Let Not Your Prayers Be Hindered

Introduction

Good morning everyone!

As we get into the text this morning, you might be wondering why we are talking about these Old Testament sacrifices, feasts, and convocations when we are talking about prayer. These practices are done away with the New Covenant. Yes that is true. While we don’t have these kind of rituals and feasts, we do have different kinds of holidays, traditions, and activities that can make us look spiritual to outsiders, but we honestly couldn’t be farther from the Lord. James 4:2–3 says“You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” James is saying, because you sin and ask wrongly, God does not answer you. This is because faithful prayer comes from faithful living. Faithful prayer comes from faithful living.

For those of you who take notes, I will have three points to help us follow along. Those points are

Faithful Practice Without a Faithful Heart

Faithful Mercy From God

Faithful Fulfillment in Christ

Faithful Practice Without a Faithful Heart

In our passages first four verses, we see that God is not pleased with the worship and sacrifice of Israel. This passage has harsh words for their worship: abomination, vain, trampling, my soul hates. Why does God have such harsh words? These are all things that God has asked for in the law: the sacrifices, the new moon celebrations, and the Sabbath. Were they doing these things wrong? No, the text says that there are a multitude of sacrifices, and that the practices themselves, while viciously insulting, were not incorrect. It was because their actions and heart were contrary to God, even though they did what was asked.

Imagine for a moment that your spouse does all the things that you ask of them around the house, and that he or she does their chores and fills all the expectations that you have of them, but your spouse treats your family like garbage, steals from people around them, and is having an affair. When your spouse comes to vent to you or tries being emotionally or physically affectionate with you, wouldn’t you take that as a slap to the face?

This is how God would feel when the Jews brought their complaints to Him after they are acting. Isaiah outside of the passage lists off the idolatry, fortune tellers like the Philistines, greed, and other offences they have commited against God. In 1 Samuel 15, Samuel speaks to Saul in regards to him not completely decimating the city God told him to, after Saul uses some of the goods to make an offering to the LORD, and says this in verse 22, “And Samuel said, “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.”

What do sacrifices and other Old Testament practices have to do with prayer? God says in verse 15, “When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.” This blood is not about the blood of the sacrifices, this is the blood on our hands due to our sin. Now I hear you some of you saying, “but isn’t our relationship by faith and not by works?” Yes, but like any relationship there are expectations that come with that relationship. A father has the expectations of caring for his children, a child also has an expectation to submit to their father. A husband has an expectation to love, lead, and care for his wife, and the wife is to love care and submit to her husband. All under Christ’s authority.

The expectation of our relationship is that we are faithful to Him in word, thought, and deed.

Some of the sins that the Bible explicitly state are hindrances to prayer or to your relationship with God are

Unconfessed sin

Unforgiveness

Unrepentance

Not loving your wife

Not loving your neighbor

Selfish prayers (meaning prayers to your glory, and not God’s)

Idolatry

If these are God’s expectations, how are we to pray at all? Which leads to the next point.

Faithful Mercy From God

If we continue on in Isaiah 1 we see in verse 16 a call to repentance, to remove the old sin from ourselves and be washed clean. God is telling the Israelites to turn away from what they know they are doing wrong, and if they don’t know to learn to do good. What does this have to do with God’s faithfulness? God sent Isaiah to warn the people of Israel! He didn’t have to do that. God could’ve pulled a Sodom and Gomorrah and eliminated them for their sins, but because of His love for His own people, He sends a messenger to warn the people and to turn back to Him. He calls them to take care of the outcasts among them, because these are the people they are oppressing by focusing on themselves. They steal, kill, and destroy just as the enemy does, and yet God tells them in verse 18 to reason together with Him.

This word reason is a legal term in Hebrew. It would be similar where two parties make their case and come to terms. Which makes sense, when looking at the rest of the verse, “though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow.” God is saying, if you return to me and abandon your sin, I will make you clean. Have you ever had a white shirt go through the wash with red clothes? It turns pink, right? Is that shirt going to be white again? With a lot of work, you might be able to revive it. What if instead of pink your shirt turned bright red? You’re probably not super hopeful for that to return to white, even with all the bleach and cleaners you got. In Israel around this time, there would be scarlet dye for clothing that was highly valued, and it was near impossible to remove. Though this scarlet color also resembles the blood on our hands mentioned in verse 15. It is to show both our guilt and the permanent nature of this guilt, but God will make us clean. These dark red colors, scarlet and crimson, show how dark our sin is, but the white He compares them to is how clean we will be. It will be they never sinned. That promise continues today.

God continues on and says that they will eat of the land again. There were specific promises to the Israelites in the Old Testament that they would receive earthly blessings for their obedience. Deuteronomy 11:13–15 ““And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. And he will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you shall eat and be full.” While this was a special promise to the Israelites, we have a similar promise in Matthew 6:25-34 when Jesus asks why we are anxious about what we eat or drink. Does this mean that God gives us everything we need? Yes and no. God gives us all our needs to sustain our life, but we still live in a broken world. God will provide for us, but we still eventually die. We understand that if we are in Christ, this life is but a stepping stone into eternity, and it is our job to provide for others as an extension of God’s grace, and to bring others to eternity with us.

All of this shows that God is faithful, we can go to Him when we are messing up, when we don’t do everything perfect, and He will make us white as snow. He wants us fully changed and killing sin, but He is the one who cleanses us.

Faithful Fulfillment in Christ

Christ was faithful in His life. He fulfilled all the law the way God intended, but He didn’t just fulfill the outward parts like the religious Jews, who were focused on seeming religious to others, He fulfilled the inward parts as well, so that He could become sin for the world, though He knew no sin.

Hebrews 10:1–7 ESV

For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’ ”

Through Jesus, God showed us that ultimately it wasn’t the sacrifices or the Holy days themselves that He desired, it was love of God and obedience by faith. These traditions of old pointed forward to the promise of the Savior to come, who has come and will come again. That we would be made clean and abide in Him. Christ’s sacrifice took our crimson stain, once and for all, and made us white as snow.

Hebrews 4:15–16 “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” This is the promise to all that believe in Jesus. Though we did the crime and He paid the fine. Trust in Him therefore and go boldly before the throne with all your needs, and pray for His glory to be made real in your life.

Conclusion

In closing, while there are proper methods of prayer, the biggest obstacle to prayer is ourselves. Christ has done the work. Throw off all sin that clings to you so that you may sprint to Christ and His promises of prayer. If you don’t pray, start. If you do pray, examine yourself to make sure that your heart is after the Lord and not your own desires. Prayer is communication, but it is also worship. It recognizes that we aren’t the big guy in charge, God is.

The veil has been torn, we can go directly to God through Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit. It all starts with faithful prayer and faithful living. Brothers and sisters in Christ, God wants us to seek Him, like a father wants to hear from His children. Let us seek the Lord in prayer this moment.

Bows head in prayer.