Today we begin a sermon series exploring What God wants? This is an age old question that Jews, Christians, Muslims, and a variety of religions have explored throughout the ages. Despite all the lofty interpretations, and educated guesses only one man has ever brought us what God wants for our lives. That man is Jesus Christ.
John Wesley during his ministry was quick to point out that all that was needed for a Christian life is found in the pages of Scripture. So for the 9 weeks we will take a walk through the Bible from the Old Testament prophets of Isaiah and Micah, through the Gospels, to the writings of Paul to the Ephesians.
We will take this tour and answer how God is speaking to us through three questions.
1) What result does God want to accomplish?
2) What does God want people to be and/or to do?
3) If we took this passage seriously. What changes would we make in our church?
Our Scripture reading for today takes us to 8th century B.C. when Isaiah was speaking to the people of Judea. Judea is on the verge of being invaded by the Assyrians. According to Isaiah the people had turned from God, however at this moment in order to appease God. They are performing rituals, sacrifices and worship services, so what is wrong with the picture? Aren’t they doing what God wants of them? Yes and no.
Listen to what God has Isaiah tell the people of Judea:
When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand?
New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation— …I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them…even though you make many prayers, I will not listen;
God affirms they are doing all the “stuff” they have been told to do. However God does not stop there, with all they are doing their hearts are just not in it. They aren’t doing these things because they love God anymore. They are doing these things because they are afraid of what is coming. And hope to appease God, like some little demon they have been worshipping as a god.
He tells them that they need to “wash themselves clean” they need to repent and turn from their present life.
Looking at our questions: So what does God hope to accomplish with this scene? For the people of Judea, we could say it is bring them back to heart of worship. Humbling themselves before the Lord God Almighty “Yahweh!” Falling back in love with God and giving themselves over to Yahweh.
Okay if this is how it was meant for people of 701 B.C. what does it say to us 2700 years later? How many of us who know people who come to church because that’s just what you do on Sunday? How many know people who consider themselves Christians, just because they were baptized once yet they do absolutely nothing Christian like. How many of us know people who call themselves Christians, yet they spend most of their time discrediting the man and God they claim to be a follower of?
I am guessing you probably know people from a variety of these categories. We may even recognize ourselves in some of these. You see, in this scripture God is using Isaiah to call on the people of Judea and to us across the sea of time to take a good look at the way we worship, at the way we express our love to the Lord God Almighty.
I think what God is trying to accomplish, here is to remind us to look at where our heart really is. I want you to turn in your hymnal to page 12, and look at the Prayer of Confession. Now I want you to look at it and think about whether you really mean it? Do we really feel bad for not loving God with our whole hearts of turning our neighbors away, or are we going through the motions.
So what does God want people to be and/or to do? For us as followers of Jesus Christ, we have been blessed with God’s grace and mercy at the sacrifice made on the cross. Sometimes we get boastful, or sometimes we forget where we came from. We begin to think that well I am doing great I don’t need to rely on anyone. In this way God speaks to us also and calls on us to remember our past, remember that Jesus called us to do for others and God did for us. Protect those who cannot defend themselves. Free people from the bondage of self destruction, and work to make our community a representative of the kingdom.
The last question to be answered is, if we took this passage seriously, what changes would we make in our church? I won’t answer this one for you, directly. But think of all the possibilities that could be made in the world, if 1 billion or so Christians in the world took seriously the words of God through Isaiah?
So what are we to do and take from this passage? I think the end of it sums up how we are to begin to see what God wants for our lives, ministry, and our so on.
God called the Judeans to repentance. He calls us to repentance as well. He calls us to take ownership of those behaviors, objects, misdeeds, and so on that have become a barrier between ourselves and God. This means actually spending time in prayer and reflection. It means letting God into your heart and let the Holy Spirit convict you.
The Believer’s Bible expresses the virtues of repentance this way:
True righteousness is expressed in five positive exhortations: (1) “learn to do good,” which implies the need for someone to teach God’s way; (2) “seek justice,” i.e., divine justice; (3) “rebuke the oppressor,” i.e., correct and punish the one who does evil; (4) “defend the fatherless”; and (5) “plead for the widow.” Both orphans and widows need help and justice and are the most likely members of society to be mistreated.
Once we truly have taken these items and have given them to God then we can truly begin to grow in Christ.
In fact I like what Pastor Howard Parnell has to say on this matter:
The challenge for Christ’s church today is this, "let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." It isn’t the cleverness of our methods, the techniques of our ministry, or the wit of our sermons that puts power in our testimony. It is obedience to a holy God and faithfulness to His righteous standard in our daily lives. (Howard Parnell)
You see once we have removed these barriers we can truly accept what God wants for us. We can truly accept the renewal that God wants to bring into our lives.
Once we have truly turned our lives over to Christ we begin to see all life in a different way. We begin to see life on this earth through God’s eyes. We begin to view suffering in a different light. We feel compassion in a whole new way. In this way we seek to be used by God to restore hope to the broken in spirit and sight to the blind.
As Pastor Parnell put it, it’s not about the new gizmos of worship, it’s really about where our heart is in the worship. So this week I challenge you to look at what could happen if we took this passage seriously. How would you view your relationship with God? What kind of church (local and denominational) do you think we would be transformed into if were to repent, put our heart into worship, and seek holy justice for the broken in our communities. Amen.
