Our FERVOR our FAITH and our FUTURE
In our reading from Isaiah, we see that it was a time of great sin and rebellion. The people were still going through the motions of worshipping God, but their hearts were not in it and their behavior was no different from the ungodly folks around them.
They were doing what they pleased and then doing what they thought would please God and the formula didn’t work.
Worship cannot be mixed with wrong-doing.
God is fed up, just as he was with Sodom and Gomorrah.
He tells them that the multitude of their sacrifices doesn’t impress Him. (verse 11)
Ritual doesn’t rectify and sacrifices are no substitute for service.
Their attention to every liturgical detail might bring admiration from men, but God saw it as a hollow mockery because of their complete disregard for his moral demands.
The congregation is made up of men whose hands are bloodstained, whose eyes are lusting, and whose hearts are greedy. There are men whose fortunes are built on crimes and who have hardened their hearts against justice and shut their eyes and ears to the plight of poor little children and abused women.
Could this be said about today’s contemporary church?
To see evil and do nothing is to be complicit in it.
What we are must verify what we say.
We must match in character and conduct.
God wants his people to imitate His justice, goodness, truth and mercy toward our fellowman, rather than observe religious ritual while our hearts are still wicked and the world around us is still in need of ministry.
It is the business of the church to make the love of God known in the world by our loving actions.
So what should they do…close down the temple? Have no more sacrifices, no more prayers, no more festivals?
“STOP DOING WRONG,” God says in verse 16.
God is not unreasonable to the ungodly but he cannot forgive the unrepentant.
God offers them a chance to come clean.
They washed ceremonially to go to worship, but God wants their hearts washed clean from sin.
In the most well known verse (18) He says,
“Come now, let us reason together.
Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow.”
It is impossible to sin more than the blood of Christ can wash away, but it is the choice of the sinner to come to the invitation of God to be cleansed, or to remain in sin and rebellion against God.
It is not ritual worship but real repentance that makes the difference.
Then what you DO becomes much more important than what you DON’T DO.
In other words….get busy DOING something good, not just
acting like you are good at times of worship.
Verse 17 says, “Seek justice, encourage the oppressed,
Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.”
We’ll become tired of church if church does not deal with our fundamental human need, with our need to be made new, our need to be forgiven, our need to be refreshed.
If FERVANT worship doesn’t result in compassion for the hurting people around us then it is hollow and meaningless both to us and to God.
If you want to please God, then faith in action is what pleases God.
That brings us to the second passage we read from Hebrews and the second point of FAITH.
Many of you probably know Hebrews 11:1 by heart. I learned it in the King James version which says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen.” But here it is in several newer translations:
Hebrews 11:1 (Living) What is faith? It is the confident assurance that something we want is going to happen. It is the certainty that what we hope for is waiting for us, even though we cannot see it ahead.
Hebrews 11:1 (NIV) Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
Hebrews 11:1 (NAS; RSV) Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1 (AMP) Now faith is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things we hope for, being the proof of things we do not see and the conviction of reality (faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses).
You hear the term, “different faiths” sometimes used to refer to different denominations, and that is really not true.
All Christian denominations are of the same faith: that is, faith in God and in His Son Jesus Christ.
Different “religions” however are like Buddhists, Muslims, etc. All religions have the common denominator of faith or some kind of a belief system.
Even atheists believe something about creation or evolution. They think this world just happened to come about with order and design, out of chaos, and without a designer.
(I sure wish that would work for my closets!)
Hebrews 11:3 says that “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”
Scientists are still trying to figure out when the world began, but the writer of both Genesis and Hebrews tells us how it began when God spoke and the material world came into existence out of immaterial things which had been invisible!
Faith allows us to sense spiritual realities just as truly as we sense things by seeing, smelling, hearing, touching and tasting. It is the Christian’s 6th sense.
The faith of a Christian is the absolute core belief that
God created us for Himself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him. He is actively involved in human history and has a plan for our lives in eternity.
Faith is the ground upon which our hope is built.
Like Abraham, we are called to a place we will “later receive as an inheritance.” (Heb 11:8) We are “looking forward to a city whose builder and maker is God.” (Heb 11:10)
We “consider him faithful who made the promise.” (Heb 11:11)
Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him as righteousness. His generation knew nothing about Jesus Christ or his crucifixion and resurrection, but they believed God was faithful to do what he had promised, to give them a better country, descendants, and make them a blessing.
All of this was accomplished in Jesus but they died before they saw their faith rewarded.
We live in hindsight of the cross but still look forward in faith to receiving our full inheritance in the kingdom of God in the city of God.
This is not our final home and we are given spiritual eyes to understand and look forward to the real substance of our faith being both a physical and spiritual reality one day.
Hebrews 11:13 tells us that people living by faith died and saw the promises “from a distance and welcomed them.”
God has prepared a city for them and for us and we will arrive there one day. It is something of which we can be certain and sure.
It is not a metaphysical mirage that we are pursuing, for God has prepared for us a city, a real city, which, has real foundations (v. 10).
It is the same goal as that on which Christ urged his disciples to fix their gaze when, he assured them that he was going to prepare a place for them, and would come again to take them to be with him (Jn. 14:1-3).
It is the same goal the apostle Paul, pressed on, ‘forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,’ in the conviction that our ‘citizenship is in heaven’ where at last we shall be fully transformed into the likeness of our glorious Redeemer (Phil. 3:12, 20)
So now we come to our last point: the FUTURE.
Earlier in the 12th chapter of Luke, Jesus has settled a dispute between brothers about a family inheritance and told the parable of the rich fool who kept building bigger barns for his wealth on earth but made no preparation for his eternal life.
Then Jesus taught about the lilies of the field and continued to teach regarding trusting God and seeking the kingdom and living free from worry.
Our scripture passage begins with, “Do not be afraid.”
The issue here is one of faith. Will we trust in God to provide for us in this life and the next one?
(The phrase is stamped on our money: In God we trust!)
But we tend to trust in our investments and in our savings and think God is in trouble if the economy is in trouble.
Earthly wealth is temporary and the security and significance it seems to offer us can evaporate within moments by a lost job, a fire, flood, earthquake or business downturn, bankruptcy or stock market crash.
Jesus was teaching that we shouldn’t worry about the future but we should prepare for it.
And the future we need to think most about is our ETERNAL home. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.”
If we are going to a city we need to make plans for what we need to take with us, especially what kind and how much local currency we will need.
Luke explains that it is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom, but we need to have a purse that will not wear out because it will be holding our heavenly treasure.
I guess I may have read this passage more than a dozen times in my lifetime and had never really seen that it is saying, “Don’t put your stuff in a bag with holes in it.”
God says where we put the treasure matters so that it will never be stolen or used up.
And what is that treasure? Well, it appears to be all those true “acts of worship” we talked about, like giving to the poor and helping the less fortunate down here.
Heavenly currency is stored up for you that way.
“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (Luke 12:34)
Do we follow our hearts? No, we follow our treasure.
By storing treasure in heaven we break the bonds of greed and materialism, freely giving to others in need, rather than worrying about our financial safety nets, and we also build God’s kingdom here on earth at the same time.
Have you ever noticed that you don’t think about yourself or worry about what you might need in the future when you are focused upon someone else’s need at the moment?
God provides for both the giver and the recipient.
And one day right in the middle of our service to others, Jesus will return to take us to that heavenly city.
The certainty, but unpredictability, of that awaited event should be motivation enough for our watchfulness and constant faithfulness.
The images of having our loins girded, lamps lit, etc means we will be ready, knowing and doing the word!
We must be faithful in little things….because there are no little things.
We must be faithful in Christ’s absence, because he is really never absent!
Our actions whether good or evil have eternal significance.
The faithfulness is now…..the reward is later.
Jesus will serve those who have served Him with fervor and faith in the future.
Come, Lord Jesus!
