When Church Ain’t Church
Isaiah 1:11-18
Counterfeit or fake things can cause a lot of damage in our lives. For example, a fake $100 bill can cost us $100, but a fake email or fake phone call can lead to costing us a lot more than $100. Sometimes it might even cost us our identity if we fall for the fraud. However, there is something that will cost us much more than we can ever imagine if we find it to be a fake and that’s church.
If you remember back in May we spoke of what a church is supposed to look like, what its members are called to do, what it’s Pastors are called to do, and how that builds up the church and spurs it on to its mission. This morning I want to examine a different aspect of the gathering of the church and that’s corporate worship. If our worship is not real, we find ourselves outside of God’s will and there is no worse place to be than outside of God’s will. This is exactly where the children of Israel found themselves in the first chapter of Isaiah starting in verse 11. The nation was falling apart. The prophets were proclaiming the judgment that was coming and calling the nation to repentance. Those serving in the temple continued going through the motions of their religious practices, never once thinking that they might be part of the problem.
Isaiah 1:11
11 “What makes you think I want all your sacrifices?” says the Lord. “I am sick of your burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fattened cattle. I get no pleasure from the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
There is no doubt God is angry with their sacrifices, but there are a few things I want you to notice before we move on. In verse 11 the word we translate as “all” means “an abundance of”. There was an abundance of sacrifices, and they were not being made to false idols (as had been common all throughout the history of Israel), but rather they were made to GOD. They were following the proper methods that were laid out in the book of Leviticus with the use of the blood and the fat being offered properly. Despite all this attention to the details there was still a problem with the sacrifice. The problem was deeper than just what we could see on the surface.
Isaiah 1:12-14
12 When you come to worship me, who asked you to parade through my courts with all your ceremony? 13 Stop bringing me your meaningless gifts; the incense of your offerings disgusts me! As for your celebrations of the new moon and the Sabbath and your special days for fasting— they are all sinful and false. I want no more of your pious meetings. 14 I hate your new moon celebrations and your annual festivals. They are a burden to me. I cannot stand them!
Here again we see a total disdain for the worship and meetings of the Israelites in Judah. We still don’t see the reason. Everything God speaks to as far as meetings, celebrations, and feasts are all being performed the way God ordained them to be in the Pentateuch. There is still a problem with their worship.
Isaiah 1:15
15 When you lift up your hands in prayer, I will not look. Though you offer many prayers, I will not listen, for your hands are covered with the blood of innocent victims.
Finally, God tells them He will not listen to their many prayers, but this time He tells them why. He says it is because of the blood on their hands. The idea of blood is representative of sin - sin that they had and did not repent of. You see when they offered sacrifice, they weren’t really looking for forgiveness (which includes repentance and turning from the sin they are making the sacrifices for), but rather a pardon from punishment and they would continue in that sin. It was a heart problem. It wasn’t the worship they were bringing that was the problem, they were following God’s law, but it was their attitudes in worship that were the problem. They were running back to the worship they were comfortable with without remembering the “why” of worship. They were running to religious devotion rather than the repentance they were called to. This was the reason their sacrifices, their worship, and their prayers angered God. It was because they were fake and just a mask for the rebellion in their hearts.
God is not the great diagnoser, He is the Great Physician who shows them not only the problem, but also how to remedy the problem.
Isaiah 1:16-18
16 Wash yourselves and be clean! Get your sins out of my sight. Give up your evil ways. 17 Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows. 18 “Come now, let’s settle this,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool.
God tells them they must be clean of their sins, they need to stop being selfish, and they need to serve those who can’t do anything in return for them. It’s at that point (when it seems an impossible task) that we get a glimpse of the coming Messiah in verse 18.
Now it’s one thing to look at this as a study in the struggles of God’s people in a bygone era, verses being introspective and seeing if we are falling into the same trap those who were serving in the Temple were. I wonder if it’s me that causes God to look down upon First Baptist Church Bloomfield and say, “Your services make me sick.” Why? When Church is Fake, Church ain’t Church.
For those in the church there is only one ultimate sacrifice that matters within the context that those serving at the temple would understand concerning sacrifice - the sacrifice made through the death, burial, and resurrection of our all-sufficient Savior, Jesus Christ. We are made righteous once and for all through the blood of Jesus Christ. We don’t have to keep going back to the altar to sacrifice like they did in the Old Testament, but there are some sacrifices we are called to make in the New Testament. We are to present ourselves as living sacrifices. We are to make sacrifices of praise, and sacrifices of thanksgiving. When we hold something back, when these sacrifices don’t cost us something personally, when we only do these things as cover for our hidden sin, we are just like those Israelites. Everything looks fine on the outside, but under the surface is a different story and God knows.
Church ain’t Church when our sacrifices aren’t right.
Corporate worship can be a very contentious thing in the church. I want to tell you that the style of worship is not what pleases God, but rather your focus and the heart you bring in worship. That truth is evident here in this passage as the Israelites are doing everything that God laid out perfectly in His word when it comes to worship at the time, but something was still missing. It seems that they were comfortable with this way of doing things, so they came back to it not to worship God the way God demands and deserves to be worshiped, but because there was comfort there. They aren’t interested in repentance, and they aren’t interested in being confronted with their sin in light of the perfection of God. They are just running back to a place of comfort. They run to religious activities, but their hearts are empty of true devotion. Surely, we aren’t guilty of that. Surely, we never worship without the right motives. Surely, our worship is acceptable.
Church ain’t Church when worship isn’t right.
Sin, specifically unrepented sin, is a hinderance in our relationship with God. One of those hindrances comes in our communication with Him. What do you do when we pray during church? What do you do when the invitation comes? Do you confess sin, respond to the Holy Spirit, or do you distract yourself with singing? Prayer is an important part of our service and our relationship with God. Are we free of the sin that will damage that communication?
Church ain’t church when our prayers are wrong.
We started off by talking about fakes and saw that in scripture God was calling the services that the Israelites were performing fake, but the book is not closed on First Baptist Church of Bloomfield. There is grace and mercy for those who have not brought a proper sacrifice, there is grace and mercy for those who haven’t brought proper worship, and there is grace and mercy for those who have let sin hinder their prayers, but…. God will not be mocked. There is coming a time that our works will be tested in fire, and we will see what is fake and what is not.
