Sermon Tone Analysis

What Following Isn’t

A Negative Example of Discipleship

Isaiah 29

Intro: The Duck Test

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then it’s a duck.

This is a duck (characteristics)

This is not a duck (characteristics)

The more known positive and negative examples we have, the more likely we are to be successful in identifying what a duck is.

Here are some more examples.

Is this a duck?

Actually, everything is either a duck or not a duck.

The same is true for anything we want to identify.

Two-week miniseries on what it means to follow the Lord.

Are you a follower?

Let’s get some positive and negative examples.

Week 1: What Following Isn’t.

Next week, what following is.

Thesis: Isa 29 identifies several failings of Israel in their followship of Yahweh, which are tied to their religion being focused on externals without a corresponding vital inner faith.

They are marked by empty effort, empty words, an empty vision of God, and empty expectations.

I.

Not Empty Effort (vs 9-12)

Mike preached over this text a few months ago, focusing on the role of suffering in the lives of the people of God.

I will be using the same text with a different interpretational emphasis.

In the broad context of this chapter, God is going to be bringing judgment upon his people because of their failure to follow him completely.

The first failure of their followship is pointed out in vs 9-12, their empty effort.

Isa 29:9-12 ESV - Astonish yourselves and be astonished; blind yourselves and be blind!

Be drunk, but not with wine; stagger, but not with strong drink!

For the LORD has poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep, and has closed your eyes (the prophets), and covered your heads (the seers).

And the vision of all this has become to you like the words of a book that is sealed.

When men give it to one who can read, saying, "Read this," he says, "I cannot, for it is sealed."

And when they give the book to one who cannot read, saying, "Read this," he says, "I cannot read."

In Isa 28, Israel’s leaders are compared to drunkards.

Here, the metaphor is continued to include Judah’s leaders as well.

Their prophets and seers do not hear from the Lord.

Their leaders act foolishly like drunkards, although they aren’t intoxicated.

Although God has given them His Word, they make no effort to read or understand it.

The reason for this is a complex knot of causality that can be interpreted in a few ways.

They have blinded themselves and gotten themselves spiritually drunk (vs 9), and so God, in response to their choice, confirms their depravity judiciously (vs 10).

Or, because of the spirit God poured out on them (vs 10), they cannot help but be blinded and spiritually drunk (vs 9).

This is a classic disagreement that has been going on throughout church history.

The truth lies in the tension.

Rom 1:24-26 ESV

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!

Amen.

For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions.

For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature;

God seems to respond to the depravity of man, which appears to be antecedent to His action.

However, their depravity can in itself be seen as existing because God gave them over to it in vs 24.

Rom 11:7-10 ESV

What then?

Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking.

The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written, "God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day."

And David says, "Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them; let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and bend their backs forever."

Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul seems to clarify by quoting Isa 29:10 in Romans along with Psa 69:22-23 and putting the cause squarely in God’s volition.

2Th 2:9-12 ESV

The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.

Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Here the causation is again compound.

God and man act as free agents and both contribute to the hardness of fallen mankind.

Systematic theology sometimes gets in the way of Biblical theology.

The truth is that God is sovereign over all things and that we are free moral agents who will be held accountable for our efforts or lack thereof.

We have to embrace the tension.

The only thing that the follower of God can control (if anything) is their side of the equation, and Judah is being condemned for failing to put forth efforts in the things they could have reasonably been expected to do.

Stay sober and attentive

Read the revealed word

Seek the Lord’s genuine prophetic voice.

Checkpoint #1: If we aren’t pursuing God with all our energy, we might not be a follower.

II.

Not Empty Words (vs 13)

Isaiah 29:13 (ESV): And the Lord said: “Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men…

The people of God had not stopped the outward show of religion.

They were still going to the temple and celebrating the feast days (vs 1).

They were still apparently praying with words, but the heart was uninvolved.

Rote prayers.

God is great; God is good…

Blessed art Thou, King of the universe, who has given us the fruit of the vine…

Isaiah here points to an external motivation for their acts of worship.

Fear, as I’ve taught before, is an overwhelming psychological impulse to change my behavior or condition in response to an outside person or reality.

When directed toward God, the Fear of the Lord is my overwhelming desire to change who I am in response to who He is.

Naturally, left to my own desires, I would be a glutton, a lying manipulator, and a cheat.

His word and His spirit constrain and transform me, and I choose to act contrary to my old nature in obedience to Him.

This is the central act of worship.

I worship God most truly not by singing or raising my hands but by being submissive to His commands to not be who I am if left untransformed and unrestrained.

Unlike congregational singing, this cannot be faked.

You have either submitted yourself in the fear of the Lord or you have not.

Surely you can be taught the commandments of God and respond in the fear of the Lord, but the fear of the Lord is not something that comes by being told, “you ought to fear the Lord.”

Isaiah lampoons his fellow Judeans for putting on an outward show that looks like worship when all along it is the words of men that they are fearing, not the commands of God.

Jesus quotes this passage specifically in Matt 15:3-9 with the same emphasis

Matthew 15:1–9 (ESV): Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?

For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” 3 He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

4 For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 5 But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” 6 he need not honor his father.’

So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. 7 You hypocrites!

Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said:

8 “ ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;

9 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ ”

Jesus’ complaint in this context is that the Pharisees have replaced the teaching of God with the teaching of man.

The Pharisees had created loopholes in the law by which people were released from the actual commands of God having to do with realities of the heart, but they were clinging to external shows of piety that actually did nothing to demonstrate a fear of the Lord.

As Jesus stated earlier in his ministry to the woman at the well,

“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

(John 4:24)