True worshipers (Isaiah 1:10-18)

4 before Advent (31^st October 2010) 

Text – Isaiah 1: 10-18

 

 The sermon for this morning is taken from our Old Testament text for today.  Let us read Isaiah 1:10-14:

¹⁰ Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom;
       listen to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah!

 ¹¹ "The multitude of your sacrifices— what are they to me?" says the LORD.
       "I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
       I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.

 ¹² When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts?

 ¹³ Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me.
       New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations— I cannot bear your evil assemblies.

 ¹⁴ Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts my soul hates.
       They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.

 

Now turn to Isaiah 29:13:  The Lord says: "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.’

I believe this message is timely for us today because many people are going to church for all of the wrong reasons, and worshipping with wrong motives. This problem is also compounded by the fact that church today has become preoccupied with “our” worship, (i.e. on what we do); rather than on God’s worship.

So as we come to the end of the year, it is good that we reflect upon what we have been doing and what we have failed to do during this one year; so that we begin anew next year. For our reflection I have used a message from God spoken through prophet Isaiah more than 2,700 years ago.

Israel had fallen into sin as a nation. She had turned her back on God.  Yes, Israel was continuing in all of the religious ceremonies.  They were still offering sacrifices; they still celebrated all the religious festivals.  But God was not impressed with what they were doing. 

In verse 10 God was talking about Sodom and Gomorrah: you remember those two were cities destroyed by God in the book of Genesis because they refused to turn from their evil lifestyles.  Here God was not talking about Sodom and Gomorrah: he was speaking to the people of Israel, but referring to them as Sodom and Gomorrah. What was wrong with Israel?

The problem was not with the rituals themselves: God himself was, in fact, the one who instituted most of these rituals. The problem was with those who were performing these acts of worship.  As I pointed in Isaiah 29: 13 just now, the problem was because the Israelites were worshipping God only with the mouths, but their hearts were not in it. They sang and they sacrificed, but they did not worship. They fasted and they celebrated their festivals, but they did not worship. Their lives did not reflect a true heart of worship. Look at verse 14.  God said, “Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts my soul hates”.  That was a sarcastic comment. God said, “It is “your” New Moon festivals; not “My” New Moons. He was basically saying, “This worship is obviously all for you, because it is doing nothing for me”.

Now if you look at verse 18, it says "Come now, let us reason together," says the Lord.  Notice that this is not an invitation to a debate or argument. No. This is an invitation to think things through. It is an invitation to discover the wonders of God, and the truth of God and the grace of God! The Lord is saying, "You’ve spent enough time going through the motions of religion. You’ve spent enough time resisting me and rebelling against me. I want you to think about what your life could be like if you repented of your sins. I want you to consider how much more wonderful your existence could be if you decided to love me with all your heart, soul, mind and strength!"

It is amazing how many of us go through life without ever stopping to think about our relationship with God.  We have time to work 50 hours a week.  We have time to go on family vacations.  We have time to raise for our children, our family members and friends, we don’t have time for the most important person in the whole universe!  We don’t have time for God!  And God is saying, "Come on now, let’s talk about this! Let’s put aside the mistakes of the past and talk about the future. Let’s talk about the things that are truly important!

I want you to understand that God is not saying that we can come and reason with Him tomorrow, or some other time. He says "Come NOW and let us reason together!"  You know how many people have said, “May be someday, or next time or after I am less busy, then I’ll go back to church." But more often than not, that day never comes.  Do you know why?  It is because God’s when God calls you it is not for ’someday’: they are for “right now”.   Isaiah 55:6 says "Seek the Lord while he may be found.”   You understand what that verse means?  It implies that if you don’t respond to him now, while he is calling you - you might not find Him later!

As I reflect upon this text I also think about the worships we have been offering in this Church all these years.  We all have “days off” during the course of the week or month.  Last Sunday was one of my low moments: I was physically and mentally exhausted and I knew I was preaching a half-cooked sermon!  I confess I did not glorify God in my worship last Sunday.  If I, your priest and worship leader, can have a “day off” in worship, I am sure you experience that too.  But, if you are experiencing it Sunday after Sunday, something is seriously wrong: we must do something about it. 

I have only about 30 minutes to speak on this subject.  So I need to get right to the point.  What is worship?  It is a term that is often misunderstood because it is very broad.  But it will help us a bit to look at a definition given by Rick Warren in his book, “The Purpose Driven Life”.  He defines worship like this: “Anything you do that brings pleasure to God is an act of worship.”   It is a fact that we were created to worship with our lives.  When you love someone, you want to do anything for him or her: you literally worship the person.  A person who does not believe in God also worships, but he does not worship God. 

Christians, as described in 1 Peter 2:9, "are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God…”   It says that we are chosen so that we “may declare the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light.  Worship is our response to experiencing the presence of God. It involves all the ways in which we can respond to Him, all the ways that we can praise him by what we do and say. It involves all the ways we can demonstrate that God is worthy of all praise and glory and honor and power and might.  Worship needs to be our lives. Our lives need to be worship.  

Now the problem of worship is very much like many other problems we have.  When things become familiar and when we have become comfortable with them, they start to lose their impacts in our lives. Worship is an expression of our relationship.  But when worship becomes routine or just a matter of habit, it also becomes meaningless or something you take for granted.  That is why we need constant renewal in worship.  

There are several areas where we can improve.  First, we need to maintain our integrity as church if we want to offer true worship. God told the people of Israel, “Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right!”   God says that worship blended with wrongdoing will not work.  And it is not only God who will become tired of the Church if the church is not connected with integrity: we too shall become tired of it.  Without personal integrity the Church is not going to make a difference in our lives.  It is not going to give us spiritual benefit. If we go to church and pretending to be holy while there are unresolved conflicts and anger in our personal lives; it will eventually wear us out.   

Second, we need to be connected with compassion.  One reason why we put a theme for next year as “Growing Together in the Body of Christ” is to revive this idea of care and compassion among church members.  Our blood-donation campaign last Sunday was partly to recapture this spirit of caring for the community.  Doing something good for other people is not only good for them: it is good for us as well.  But if we continue doing things in church that have nothing to do with caring for people, we shall soon get tired of it. God will also get tired of it.

Third, we need to deal with our fundamental human need, with our need to be made new, our need to be forgiven, our need to be refreshed.  God said, “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes .... Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.”

To grow up means to allow constant renewal to take place in our lives.  We need change and we need to be refreshed.  I cannot bring change to this Church by myself: this is the responsibility of the whole Church.  Each one of us needs to constantly evaluate himself.   If you are to look at the group or fellowship that you are leading now, can you honestly say that you are happy with it? Are you satisfied with what you have achieved?  Most importantly, does your ministry please and glorify God?  (I can encourage you personally to move towards change and renewal, while the Holy Spirit can inspire and equip you to achieve it: but in the end, it is you who will decide whether to change or not).   

If you want to know what I think I can honestly say I am not satisfied with several areas of our worship.  One of the things that I need to mention is our general attitude towards God’s house or building. Almost every time when we have a PCC meeting there is complain that something gets broken or lost. Some of us have the attitude that because the things do not belong to us personally, we can be careless about them.   I want to remind you they belong to God.  This building is God’s house and outside is God’s garden.  The general cleaning that we do each month is part and parcel of worship. But I don’t think many of you see sweeping the drain, or pulling the weeds and throwing away the rubbish as worship, otherwise all of us would have turned up for the work party.   But don’t forget the earlier definition of worship given by Rick Warren that “anything you do that brings pleasure to God is an act of worship.”    Dirtying your hands to scrub the floor of his church, or pruning the flowers of his garden bring pleasure to God, and that is worship.

We need improvement in our worship music.  If you surf the internet and seek the word “sing” in the Bible, you will find it appears 122 times, compared to the word “pray”, which appears 121 times.  You and I all know about the importance of saying our prayers.  But if I am to ask you whether you ever sing to the Lord, I am sure some of you may say sometimes, or all the time, or say, “I can’t sing.”  

We all know that saying our prayer is a necessary element for the Christian to communicate with the Lord. The Bible tells us to pray at all times...to pray without ceasing.  If we are to truly know God and build a relationship with Him, prayer must be a vital part of our lives. But what about singing?  Why is it that not all people want to sing in church during service?  Isn’t singing a part of our worship expression to God?  If it is mentioned 122 times in the Bible, then it must be important.  But how can someone go through life without practicing it in worship?  How can people who sing at Karaoke, or sing as they listen to music in their cars refuse to sing during the worship time?  

I want to tell you that singing to the Lord is as important as praying to the Lord.  Our song is one of the most powerful tools that have the ability to touch the emotions of people, as well as God.  We cannot deny the power of music on the human level.  We need to get rid of the idea that singing is not a waste of time in our services. Singing is very important to God and needs to be a large part of our worship experience.  Last Sunday, at the Iban Service we had 14 children baptized and that took about half an hour. We only had one and a-half hour to celebrate the whole service. So I told the congregation that I would not preach a sermon so that we could spend half an hour singing praise & worship songs to God! 

It speaks to both the congregation and the music worship leaders.  While the congregation must sing with the worship leaders, the worship leaders must also be wise in choosing their songs: that their songs can be sung by everybody.  Secondly, our songs must never go stale.  We must always introduce new songs into our worship.  The book of Psalm keeps on reminding us about singing “new song to the Lord”, which indicate that fresh outbursts of rejoicing and reverence are important to God and helpful to us.

Finally, worship is the awareness that were it not for Jesus touching you, you would still be hobbling and hurting, bitter and broken.  Somebody says that “worship is the “thank you” that refuses to be silent”. That was what was happening Zacchaeus. He could not help it, except to express gratitude to Jesus.  Jesus did not ask for anything, but Zacchaeus offered to give to the poor and pay back those he had cheated. He said to Jesus, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”  When you truly know how much you have been spared and knowing what Jesus has given up for your sake; you cannot help it, except to say “Thank you”.

When we are truly thankful people it will be expressed in our worship by the way we give.  I can say that our giving to the church is poor, if I am to compare it to our living standard.  That attitude has to change and when we have properly known a God who graciously gives, even his Son Jesus Christ – we can then enter into worship of Him. That’s the first key to experiencing a worship renewal.