I want something else
Notes
Transcript
Our scripture text really follows up well on last weeks message from Micah. Last week we looked at the question, Who are God’s people? I answered that question by stating that:
God’s people are those who go against the status quo and work to bring about God’s beloved community on earth, here and now.
It is those who act with justice and compassion.
It is those who walk humbly with God
It is those whom the world might call foolish because they choose to live kingdom values rather than worldly values.
Throughout that passage from Micah we read about what God is wanting and not wanting from His people Israel.
Isaiah follows the same theme when he opens in verse 1 with these words:
1 Shout loudly; don’t hold back; raise your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their crime, to the house of Jacob their sins.
One author suggested that Isaiah was standing up in a huge assembly of people and shouting out this announcement. Can you picture this in your mind. You are at a worship service and the stands up and starts shouting. Their voice is loud like a trumpet. They are announcing the sins of the church.
What would your response be?
Would you welcome a preacher making that kind of announcement?
We would never expect that kind of pronouncement in church. After all we have come together to worship God.
The Israelites were not expecting God to condemn them. They were coming together to worship. They practiced fasting. They did everything that God expected from them.
Look at they question they seemingly ask God there in the first part of verse 3:
Common English Bible Chapter 58
Why do we fast and you don’t see;
why afflict ourselves
and you don’t notice?
They are sounding like God is not answering. The truth of the matter is that God is not listening to them because they are not doing what God has already told them.
This reminded me of kids whining. You tell them to do something and you check back later and they haven’t and when you ask why not they start whining that they did it last time, it is someone else turn. They say don’t you see what I have done.
It is a shame when we do that to God. Here in His written word he has given us everything that is necessary for our salvation. He has told us what he wants from us. We end up going through the motions however we are not changed on the inside. Everything that we do is strictly external and then we complain to God that he does not answer our prayers.
There is two things going on here that Isaiah is addressing. The first is:
False Worship
False Worship
Notice what God says in the latter part of verse 3 and 4:
Common English Bible Chapter 58
Yet on your fast day
you do whatever you want,
and oppress all your workers.
4 You quarrel and brawl, and then you fast;
you hit each other violently
with your fists.
You shouldn’t fast as you are doing today
if you want to make
your voice heard on high.
They are participating in fasting, a religious ritual and requirement but God says that on the day of fasting they do whatever they want.
At the root of this false worship is selfishness. It is like they are saying, I’ll do it if I have to, but I don’t want to. How childish is that? Their worship was filled with childishness and selfishness.
That is not the kind of worship that God is wanting. It is really not about the worship, it is about the relationship. Every since God created humankind, he has wanted a relationship with us. Look at what happened when Adam and Eve first sinned. God came to walk in the cool of the day with them. That tells me that God was in relationship with them.
God’s wants a relationship with us. He is not interested in purely religious ritual.
The second thing going on that Isaiah addresses is this:
Mistreatment of those around them
Mistreatment of those around them
Look at what they are doing on the day that is set aside for fasting and worshipping. They are oppressing their workers, they quarrel and brawl, they hit each other. They are doing all this when they should be fasting and worshipping God.
What are the two great commandments?
Love God with everything you got and love your neighbor as your self.
They were failing on both accounts. If they truly were loving God with all that they got then they would be honoring God by how they were treating others.
The Apostle explained it this with in his first Epistle, 1 John chapter 4
19 We love because God first loved us. 20 Those who say, “I love God” and hate their brothers or sisters are liars. After all, those who don’t love their brothers or sisters whom they have seen can hardly love God whom they have not seen! 21 This commandment we have from him: Those who claim to love God ought to love their brother and sister also.
That word hate means:
Biblical usage represents a broad range of nuances from intense malice to simple disregard as expressed between individuals and groups and between God and mankind.
It is not showing love when they should be.
Earlier in that same chapter John wrote
7 Dear friends, let’s love each other, because love is from God, and everyone who loves is born from God and knows God. 8 The person who doesn’t love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how the love of God is revealed to us: God has sent his only Son into the world so that we can live through him. 10 This is love: it is not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as the sacrifice that deals with our sins.
Notice what he wrote:
8 The person who doesn’t love does not know God, because God is love.
That was the issue for the Israelites, God wasn’t accepting what they were offering because they were not loving each other and they were not loving God.
God has looked at Israel and all the religious stuff they are doing and he says
I want something else
I want something else
God is calling the people back to himself. He is extending a
New call to worship Him
New call to worship Him
The word worship is used over 300 times in the Bible. God is not saying that he doesn’t want to be worshipped, but rather that he wants to be worshiped with a pure heart and mind. Remember the 10 Commandments? The first 2 are:
3 You must have no other gods before me. 4 Do not make an idol for yourself—no form whatsoever—of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth. 5 Do not bow down to them or worship them, because I, the Lord your God, am a passionate God. I punish children for their parents’ sins even to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me. 6 But I am loyal and gracious to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
What is behind these two commandments of having no other gods or making idols? It comes from that first great commandment:
5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your being, and all your strength.
If we are worshipping other things then we are not loving God with are entire being. If we are allowing things to crowd into our worship we are not loving God with our entire being.
In this passage about the greatest commandment God tells them that they are to teach it to the children and talk about and write it out. In other words, this command to love God with everything we got is to so encompass all areas of our life that our lives are focused on God first.
If our lives are focused on God then we won’t want anything to push him aside.
I think we tend to ignore verse 5
5 Do not bow down to them or worship them, because I, the Lord your God, am a passionate God. I punish children for their parents’ sins even to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me.
Why would God punish down to the fourth generation? I do not have time to fully explore this this morning. I have been working on my family tree for years. One thing that I have noticed in the various branches is that if the family is a Christian family that you can see down through the generations of how many have those generations have also been Christian.
If the family walked away from the church at some point you see down through the generations the generations living lives that do not please God. In those families I have discovered criminals and alcoholics.
There is one branch in my tree where the great grandfather was an alcoholic, the grandfather was an alcoholic, the son was an alcoholic and the grandson was an alcoholic. They all died from the complications of alcoholism. There is two great grandchildren, only time will tell how they will turn out. Was their lives effected because of their parents sins? I believe so.
God wants and deserves our love. The main issue here is that the people were wanting to be religious without practicing holy living by loving each other.
The second thing that God wants is
A life called away from self-centeredness
A life called away from self-centeredness
Look at what they were doing. They did what ever they wanted, they were oppressing their workers, they were quarreling and fighting. Some of that fighting was leading to actual physical violence.
They were doing this even on fast days, days that they should have been truly worshipping God. They were fasting, they were wearing mourning clothes and putting ashes on themselves.
From the outside they looked like they were doing all the right things when it came to their worship of God.
God said in Isaiah chapter 29
13 The Lord says: Since these people turn toward me with their mouths, and honor me with lip service while their heart is distant from me, and their fear of me is just a human command that has been memorized,
When we are doing whatever we want and then coming to worship God we are living a lie. We are only paying lip service to God and then doing whatever it is we want.
God is calling us away from self-centeredness to a life that is centered on Himself. This theme runs throughout the Bible. James addressed it when he wrote
22 You must be doers of the word and not only hearers who mislead themselves. 23 Those who hear but don’t do the word are like those who look at their faces in a mirror. 24 They look at themselves, walk away, and immediately forget what they were like. 25 But there are those who study the perfect law, the law of freedom, and continue to do it. They don’t listen and then forget, but they put it into practice in their lives. They will be blessed in whatever they do. 26 If those who claim devotion to God don’t control what they say, they mislead themselves. Their devotion is worthless. 27 True devotion, the kind that is pure and faultless before God the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their difficulties and to keep the world from contaminating us.
James says:
They forget what they were like
They don’t listen and forget
They don’t control what they say
They mislead themselves
Their devotion is worthless
How said is that. They expend all that energy hear the word of God and in the end their worship is worthless.
What is it that God is wanting? God is
Issuing a call to Righteousness
Issuing a call to Righteousness
This call to righteousness is a call away from self-centeredness. The type of worship or fast that God is interested is shown in 18 different ways through the end of the chapter. God talks about:
Releasing wicked restraints
Untying the ropes of a yoke
Setting free the mistreated
Breaking every yoke
Sharing bread with the hungry
Bringing the homeless poor into your house
Clothing for the naked
There are more but those are just some of the things that God is looking for in our lives. Each of them come with promises of God’s blessings. Now we have to be careful that we don’t go from one extreme to another. Doing good works will not get a person into heaven.
Righteousness or right living is balanced between those two great commandments of loving God and loving others.
There is a hymn from Fred Green who was a great hymn writing in England for the Methodist church there. He wrote When the Church of Jesus. It has these beautiful words that emphasizes this balance.
When the church of Jesus shuts its outer door,
Lest the roar of traffic drown the voice of prayer:
May our prayers, Lord make up ten times more aware
That the world we banish is our Christian care.
If our hearts are lifted where devotion soars
High above this hungry suffering world of ours:
Lest our hymns should drug us to forget its needs,
Forge our Christian worship into Christian deeds.
Lest the gifts we offer, money, talents, time,
Serve to salve our conscience to our secret shame:
Lord, reprove, inspire us by the way you give;
Teach us, dying Savior, how true Christians live.
This hymn reminds us to keep our focus on God and what he desires from us. It reminds us that our worship with worthless if we do not live out our faith daily.
What is it that God wants?
God wants something else
God wants something else
He wants more than just our worship. God wants us to live out our faith.
God uses that conditional word “if” in verse 9 and 10. There is blessings for those who live righteous lives. If they do what God desires then He will send light, healing, righteousness and God will hear and answer their prayers.
Do you ever wonder why God doesn’t seem to answer your prayers? Might it be because we are doing the right stuff in worship but we are not living out a holy life on a daily basis.
There are consequences to our actions or in actions.
God tells them that if they respond to that something different that God wants that they will receive new titles.
Common English Bible Chapter 58
Mender of Broken Walls
The walls of Jerusalem had been broken down when it was conquered. The remnant of Judah came back they rebuilt the walls.
The walls of our society are broken, sin and evil are rampant in our world. We need to mend the broken walls in families and society.
Common English Bible Chapter 58
Restorer of Livable Streets
We need to work to restore our world. We begin to do that when we live the way that God desires. When we live the life that we talk about people will see that.
Do you want God’s blessings on your life? You cannot expect God to bless you if you are not living out your faith on a daily basis. It is all about not talking the walk but it is about walking the talk.
Do people see Jesus in you?
God is saying he wants something else. Are you living that something else?