THE LORD’S SONGS IN A STRANGE LAND

“How shall we sing the LORD'S song in a strange land?” Ps.137:4 

There is a spirit in the world today which covers up filth by applauding, simplifying sin by mistaking it for holiness and in many ways singing God’s own songs and speaking and using God’s own words so as to appease conscience from its own and other torments and obvious consequences coming and budding off in sin and sinful ways. My intention today is to give an alert against this sort of things since people sing to cover up filth and sin.

The world is hungry because they reject proper food for the soul. In many ways they wish to have much from both worlds, having many a sin blessed by God. They wish after peace and sin even if the Lord Himself decreed that “But the wicked are like the troubled sea, which cannot rest, and its waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, says my God, to the wicked”, Is.57:20,21. Men wish to have and breed a holy prostitute for a truthful wife, woman wish for a proud man who cares humbly for them. This is a strange pattern of wishful thinking which the heart devised in some strange dreaming world, and I am sure it is close to what the Bible explains as “and it will be one day which shall be known to the Lord, neither day nor night; but it will happen that at evening time it shall be light”, Zec.14:7.

Because the world is hungry, because they buy not where they should the way they should, at least they desire after the good things of our good Lord without mentioning Him at all. This is why the Lord says "My reward is with Me". But, there is a commercial spirit in the world today which devised something else: it uses and sings God’s songs in a worldly fashion. And Christians should become able to show that the reward of the Lord is with the Lord and not with the world and neither that the Lord is a secondary gift attached to a desired thing. They sing to sell, to get to the spoil and rewards coming back to them, even from tithes and offerings, to be praised and so deceive themselves according to what their souls demand from them: to be pleased within sin and within themselves as well, looking like the holy people they are not. I believe this is the main reason these criminals use God’s songs so much. That’s why we are often asked to sing God’s things and words to a commercial and fainting world and be praised if we do as they wish it to be done. But, we read that “Better to be of a humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud”, Prov.16:19.

The other way is to have our own lives filled with sin and the unconfessed filth deriving from hypocritical sins which are hiding behind the Lord’s songs, so as to hurt God deeply by sharing His lyrics and words without cleaning our hands first. Paul states that “I desire that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting”, 1Tim.2:8. People in sin doubt always, even if they sing. Christian, how are you singing today? Do you still sing being residing in the strange land of sin? Are you honest enough to refuse to sing until your heart is spotless and acceptable unto God alone, till you are in a holy land, till He is the one who says you are made clean and not baptism? Blessed is the man who refuses to sing unto God until God has sung unto his own soul Himself. If you are in sin, be sure to believe God will not hear you on any issue besides that sin – that’s faith. Once having clean hands, make sure you are able to believe God as He promises to grant too, especially when it is not for you personally He promises to you (too).

People usually sing for the musicality of the songs, for the beauty of the rhythms and the compositions, for what holy people have and share from inside desiring it for themselves as well, getting into the sheepfold but never through the narrow door of confession and genuine repentance. Seldom do these take into account the harmonious state of heart which the Lord’s songs demand from us. No song of God is well sung unless a heart is spotless from its roots on and until real Life is what is directing and breeding the harmonious sounds within.

José Mateus