God Rebukes Judah's Religion

Isaiah  •  Sermon  •  Submitted
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Isaiah 1:10–17 KJV 1900
10 Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom; Give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah. 11 To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; And I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. 12 When ye come to appear before me, Who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? 13 Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; The new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; It is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. 14 Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: They are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. 15 And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: Yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: Your hands are full of blood. 16 Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; 17 Learn to do well; Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.

Introduction

God expresses displeasure with the worship of the people. 10-15

He starts by relating them to destroyed people of the past.
Isaiah has already highlighted the fact that Judah and Jerusalem would be like Sodom and Gomorrah were it not for God’s grace.
Now God connects the rulers and the people of Judah to their counterparts in S&G!
This has to be offensive for the people to hear.
They know just as much as we know about what happened at S&G.
God must have anticipated some resistance to His estimation of the people in the previous section.
In this passage he will dig deeper into His displeasure with His people.
Surely, some of them would have taken issue with God’s judgment based on their strict observance of the ceremonial aspects of their faith.
Isaiah directs them to hear the WORD of the Lord.
That Hebrew term for “word” is strong, it means the absolutely authoritative take on a matter.
There is no argument or debate.
What is about to be said is definitive and unquestionable.
God is not impressed with the formality of their religion, instead He is greatly offended by their religious activities.
God is displeased with the sacrifices, gatherings, and prayers of His people.
These are not the impressive displays of worship that the people think they are.
Something has severely disqualified them from bringing pleasure to God.
He says of their sacrifices...
What is the purpose of the multitudes of sacrifices?
God says that He is full of or sick of their sacrifices.
But why?
Are the sacrifices sick or blemished?
Are they scrawny or inappropriately prepared?
No.
We see a level of excellence in the presentation of the sacrifices that are being offered.
All types of sacrifices are mentioned, even the larger, more expensive ox.
Look at this, too, God notices the fat of fed beasts.
What this means is that the people who were offering sacrifices were taking care to fatten up the animals so that they could offer a hefty, healthy animal.
They are not giving Him their material leftovers.
However, God is not delighted in their sacrifices.
God also takes offense to their very presence on His property.
The temple is God’s house.
He refers to the people gathering there as basically trespassers.
He says they are treading or trampling on His courts.
God wants to know who invited them to come into His house and treat it with such disrespect!
Through their religious gatherings, the nation of Judah thought that they were drawing forth the favor of God; instead, it merely succeeded in drawing forth His anger.
They got together for holidays, feasts, and sabbaths.
They often observed solemn meetings together.
God tells them I cannot away with it. HA!
Do you know what that means?
It means He cannot endure it any more.
Can you imagine?
He even goes so far as to say that their gatherings are wearing Him out.
He says they are trouble to me.
I am weary of bearing them.
God is done with their religious gatherings and cannot stomach them any longer.
Finally, God says he will not hear their prayers.
Hands spread forth before God are supposed to be a demonstration of cleanness.
Lifting holy hands in prayer.
The Jews are coming to God and holding out their hands, which they think are clean.
God is actually repulsed by their hands.
Here is where we get into the problem with their worship.
We know God is full of their sacrifices, but we don’t yet know why.
We know that He is weary of their religious gatherings, but we haven’t been told why.
Now He says that He will not hear their prayers, and the reason is that their hands are dirty.
Specifically, though, their hands are full of blood.
The Hebrew term is “damim” which means to violently shed blood.
The Jews are coming before God, as though they are pure and clean before Him, and yet, in reality they have hands wet with blood.
This is the picture of hypocrisy.
God’s problem with the religious expressions of the Jews stems from the hypocrisy that He observed in their lives.
God is not rebuking the formality of the Jewish worship; He is rebuking their formality divorced from spirituality.
True spirituality, true religion will prove it legitimacy through wholistic adherence to the words of God.
You cannot replace holy living with religious observances.
Hypocrites abound in outward religious observances just in proportion to to their neglect of the spiritual requirements of God’s word.
Judah and Jerusalem may be meticulous in their observances, but their hearts are far from God and their hands are soiled with sin.
Therefore God is sickened, weary, and full of their hypocrisy.
This is the cause of His wrath and judgment upon them.
As is always true about God, however, the love that is hidden behind the wrath, and would gladly break through, already begins to disclose itself in the next section.

God uses strong language to call the people to repentance. 16

This builds off of the imagery that ended the previous section.
The disconnect between their lives in the temple and their lives outside the temple are impossible to ignore.
They are soiled by the hypocritical actions of their life.
God tells them to wash and make themselves clean.
Two things have to happen before a person will wash and get clean.
They have to realize/admit they are dirty.
They have to have a desire to be clean.
God is directing the Jews toward a change of heart.
He tells them to put away the evil of their doings.
This command doesn’t deal with the evilness of their actions, but rather the evil motivations for their actions.
If this changes, then, yes, the evil actions will change too.
God is pleading with His people to undergo a significant level of heart change that will lead to a noticeable level of behavioral change.

If the people will truly repent, it will be evident in their lives outside the Temple.

The areas of life that God addresses are probably a sampling of the areas where they were disqualifying their worship through hypocrisy.
Giving up evil motives and actions will require the people to learn to do well.
The fact that they have to learn to do well shows us how far removed they are from true spirituality.
Pure religion and undefiled will produce these exact habits that God is about to commend.
Repentance will lead the people to seek judgment.
Basically they will champion the presence of justice in their society.
They will not foster or permit a two-tier justice system.
Spirituality will be seen when the people relieve the oppressed.
Every society and culture has oppressed people within it.
Oppression doesn’t have to be personal; it may be circumstantial.
A spiritual society and culture will see to relieve those who are under oppression.
They will judge the fatherless.
This doesn’t sound too nice.
But, it is.
It means that they must give the fatherless an equal legal standing in society.
A fatherless child had no one to stand up for them.
A hypocritical society will take advantage of and steal from the fatherless.
A spiritual society advocates for the fatherless.
Pure religion will cause them to stand up and plead for the widow.
Plead for her care and protection.
Plead for her surviving family to fulfill their responsibilities.
The care of the orphan and widow has always been a revealer for the health of a culture.
The hypocrisy of the Jews was concealed by their religious activities, but it was revealed in the social injustices that they perpetuated.
God rejected their sacrifices at the temple because of their behavior outside the temple.
He was turned off by their religious gatherings because they acted as though things were good when they weren’t.
God refused to hear their pleas because they refused to hear the pleas of their fellow man.

As I look at the condition of these people, I have to wonder how many similarities there are to us.

What does God think of our religion?
We can do everything with excellence.
Our religious exercises can be well-thought out and appropriate for the situation, and yet they can be vapid an powerless.
Do we need a change of heart regarding our own behaviors?
Do we come ready to lift holy hands to the Lord?
Or are we stained by the sins of our week?
How does our faith influence our behavior to those around us?
If what we do today doesn’t influence what you do tomorrow, then what are we even doing?
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