Wake-Up Music

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. - Colossians 3:16


In a suburb of Nairobi, Kenya, a group of international refugees has been singing sogs that they hope will wake up their homeland. According to the BBC, the group Waayah Cusub has been enjoying extensive airplay on radio stations and television channels by using bold lyrics to address social issues. One of the musicians says, "We are not happy with what is happening back home; in fact we have recorded a thought-provoking song that we hope will bring our leaders back to their senses."

Long before Waayah Cusub began using songs to call for an end to social pain and violence, GOd taught Moses to use music in a bold and provocative way. Knowing that His people's sinful inclinations would distract them when they began to enjoy the prosperity of the Promised Land (Deut. 31:21), God told Moses to teach them the song of chapter 32. It is a shocking song of warning, designed to get the attention of those who would forget God and fill their lives with trouble.

Could our wise and loving God be repeating that strategy with us? Is there a psalm, a hymn, or a spiritual song that is calling us back to His faithfulness and amazing grace? What song might He be using to get under the radar of our natural defenses an renew our hearts today? - Mart De Haan


Come, Thou fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise. - Robinson

Where words fail, music speaks. - Hans Christian Anderson

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Deuteronomy 31:16-22

Yahweh said to Moses, Behold, you shall sleep with your fathers; and this people will rise up, and play the prostitute after the strange gods of the land, where they go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my convenant which I have made with them.

Then my anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall come on them; so that they will say in that day, Haven't these evils come on us because our God is not among us?

I will surely hide my face in that day for all the evil which they shall have worked, in that they are turned to other gods. Now therefore write you this song for you, and teach you it the children of Israel: put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel.

For when I shall have brought them into the land which I swore to their fathers, flowing with milk and honey, and they shall have eaten and filled themselves, and grown fat; then will they turn to other gods, and serve them, and despise me, and break my covenant.

It shall happen, when many evils and troubles are come on them, that this song shall testify them as a witness; for it shall not be forgotten out of the mouths of their seed: for I know their imagination which they frame this day, before I have brought them into the land which I swore. So Moses wrote this song the same day, and taught it the children of Israel.

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