Obedience of Faith — K.P. Yohannan

God's Weariness With Empty Ritual

2. Say. Obey by faith. The biblical passages we read from the Old Testament, New Testament has all very good instruction. Now, remember the passage from Isaiah chapter 1 beginning with verse 10 and God is speaking and we need to listen.

So what does he say? He says I'm kind of upset and I'm not very happy. God is saying that. And then he says things like I don't have any happiness. You know, look at that verse 11. I don't have any happiness or pleasure.

I'm not looking for your sacrifice of animals and bulls. And verse 12, it's like God is saying don't come to church. You are abusing my place of worship. And verse 15, stop bringing meaningless offerings, your incense.

I hate it. And then your, verse 14, your new moon festivals and your appointed feast, my soul hates. And they have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. Have you ever carried a heavy suitcase and in the beginning it was easy, then your hands got tired and your shoulders start aching or a heavy burden.

You see, when you swim, the same thing happens. The other day I was swimming and it was so nice. The water was warm and after two laps, I started breathing heavy. Then I said, well, I better do more exercise.

Then I start doing again. Then I found my legs got heavy and tired. My hands got paining and hurting and start panting. So this happens. You know, little children, they want to carry and help their parents, you know, carry the suitcase and pots and pans and all that.

And they are very excited and take the run with it. And then mommy is after them all and they are dropping the whole thing. What happened? It's heavy. And God is saying, I am tired and weary. Do we take that seriously?

God Revealed Through Christ's Human Emotions

Can God get sad and discouraged? See, we think about God, some super being out there who is not touched with any of our human feelings or sadness or laughter or sorrow, things like that. But that is not true.

Because Jesus said to the disciples, you are asking me to show you God. If you have seen me, you have seen the Father. And then you look at Christ, the man, and you will find the times he cried, he felt sad and he laughed and he rejoiced.

He was angry. So this relationship that we have with this God, it only becomes real when we understand he is not only near us, but he feels, he understands, he sees, he hears. So all those things you read there, the sacrifice of bulls and lambs and incense, and their new moon festival and appointed feast and celebrations, and all these things, not one time God says don't do these things.

Did you notice that? God is not saying don't do these things. The incense that portrayed the prayers of people and their confession, I don't know if you have seen incense and the offering of the incense in the worship, but sometime I will talk to you about it later.

But basically it is the prayers, you will find that not only in the Old Testament, you will find that in the New Testament. Some people, they only believe in the New Testament. They think God is only in the New Testament, it is not in the Old Testament.

You will find the God of the Old Testament is the same God of the New Testament. The best way to understand that is go and read the last book, Revelation. There you find when time is over into eternity, you will find the way God conducts himself and what happens there.

Christ's Warning to the Church at Ephesus

Now there is a parallel passage that I want you to look at, Revelation chapter 2. This is what we are reading. Here Christ is talking to a group of people in a place called Ephesus. And this group of people they are meeting, just like you saw in the book of Isaiah.

The only difference is 800 years. 800 years of time difference. It almost sounds the same. Here Christ is talking to these people. Look at verse 2. I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance.

I know you cannot tolerate the wicked men and all these different things he says. You have tremendous endurance and you work so hard. Verse 4. Now that is the critical word there. I hold this against you.

I am quite unhappy. I am sad and I am upset and I am not happy at all. He says, you have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen. Repent and do the things you did at first.

Now here is what I need you to think with me. Here is a group of people like, say we are the people. Christ talks to the church, to us and says, you do all these wonderful things. You are great. You believe the right thing.

You are actually very fundamental, very evangelical. It is all great. But I am quite sad. The reason is the reason changed. I mean think about it. The sun rises in the morning and it gives light to the whole world.

What is the big deal about lighting a candle in the middle of the day? He owns the cattle on the thousand hills and he owns everything. Everything belongs to God. Why we must give offering? Because we love him.

And that is what happened to the people at Ephesus. They did everything right. They were doing perfectly right. They were doing everything. I mean they worked hard. Everything was absolute in the court of law.

They would just be the best people. But God says the problem is I look inside your heart and there was a time you did all these things because you just loved me. But now you do it out of duty. You just have to do it.

That is the difference. So whether it is 800 years or it is 100 years, prior to this incident in Revelation chapter 2 or even 800 years later or 2016 when we are now here in this journey of the church of 2000 years, the same God speaks to us in the present tense.

From Apostolic Devotion to Medieval Ritual

Let me ask you this question. It says in the book of Psalms, the heavens declare the glory of God. God is saying ultimately the question is asked why? You see the church began so incredibly in a beautiful place.

You find the book of Acts chapter 2. But as time went by, the persecution, the killing, the brutality, the murder, thousands of bishops were brutally murdered. As a matter of fact, one of the strangest things about church history is that the new believers, they really prayed actively that they be given the privilege to be martyred.

This is the most strange thing I am reading about. How they loved Christ and their highest joy was if they get a chance, somebody will kill them for their faith. So was the early church. But then after the freedom that came through the emperor constitution, constant time, the constitution changed, the whole Roman empire became Christian and to the Europe and all that, things began to change.

If you study this, what happens is something quite interesting. The worship we have, the incense, the candles and the altar and the Eucharist all was so sacred, so filled with wonder of heaven and Christ's presence.

But as the middle ages came, that is between AD 500 to 1500, that particular season is known as the dark ages of the church. See what happened, all of a sudden people began to forget the word. And all of a sudden, the sacraments, the performance, the visible things became more important, especially influenced by the Hellenistic culture.

And as a matter of fact, the heathens, people who didn't believe in God at all, the pagan kids and others, they acclaimed and said when they came to the orthodox church and they saw the music, the rhythm, the singing and the candles, the incense and the reverence and respect and they, many confess, it is like we are transported to heaven itself.

But God was saying, I am sad. What happened? By the time AD 1500 came, the ceremony, the Eucharist, the incense, the candles, they all became an end in itself. Some of you who are studying church history and hope you are studying properly, you will be surprised.

Monastic Renewal and the Reformation's Recovery of God's Word

You cannot blame the church leaders for a lot of these things. It was a brilliant theological decision. That is, millions of people that are turning toward east and praying, and all of a sudden, they began to search the Bible to find out how many verses there are talking about the sacredness of east.

And they found a bunch of verses, places. And they didn't think much about looking toward Jerusalem and praying and so somebody from the south and north and east and west, where are they looking? Always east?

No. But they said it is a brilliant move to make to give little emphasis on this. Are they trying to make all the Christians heathens? No. It was a missiological, it was a decision. That was helping, it was kind of a bridge they were building.

Nothing wrong with that, but they missed preaching and teaching of God's word. And finally, the reformation is like the biggest event people talk about, but it was happening forever. Starting from AD 285, with Saint Anthony, the monastic orders, tens of thousands of people walked away from the affluent and rich church and all this glamour and all this stuff going on into the desert.

And they said, no, the city of God is not here. This is not our home. And they gave themselves a meditation and prayer and simplicity and worship. Oh no, they did not deny the altar and the incense and the candles.

No. That was there, but they did not. For them, the word of God was inviting them into the heart of God and they all became a means for them to understand it. Eucharist was not the end in itself. Finally, believe it or not, a day came, people came to church.

Not to partake from the Holy Communion, all they needed was just to watch the priest doing the prayers and performing the prayer. And the ritual. You see what happens now? Now, I tell you something interesting, but I need you to think with me.

Celebrity-Centered Worship in the Modern Church

The same thing is happening today in a different way. Some years ago, not some years, a couple of years ago, I was invited to speak to a very large church in another country, in a western country. They are supposed to have 40 ,000 people attend that church service.

40 ,000, that is a lot of people. They did something very interesting. When I got to that place, I found they have a 24-hour radio station announcing about what's happening and what's going on in the church and the bulletin and all those things.

And I looked for my name. And I asked one of the leaders there, why is it strange that usually when I go to places, they put up my name, say somebody is speaking, why are you mistreated? And he said, oh, sorry, if we mention that our senior pastor is not preaching, maybe 40 of the people may not show up.

They may not come. That many people? He must be so famous. He said, yeah, he is the best. So here is the question. What was the drawing card? What was the magnet? What was the thing having all the people drive for 30, 40 miles distance to come to this church?

Worship God as the True Audience

Now today, you know this television verifies this. The church, the evangelical church and further down the charismatic world, I will tell you without having to be afraid of it because I have been to enough countries and know what is going on a little bit.

The biblical worship, God is the audience, not Bishop. Not preacher, not Bible exposition of great truth. This entire Bible has only one message, one word, Jesus. That's what he said to the Pharisees.

You are memorizing it, you got PhD in this, but you are going to hell. The reason is the scripture talks about me, but you don't want me. So why do we all face the altar? Why do we sit on the side? Because we are humans with senses.

We are humans who understand the invisible through means of visible things. And God is a God who ordained all that. He said, none of these things are wrong, but don't look at the sun and say, I worship you, son.

I say, oh God, you are the creator of the sun. I see you through the sun. So you see the difficulty we have is what he called keeping balance. We are, the pendulum always swings. Either we go that way or they're completely this way.

Either way, we go wrong when we miss God's word and then externals becomes the end in itself. It is not supposed to be like that. And there are people who say, I don't care about any external things. No, none of those things matters anything.

That's not biblical either. Why? Because you will see that in the New Testament, Old Testament, everywhere, God became flesh and dwelt among us and he want us to understand him. Ways in which he created those bridges.

Practicing Obedience From Love, Not Duty

And so, brothers and sisters, it's important that we obey by faith. You read the Hebrew and it's going to take another at least half hour to explain all that. There isn't time for us to do all that. But we do what we do and we must do.

But always remember, I do it for him, not for anyone else. I sing for him. I witness for him. I give for him. I am kind to others because of him. I stay up in the night and pray for people because of him.

I don't do these things because of him. Everything changes. So, may God help all of us, help me and help you. People are the same in the Middle Ages and people are the same today. But we always can be the people of God because there are always people that journeyed with God understanding this.