The Folly of Hypocrisy

The Folly of False Worship in Isaiah 43

Please turn your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 43. I'll read our preaching text, which is from verse 22 to 24. When you have that, go ahead and stand. Yet you did not call upon me, O Jacob, but you have been weary of me, O Israel.

You have not brought me your sheep for burnt offerings or honored me with your sacrifices. I have not burdened you with offerings or wearied you with frankincense. You have not brought me sweet cane with money or satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices.

But you have burdened me with your sins. You have wearied me with your iniquities. Amen. You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your Word. We ask that today it would guide us, guide our hearts, so we come before you in worship, and even in subsequent weeks, we come before you in worship.

We pray that you would be honored with our hearing of the Word, with our prayer, with our song, with the Lord's Supper. In Jesus' name, amen. The passage just before this has spoken of God's goodness to the people of Israel in his gospel.

Why Hypocrisy Is More Astonishing in Light of the Gospel

And now it speaks of their failure to worship him as they ought. Some of these passages may be surprising to someone who is originally hearing this. You did not call upon me. You have not brought me sheep, etc.

Could these things really be said? Did the people not bring him sheep? Did they not call upon him? Is this not what Israel was constantly about? Bringing him sacrifices and praising him? Yet, God still says that they have not done this.

Why? Because they have not done it properly. This has been a main theme throughout the entire book of Isaiah. Isaiah 1, verse 12. The very first chapter it says, When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts?

Bring no more vain offerings, incenses and abomination to me, new moon and Sabbath, and the calling of convocations. I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates.

They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. Now he comes back to the very same thing. But he comes back to this very same thing after having explained to them much of what is going to come to pass in them receiving salvation from the servant of the Lord.

And so, as God has promised them a great salvation, their hypocrisy is even more astounding. And yet, at the same time, because of that gospel, it has its answer that we see in the subsequent verse, verse 25.

I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake. I will not remember your sins. It is by God's mercy that we are able to bring our worship before him. You probably noticed in the corporate prayer, I prayed that God would receive our worship.

This is something that I pray for fairly often because it is something that's important, that as we come before him, that he would receive our worship. Most people come before God just assuming that he would receive worship, just assuming that their prayers are valuable, just assuming that their praise is valuable, not realizing that if we are sinful creatures before a holy God, it is incredibly presumptuous without some kind of reason to think that we could come before the throne of grace.

Now, we do have good reason. We can, by the blood of Jesus Christ, come before the throne of grace. But the reality of this distance between man and God calls for us to treat the nature of worship with a great degree of reverence and solemnity that few people take to it.

Now, by God's mercy that he has given in Jesus Christ, when we come before him without the proper reverence, there's mercy, but let us not be guilty of doing so. And let us not be like many who come without the blood of Jesus Christ and will not find mercy for themselves bringing false worship before the Lord or worship rightly done in an outward sense, but not with the attendant heart and not with the attendant obedience that is required of right worshipers.

Calling Upon the Lord as Worship

It says in verse 22,. Yet you did not call upon me, O Jacob, but you have been weary of me, O Israel. Once again, it's not that they haven't worshiped God. It's not that they haven't called on him in any sense, but he does not count their calling upon him as a true calling upon him.

This word call and calling upon him is one that's used throughout Scripture to describe worship. It might not be one that you're used to thinking of that way, but it is one that we see throughout. In fact, in Genesis 4, when it describes the beginnings of an increase in worship, it describes it at the end of that chapter as it was at that time that the people began to call upon the name of the Lord.

That refers to worship. They're calling upon the name of the Lord. Verse 23 says, You have not brought me your sheep for burnt offerings or honored me with your sacrifices. Nothing that they have brought before him has been satisfactory to him.

He says, I have not burdened you with offerings or wearied you with frankincense. He's not required too much of his people. He does not want frankincense from them. You know frankincense is one of the gifts that was brought to Jesus.

It's a special gift because it is incredibly precious. It's brought along with gold and myrrh. Gold, obviously, something incredibly precious. God has not required of his people very expensive things, great things.

He requires very little. So we cannot say that he's asked too much of us. Rather, what he requires, we are able to give and we ought to give it. So it is a shame when we don't or when we give it in a way that is not pleasing to him.

The Center of the Passage: Burdening God with Sin

It says in verse 24, You have not brought me sweet cane with money. You have not bought me sweet cane with money or satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices. This notion of sweet cane, referring to something that's very rich, right?

The fat of sacrifices, the word satisfied, could also be translated drenched. You know, the idea of God speaking with this extreme language to describe how he might be satisfied with something. They haven't done anything like that.

Now, we know from Scripture that God can't be satisfied with any kind of food because he does not need to eat. In fact, it said that a little earlier in Genesis 40, verse 16. It said, Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.

If you go to the greatest forest and you take all the animals from the greatest forest, they would not be enough to fill God. But that's not his point here. His point here is not really the quantity of sacrifice, though he speaks in those terms.

The problem is the quality of the sacrifice, that none of it pleases him because they do not have the right hearts before him. But you have burdened me with your sins. Here he says it directly. You have wearied me with your iniquities.

He has not burdened them, but they have burdened him. They have not given him anything good, but they have given him something bad. How is it that we are to repay this God who has not laid heavy burdens on us?

Is it by laying a heavy burden on him of our sin? It is not. This verse in the center here, or particularly the second half of it, the second half of verse 23, is the center of this passage. I have not burdened you with offerings or wearied you with frankincense.

Whenever you see an isolated passage of Hebrew poetry, it's worth looking at it and seeing if the center looks different or if there seems to be what is known as a chiastic structure, basically that the outer edges seem to be forming a point into the middle.

You notice he talks about you, you, you on the outside, then you, you, you on the outside, but then in the middle, I have not. I have not burdened you with offerings or wearied you with frankincense. He talks about everything that they do on the outside, and then he speaks of himself in the middle.

This is a chiasm. You should look for it in Hebrew poetry because it can tell you where the force of the passage is. The force of the passage is, he is not required so much. He is not required much, and therefore, their sinfulness is especially heinous before him.

He is not required much, and why is it that he is not required much? That's because he needs nothing. He is God. He is blessed above all. What need has he for anything? Instead, he gives us the opportunity to worship him in order that we might benefit from worship.

The reason why we would want God to receive our worship is because we want the good that comes from that. It is not that God grows more blessed intrinsically in himself. It is as we recognize him as more blessed, we are more blessed by knowing him, and he has not required too much of us.

Worship Without Compulsion, Giving With Gratitude

1 Corinthians 10 .13 says that God would not tempt us beyond what we can bear, but with every temptation makes the way of escape. You may think of that just in terms of the very negative kind of temptations that we face, temptations of lust, temptations of greed, etc., but even with positive things that we should be doing, temptations away from those positive things are still temptations.

When it says he is not required too much, that means that there is no temptation not to give that is so great that we can't bear it. Every temptation that we face when it comes to worship or the circumstances that attend worship, etc., none of it is too great because God does not require anything of us as one who has needs.

He requires things of us as one who interacts with a people who has needs, and our need is to know his blessedness. His need is not to be someone blessed as one who receives. Rather, he is to be recognized as one who blesses others.

That is what we mean when we call him blessed above all forever. Positively, we must bring right worship before him. We must come to him with right hearts, offering right worship. It should not be something that is done out of any kind of compulsion before him.

2 Corinthians 9, 7, famous verse, Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion. If you give as one who is under compulsion, as one who feels like he has to give in order to satisfy God, what is this doing?

Is it accomplishing the purposes that exist in worship in order for you to recognize God as blessed? If you give to God as one who is requiring of you and you don't want to give to him, you're not giving out of a heart of gratitude, you are interacting with him as one who has needs.

You're not recognizing him as blessed, you're recognizing him who is greedy, him who wants, wants, wants, takes, takes, takes. This is the opposite of what worship is supposed to be accomplishing. This says the same thing of pastors and their service.

This is not just true of worshipers worshiping in the standard ways that you would worship, but also pastors as they exercise the charge that God has given them. 1 Peter 5, 2 says, Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you, not for shameful gain, but eagerly.

Pastors are supposed to exercise not under compulsion, and it parallelizes that directly with this idea of shameful gain, not for shameful gain, but eagerly. This is why I know I've been making a lot of applications to the Doctrine of Simon recently, and that is because I've been studying this so much, but this verse comes up often because it so directly addresses the matter of pastors serving in exchange for money.

If you exercise your office as a pastor, if you teach because someone has given you money in order to teach them, and you make that kind of exchange, you are operating under a contract where you are operating by compulsion.

You're under contractual obligation. Now maybe someone might say, oh, well, I'm doing it joyfully. I'm doing it because I want to do it. But if you entered a contract where someone paid you and now you have to give to them, it is definitionally by compulsion.

And this is what is wrong with the incredibly prominent way that people teach these days outside of churches. Within churches, that's not what's happening typically. But outside of churches, when pastors or those who are not pastors but take upon themselves some kind of similar office of teacher, they charge for their resources, etc., that's exactly what's happening.

They're teaching by contract. They're necessarily putting themselves under compulsion. This is also why it is not right to understand a pastor's pay within the church as being a contractual wage that's coming from the church to him.

When the Bible speaks of a pastor's pay as wages, it speaks of them as being wages from God. Just like for the Levites, as it explains in 1 Corinthians 9, the Lord is their inheritance. The people give to the Lord, and then the Levites receive of the altar.

Very similarly, people give to God, and then pastors receive as one who is receiving from God, not one who is contractually obligated to teach a particular people. Now, of course, there's going to be a sense of understanding that when we're working in this together, we have duties to each other, but notice that this is very different than what people have called base wages, okay?

Base wages are where they're directly to each other so that each side is operating contractually under compulsion. Great. So the problem with all that, if you give to God as one who feels like he has to, if you're worshiping God as one who just feels like you have to, then you are not accomplishing the purpose of worship.

The purpose of worship is to recognize God is blessed. It is an opportunity for you to give gratitude before God. He has given you so many things. He has given you everything, in fact. And so he has given an outlet for your spirit in order that you might appreciate that to its fullest, in order that those gifts may not come in a way that you're not fully appreciating them, but in a way that you are fully appreciating them.

It is something that is for you. And so it is a very sad thing when people go about worship not understanding this and going about it in a way that doesn't accomplish the purposes. There was no point in it at all if you were to bring your worship in a false way, if you were to bring your worship in a way that is not accomplishing the purposes of worship.

Maybe you've seen all kinds of other religions that have various ceremonies that are completely pointless and accomplish nothing. Maybe you've seen what different pilgrims in Roman Catholicism do, or maybe they'll go on their knees up a flight of stairs to a monastery, do all kinds of ascetic things that they think please God, and you know God hasn't required that.

That's just totally pointless. What a shame for someone to put so much work in for absolutely nothing. I remember as a kid seeing a picture of a Hindu man who had been raising his hand for his whole life, and I think at night he just keeps it held up by a string or something so that his hand never goes down, and his whole hand is withering.

And he thinks that this is real devotion to his God, and it's costing him something real, but it's gaining him absolutely nothing. This is what happens when you come before the true God, and you do not come worshiping rightly.

That worship accomplishes nothing and is a complete shame. So we ought not worship Him hypocritically. The problem here is not only the problem of a wrong heart, the wrong heart addressed throughout Isaiah, 3rd Commandment, you shall not take the Lord's name in vain.

That's what happens when we come to God and we don't have our hearts involved in worship. We sing without thinking about singing. We're listening to the prayer without really engaging and praying ourselves.

Or your mind is elsewhere. You don't love God as you ought to love Him. Those are all violating the 3rd Commandment. They are all bringing before Him. Worship is not true. It is taking the Lord's name in vain.

But in addition to that, it speaks here of burdening Him with our sins, wearing Him with our iniquities. Worship, even if your heart is in it in the moment, even if you are really excited about the singing, you're listening, your mind is engaged, you know that God is your master, etc., if you have spent the week sinning against Him, if you have things that you have not been forgiven of because you have not brought them before Him, then that worship, even if you have your mind engaged, even if you bring it with a right heart in another sense, is not right enough to have it be accepted by the Lord.

Prayer, Purity, and the Need for Forgiveness

Consider the things that it says about prayer. James 5 .16 says that the prayer of a righteous man has great power as it is working. What does that imply? The prayer of a wicked man does not have great power.

This morning, my family in reading Proverbs 28, we came across Proverbs 28 .9 that says that if one turns his ear away from listening to the law, then even his prayer is an abomination. Another way of saying that would be if you stop listening to God, He will stop listening to you.

A lot of people go about their lives thinking they can just do whatever they want, disobey Him at all times, and then come before Him and have their worship received. That is not the case. You cannot just bring that kind of worship before God.

You must be pure. In Israel, they had ceremonial laws to make sure that they were pure before God. They couldn't wear mixed fabrics. They had to eat only certain foods. And then only certain kinds of people could even come into the temple.

If they had touched a dead person or if they had some kind of bodily fluid emission of various different kinds, that would all keep them from being able to come before God and worship Him. Now, we know that with the temple being demolished, the physical temple, likewise the ceremonial law is demolished, but it's not as though that has no purpose.

Look in our confession, and it explains very clearly what the New Testament says directly enough as well, is that those ceremonial laws about cleanliness show us our moral duties before God. We, if we do not obey the Lord, cannot come before Him and bring our worship to Him.

We'd be like an Israelite who thinks that they can touch dead bodies and then come into the temple, have leprosy, come into the temple. Wear the same things that the other nations wear, eat the same things that the other nations eat, and come into the temple.

This is not how you can come before the Lord. You cannot disobey the Lord and then come before Him and, you know, happy-clappy, stand before Him as though nothing is wrong. But this is what many people think.

Many people think that God receives their worship when He does not receive their worship. What is the answer for this? What is the answer for our sin? First of all, it is not to cease worshiping Him. This is what many people think.

Many people think, okay, well, if I'm not giving with the right heart, I should stop giving. You know, giving the quantity that I'm giving is pretty painful. I don't like doing it. The cure here, since my heart isn't in the right place, I'm going to just stop giving to God altogether.

That's going to fix the problem. If you add outward disobedience in addition to the heart problem and then the other attendant disobediences, that's not helping. Okay, there are people who say, well, I know I should love my neighbor.

I know I should love my family member in this particular way and talk to them. But my heart is not in the right place about it right now. So I think it's right for me just to completely withdraw. Not the right solution.

Or someone might say, well, I know I need to speak out about this certain issue. I need to address the sin in my brother. I need to speak out about what an authority figure is doing wrongly in the way that they're oppressing others.

I need to offer the gospel to this other person. But I think that maybe I have too much pride about it, and I don't really want to say that thing anyway. So it's best if I just not speak at all. These are not the solution to sin.

Adding more disobedience to your... In refraining from worship or any kind of obedience, it's not the answer. The answer is to have your sins forgiven. I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake.

I will not remember your sins. God blots out your transgressions for his own sake. He will not remember your sins. Come before him asking for his forgiveness, and he grants it. He will grant you the right kind of heart.

The right kind of heart, by the way, is one that is repentant. He gives that. If you come to him for the right heart, he will grant the right heart. And then by the mediation of Jesus Christ, he will accept not only your worship, but he will accept you, and you will experience the true blessings of worship, which are to know the blessedness of God, that you would not receive just all the good things in this earth, but that you would know the one who made those good things.

Worshiping God as Blessed, Not as Needy

A lot of people think about God as a distinct kind of good things from the good things of the earth. They think about him as competing with the good things of the earth. Do you realize that if all those things came from God, their whole purpose is that you would know his goodness?

Okay, don't think about those as competing things. The good things of the earth are there to show you the goodness of God. And inasmuch as you want these without him, or you are not able to bring right worship before him, you do not appreciate goodness in the fullest.

You just cannot. Bring your right worship before the Lord. First of all, it is important to worship God. Isaiah is speaking to a people who are regular in their obedience and worship. They always bring their worship before God, but they do not do so rightly.

We live in an age where perhaps the opposite is the problem. Very few people bring their worship before the Lord, and they think that they have a right heart. Of course, if you don't bring your worship before the Lord, you can't be said to have a right heart, so it's not really completely the opposite.

I spoke with someone recently, and I've heard stories of others recently who have said the same thing. This is such a common thing where people say that they don't need to be part of the church, they don't need to go to church because they have church at home, or their heart's in the right place.

God looks at the heart. Where is your heart if you do not love the bride of Christ? That's the problem. The problem is that God does see your heart. Those platitudes may work with man. They will not fool God.

Jesus said, Out of the heart the mouth speaks. If what the mouth is saying is, I have a heart in the right place, but I don't need to bring my worship before Him, your heart is not in the right place.

Worship God with the obedience that He requires. And so as you worship Him, worship wholeheartedly in every aspect with your prayer. Really engage in prayer. Pray in a way that is according to God's will.

What is prayer in order to be accepted by God? It must be according to His will. It must be truly believing, not doubting God as though He's not powerful enough, as though He's not capable. Now, it is right to come with humility about what things He might grant because you know the sinful tendencies of your own heart to ask for your own pleasures.

But do not doubt His capacity to do what is good for His children. It must be by the power of the Spirit. And in the name of Christ, in the name of Christ, doesn't mean that you always have to utter the phrase in Jesus' name, but it does mean that you must come by His mediation.

You do not come with the presumption that God would just give things to you because you deserve things. No, you come to Him with an understanding of why you have that privilege to come before Him. When you sing, sing with your whole heart.

Singing, Hearing, Giving, and Keeping the Lord's Day Holy

We're told in Ephesians and Colossians that we are supposed to sing with gratitude in our hearts to God, with thankfulness in our hearts. Be singing that way. Don't sing with just an absent-mindedness or a boredom.

Don't sing with any of those kinds of emotions. Sing with gratitude in your heart to God and sing for the sake of others as well. Colossians and Ephesians both say that you're supposed to be singing to others.

A lot of people think of singing as something that's happening directly to God. Notice that worship, while worship is always offered to God, some of the elements of worship involve direction toward each other.

Okay, right now I am preaching to you, and this is my worship to God. Right now you are hearing me, and this is your worship to God. When we sing, we are singing to each other, and this is our worship to God.

That's why when you look at these songs, sometimes the lyrics are to God, but a lot of times the lyrics are to each other, about God, about how great God is. You look at the Psalms, same thing. It switches back and forth between speaking to people and speaking to God because both are appropriate in word and song.

In prayer we would never do that, right? You don't switch to talking to somebody else in prayer. In prayer you're just talking to God, but in song we're talking to each other about God, we're singing to each other about God, as well as singing directly to God in a way that others can hear about God's goodness.

Sing with the right purposes in mind. Hear attentively, as someone who is truly a student of the Word and wants to know what it says, being a Berean, going to the Scriptures, see if those things are true.

If you come across things that you hear that are difficult, go see if they're true. Go look them up. Try to understand the other passages that you think might say otherwise. Do whatever it is that you need to do in order to understand the Word.

Be one like those of Acts 11, the Bereans who search the Scriptures daily to see whether those things said were true. Our worship before God is not some bare ceremony that is just accepted because of the motions that you do.

It has its purpose in appreciating God. That is why there are the commands given about how to appreciate God in the hearing of His Word. If you just sit there and listen, you're not going to appreciate God as fully as if you go and you search the Scriptures given the things that you have heard, or if you share those things with others, etc.

When you give financially, give out of real gratitude. Do not give as one who just has to give. Give with real gratitude, knowing that God has given you much and you are excited to give to the kingdom and to build it, to return some small thing to Him, knowing that He needs nothing of you, but He has given you the opportunity to give to Him.

Now, isn't that something? He needs absolutely nothing, but He's given you the opportunity to give? A lot of people think, well, isn't that nice that God only asks for a small amount when He could ask for much more?

One of the alternatives here is He could ask for nothing, and then we wouldn't have that outlet to be able to give Him gratitude and praise. It is a good thing that we're able to bring our gifts to the altar.

Do so with that attitude. Here's another word of advice. If you have... I know we have an online giving thing here. If you have a regular giving set up, don't let this be an excuse to have your mind check out of the giving.

That's good that you're using technology in order to be obedient before God without the irregularities of life becoming temptations to fail to give, but if that is supposed to be attended with the right heart, then what happens to the one who set up regular giving and then is kind of checked out, not thinking about it?

Are they engaged in the kind of gratitude that God would have them to be in in worship so that they would experience God's goodness more fully? You're missing out on something there, okay? If you have regular giving set up, you still need to go to God with gratitude.

Don't let that be an excuse to just check out. And then as you come and you worship Him on this Lord's Day, do so in a way that has it set aside in a way that will truly appreciate Him. If you spend the rest of your week lounging around and having your own kind of rest, and there's a place for recreation, but if you are idle throughout your week and then you come here on this day, are you going to appreciate the rest you receive?

You are not, and you are not going to appreciate God as a God of rest because you're going to be taking it in other ways. Okay, six days shall you labor and do all your work. That is how you make the seventh day holy.

Now notice, it's the seventh day after six, not the seventh day of the week, but the seventh day after six, which in the New Covenant is the Lord's Day, which is Sunday. Make that day holy in order that you would truly appreciate God and be able to offer it with the right heart.

Otherwise, you are not going to be offering it with the right heart. And then with that, obey the Lord throughout the rest of your week. Do not come before Him thinking that you can just bring your sinful self in here, offering your worship before Him, not regarding Him at any other time during the week.

You cannot live your life sinning against Him, and I've not gone through specifics here, but I could list the works of the flesh, etc., all the various vices the Bible describes. If you're going about life with your greed, with your gluttony, with your avarice, etc., with your sexual sin, it doesn't matter, with your bitterness towards man and brother, your hatred, and you think that that's just separate, and then you can come in here, you're just like an Israelite who touched a dead body and then walked in.

The problem is not just that you're spoiling your own worship, you are spoiling the community's worship as well. We are our body offering our worship as a body. There is a thing as secret worship and private worship in families and for individuals.

This right here is corporate worship. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. If you come in having sin that has not been dealt with, you are not just undermining your worship, you're undermining the body's worship.

Do not bring such things before God. But there is no one who is perfect and does not sin. Every single one of us sins. What shall we do? We shall go to Christ for mercy. I'm He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

Come to Him for mercy. He will grant you forgiveness, and then He will likewise grant you the heart that would desire to walk in His ways, that you would not come in as a hypocrite and offer hypocritical worship before the Lord, that kind of worship that's not accepted, that kind of worship where why would you even bother?

Why would you waste your time? What a shame for people to spend so much of their time, so much of their energy. I have all kinds of things I would rather be doing with my day if this were not meaningful.

What a shame to waste it. Come before the Lord as one who is forgiven, as one who is purified for the purposes of worship. He is a God who forgives because He knows His people are not a perfect people.

They are not a people who is able to walk before Him in all holiness apart from Jesus Christ, granting them a holiness, a holiness which came through the cross that we will now remember momentarily. Amen.

The Righteousness of Jesus Christ and the Lord's Supper

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank You for the righteousness of Jesus Christ. We thank You for His sacrificial death on the cross that by His blood we are made forgiven, that we are made pure in order to come before Him for worship.

We thank You that we have a means of bringing our praise before You and that we have a way to be made clean in order to bring our praise before You. We thank You that we can come before the throne of grace by the mediation of Jesus Christ.

May You bless us as we remember His death. In Jesus' name, amen.