True Worship

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There’s a movie that I had been telling Benjamin about for several weeks. It was kind of an older movie about a terrorist incident where the President of the United States was targeted. And since Charla and two of the girls were out of town for a family reunion, Friday night my dad and I put the little kids to bed, and then the two of us and Benjamin had a movie night and watched this movie.

See, I couldn’t talk about that terrorist attack movie without mentioning what happened yesterday. But as we were watching this movie, and it’s one that I’ve seen since I was a little kid, but still was just on the edge of my seat. You know what’s going to happen, but it’s still just suspenseful.

And watching Benjamin watch it for the first time was funny because, you know, the suspense was really there. But as we’re watching this movie, I looked at my dad and I pointed out the actor who was playing the lead terrorist. and I said that man is an incredible actor and he I think he’s underrated I don’t know anything about him personally I don’t you know so I’m not naming names because I don’t know if he’s a good person I don’t you know I don’t know anything about that but from what I’ve seen him interviewed he’s just a mild-mannered little English guy in real life and yet he played this crazed Soviet get radical so well that you forget it’s not him. I mean, he put on quite a show.

And when I thought about the few other things I’ve seen him in, he’s one of those actors that you can’t tell where he ends and the character begins. And it’s just incredible to see somebody who’s that good at putting on a show. It’s really amazing to see it when it’s a television program, when it’s a movie, when it’s something like that.

It’s really unfortunate to see it in terms of our worship. And that’s what I want us to look at this morning, is our worship and the difference between worship and a show. For the last several weeks, we’ve been talking about spiritual disciplines.

These are practices that we engage in that we discipline ourselves to do in order to grow spiritually. Now, I know that spiritual growth is the work of the Holy Spirit in us, and yet the Bible calls us to do certain things to, I don’t even know if participate is the right word in that process, but at least to get out of the Holy Spirit’s way. These are tools that we use and we carry, and the Holy Spirit uses those things to build us spiritually.

Worship is one of those. This morning we’re going to look at Isaiah chapter 29. There are a lot of things that the Bible says about worship, a lot of things that we could look at this morning about worship, but as I was studying and preparing for this morning, the Lord brought my attention back to Isaiah 29 and this idea of not putting on a show in worship.

So we’ll be in Isaiah 29. Once you turn there, if you’d stand with me as we read together from God’s Word. If you can’t find Isaiah 29 or don’t have your Bible this morning, that’s all right.

It will be on the screen for you. But follow along with me as we read from God’s Word. Here’s what the prophet Isaiah, speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, said, the entire vision will be to you like the words of a sealed book, which when they give it give it to the one who is literate saying please read this he will say I cannot for it is sealed then the book will be given to the one who is illiterate saying please read this and he will say I cannot read then the Lord said because this people draw near with their words and honor me with their lip service but they remove their hearts far from me and their reverence for me consists of tradition learned by rote.

Therefore, behold, I will once again deal marvelously with this people, wondrously marvelous, and the wisdom of their wise men will perish, and the discernment of their discerning men will be concealed. Woe to those who deeply hide their plans from the Lord, and whose deeds are done in a dark place, and they say, who sees us, or who knows us? You turn things around, Shall the potter be considered as equal with the clay?

That what is made would say to its maker, He did not make me. Or what is formed, say to him who formed it, He has no understanding. And you may be seated.

This passage is part of a longer section of text where God is giving a message to the nation of Judah through the prophet Isaiah, dealing with the spiritual condition of the country and how because they have failed to heed all of his warnings up to this point, God is about to step in and deal with it himself. And he comes to this section where God’s complaint is about the way the nation was dealing with him in their worship, in their walk with him. And as we read what he says about them, we have to realize it’s possible to look like we’re devoted to God while we’re putting on a show.

It’s possible that we can do everything right outwardly, that it looks like we’re devoted to God, But inwardly, there’s nothing there connected to what’s going on outside to where what’s outside is just a show we’re putting on, like those actors who are so phenomenal at their job that you can’t tell. In verse 14, we see God had some serious complaints against Judah. And as we read through this part of Isaiah, Judah was about to face discipline.

That’s why he says in verse 14, I will once again deal marvelously with this people, wondrously marvelous. us. Now those sound like good words.

For Judah, they’re not good words because God’s saying, I’m about to show my incredible power. I’m about to do some things that are going to get Judah’s attention. Judah had been skating along for years, just kind of keeping God at arm’s length.

We want him there when it’s convenient for us. We want him there when it comes time to deal with an enemy or a problem, but we don’t really want to live like it. Judah was the southern kingdom, by the way, if you’re not familiar with the timeline here.

When Solomon died, his son was a really terrible king and caused the kingdom to split in two. Judah was the southern half. Israel was even worse than Judah, and so those ten tribes were conquered sooner.

God kept Judah around as a remnant and worked through them. And God’s plan here was to allow trouble to come on Judah for God to do amazing things that were going to get Judah’s attention and not in a good way, but eventually bring Judah back to him. and those are the marvelous wondrous works that he’s talking about not marvelous in the sense of oh isn’t that isn’t that terrific but marvelous in the sense that they would marvel at what they saw the final straw in in these generations of judah drawing further and further away from god the final straw was god telling them I will protect you if you’ll just trust me they were surrounded just like today by enemies who hated them, who wanted to take them over, who wanted to annihilate them at the first chance they got.

They were surrounded by all these enemies and God was telling Judah, just trust me, keep the covenant, walk with me, be my people, I’ll be your God, I’ll protect you, just trust me. And Judah outwardly said, yeah, yeah, we’ll trust you, that’s great. Meanwhile, they’re so worried about the Assyrians coming in and taking over that they went down to Egypt and made a deal. They went and made an alliance where they’re now trusting Pharaoh.

They wouldn’t trust God to take care of them, but they would trust Pharaoh. Because if you know anything about the Bible at all, you know you can always trust Pharaoh, right? But they decided they would rather trust in Pharaoh.

That’s what God’s talking about in verse 15 when he said, Woe to those who deeply hide their plans from the Lord and whose deeds are done in the dark place. They went down to Egypt and made this alliance and thought they could get away with it. I guess maybe they thought God can’t see in Egypt.

I don’t know what their thoughts were, but they went down there and said, who sees us, who knows us? Kind of like the people who go out of town and say, well, nobody knows me here. I can do whatever I want to when I’m out of town.

That tells us what’s really in the heart, who we want to be when nobody knows us or sees us. And when they had that opportunity to go where nobody knew them or saw them, they thought their desire was to ignore God yet again. And it was a symptom of the fact that Judah had long since grown cold toward God.

As a matter of fact, we really can’t even look at this as just something that happened to them because verse 13 says, they removed their hearts far from me. It’s not even that their hearts were drawn away. Oh, it just happened.

We didn’t intend it to happen. We just fell out of love with God. They removed their hearts when they actively pursued other things.

They pursued other gods. They pursued other interests. And it drew their hearts away because it’s never a stable situation when we want to worship God with half our heart.

We will either get right and worship God with our whole heart or that half that’s not worshiping God will grow and grow. The idols will take deeper and deeper root and it will push the worship of God out. So Judah’s heart had grown cold towards God, but outwardly they were doing all the things they were supposed to be doing.

They were keeping up the feasts and the rituals and the sacrifices. They were going through all of the religious stuff they had to do. They were doing the washings and the offerings and the incense.

They were doing all these things that looked religious like they were worshiping God. But God saw through it and saw that their hearts had grown distant from Him. It was all an empty show.

And unfortunately, it’s possible for us to do the same thing. It’s possible for us outwardly to look like we’re worshiping God, to look like we’re serving God. Worship, what we’re doing here together is part of worship, but it’s not the total of worship.

We are worshiping corporately in song, in study of God’s Word, in prayer, in fellowship, in all of it. We’re worshiping God. But worship also has a component of what we do outside of this place, what we do when we’re alone, and the posture that we take toward God.

Are we really serving Him? Are our hearts really bowed to Him? And it’s possible to do all these religious things and look like we’re serving God when our hearts are cold toward Him.

That’s why we really can’t focus on the external things as much. We should be doing the right things externally, but as with everything, God is far more concerned with the condition of the heart. I can stand here and worship, I can sway, and I can put on a show and inwardly be just as distant from God as you could imagine.

I can’t judge anybody’s hearts, but I’ve been in enough camps and other events that I’ve seen people, you know, I try not to look around when we’re in worship, but sometimes you can’t help it when somebody’s being obnoxious in front of you. And I’ve seen people that one minute are just putting on a show who just seconds before were chatting and laughing and making noise. And I think, how did they get from, this is not a microwave, it’s a crock pot.

How did they get from here to here? And I don’t want to judge them, but it feels like that would be a show. At the same time, I can worship God and one of those songs that we sang this morning, I think it was the third one, there was a moment singing one of the verses where sin runs deep, your grace is more, I think it was what it said.

And that just struck me. And I was in awe of who God is. I feel like I was really worshiping.

And I realized I don’t think I moved at all during that song. Some of us just aren’t real demonstrative. I remember once telling my wife, I am, something had happened.

I said, I’m angrier than I’ve ever been. She’s like, your face didn’t change at all. Some of us just don’t show things.

You can look the part and not be worshiping. You can also worship and not look like anything’s happening. But God is deeply concerned about the condition of the heart.

We can’t equate the show with the worship. And one thing that I have to bring up with this passage is where this passage was taken and applied in the New Testament. And we’ll come back to Isaiah specifically in just a minute.

I’m not going to read the verses or the passages in Matthew and Mark, but I want you to be aware that they’re there. Because when Jesus applied this passage in Matthew and Mark, he quoted this exact passage, talking to the Pharisees and scribes. Jesus demonstrated that our external efforts were never enough.

What we do externally is never enough. He quoted this passage on an incident when he was calling out the Pharisees and the scribes who appeared to be righteous outwardly. They came to him, one of the, I can’t remember now offhand.

I looked at it again this week, but the details escaped me. But they came to him with one of their complaints about one of the rituals or something that the disciples weren’t doing right. And Jesus quoted this passage from Isaiah to them and said that they were a people who drew near with their words and honored him with their lips, but their hearts were far from him because they had confused reverence for him with the traditions of man.

And that’s exactly what they were doing. The Pharisees were more concerned about their rules and the show they were putting on than the condition of their hearts before God. And Jesus called them out for it.

And that hearkens to the entire point of the gospel. The entire point of the gospel is that our outward efforts and our good works have never been enough. Our outward efforts and our good works can never be enough to make us right with God.

If we could ever do enough outward good works to make ourselves right with God, if the show was ever going to be enough, if we could ever put on a good enough show, then the sacrifice of Jesus Christ was unnecessary and was a tremendous mistake. Because why would Jesus need to put himself through that if we could somehow make ourselves right with God another way? The very fact that Jesus suffered, bled, and died on the cross was because you and I could never do enough good.

We could never outwardly be good enough to make ourselves right with God. And the reason why we could never outwardly make ourselves good enough is because all the effort we put in could never change what’s in here, where the real problem lies. And so Jesus pointed to the Pharisees one of many times he did this and said, you honor God with your lips, but your hearts are far from it.

All the good works, all the religious deeds, the heart is still the problem because the heart is still filled with sin. And the show was never going to be enough. So Jesus came and He went to the cross willingly.

It’s important that we understand He went willingly to the cross. He was nailed to the cross and He shed His blood and He died to pay for our sins so that we could be forgiven, so that our sins could be paid for in full. And then He rose three days later to prove it.

And it’s still true that the show is not enough. It’s still true that what we do outwardly is not enough. And folks, hear me on this.

Don’t understand me to be saying something I’m not saying. we should strive to live godly lives outwardly. My point is not that we should abandon godliness outwardly.

My point is that that’s not enough. That’s not enough. There needs to be a change and there needs to be cleansing within.

And only Jesus can provide that. And our job now is simply to believe that He died in our place, believe that He paid for our sins in full, and believe that He rose again. Ask for that forgiveness and you’ll have it.

Now for us as believers in worship, that’s a reminder to us his application of this to the pharisees is a reminder that while the outward is important we can’t get so focused on that that we ignore what’s taking place in here and that our we we need to worship him truthfully and we see back in this passage in isaiah that true worship that honors god comes from within that was the that was the point god was making through isaiah that’s the the point that god was making when he spoke in human flesh to the Pharisees, when Jesus spoke to the Pharisees, true worship that honors God comes from within us. It’s not just in the show. It’s what takes place in the heart.

We can look at God’s complaints about Judah and what they were doing wrong. And from God’s complaints about what Judah was doing wrong, we can flip those around and learn what the right things are to do. First of all, when we look at verse 13, it teaches us that true worship doesn’t leave a gap between the internal and the external. He says, this people draw near me with their words and honor me with their lip service.

That wasn’t the problem. We should honor God with our words. We should praise Him with our lips.

We should do that. That’s not a problem. The problem is what follows the but here.

But they remove their hearts far from me. You could exhaust the dictionary coming up with new words and phrases to apply to God to try to praise Him and worship Him in the most flowery, poetic, eloquent way you could muster. And it means nothing to God if it’s not backed up by what’s in here.

If it’s not backed up by a heart that is deeply and unquestionably devoted to Him. God wants our whole hearts. And if there’s a gap between what we’re doing out here and what’s going on in here, if there’s a gap between the internal and the external. It’s not true worship.

It’s a show. We have to be on guard against that. I have to be on guard against that.

When I say you, please don’t think I’ve got this all perfectly under control and you need to fix you. This is for all of us. And I’m here to tell you, this may be a bigger challenge for me than for you.

Because if there are days you’re just not feeling it with the Lord and you don’t show up here to worship, not much happens. I have to be here whether I’m feeling it or not. So the answer is not to put on a show.

The answer is to deal with the Lord and get fixed whatever it is. It’s easy to put on the show, but God isn’t impressed with that. If there’s a disconnect between the internal, if there’s a disconnect between what I say with my words and what I do and what I really believe and what I really think, then there’s a problem.

And I need to bring this heart in line with the outward worship. And so just think about that sometimes, because it seems to be a bigger issue when we come to corporate worship. We’re not out there trying to worship God outwardly by ourselves when we’re not feeling it.

We just don’t, which is also a problem. But when we come together to worship God, and things are not right between us and God, but we’ll put on the show anyway, be aware and be sensitive to, is there a disconnect between where my heart is and where my lips are. The answer is not, if there is, the answer is not to quit worshiping God and it’s not to just plunge forward and put on the show.

The answer is deal with the Lord about what’s going on in your heart so that when we do come to worship Him, we worship Him from a place of spirit and truth. Verse 13 also teaches us that true worship is a discipline and not just a habit. And I borrowed that phrase.

On Wednesday night, we were talking about the book of James, not just being hearers of the word, but being doers. And Ms. Sharon pointed out that hearing is a habit.

It’s something we can just do because we’ve always done it, but doing is a discipline. It’s something we have to challenge ourselves to do. And I told her I’m going to remember that, and I’m going to quote it, and I’m going to use it.

Didn’t realize I was going to use it Sunday. But true worship has to be a discipline, not just a habit. Not that we come and do it just because it’s Sunday.

This is what I’ve always done. I’ve been in church my entire life. as far back as I can remember, I cannot imagine what I would do on Sunday morning if I didn’t go to church.

That’s not a good enough reason to worship in and of itself. It’s a good thing. I’m thankful that my parents raised me the way they did.

But that by itself is not enough reason to worship God just because I’ve always done it. This is tradition. If I’m here worshiping God, because this is what I’ve always done, this is what my parents always did, this is what my grandparents did, that’s not a good enough reason.

And that’s not true worship. Now the answer, again, is not, then quit worshiping God. The answer is deal with the Lord about what’s going on in your heart so that you’re worshiping Him not out of a sense of tradition, but because of who He is, as we’re going to look at next.

When we go to verse 16, we see that true worship is based on who God is, not how we feel. Isaiah asks the question, Shall the potter, the one making the pottery, be considered as equal with the clay? That what is made would say to its maker, he did not make me.

Or what does form say to him who formed it? He has no understanding. And he says at the beginning of verse 16, you turn things around.

As I understand it, I don’t think that’s a command. I think that’s an indictment. I think that’s God speaking through Isaiah telling the people of Judah, you’ve got this backwards.

You act like the clay is in the driver’s seat, being able to tell the potter how it’s going to be. And Judah needed to be reminded of that attribute of God, that God is the potter and Judah is the clay. God is the creator and the maker.

He’s the sustainer of all things. In Him we live and move and have our being. That God holds nations and kingdoms in His hands.

God is responsible for every breath we take and every heartbeat that we experience. God’s responsible for all of it. Without Him, we wouldn’t exist. We wouldn’t continue to exist. And sometimes it’s easy to get it backwards and think, He exists for me.

When the Bible teaches that I exist for Him, they had a faulty view of God and a faulty view of themselves and a faulty view of the relationship between the two. And it was affecting their worship. The same can happen to us when we get a faulty view of God.

That’s why our worship, to be true worship, needs to be based in a biblical view of who God says He is. And you can turn to just about any page of Scripture and read things there that whether they directly address it or not, point to some attribute of who God is. I’ve given you a list of questions to discuss tonight, And one of those is name some of the attributes that the Bible teaches about who God is.

And why does this give us a reason to worship Him? The one given here is His might and His power. That they’re being reminded He is the potter and we are the clay.

They’re about to be reminded by the things as God moves these nations around like pieces on a chessboard. As God moved in the Assyrians and the Babylonians and moved the Egyptians around in order to bring Judah to its knees so He could rebuild it. they were about to understand the might and the power of God.

We don’t worship Him because we feel like it. We don’t worship Him because it works well for us. True worship is not, I think this fits into my life, true worship is a recognition of who God is.

And it’s a response to who God is. That He’s the one that created us. He’s the one who because of His holiness could wipe us out due to our sin.

but because of His love and His mercy, chose to offer a way of salvation instead. We could start to list all the things that God has done, and we’d never finish the list, but we could start a list like that and draw from it all these attributes of God, and they all give us reason to worship Him. Worship, the way we worship corporately, the way we worship individually, it helps us to grow spiritually because it’s a recognition of who God is.

And we need to constantly be reminded of who God is. If we’re going to walk with Him, if we’re going to serve Him, if we’re going to do it correctly, if we’re going to grow spiritually, we need that reminder of who God is because it keeps us grounded. Because if we’re not reminded of who God is and if we’re not consistently worshiping Him, we’re going to end up worshiping something else.

We may even end up worshiping ourselves, as foolish as that is. True worship is rooted in who God is. And who God is, is as I’ve already said, a God who was powerful enough to create us, A God who is holy enough to hold the line on sin and judge it.

But a God who is merciful enough to love us in spite of our sin. A God who is all-knowing enough to see down through the corridors of time and come up with a plan of salvation that would satisfy His holiness and His justice and His mercy. A God who was loving enough to send His only Son so that we could be forgiven.

A God who is willing to hear even the worst sinner when they look at what Jesus did and cry out for mercy. This morning, if you’ve never trusted Jesus as your Savior, I want to invite you to do so. Your sin is a heavy burden to carry.

And it’s one that you can’t deal with on your own. It’s one that you can’t ever make right with God on your own. But the God we worship made a way for those sins to be forgiven.

And if you’ll believe that Jesus paid the price for you and believe that he rose again, you can ask for that forgiveness this morning and you’ll have it.