WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 We are carrying on in a series on the first book of Isaiah. 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:10.000 And tonight our assignment is Isaiah 29 to 31, that section. 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:12.000 That is one section in Isaiah. 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:15.000 When you read the whole thing, we read just a segment of it. 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:19.000 And Isaiah writes these prophecies here. 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:25.000 Very likely the commentators mostly think that this is probably 703 BC. 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:33.000 Because he mentions a couple times if you read in the wider context that it's two years away from some great act of destruction. 00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:43.000 And so it's likely 703 BC because in 701 BC, a Sennacherib of Assyria is going to lay siege to Jerusalem. 00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:46.000 And so it seems like he's prophesying that. 00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:51.000 We're going to read about the history of that siege just a little bit later in Isaiah. 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:56.000 But here, he's not giving us the history of how this came about. 00:00:56.000 --> 00:01:00.000 Instead he's doing what he's done for most of the first book of Isaiah. 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:04.000 And that's giving diagnosis of the real problem. 00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:09.000 And the diagnosis of the real problem is the hearts of the people in Jerusalem. 00:01:09.000 --> 00:01:16.000 So he's saying that the heart of Jerusalem, and particularly the leaders, has brought this siege. 00:01:16.000 --> 00:01:25.000 And he's giving a very poetic verse here, a diagnosis of what's going on in the hearts of the people in Jerusalem. 00:01:25.000 --> 00:01:29.000 Now, we get told exactly what that is in verse 13. 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:32.000 This is the summary of the whole section, I think. 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:38.000 He says, the people draw near with their mouth, but their hearts are far away from me. 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:45.000 So the people of Jerusalem are near to me in one way, but they're very far away in another way. 00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:47.000 At the same time. 00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:50.000 And so let's think about that together. 00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:59.000 Let's look together tonight at the problem with our hearts that we're near in one way, but really far away. 00:01:59.000 --> 00:02:04.000 And then think about the solution that God proposes here in the verses that we read. 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:08.000 Alright, so first, the problem with our hearts. 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:13.000 When you read across Isaiah, one of the things that some of the theologians have said in the past is that 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:20.000 Jerusalem really stands in Isaiah and the prophets as a microcosm of all of humanity. 00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:24.000 That however Jerusalem goes, that's how humanity is going to go. 00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:28.000 You know, if Jerusalem gets destroyed, there's no hope. 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:34.000 But if Jerusalem becomes Eden, then it becomes the hope of the nations. 00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:35.000 All the nations will flow in. 00:02:35.000 --> 00:02:40.000 And that means that whenever Isaiah talks about the heart of Jerusalem, 00:02:40.000 --> 00:02:43.000 he's talking about the human heart, everybody's heart. 00:02:43.000 --> 00:02:47.000 It's a microcosm of all of our hearts, everybody who's ever lived. 00:02:47.000 --> 00:02:54.000 And that means that you're going to see in just a second, I'm going to show you three problems that Isaiah talks about 00:02:54.000 --> 00:02:56.000 with the hearts of the people in Jerusalem. 00:02:56.000 --> 00:02:58.000 He focuses on one. 00:02:58.000 --> 00:03:01.000 We'll do too quickly and then focus on one. 00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:06.000 But when we look at them, one of the things you can do, and you can do this through all of Isaiah is you can say, 00:03:06.000 --> 00:03:13.000 who am I? You know, if there's three problems of the heart in Jerusalem, who am I? 00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:17.000 Because Jerusalem stands for everybody. 00:03:17.000 --> 00:03:20.000 All of us tend towards one of these directions. 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:25.000 What we constantly learn here and in the New Testament is that God is near us. 00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:29.000 If you're not a Christian tonight, God is near you. 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:31.000 And if you're a Christian tonight, God is near you. 00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:36.000 God is not far from anybody that in him we live and we move and we have our being. 00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:40.000 He is close and it's us who wander and we go away. 00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:45.000 And that's exactly what was happening in Jerusalem that caused this mess. 00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:47.000 Now let me show you these three. 00:03:47.000 --> 00:03:49.000 The first one is in verse 15. 00:03:49.000 --> 00:03:52.000 It says it's kind of a tricky translation, but it says, 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:58.000 you who hide deep from the Lord your counsel or another way to say it. 00:03:58.000 --> 00:04:04.000 You who hide what's going on deep in your heart, your counsel, you hide it from God. 00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:06.000 And you can see that that's what he means. 00:04:06.000 --> 00:04:07.000 Your deeds are in the dark. 00:04:07.000 --> 00:04:09.000 You say, who sees us? Who knows us? 00:04:09.000 --> 00:04:12.000 Now he's saying here that there's a way of being far from God. 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:18.000 And it was a way that was happening in Jerusalem where people were living life in such a way that they said, 00:04:18.000 --> 00:04:21.000 God doesn't see anything that I do. 00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:24.000 They said, my deeds are hidden from God. 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:27.000 And I know that the counsel of my heart is hidden from God. 00:04:27.000 --> 00:04:29.000 God can't see. 00:04:29.000 --> 00:04:30.000 The lights are out. 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:33.000 I can flick the light switch and it's all dark. 00:04:33.000 --> 00:04:34.000 He can't see through it. 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:36.000 He has an epistemological barrier. 00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:39.000 He's blind to what's going on in my life. 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:45.000 And that means that Isaiah here is saying that in Jerusalem, in the city of God, 00:04:45.000 --> 00:04:48.000 they encountered the problem of deism. 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:53.000 That's sure people believed in a creator, but actually they didn't think that that creator was actually near them at all. 00:04:53.000 --> 00:04:54.000 That's deism. 00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:59.000 Deism is when you think, yeah, there probably is a creator, but he wound up the world. 00:04:59.000 --> 00:05:01.000 Derek mentioned this this morning like a clockmaker. 00:05:01.000 --> 00:05:03.000 And then he left us all to ourselves. 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:07.000 And he's saying that one of the problems in Jerusalem was deism. 00:05:07.000 --> 00:05:11.000 In the city of God, when God was so close to them in the temple, yet they were so far, 00:05:11.000 --> 00:05:14.000 they said, I don't think he's really interested in me, so I'm not interested in him. 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:16.000 And he's left us to run. 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:19.000 He's left me to run my own life. 00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:21.000 Now this gets heightened. 00:05:21.000 --> 00:05:26.000 There's a progression here because eventually in verse 16, it says, you know, you turn things upside down. 00:05:26.000 --> 00:05:32.000 And did you see in the middle of verse 16, eventually that person says, he did not make me. 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:39.000 So he says, even in Jerusalem, eventually deism saying, sure, there's a creator, 00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:43.000 but he doesn't see what's going on in my life becomes, he didn't even make me. 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:47.000 In other words, deism becomes atheism. 00:05:47.000 --> 00:05:50.000 And that that was actually one of the problems. 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:55.000 And the way he died, the way he diagnoses this, the reason this happens, did you see the language he said, 00:05:55.000 --> 00:05:59.000 you know, your deeds are hidden, you want, you don't want God to know what's going on in your heart 00:05:59.000 --> 00:06:01.000 or what you do in the dark. 00:06:01.000 --> 00:06:04.000 And so you eventually just say, there is no God. 00:06:04.000 --> 00:06:09.000 You see, he says that atheism and deism are actually a moral problem. 00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:15.000 It's the problem where we say, I don't want there to be a law above me that can judge me or condemn me 00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:19.000 or tell me not to live like this or not to live like that. 00:06:19.000 --> 00:06:23.000 And he says, that's actually a problem in the hearts of the people, even in Jerusalem. 00:06:23.000 --> 00:06:26.000 And the Bible calls this living in the upside down. 00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:28.000 That's what it says, verse 16. 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:30.000 You turn things upside down, you're living in the upside down. 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:32.000 That's not a stranger things reference. 00:06:32.000 --> 00:06:33.000 That's Jerusalem. 00:06:33.000 --> 00:06:35.000 Let the reader understand. 00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:37.000 You live in the upside down. 00:06:37.000 --> 00:06:42.000 And that's, that's the world of deism or atheism will move on. 00:06:42.000 --> 00:06:48.000 But let me say here we have the reason I read the section we read is because there are many, many New Testament quotes here 00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:50.000 found in this little section. 00:06:50.000 --> 00:06:52.000 And one of them is right there. 00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:53.000 You probably noticed it. 00:06:53.000 --> 00:06:57.000 You New Testament readers, shall the potter be regarded as the clay? 00:06:57.000 --> 00:07:00.000 Paul quotes this in Romans nine. 00:07:00.000 --> 00:07:03.000 Shall the potter, you know, eventually the person says, God didn't make me. 00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:04.000 He doesn't see me. 00:07:04.000 --> 00:07:06.000 And eventually he didn't make me. 00:07:06.000 --> 00:07:09.000 And he says, that is like the potter saying to the clay. 00:07:09.000 --> 00:07:10.000 Sorry, the clay. 00:07:10.000 --> 00:07:11.000 I got it backwards tonight. 00:07:11.000 --> 00:07:15.000 The clay saying to the potter, you didn't make me. 00:07:15.000 --> 00:07:17.000 I think it's a little abstract. 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:24.000 I went to the grass market recently before my trip to the U.S. in February to buy some gifts for people. 00:07:24.000 --> 00:07:30.000 And one of the things I bought was some good Edinburgh pottery, these beautiful mugs. 00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:35.000 And they were all ceramic, you know, let's, let's bring this into the 21st century a little bit. 00:07:35.000 --> 00:07:38.000 It's like that ceramic, this is the ridiculousness of it. 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:43.000 It's the ceramic mug looking up at me and saying, there's no such thing as a potter. 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:46.000 You know, the potter is a construct. 00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:51.000 The ceramic mug talks to me and says, you know, there's nothing that made me. 00:07:51.000 --> 00:07:52.000 I made myself. 00:07:52.000 --> 00:07:53.000 I'm a self made person. 00:07:53.000 --> 00:07:56.000 Now that's the illustration that Isaiah gives. 00:07:56.000 --> 00:08:02.000 And he's saying that that's actually what we're doing when we say there is no God above me or no law given within me. 00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:06.000 It's a desire for a type of freedom and it's moral freedom. 00:08:06.000 --> 00:08:08.000 It's freedom from any constraint. 00:08:08.000 --> 00:08:11.000 Now that's one way that our hearts are prone to wander. 00:08:11.000 --> 00:08:13.000 Maybe that's some of you tonight. 00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:16.000 But there's a second way and here's the more Christianized form of it. 00:08:16.000 --> 00:08:17.000 And it's flip over. 00:08:17.000 --> 00:08:26.000 You can see in chapter 30 at the very beginning, the second way he says, ah, stubborn children who carry out a plan, but not mine. 00:08:26.000 --> 00:08:30.000 And then he says, you've decided to go down to Egypt. 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:33.000 Now here in the context, Sinakarib is coming. 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:34.000 They know that. 00:08:34.000 --> 00:08:41.000 And he's saying that the Jerusalem leadership got together and decided we're going to go seek help from Egypt. 00:08:41.000 --> 00:08:43.000 So they do. They go down to Egypt. 00:08:43.000 --> 00:08:45.000 They try to form a treaty with Egypt. 00:08:45.000 --> 00:08:49.000 And God says here, here's the second way your heart can be very far. 00:08:49.000 --> 00:08:53.000 The hearts of the people in Jerusalem, sure, you're religious. 00:08:53.000 --> 00:08:55.000 You know, you're a Christian. 00:08:55.000 --> 00:08:57.000 You're around. 00:08:57.000 --> 00:09:04.000 But when it comes to Monday and it's time to make a plan, your heart is far from the Lord. 00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:06.000 You see, that's what he's saying. 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:15.000 Yeah, you come to the temple on the Sabbath day, but when it came to a real issue strategy, war strategy, or how you're going to construct your schedule, 00:09:15.000 --> 00:09:20.000 or how you're going to live your life Monday to Saturday, you just went down to Egypt. 00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:23.000 And he says that's living life on your own terms. 00:09:23.000 --> 00:09:25.000 He says not living life in the spirit. 00:09:25.000 --> 00:09:26.000 It's living autonomously. 00:09:26.000 --> 00:09:31.000 In other words, some authors recently have called this religious, but indifferent. 00:09:31.000 --> 00:09:35.000 It's a form of practical atheism that we're religious and we're generally committed to the gospel. 00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:39.000 We're generally committed to the life of the church, but when it comes to Monday, we forget about God. 00:09:39.000 --> 00:09:44.000 Now, God, this gets addressed really directly in the book of James, James 4. 00:09:44.000 --> 00:09:46.000 James 4, 13 to 17. 00:09:46.000 --> 00:09:54.000 And James says, come now if you say today or tomorrow, we will go into such and such a place and we'll make a profit. 00:09:54.000 --> 00:09:56.000 You don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. 00:09:56.000 --> 00:10:03.000 And then he moves on and he says, you ought to say instead, if the Lord wills, we will go tomorrow and do this or that. 00:10:03.000 --> 00:10:08.000 But because you don't, you boast and you're boasting is evil. 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:18.000 Now, listen, what Isaiah and James are saying is that when we live our lives Monday to Saturday with complete God forgetfulness, 00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:21.000 we have no consciousness of God in our day to day lives. 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:25.000 He says that is boasting, living in pride and it's evil. 00:10:25.000 --> 00:10:32.000 And that's exactly the kind of wandering that Isaiah was talking about, even in Jerusalem where they were there and God's presence were there. 00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:38.000 When it came to Monday and they were trying to make a business decision, they said, we're going back down to Egypt. 00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:41.000 And he says, that's not living in the spirit, that's living in the flesh. 00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:45.000 That's living life on your own terms, not walking in step with the spirit. 00:10:45.000 --> 00:10:51.000 In other words, not having any consciousness of submitting your daily plans to God in prayer. 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:55.000 That's what he's, that's, that's the simple thing that he's talking about here. 00:10:55.000 --> 00:10:56.000 It's literal. 00:10:56.000 --> 00:11:00.000 They went down to Egypt, but it's also metaphorical. 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:07.000 You know, they went down to Egypt and he says, it says, if you've gone back to Egypt, I freed you, I freed you. 00:11:07.000 --> 00:11:09.000 And in your weakness, I showed my strength. 00:11:09.000 --> 00:11:16.000 In my strength, your weakness was glorified and made much of, and yet now in your weakness, you're seeking strength in yourself. 00:11:16.000 --> 00:11:17.000 In Egypt, you're going back. 00:11:17.000 --> 00:11:19.000 It's like the Red Sea never happened. 00:11:19.000 --> 00:11:22.000 You're saying you're choosing to go back into slavery. 00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:24.000 And you see, that's the second way. 00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:29.000 The first way is being far from God by saying, I don't think God can see me in my life. 00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:33.000 To the point where you might even say, He didn't even make me. 00:11:33.000 --> 00:11:40.000 The second way is being generally a religious person, but then God really has nothing to do with your day to day. 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:42.000 You don't have any consciousness. 00:11:42.000 --> 00:11:45.000 We don't have any consciousness of God in our Monday to Saturday life. 00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:48.000 That's another way some of us meet. 00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:51.000 We may be prone to wandering from God. 00:11:51.000 --> 00:11:53.000 Now, here's the third way. 00:11:53.000 --> 00:11:56.000 And this is the most important one, the one that he focuses on. 00:11:56.000 --> 00:11:59.000 And it's back to the top of the passage, verse 13. 00:11:59.000 --> 00:12:03.000 He says, the people draw near with their mouth. 00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:07.000 They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. 00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:18.000 And here he's talking about not atheism, not deism, not religious, but generally indifferent, but intensely religious people, the leadership. 00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:27.000 So he's saying here that the real problem is that the Jerusalem leadership is intensely religious, but far away from God at the same time. 00:12:27.000 --> 00:12:31.000 That publicly, externally, they're very committed. 00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:35.000 They're very committed to being known as religious people, but in their hearts, they're very distant. 00:12:35.000 --> 00:12:39.000 And that means that he's defining what we mean by the word hypocrite. 00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:48.000 A hypocrite is simply when what we do on the outside, our religious public performance doesn't match what we believe on the inside. 00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:52.000 There's a gap between our inside life and our outside life. 00:12:52.000 --> 00:12:55.000 And that's the condemnation he's giving here. 00:12:55.000 --> 00:12:59.000 It's another way that we, even as Christian people, are prone to wander. 00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:08.000 Now, we have real help here because Jesus quotes, here's another one, Jesus quotes Isaiah 29.13 in the Gospels. 00:13:08.000 --> 00:13:11.000 And he does that in Mark 7 or Matthew 15. 00:13:11.000 --> 00:13:13.000 There's our parallel passages. 00:13:13.000 --> 00:13:18.000 And he gives us the official interpretation of what's going on in Isaiah 29. 00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:20.000 Jesus gets to tell us what it means. 00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:21.000 And here's what he says. 00:13:21.000 --> 00:13:33.000 He's talking to the Pharisees and they're questioning him and the disciples about their obedience to some of the laws that were customary in the first century Israel and Jerusalem. 00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:43.000 And he says that Isaiah was right when he said of you, you leave the commandments of God and you simply hold to the traditions of men. 00:13:43.000 --> 00:13:51.000 So Jesus said that in the eighth century BC in Jerusalem and in the first century AD in Jerusalem, the issue was the exact same. 00:13:51.000 --> 00:13:58.000 And he said it's like this, you leave the commandments of God and instead you hold fast to the traditions of men. 00:13:58.000 --> 00:14:06.000 And so he says that the problem is that you've rejected the command of God, the authority of God's command, and you've embraced human traditions. 00:14:06.000 --> 00:14:09.000 Now, what does he mean? 00:14:09.000 --> 00:14:18.000 And we have to be very careful here because first what he does not mean is this, that traditions are bad and set against the Bible. 00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:23.000 So Jesus is not at all saying the Bible is good and tradition is bad. 00:14:23.000 --> 00:14:29.000 You know, here at St. C's we have lots of traditions and we like them. 00:14:29.000 --> 00:14:36.000 We have the tradition of having worship on Sunday nights at half five and that's a tradition. 00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:41.000 And we have the tradition of having tea and coffee in the morning after worship and that's a tradition. 00:14:41.000 --> 00:14:49.000 We even have the tradition more significantly in our denomination and here at St. Columbas of being Presbyterian. 00:14:49.000 --> 00:14:54.000 And in that thinking that a good way to run the church is through three different levels of government. 00:14:54.000 --> 00:15:03.000 We have elders and then those elders come together and they form a Presbytery and then that Presbytery meets with other Presbyterians and we form a general assembly. 00:15:03.000 --> 00:15:05.000 Now, that's a tradition. 00:15:05.000 --> 00:15:09.000 There's no command in the Bible that says you've got to have three levels. 00:15:09.000 --> 00:15:13.000 There's no command that says this is exactly how to do it. 00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:19.000 Instead, we look at the Bible when we say this is wisdom, this is a tradition we've developed in wisdom. 00:15:19.000 --> 00:15:21.000 We think it's a good way to do it in the light of the Bible. 00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:27.000 So that means that Jesus is not pitting tradition against the authority of the Bible that you can never do that. 00:15:27.000 --> 00:15:30.000 You can never pit traditions against God's command. 00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:31.000 Instead, what is he saying? 00:15:31.000 --> 00:15:32.000 He's saying this. 00:15:32.000 --> 00:15:39.000 To the proto Pharisees of the 8th century that Isaiah is talking to or the Phariseeism of the 1st century, 00:15:39.000 --> 00:15:54.000 he's saying that the problem was, the problem is whenever the human heart lets rules, traditions, commandments that people have created actually become the word of God to them. 00:15:54.000 --> 00:15:56.000 So he's not saying tradition versus Bible. 00:15:56.000 --> 00:16:04.000 Instead, he's saying the problem is you flipped them and you've let traditions and rules, religious things, 00:16:04.000 --> 00:16:09.000 actually become the authority for your life instead of the word of God itself. 00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:20.000 Now he builds on that and he's saying, and what that means is you've actually created and constructed a system of rules in Jerusalem where you've determined actually the right way you think. 00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:24.000 The way you think you need to approach God or anybody might need to approach God. 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:27.000 And the problem is not tradition versus Bible. 00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:29.000 It's something that's going on in the heart. 00:16:29.000 --> 00:16:35.000 And it's a situation where ultimately you're saying, I'm not sure that what God's laid out in the Bible is the right path. 00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:37.000 I need to create my own way. 00:16:37.000 --> 00:16:42.000 I need to have rules in place to mark out the right way to get to God. 00:16:42.000 --> 00:16:45.000 In other words, he's saying you're not living by grace. 00:16:45.000 --> 00:16:47.000 You're living by law. 00:16:47.000 --> 00:16:49.000 That's the problem of Phariseeism. 00:16:49.000 --> 00:16:50.000 You've reversed it. 00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:53.000 The Bible says it's all about grace, but you make it all about law. 00:16:53.000 --> 00:16:58.000 You live on the traditions of men, not on the commandments of God that have actually come through in the Bible. 00:16:58.000 --> 00:17:07.000 In other words, another way to say it would be this, for Phariseeism, Pharisees like me, like you, like all, we're prone to wander, 00:17:07.000 --> 00:17:10.000 religion becomes the God that we love. 00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:18.000 Religion is the actual thing that we care about, not the God of religion, the God through which our religion seeks. 00:17:18.000 --> 00:17:20.000 Religion actually becomes our very God. 00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:28.000 Jesus gave a couple of examples in the passages here in the Gospels. They questioned him about the Sabbath. 00:17:28.000 --> 00:17:35.000 And in the context, in that time, there were more than 200 rules written about how to treat the Sabbath day. 00:17:35.000 --> 00:17:39.000 You can pick up one stick on the Sabbath, but not a bundle. 00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:45.000 You can sew one stitch if you need to on the Sabbath, but not two stitches. 00:17:45.000 --> 00:17:50.000 You can walk this far on the Sabbath, but not that far, not the extra step. 00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:53.000 These were the rules of the first century. 00:17:53.000 --> 00:17:59.000 And we know that our hearts are prone to wander in the same ways. 00:17:59.000 --> 00:18:05.000 He addressed one, you know, he said, this is living under the yoke of the law, not under the yoke of grace. 00:18:05.000 --> 00:18:09.000 There's one even more he focuses on in that particular passage. 00:18:09.000 --> 00:18:15.000 One that may be a little new. He calls it the law of Corbin, Corbon in Hebrew. 00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:20.000 This is a Hebrew word that meant I dedicate to the Lord. 00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:23.000 And he calls the Pharisees out for this and the Gospels. 00:18:23.000 --> 00:18:27.000 He said, what is this? What were they doing in this law? 00:18:27.000 --> 00:18:30.000 This law where you can just shout out, I dedicate this to the Lord. 00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:34.000 He said, well, he said, you've created a loophole. 00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:40.000 And the situation was that the Bible says in the Ten Commandments, honor your father and your mother. 00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:49.000 And he says to the Pharisees, but many people when their father and mother are elderly and they come to them, you know, there's no social services and they need help. 00:18:49.000 --> 00:18:53.000 They need a place to live. They can't care for themselves perhaps any longer. 00:18:53.000 --> 00:18:57.000 And the Pharisees and others were saying, yeah, I do have an extra piece of property. 00:18:57.000 --> 00:19:02.000 I do have a house here next to my house, but I've declared it Corbin. 00:19:02.000 --> 00:19:10.000 I've declared it to the Lord, a commandment we see in Leviticus, which means that it can't be used for anything because it's been dedicated to the Lord. 00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:15.000 It's like the firstborn, meaning I don't want anybody to live in this house. 00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:17.000 And so I've dedicated it to the Lord. 00:19:17.000 --> 00:19:19.000 He said that that was happening. 00:19:19.000 --> 00:19:27.000 And he said, and so what you've done is you've taken a commandment of the Bible and you've twisted it into a commandment of men and you've done something particularly heinous. 00:19:27.000 --> 00:19:34.000 You see, there's two ways that we wander towards Phariseeism and one, one is subtle. 00:19:34.000 --> 00:19:45.000 And it's when we transfer the relationship with God that we have in grace, giving God our hearts into a situation where we get to God by making rules. 00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:48.000 But Jesus says it can get more heinous than that. 00:19:48.000 --> 00:20:00.000 It can become one where we devise ways of being so self-centered that people think of us as godly externally, but internally we're actually seeking our own selves. 00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:07.000 People publicly say, I've declared this to the Lord, but internally, oh boy, I know, I just don't want to share my property with anybody. 00:20:07.000 --> 00:20:09.000 And he says that that's Phariseeism. 00:20:09.000 --> 00:20:11.000 It's Phariseeism of the eighth century BC. 00:20:11.000 --> 00:20:13.000 It's Phariseeism of the first century. 00:20:13.000 --> 00:20:16.000 And it's a way that we're prone to wander as well. 00:20:16.000 --> 00:20:19.000 What do you do about it? 00:20:19.000 --> 00:20:22.000 And Isaiah tells us also what we can do about it here. 00:20:22.000 --> 00:20:25.000 And I'll rattle these off to you. 00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:29.000 Three things very quickly that he tells you to do tonight. 00:20:29.000 --> 00:20:38.000 First, he says, there has to come a point in your life where you say, am I going to submit to the Bible as the true authority in my life? 00:20:38.000 --> 00:20:45.000 If you just back up one verse, two verses from what we started our reading, 2913, back to 2911, he says, 00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:51.000 the vision of all these things, all these oracles, has become to you like the words of a book that is sealed. 00:20:51.000 --> 00:20:56.000 When men give it to the one who can read saying, read this, the man says, I can't read it. 00:20:56.000 --> 00:21:05.000 He's saying that their hearts in Jerusalem had wandered so far away that when they opened the Bible and somebody said, read this, they say, I can't read it. 00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:08.000 I can't see what it's saying. I can't understand it. 00:21:08.000 --> 00:21:14.000 He's saying that they had wandered so far away that they had lost the ability to see Scripture as their authority in life. 00:21:14.000 --> 00:21:23.000 And you see, whether it's atheism or deism or fair sayism, they're actually all this one of this really the same issue. 00:21:23.000 --> 00:21:29.000 And it's saying, I'm not willing to submit myself to what God has written as a word. 00:21:29.000 --> 00:21:37.000 And here's a reason instead to give your life to God's word and to study it and to put your life underneath it. 00:21:37.000 --> 00:21:42.000 And it's because when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, what did he say? 00:21:42.000 --> 00:21:47.000 He said, man does not live by bread alone, but by the every word that comes from the mouth of God. 00:21:47.000 --> 00:21:51.000 Jesus Christ said, the word of God is my bread. 00:21:51.000 --> 00:21:59.000 And that means that if you follow Jesus and Jesus says, the word of God is my bread, you've got to say the word of God is my bread. 00:21:59.000 --> 00:22:06.000 You know, you've got to say at some point I'm willing, in faith to say I'm willing to listen to the Scriptures and what they say. 00:22:06.000 --> 00:22:14.000 There has to come a moment in your life where you come under that authority and maybe again, if you're prone to wander like me and you feel it, 00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:22.000 to leave the God that you love, there may need to be a moment where you say, I need to come back and submit myself to the word of God. 00:22:22.000 --> 00:22:28.000 Now, here's the second thing that he teaches us of what to do here is he says, secondly, look for God. 00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:32.000 Now look for God's foolishness. 00:22:32.000 --> 00:22:35.000 You submit yourself to the word of God, now you can look for God's foolishness. 00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:45.000 Now, remember that this passage is quoted often in the New Testament, chapter 29 verse 14. 00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:48.000 Let me set the stage before I say this. 00:22:48.000 --> 00:23:00.000 Remember 29, 13, you Pharisees, you come and you make yourself known religiously and publicly, yet in your heart you're far away. 00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:05.000 You don't care, you're not interested in the things of God, you haven't given your heart to the Lord. 00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.000 That's the context of verse 13 and then look at the therefore in verse 14. 00:23:09.000 --> 00:23:13.000 Therefore, behold, I will do wonderful things with this people. 00:23:13.000 --> 00:23:17.000 Now do you see that that doesn't make any sense? 00:23:17.000 --> 00:23:23.000 God says, your heart is so far away, therefore I'm going to do wonderful things with these Pharisees. 00:23:23.000 --> 00:23:25.000 That's what he says. 00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:30.000 And you see, if you keep going, this happens three or four times in this passage. 00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.000 Just scan your eyes across 15 and 16. 00:23:34.000 --> 00:23:37.000 15 and 16 he says, he didn't make me, I'm an atheist. 00:23:37.000 --> 00:23:44.000 I'm going to say in my heart that I'm a piece of pottery that has no potter. 00:23:44.000 --> 00:23:50.000 And then verse 17 to 22, in that day the death will hear the words of a book. 00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:53.000 Verse 22, Jacob will not be ashamed anymore. 00:23:53.000 --> 00:23:58.000 It's Jacob that is the clay who is saying there is no potter. 00:23:58.000 --> 00:24:06.000 But then verse 22 says, but Jacob on that day, the Lord says, I'm going to save him and he won't be ashamed. 00:24:06.000 --> 00:24:14.000 You see, look down again, one more last one at chapter 30 verse 18, the very last thing we read. 00:24:14.000 --> 00:24:19.000 If you just look, your Bible probably has a heading in chapter 30 that says, a rebellious people. 00:24:19.000 --> 00:24:23.000 And it lists all the ways Israel was wandering away from God. 00:24:23.000 --> 00:24:25.000 And then verse 18, ignore the heading. 00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.000 Therefore, the Lord waits to be gracious to you. 00:24:29.000 --> 00:24:34.000 And therefore he exalts himself to show you mercy. 00:24:34.000 --> 00:24:37.000 And you see the answer. 00:24:37.000 --> 00:24:42.000 First, you submit yourself to the authority of the Bible and you realize that in the midst of wandering hearts, 00:24:42.000 --> 00:24:49.000 you're wondering heart, my wondering heart, whether you're you struggle with unbelief in the form of deism or atheism, 00:24:49.000 --> 00:24:51.000 or you say, I'm indifferent. 00:24:51.000 --> 00:24:52.000 I know I'm indifferent. 00:24:52.000 --> 00:25:00.000 I come to Monday and I don't think about the Lord after Sunday, or you struggle with phariseism and creating your own path, 00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:03.000 your own bridge across the Exodus waters, you know, works. 00:25:03.000 --> 00:25:05.000 Whatever it is, here's the answer. 00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:11.000 God says, my grace will triumph over your weakness. 00:25:11.000 --> 00:25:14.000 I'll come and save you whether you like it or not. 00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:19.000 I'll come and do a wonderful thing in your midst, you Pharisee. 00:25:19.000 --> 00:25:22.000 You see, you've got to see the foolishness of God. 00:25:22.000 --> 00:25:26.000 And look, here's how the foolishness of God takes shape, the very last thing, and we'll close. 00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:34.000 The third thing that God says, the final thing, is therefore, if you are prone to wander tonight, you need to do nothing. 00:25:34.000 --> 00:25:36.000 That's ultimately what he says. 00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:43.000 And you can see it here in the very end of the passage we read, chapter 30, verses 15 to 18. 00:25:43.000 --> 00:25:56.000 He says in 15, thus says the Lord, in returning and rest you'll be saved, in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. 00:25:56.000 --> 00:25:58.000 The final thing he says to you tonight is do nothing. 00:25:58.000 --> 00:25:59.000 Now, where do we get that? 00:25:59.000 --> 00:26:05.000 He says in verse 15, in returning and rest, that word rest there is the word quiet 00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:07.000 or stillness. 00:26:07.000 --> 00:26:08.000 And so he says it twice. 00:26:08.000 --> 00:26:12.000 In returning and stillness, you'll be saved. 00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:17.000 In stillness or being quiet, that'll be your strength. 00:26:17.000 --> 00:26:18.000 You see what he says? 00:26:18.000 --> 00:26:26.000 He says, you need to stop and be still and be quiet and do nothing. 00:26:26.000 --> 00:26:29.000 If your heart is prone to wander, stop and do nothing. 00:26:29.000 --> 00:26:35.000 And what he means by that is that this is an illusion, all the commentators say, to Exodus 14. 00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:41.000 And in Exodus 14, Israel was standing on the brink of the Red Sea. 00:26:41.000 --> 00:26:47.000 And they had Egypt, Pharaoh, at their backs, and they were trembling and afraid and angry. 00:26:47.000 --> 00:26:50.000 And they were saying to God, why did you bring us to this moment? 00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:52.000 Why did you do this to us? 00:26:52.000 --> 00:26:55.000 And they were wandering very quickly from the Lord. 00:26:55.000 --> 00:27:03.000 And then this is what Moses says, fear not, stand firm, see the salvation of the Lord. 00:27:03.000 --> 00:27:10.000 Today, the Lord will fight for you and you need only to be quiet. 00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:12.000 You see, you got to do nothing. 00:27:12.000 --> 00:27:14.000 You've got to be quiet. 00:27:14.000 --> 00:27:16.000 You've got to see that the Lord fights for you. 00:27:16.000 --> 00:27:18.000 He saves you. 00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:21.000 Don't try to build a bridge across the Red Sea. 00:27:21.000 --> 00:27:23.000 That's fair as aism. 00:27:23.000 --> 00:27:25.000 The Lord will fight for you. 00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:27.000 The Lord will take you across the waters. 00:27:27.000 --> 00:27:29.000 You can't save yourself. 00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:35.000 You've got to be quiet and stop fighting and let the Lord, let the salvation that he has brought be your salvation. 00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:40.000 That's the answer to our wandering hearts is what Isaiah gives us here. 00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:42.000 How? 00:27:42.000 --> 00:27:43.000 How does he do it? 00:27:43.000 --> 00:27:47.000 And here's the last quote from the old to the new. 00:27:47.000 --> 00:27:49.000 I didn't give you the New Testament quote here. 00:27:49.000 --> 00:27:51.000 Back to 2914. 00:27:51.000 --> 00:27:59.000 He says, I'm going to do wonderful things for this people, despite this people, with wonder upon wonder and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish. 00:27:59.000 --> 00:28:01.000 Now that's also quoted in the New Testament. 00:28:01.000 --> 00:28:05.000 And it's quoted by Paul in 1 Corinthians 1. 00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:13.000 He quotes this verse and Paul in 1 Corinthians 1 says, God, remember when God said in Isaiah, the wisdom of the wise is going to perish. 00:28:13.000 --> 00:28:18.000 I'm going to take what the Pharisees and Jerusalem think is wisdom. 00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:20.000 I'm going to flip it upside down. 00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:25.000 I'm going to do what they call foolishness and make it the true wisdom, the plan. 00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:27.000 And what was he talking about there? 00:28:27.000 --> 00:28:29.000 He was talking about the cross. 00:28:29.000 --> 00:28:34.000 You see, right here in Isaiah 2914, Isaiah is prophesying about the cross. 00:28:34.000 --> 00:28:39.000 He says, in the midst of their wandering hearts, I'm going to do a wonderful thing for them, whether they like it or not. 00:28:39.000 --> 00:28:43.000 I'm going to do something so wonderful that they're going to think it's foolishness. 00:28:43.000 --> 00:28:46.000 And he's talking there about the cross of Jesus Christ. 00:28:46.000 --> 00:28:51.000 Paul not only calls the cross foolish in 1 Corinthians 1, he says, the way of faith is foolish. 00:28:51.000 --> 00:28:56.000 He says, oh, I mean, our, our Pharisee of hearts want to say, what is wisdom? 00:28:56.000 --> 00:28:57.000 What's wisdom? 00:28:57.000 --> 00:29:01.000 Wisdom is I've got to build a bridge across the Red Sea with my good works. 00:29:01.000 --> 00:29:03.000 I need to, I need to do this and do this and do this. 00:29:03.000 --> 00:29:06.000 If I'm going to be saved, that seems like wisdom to me. 00:29:06.000 --> 00:29:09.000 But God says, no, I'm going to give you the way of faith. 00:29:09.000 --> 00:29:12.000 And that seems like foolishness, but that's wisdom. 00:29:12.000 --> 00:29:15.000 You see, the cross leads to the way of faith. 00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:18.000 Nothing, be still and embrace fully the way of faith. 00:29:18.000 --> 00:29:20.000 And that's the wisdom of God. 00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:22.000 That's the wonderful thing that God has done. 00:29:22.000 --> 00:29:25.000 You know, Jesus Christ, we'll close with this. 00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:33.000 Jesus Christ, when he was on the mount of transfiguration, Moses and Elijah showed up, the two great prophets of the Old Testament. 00:29:33.000 --> 00:29:37.000 And they sat on either side of him and they, they talked with him. 00:29:37.000 --> 00:29:39.000 And we're told a little bit about their conversation. 00:29:39.000 --> 00:29:47.000 It said in Luke 9 verse 30 that they spoke with Jesus about his quote, departure. 00:29:47.000 --> 00:29:53.000 Elijah and Moses talked to Jesus Christ and they had a conversation about his departure. 00:29:53.000 --> 00:29:58.000 And that's the, very literally in the New Testament, the Greek word Exodus. 00:29:58.000 --> 00:30:04.000 You see, they talked to him just before his death about his Exodus. 00:30:04.000 --> 00:30:12.000 The reason tonight that you can cross the Red Sea from Egypt to the Promised Land, from death to life, 00:30:12.000 --> 00:30:16.000 is because Jesus Christ endured the Exodus. 00:30:16.000 --> 00:30:18.000 And it was different for him. 00:30:18.000 --> 00:30:23.000 You know, you can cross through the waters unscathed because he drowned. 00:30:23.000 --> 00:30:30.000 You can, you can cross, you can leave Egypt tonight and reject your wandering heart 00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:34.000 and embrace his grace because he's the Passover lamb who was slain. 00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:38.000 He experienced the ultimate wrath of the Exodus so you could have it. 00:30:38.000 --> 00:30:43.000 And that means tonight that the simple message of Isaiah 29 to 31 is, give your heart to the Lord, 00:30:43.000 --> 00:30:49.000 stand upon the foundation of grace, don't seek formal compliance with rules. 00:30:49.000 --> 00:30:52.000 Not at all, live the life of grace. 00:30:52.000 --> 00:30:59.000 And truly the last word, remember that they crossed the Red Sea and then they got to Sinai. 00:30:59.000 --> 00:31:01.000 It wasn't the other way around. 00:31:01.000 --> 00:31:04.000 You know, God didn't say, follow the Ten Commandments and then I'll bring you across. 00:31:04.000 --> 00:31:08.000 Instead, he brought them across and then he said, now, what did he say? 00:31:08.000 --> 00:31:11.000 I brought you across on the wings of eagles. 00:31:11.000 --> 00:31:13.000 Now follow me. 00:31:13.000 --> 00:31:17.000 You know, if you embrace and grow in the grace of Jesus, 00:31:17.000 --> 00:31:20.000 if you lean in more and more into the grace of Jesus, 00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:26.000 then you realize that following him is no longer about rule compliance. 00:31:26.000 --> 00:31:33.000 It's just life. It's just joy. It's just what gives you peace. 00:31:33.000 --> 00:31:39.000 True religion is becoming more and more familiar with the grace of Jesus Christ. 00:31:39.000 --> 00:31:42.000 And so if you're struggling with a wandering heart tonight, 00:31:42.000 --> 00:31:47.000 right now as we pray, give your heart to the Lord. 00:31:47.000 --> 00:31:49.000 Let's do that. 00:31:49.000 --> 00:31:54.000 Father, we ask now that you would take our wandering hearts. 00:31:54.000 --> 00:31:59.000 We, each of us in here, struggle with deism and atheism and phariseism 00:31:59.000 --> 00:32:02.000 and religious but indifferent. 00:32:02.000 --> 00:32:05.000 And it's never been different than that. 00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:10.000 Lord, we give thanks that you've shown us that the people of Jerusalem in the eighth century, 00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:12.000 this was their problem. 00:32:12.000 --> 00:32:19.000 And tonight we cast our wandering hearts before you and ask that you would show us your grace 00:32:19.000 --> 00:32:24.000 and help us to live life standing on the firm foundation 00:32:24.000 --> 00:32:29.000 that you brought us through the waters that we didn't build bridges. 00:32:29.000 --> 00:32:35.000 And so we ask, Lord, that you would again restore us this evening to a life of faith. 00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:39.000 So Lord, I pray for someone in here tonight, for several in here tonight, 00:32:39.000 --> 00:32:42.000 that you may be working in their lives. 00:32:42.000 --> 00:32:48.000 Lord, we ask for that and we ask, Father, that you would give the gift of the life of faith tonight, 00:32:48.000 --> 00:32:50.000 the foolishness of faith. 00:32:50.000 --> 00:33:19.000 And we just ask for that, Lord, by the Spirit, in Christ's name. Amen.