Isaiah 43:22-28; Isaiah 44:1-5
So turn to Isaiah 43, 21. We’ll
read 21 through 44, verse five. Actually, it’s verse 22 of chapter
43. It says, yet you did not call
on 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 bought
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. I am he who blocks out your transgressions
for my own sake. I will not remember your sins. Put me in remembrance, let us
argue together. Set forth your case that you
may be proved right. Your first father’s sinned and
your mediators transgressed against me, therefore I will profane
the princes of the sanctuary and deliver Jacob to utter destruction
and Israel to reviling. But now hear, O Jacob, my servant,
Israel whom I have chosen, thus says the Lord who made you, who
formed you from the womb and will help you. Fear not, O Jacob,
my servant, Jeshurun, whom I have chosen, for I will pour water
on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground. I will pour
my spirit upon your offspring and my blessing on your descendants. They shall spring up among the
grass like willows by flowing streams. This one will say, I
am the Lord’s, and another one will call, on the name of Jacob,
and another will write on his hand, the Lord’s, and name himself
by the name of Israel.” Amen, God’s great and gracious word. So you’ve probably heard me say
a million times, maybe not quite that many, I guess I was bearing
false witness, a few times, maybe more. You’ve heard me mention
the threefold formation, deformation, and reformation. So something
gets formed and then it gets deformed and has to be reformed. We talk about being part of the
reformed church, the church that was formed in the Pentecost,
early church days, deformed over the thousand years or so of the
dark ages, and then reformed by the likes of Martin Luther,
John Calvin, and all the rest. You know how this works practically.
You get your house all neat and orderly. It’s formed. And then
the hurricane, the whirlwind comes through. House guests,
children, husbands, whatever. And it gets deformed, right? And you are in a huff until you
get it back together. You get it put back. We’re watching
a nation that was formed a couple hundred years ago being deformed
by government bloat, government waste, all the rest. And we’re
now seeing, hopefully, it being reformed as they drain the swamp
and put money back in the pockets of the people. And, you know,
this week they’re telling all the places around the world where
our money went to the I could have done something wacky
and taken the $50 million. Maybe that would have sufficed,
but they didn’t ask me for it anyway. But the government needs
to be reformed at times. Good companies, good businesses
have decision makers who can say, you know, things aren’t
like they ought to be, and they make hard choices, hard cuts.
and they reform, reshape their business. You’ll hear in the
news of layoffs or you’ll hear maybe Elon Musk and Twitter,
he cut what 80% of his workforce and they’re doing better than
ever. He also cut off the avocado toast
in the lunchroom, break room I think. So it happens in companies. Private sector meets government.
That’s what we’re seeing today. I was mentioning before morning
service with one of our people who probably did government contracts
most of his life. And he said that in the private
world, he would offer his computer expertise to companies to help
them save hundreds of thousands of dollars. You give me $25,000,
I’ll build a system, and it’ll save you hundreds of thousands,
if not millions of dollars over the years. Well, in the private
sector, the banking world, go for it. We’ll give you what you
need. Do it. We probably should do it, but
no, probably because all their friends have jobs, that sort
of thing. The church, the church needs
reformation. God forms it. It gets deformed.
There’s reformation. You can follow the pattern through
God calling Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. You know, Abraham
would call on the name of God. He’d worship at an altar. He’d
trust God. And then he’d go down to Egypt. And he’d fib about
his wife. It’s my sister. Bad things would
happen. And he’d say, Oh God, I shouldn’t
have done that. And so there’s formation, deformation, reformation
in the patriarchs. Definitely in the time of Israel
and the Kings, they would find the book of the law, read the
book of the law. The King would weep. He’d put on sackcloth ashes,
dust on his head, and he’d tear his robes. And then they would
start doing Passover again or whatever they weren’t doing.
And it’s the same in the church. What is it, the second law of
thermodynamics? Something about decline, you
know, if you set something up, if you clean something up, if
you straighten something up, in time it will fall apart, it
will become untidy, it will become messy, and so we got to fix it
back. Protestant Reformation, John Calvin’s big. deal was to
reform worship, get all the ceremonies that the Catholics had brought
in, all the man-made ceremonies, get those out. Let’s just worship
God the way we should. Luther wanted to bring back the
doctrine of justification by faith. And so as people in the
line of Protestantism and the line of the reformed church,
we have to remember the mantra. We should, as the church, be
reformed and always reforming. And so we look to the scripture
as our norm, as our guide. Remember Paul’s word to Timothy. We read chapter two tonight,
but if you bumped into chapter three, all scripture is breathed
out by God and is useful for teaching. and for rebuking and
for correction and for training in righteousness so the man of
God may be thoroughly equipped. Well, one of those words of the
scripture and its effect is it can take what’s knocked over
and disarray and it can fix it in your life and in the life
of the church. So in our passage tonight, Israel
has strayed from norms. They have gotten off the beaten
path. They were formed and now they’re deformed. And you hear
a lot of that form language. Even it said tonight that God
formed Israel in the womb. He called Israel by name, all
the rest, the church. So Israel has strayed from the
norms. God formed them. They’ve become deformed because
of sin. And now he wants to reform them
in the new covenant. So they’ve been called, loved,
kept by God and blessed. And if you look at verses 20,
2 to 25, you’re going to see that He’s weary of them. Well,
first, they’re weary of Him, and then He is weary of them. And we’ll pick that apart for
a few moments. Verses 22 to 25 remind us that
Israel had become formulaic in their worship. They had become
box checkers. Y’all know what a Well, I went
to church today. I put my offering in the plate. I went to Sunday school. I wore
my suit and tie or my dress. We check the boxes and it’s easy
to check the boxes, but did something happen in our hearts? Would Paul
say of us, Oh, we’re growing in our faith. We’re abounding
in our love for one another. Would he say that of us? Or did
we just go check the boxes and give our you know, or Holy Bob
or Holy Nod. So we want to be careful not
to be box checkers. That’s what’s happened to Israel. So in verses
22 and 23, God says to Israel, you’re weary of me. 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. And I have not burdened you with
offerings or wearied you with frankincense. He’s saying to Israel, you had
me. I was your God. You were my people. Our relationship
was, was mutual. It was good. The covenant love,
the covenant fellowship was great, but now you have put me off.
And though you’re going through the motions, you’re, you’re,
you know, you’re bringing bulls, you’re killing things, you’re
burning things. You’re, you’re offering me the best. Your heart
is not in worship. Your heart is not, in it. And so reminder of a danger of
formalism. You know, we could go to church
and we could knock a service out in about 42 and a half minutes,
right? If we were good Methodist. Just
read the book and get right through it. And don’t preach too long,
maybe 12 minutes max. What is it, sermonettes make
Christianettes? Formalism though, I like formality. I love our,
we’re not low church Presbyterians, we’re not high church, we’re
probably mid church Presbyterians in our formality. I like what
we do, it’s standardized. Right? We do the same things
really the same way all the time and the content just changes.
It’s all biblical, but it has a theme, it matches, it goes
with the sermon, all that sort of business. And so we don’t
have, I would not say a dead formalism. We also don’t have
a legalism. You know, you gotta come, you
gotta, you know, look the part, that sort of things. But what
God is saying here is you’re coming to please yourselves,
not to please me. And you’ve become slaves to the
form and not to the content or not to the heart issue. You’re
weary of me. Now, I want to suggest to you
that there’s probably some blessing in going through the motions.
You know, I was a kid in church all the time, morning, noon and
night, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, prayer
time, all the rest. And so when I went off to college, you know,
that’s when you get away from your parents and you’re supposed
to do what you want, when you want, how you want. I still went to
church. I don’t know that my head was
in it or my heart was in it until a little bit later, but I still
went because that’s what you do. And in some sense, well,
in a real sense, you should go to church until it becomes church
to you, right? You should go because that’s
where the word is read and preached. We talk to people sometimes about,
oh, I’m at church and I don’t understand yet. Well, what do
we say? Well, you probably should quit coming if you don’t understand
it. No, we say keep coming because what will happen, the Holy Spirit
will open their eyes. And that’s the same for us when
we maybe are going through the motions, we’re weary with church.
And here’s a little secret. The preacher can become weary
of church. I’ll have a little deeper confession
here. Back during Christmas, I had
a little bit easier schedule, lighter schedule. There was no
Wednesday this, Sunday that. Well, we started Sunday stuff.
But my logic class at Bradford wasn’t on. Other people were
at home walking the dogs. I didn’t have to walk them all
the time. Just no sports, chasing kids here and there, none of
that. And I could sit and read more leisurely. I take my walk
and pray more consistently. And then guess what happened
is January crept on. I’m just checking the boxes,
just chunking it out. You know, got to get up, got
to do this, got to write this. You got to preach this. You got
to teach that. I got to go here, go there. And, and you get kind
of cold and formulaic. Now I’m a duty guy. You just
wake up and do what’s in front of you. But it can get cold sometimes. It can get very sterile. A friend
of mine gave a little speech to the pastors and elders of
our Presbytery about a year and a half ago about things he learned
on his sabbatical. And he said, you have to read
the Bible till you’ve read the Bible. and you have to pray until
you’ve prayed. And you need to order and guard
your day as a minister until those things happen. Probably
in the old days, before we got too busy and too much information,
a minister used to have the whole morning to study and then the
afternoons to visit with people. Now it’s just all the time, every
direction, things coming. But even as ministers, we can
check the boxes. and even lead the service in
a way that just checks the boxes. The danger of formalism and legalism
and heartless, heart not being in worship is true, both of the
parishioner and the pastor. It is possible to come sit in
church and to look pious. It is possible to stand up here
and lead the service and look pious. It’s possible to profess
faith and not possess faith. It’s possible to be in church
and not be in church, as it were. And so we’ve got to examine ourselves
and make sure that this judgment God is giving on Israel is not
the judgment He would give to us. Are we weary in God or is
it a delight to Him when He says, oh, you’re here? Wonderful. Great. Good question to ask,
isn’t it? Am I wearying God? And am I just wearing myself
out checking the boxes? So God says, you’re weary of
me checking the boxes, but now he’s going to flip and say in
verse 24, I’m weary of you. You have not bought me sweet
cane with money. You’ve not satisfied me with
the fat of your sacrifices, but you have burdened me with your
sins. and you have wearied me with your iniquities.” So they’re
worn out keeping the old Testament customs. He’s worn out with their
myths. He’s worn out with their sin.
He’s worn out with their iniquities. What doesn’t delight you, God
says? My presence. What doesn’t delight you, God
says? My worship, my sacrifices, my ceremonies. What doesn’t delight
you? It’s also not delighting me.
There’s other places in the scripture where God says your prayers or
your incense or the smell of your offerings, it’s a stench
in my nostrils. It does not please me. They have
burdened Yahweh, wearied Yahweh. Now what do we know about God?
God is big and strong and mighty. He can put up with anything and
everything. Well, he can’t put up with sin and he can’t put
up with rotten hearts and he can’t put up with dead formalism.
He can’t put up with people going through the motions. It’s sin.
It’s a burden to him. These two in covenant relationship,
God and his people, they’re talking past each other. And so that
relationship should be an intimate one. Well, What’s the solution? We’ve got to get worship right.
And the New Testament helps us. The New Testament helps us in
a lot of ways with how do we get worship right. But first,
if you start with the second commandment, where we are to
worship God the way he commands, not the way we invent. Whatever
he commands, we do. Whatever he doesn’t command,
we don’t do. We often speak of the elements
of worship. We read the Bible, sing the Bible,
pray the Bible, preach the Bible. In the sacraments, we see the
Bible, taste the Bible. In baptism, we, you know, the
water. So the Bible comes alive in worship. There are things we must do.
The circumstances are wisdom issues. You know, what color
chairs to get. You know, that’s not in the Bible. Unless you’re
building the tabernacle, but they didn’t have chairs. They
stood, uh, you know, what time 11 o’clock? Well, that’s generally
for the farmers. They can get, get the cows milked
before morning church, that, that sort of thing. So there’s
wisdom. Um, but here’s the big thing. You know, a lot of times
we say, well, we do all the right things, right? And we don’t do
any of the bad things. You know, we’re not having a
Superbowl party. We’re more pious, right? Uh, that is tonight, you
know, What does Jesus say to the woman at the well? It’s not
about the place. It’s about worshiping in spirit
and in truth. And so if we put the truth on
display in worship and the spirit of God is at work, we will walk
away and say, surely God, was in this place. We will have felt
the spirit at work among us. And so we put all the pieces
together. We give the opportunity. Now,
just because we do worship right, you know, how great we are, just
because we do all the right things, does that mean it will be effective
for everybody? Our hearts have to be prepared.
That’s why we take a moment for the preparation in the morning. Silence your devices. But more
importantly, silence your heart. That’s why we say we’ve come
from busy weeks. We’ve come from noisy worlds. We’ve become burdened
with all kinds of things. And Sunday’s the day to be released
from those burdens until Monday morning comes around. But we
have this opportunity to worship God with reverence and to worship
Him with awe and to to be in his great presence because of
the blood of Jesus. So they’re weary of God. He’s weary of them.
We have the opportunity to get worship right. And then he speaks
of the solution of sin in verse 25. He’s been fussing at them,
been yelling at them, but he says, I am he who blots out your
transgressions for my own sake and I will remember your sins.
I will not remember your sins. God keeps his word. What would happen to God if he
didn’t keep his word? He swore by himself. He swore to Abraham
by himself. He swore to Moses by himself.
He swears to us by himself. If God does not keep his word,
who is trustworthy? We spoke a bit earlier about
the, was it the ninth commandment, not bearing false witness. God
does not make oaths and vows He doesn’t keep, we do. We’re
oath taker breakers, right? We’re vow taker breakers, but
not so God. And for His own sake, for the
sake of His promise to Abraham and to Isaac and Jacob, He puts
up with our sin because He promised to. I was telling y’all about
this little book. Puritan prayers has a phrase
in here that caught my eye this week. It says, pretty remarkable,
isn’t it? Though I sin continually, he continually repeats his kindness
to me. You know, so many today bear
guilt. And as Christians, we should
be cognizant of our sins. We should recognize that we sin
against God and we break his law daily and thoughtward indeed,
but we should be quick repenters and we should lay those sins
on Jesus because that’s what God has promised to do. And our
guilt should be temporary, right? Should Christians just walk around
guilty? Not if you’ve repented, not if you’ve confessed, not
if you’ve hated and forsaken. Of course, you’ll be back in
a dog returning to vomit. You’ll be back at it before long.
And it’s a lifelong process of faith and repentance and obedience. But so many people live under
guilt. And what has God done? He’s taken our guilt away because
he laid it on Jesus. And so there is a solution for
sin because God keeps his word. He does it for his sake because
he promised. And so you contrast our rebellion
with him blotting out sins. You contrast our iniquity with
him wiping away our sins, remembering it no more. But there’s a danger. And that danger pops up in 26
and 27 and 28. He’s sort of saying, let’s set
the record straight. Put me in remembrance. Let’s
argue together. Another courtroom scene. Set
forth your case that you may be proved right. So they’re condemned
and let’s argue the case. Your first father sinned and
your mediators transgressed against me. Therefore, I will profane
the princes of the sanctuary and I’ll deliver Jacob to utter
destruction and Israel reviling. He’s pointing out to them this
great danger and there’s a big danger coming. The big danger
coming is exile by Babylon, destruction of the temple, destruction of
the city, and them being 70 years off in a pagan land. And so all
these things that they’ve been offering that have been a weariness
to them and a weariness to God, they’re not going to be able
to do that a thousand miles away in Babylon. But he says, let’s
get the record straight here. And it’s like, for a moment,
God says, I’m going to give you one hour and open up the complaint. Kind of oxymoronic, isn’t it?
What do we have to complain about to the most high God, the perfect
life-giving providing God? He opens up the complaint department,
you know, our free pass. You can complain and let’s see
how it goes. Plead your case. And what does
he say to them? It’s in your blood to be sinners.
When I called Jacob, when I called Israel, when I called your forefathers,
or he calls them your mediators, when I called them, what’s the
first thing they went and did? They broke the covenant. It’s
in your blood and it’s all the way down through the priesthood.
And what’s God going to do? Because the people have profaned
the covenant, profaned his name, even profaned the cultic practices
of the temple. He’s going to destroy them. And
they’ll be made a mockery among the rest of the nations. What
are the nations going to say? Look at Israel. Their God can’t
save them. Look at Israel. They must have
done something really bad because they’re in big, big trouble.
But that doesn’t last but for a moment. But now, verses 1 through
5 of chapter 44, But now hear, O Jacob, My servant, Israel,
whom I have chosen. He’s going to give a name change. That’s always significant. Thus
says the Lord who made you. Thus says the Lord who formed
you from the womb. Thus says the Lord who will help
you. Fear not, O Jacob, my servant. And then what does he call Jacob?
Jeshurun. There’s not too many Jeshuruns
running around. A lot of Caleb’s and Joshua’s and John’s and It means upright one. Have you
cheated and looked down at your old study notes or maybe it’s
in your footnote? What does Jeshurun mean? It means
righteous one. Now, what does Jacob mean? Deceiver
or cheat. And so what happens when God
changes our name? What happens when God works acts
of redemption? He changes our name, but He also
changes our heart. He changes our character. We
want to worship Him. We offer sacrifices, and as our
hands perform the deed, our heart is in the duty. It’s a very big
difference. We aren’t wearied when we come
to church. We aren’t wearied. You know,
sometimes people will say, oh, today we sang eight verses. Did y’all catch that? No, they
were short stanzas. So it’s really like probably
singing five or six verses. But you know, people, that is
just too much singing. Well, maybe Jesus has done too
much for you and, you know, it just doesn’t fly. And plus, if
you leave off the last verses, you don’t get to persevere or
get to heaven, right? Isn’t there a logic to most songs?
There’s a problem. There’s trust. There’s God. There’s the solution. There’s
blessed life. And then there’s blessed forever
life. We cut off the last two verses. You leave out heaven.
and the good part of the Christian life, right? Let’s just sing
half a verse of amazing grace. That just doesn’t work. But we like to be in worship.
And why is that? It’s because the spirit of the
living God has come into our hearts and cleansed us of our
sin. The spirit of the living God has come into our hearts
and made it new. Whatever God’s heart beats for, guess what?
Our heart. beats for. And we have to nurture that.
We have to feed it. We can grow cold. We can grow hard-hearted
towards God indifferent. But when the spirit comes, how
does he say it? It’s like rain on dry land. You
know, the cracked soil, the unproductive soil. When the rain comes and
revives the land and crop grows, he speaks of the grass growing,
the willows growing. Today we mentioned Psalm 1, the
tree planted by streams of living water. There’s a good life. So
how do we, how do we think of all this? Well, Yes, God is going
to punish Israel. He’s going to send them away.
There’s going to be a return of exiles, a couple hundred years
of little bitty promised land living. And then Jesus is going
to come. And at the end of his life in
ministry, he’s going to send the promised spirit. The spirit
will be poured out on the apostles and on the church. And that spirit
has been poured out on us. And so when we worship God in
truth, which we want to do because of formation and reformation,
right? No deformation, not us. But we want to worship also in
spirit hearts that have been changed and made right before
God and our hearts beat for him. So take these scriptures to heart. Let’s do pray. Lord, bless us
as we come to your house week by week. May it not be a burden,
but a delight. All kinds of reasons we come
to church. Sometimes it’s to be seen. Sometimes it’s because
we need people. Those are great things, but most
of all, we need you and we need to be in the company of saints.
And so help us as we gather week by week under the word, may it
be by the spirit for our own good and for the mutual edification
of one another. If tonight we are maybe hard
hearted or our soil is dry and crackly, pour that refreshing
water on it so that we can live anew for you. We ask in Christ’s
great and mighty name. Amen. We’ve got number 705 to
sing, I know whom I have believed.