Sunday Sermon

 

Special

Isaiah 58:3

They say, ‘To honor you we had special days when we fasted, but you didn’t see. We humbled ourselves to honor you, but you didn’t notice.’” But the Lord says, “You do what pleases yourselves on these special days, and you are unfair to your workers.

I once knew a guy that made his living from buying and selling car repair manuals. It surprised me that those old dusty books had any value and the guy told me they worth a lot of money. He explained to me that the people buying the books needed the information in those pages to fix the cars they were working on and without those books the work they were doing was a lot harder. The value was not in the book itself but the information that it held explaining how to fix a car. That conversation has stuck with me over the years because it really has application to our faith. The Bible is a lot like those old car manuals. Our Bible is not valuable in and of itself, it is valuable because in it we find the God who loves us enough to explain how our lives were meant to be. God does not intend our Bibles to sit in some honored spot but God wants us to read it because it explains the technical parts of life. In short the value of the Bible is because it is meant to be used as an instruction manual about how to build our lives. If we are not spending time in the Bible to learn how to live the way God meant us to live we are wasting time. Faith is not about going to church and helping the poor. It is about learning how to be the people God wants us to be. I love how in the Book of James chapter two verse twenty we read this; “You foolish person! Must you be shown that faith that does nothing is worth nothing?” If our faith is not working in our lives then we have religion not faith and there is a big difference between those two words. Over and over Jesus talks about our faith being something that is active and real. Look at the Sermon on the Mount for example. In those chapters Jesus speaks about how we are to live and points us to learning how to be the people God calls us to be. Learning to think about the Bible as an instruction book about how to build and repair humans lives changes how we think about our faith and about God. Consider why God gives us the Holy Spirit. We are told that the purpose of the Holy Spirit is to guide us and if we are not letting the Holy Spirit direct how we live then we are missing a large blessing from God. Instead of trying to get through this world by ourselves let us learn from God about what it means to be a human and how then to live as we are supposed to. God gives this stuff because He wants to make our lives better and to help us know about the world and how to live in it. It does mean we will have to humble ourselves and obey what God tells us but that is a lot easier then trying to figure out life on our own. What a blessing we have from God and what a missed opportunity if we do not take up our Bibles to learn how the universe works.

Understanding the things God speaks to us about is so important because God knows how things can go wrong very quickly. When God talks about sin God is doing it because sin corrupts us and does damage to our souls and God hates that. One of the things God addresses is sexual sin and God does that because sexual sin has some terrible effects very fast. Just look at David and what happens when he engages in adultery. David turns to murder so fast and David is a man after God’s heart. If this can happen to David what can happen to us. God knows how dangerous sin is and we need to take God seriously when He speaks about it. The whole point is not to make us feel bad but to inform us about how the world works. There are loads of positive things that God gives us so we learn how to be real people. A central point God makes is that we are to be kind and generous people. This is the opposite of how most of the world works. People tend to drift to hate before they move to being kind and that is not God’s plan of how to live. God knows that being kind and generous people will bring us more peace and will fill our lives with a joy that hate and anger will never be able to create. What I really like is that God explains how to be people who do the right thing and then God encourages us to grow in that material. Being people of faith is a wonderful thing but God does warn that it will not be easy and I like that too. God knows that because of sin we will face pain and have to deal with problems and God says that He will be with us as we go through those things. Thus faith will also help us work through hard places in our lives and the Bible tells us we can trust that God is with us and working in us. Do we have the courage and strength to trust what God ways and live by His instructions.

Over the years my wife has run large medical groups and been in charge of hundreds of people. In that time she learned one really useful insight into dealing with employees. More then money and other perks that come with most jobs Debbie has found that most people want to be appreciated. The power of just telling people that you see what they are doing and are glad they are doing it so well can change how a company works in remarkable ways. What I find interesting is that even thousands of years ago people wanted to be appreciated and that applies to the verse we are considering. In our verse we find people challenging God and think they have something on God. These people tell God they have done special things to honor God and they have humbled themselves to let God know how good they are but they complain that God has not noticed what they have done and they are upset with God about the lack of appreciation from God. This situation is so human. We humans want to believe we are good people and so we set standards we can meet and then we go to God and say see how good I am. What they are saying sounds good and most people would accept what they are saying but God knows the truth. God’s response to what they are saying is “no you are not good people” and God goes on to explain why He does not appreciate the religious acts they have preformed. The concept here is that they did the religious acts but they missed what the point of those acts were to do. I love that God exposes things for what they are. They did not do things for God but for themselves and for their glory. The point of those acts are to direct us to God and to help us become the people God wants us to be. But these people did what they did not to draw closer to God but to try and control God and they miss the whole idea of what God wants. Then God goes even further and tells them that they are unfair to their workers. We need to grasp this concept and hold it very deeply, God does not care about the religious acts we do if we are not living by the principles God teaches us. We are told by God to care about people and to do the right thing even when it is hard but these people don’t want to live by those ideas they just want to manipulate God so God will do what they want. The problem is we should be doing what God wants us to do and be letting God work in us. These people have the whole thing wrong and so many of those who call ourselves Christian fall into the same place.

It needs to be made clear that we as humans need to carry out religious acts. Being at church and reading our Bibles are things we need to be part of but they are only there to help make us into what God wants us to be. The problem in the verse was not the religious acts but what the people were doing them for. Instead of seeking to be connected to God in these acts they were doing them to control God. We as people who proclaim faith in the living God need to listen to what God says about the things they did. God calls things what they are and God says they did these acts to please themselves. Our purpose should not be to make ourselves look good but to honor God and to become what God wants us to be. The people in this verse have missed what God wants in all things. It frightens me that God by passes everything and calls things as they really are but it also helps me trust God. Instead of doing the religious acts God wants them to be good to the people that work for them. God is pleased when we do right by other people. All the things the people did were not able to fool God and God speaks what is true to them. As people of faith in the living God we need to know God is not fooled by what we think we are doing and God will reveal what is real and true to us. Instead of doing what we want we need to seek what God says and live by what God calls us to do. Our faith is not about doing religious stuff but following the instructions God gives about how to be the people God wants us to be. The religious things help us connect to God and help us celebrate the God who teaches us how to live in the right way. What we find in this verse is a warning not to pagans who do not know God but to those of us who say we believe. Our faith is not about us but about the God who we serve. Let us focus on what God wants and what God calls us to do and to be and when we do that God will appreciate who we are and what we are doing.

The thing I like about this verse other then God pointing out how we should worship and honor God is that God speaks the truth here. To some people this might seem a little harsh but I appreciate that God is honest and truthful with us. It tells me that I can trust God and it shows me that God knows what is real and true even when we live in a world of foolishness and sin. I want a God who tells me the truth not to hurt me but to help me that is the kind of God I want to worship. Hearing the truth and having our fake faith broken by God can be hard and will take a willingness to accept that God wants the best for us and by telling us the truth we have a starting place. It will then help us move to being people who’s faith is about living as God calls us to be. God does not want religious acts He wants people who know how to live as God teaches because that is what has meaning to God. Let us learn to be people who serve God and not ourselves.