, drank
wine and refused to be "evangelists."
Therefore have I hewed them by the
prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth: and thy judgments are
as the light that goeth forth. Hos 6: 5
For I desired
mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt
offerings. Hos 6: 6
We should understand that animal
sacrifices was the only justification for Robert
Beasley's "optional traditions" such as any form of
music as worship was animal sacrivices. When the Jews
lost Jerusalem and the temple, instrumental "noise"
ceased until AD 1815 in a liberal synagogue which "sowed
discord" and divided Jews in a court of law.
Second,
the "Spirit of the Branch" was not a
little indwelling "person" called the Holy Spirit Person of the God
family.
AND there shall come
forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his
roots: Isaiah 11:1
And the spirit of the Lord shall rest
upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the
spirit of counsel and might, the
spirit of knowledge and of the
fear of the Lord; Isaiah 11:2
And shall make
him of quick understanding in the fear of the
Lord: and he shall not judge after the sight of
his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his
ears: Isaiah 11:3
Third, Hosea, like Amos, warns
about the musical idolatry in Israel. This was the same
Molech or bull worship Israel brought with them from
Egypt, which cost them the Covenant at Mount Sinai,
which Amos warned about and which got Stephen murdered
(Acts 7):
But they like men
have transgressed
the covenant: there have they dealt treacherously
against me. Hos 6: 7
Gilead is a city of
them that work iniquity, and is polluted with blood. Hos 6: 8
And as troops of
robbers wait for a man, so the company of priests
murder
in the way by consent: for they commit lewdness. Hos 6: 9
I have seen an horrible thing in the
house of Israel: there is the whoredom of Ephraim,
Israel is defiled. Hos 6: 10
Notes
from:
"The Holy Spirit,
uttering His voice by Amos, pronounces the rich to be
wretched on account of their luxury: 'Those that drink
strained wine, and recline on an ivory couch,' he
says; and what else similar he adds by way of
reproach. Especial regard is to be paid to
decency (as the myth represents Athene, whoever she was, out of
regard to it, giving up the pleasure of the flute because of the
unseemliness of the sight). (Clement of Alexandria, p.
245).
"...these same
people were punctilious in their religious
observances. Never did such abundant sacrifices
smoke to Yahweh from the altars at Dan and Bethel and
other sanctuaries in Israel; and the note of praise rose regularly and loudly
from tongue
and harp.
Was not this the
worship in which Yahweh delighted? So they thought,
but the voice of yahweh through His prophet told a different story." (F.F. Bruce, Israel,
p. 58).
There was no congregational singing with
instrumental accompaniment among the "people's"
congregation of Israel. There was no praise service in the
Synagogue.
"The prophets were
singularly unimpressed by all this religious busyness. They asserted that the
people had abandoned the true God for heathen
idolatries and that their much-frequented
sanctuaries were sinks of iniquity. Recent archaeological
discoveries go a long way towards confirming their
condemnation of popular religion. It is significant,
for example, that on the ostraca from eighth-century
Samaria, the proportion of names compounded with Baal suggests that no less
than a third
of the population practiced some form of Canaanite
religion." (Heaton, E. W., Everyday Life in the
Old Testament, Scribners), p. 231).
You have lifted up
the shrine
of your king, the pedestal of your idols, the
star of your god -- which you made for yourselves. -- Amos 5:26
Yea, ye took the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Raephan,
the image of them which ye made for yourselves."
Amos 5:26 LXX
"they employed on
their light, enervating unmeaning music, and if they
were in earnest enough, justified their inventions by the
example of David... The word can mean no other than devise.
He introduced into the
Temple-service the use of the stringed instruments,
the kinnor, (the lyre) and the nebel (the harp) in
addition to the cymbals.
Whence these, in
contrast to the trumpets, are called the instruments of David." (Barnes, Albert,
Amos, p. 308
"When Amos (6:5)
caustically chastises the nouveaux riches and their 'artistic' extravagance, he stressed for the
first time the age-old feud between the professonal and dilettante (orig. tr):
- They chant idle songs to the sound of the
harp
- and fancy to
play their instruments like David.
- &emdash;
(The Int. Std. Bible Dict., p. 457).
After Israel went
into captivity and death because the people hungered
and thirsted for the Word and were taken into Assyrian
captivity, Judah in Jerusalem were no better because
they practiced musical idolatry in the temple because
they had demanded and God had granted them the right
to "worship like the nations" and perish like the
nations:
Also, O Judah, he hath set an harvest
for thee, when I returned the captivity of my
people. Hos 6: 11
See the
musical worship of Tammuz by the women in the
temple.
"Amos stressed "that
violations of the moral law could not be remedied by means of festive rites, offerings, or liturgical indulgence on the part of the
sinner. In point of fact, God was already standing beside
the altar (Am. 9:1ff), poised and ready to
shatter it. No ritual, however, elaborate and symbolic
in nature, could possibly substitute for the sincere worship of the human spirit, grounded in high moral
and ethical principles." (Harrison, R. K.,
Introduction to the Old Testmane, Eerdmans, p. 895).
Worship under the Law
was like the worship under Christ: a sincere person
would seek God through His word, would live right and
would practice social justice. The non-civil Israelites
never engaged in ceremonial legalism.