If....Then

Isaiah 58:6-14 (ESV)

“Is not this the fast that I choose:
    to loose the bonds of wickedness,
    to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
    and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
    and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
    and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
 

Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
    and your healing shall spring up speedily;
your righteousness shall go before you;
    the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
    you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’

If you take away the yoke from your midst,
    the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,

If you pour yourself out for the hungry
    and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,

Then shall your light rise in the darkness
    and your gloom be as the noonday.
 And the Lord will guide you continually
    and satisfy your desire in scorched places
    and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
    like a spring of water,
    whose waters do not fail.
And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
    you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
    the restorer of streets to dwell in.

“If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath,

    from doing your pleasure on my holy day,

and call the Sabbath a delight

    and the holy day of the Lord honorable;

If you honor it, not going your own ways,

    or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly;

Then you shall take delight in the Lord,
    and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father,
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Before I start taking apart this Scripture, I just want to take note of all of the "if -- then" cause and effect clauses in this passage. I'm not 100% sure what to make of it, but it is certainly present in this chapter.

Well, I had to take a break from trying to figure out this passage because I was stuck. I couldn't figure out why God tells His people that He doesn't want their actions in the first part of this chapter, but then He turns around and commands them to do other actions instead, at the end of the chapter. I kept trying to determine this one thing:  Is this passage about actions or is it about the heart? 

I think it's both. From the heart comes the words and the actions; they are inseparable, just as much as breathing and living are inseparable. In Luke 6:45, Jesus says,

"The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks."

At the beginning of the chapter, God expresses disappointment in the behavior of the Israelites because their actions are an indicator of their hearts, and the news wasn't good -- their actions revealed a bad heart.

Now He's telling them what He wants to see:  actions that reveal a pure heart.

Another thing that helped me understand this passage was our sermon at church on Sunday. In the following New Testament passage, we see the put-off, put-on principle, which we find in various places throughout Scripture. I think we can even make application to the passage we are studying now.

The put-off/put-on principle says we are to put off certain sinful behaviors, and put on other godly ones in their place. If we just put off without putting back on, that void will fill again with something. If we put on something new to replace what we put off, the putting off is more likely to be a permanent change

Following is that principle at work in Ephesians. Notice that each "put off" is followed by a "put on:"

• Put off the old self, put on the new.
• Put off falsehood, put on words of truth.
• Put off stealing, put on working and giving.
• Put off corrupt speech, put on godly words that build up.
• Put off bitterness, anger, slander; put on kindness, tenderhearted ways, and forgiveness.

Ephesians 4:22-32 (ESV)

 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,  and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. 

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,  and give no opportunity to the devil.  

Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.  

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. 

So what if we applied that same put-off/put-on principle to our passage in Isaiah? That sheds a whole new light on things! Put off pride and put on true humility Put off a sinful heart attitude and put on a Christ-like one.

Put off, put on.  I think that's where this passage is going.

Known by God

Isaiah 59:3b-5 (ESV)

Why have we fasted, and you see it not?
    Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’
Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure,
    and oppress all your workers.
 Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
    and to hit with a wicked fist.
Fasting like yours this day
    will not make your voice to be heard on high.
 Is such the fast that I choose,
    a day for a person to humble himself?
Is it to bow down his head like a reed,
    and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?
Will you call this a fast,
    and a day acceptable to the Lord?

God doesn't mince words with the Israelites in this passage. He tells them straight up exactly what He thinks: 

"You put on a good show. You put on the sackcloth of fasting and cover yourself with ashes, and put your head down as if to humble yourself, but in the midst of your fasting, your heart attitude shows: you mistreat your workers, you argue and engage in brawls. Do you think I only want the outward appearance of fasting? Do you forget I can see all your other actions? Do you forget I can see your heart attitude?" 

How would this conversation sound in modern-day vernacular? I'm not trying to put words into the mouth of God Almighty, but what is He saying to me?

"You put on a good show. You show up at church every time there's a service, and you write verses from my Word all over Facebook. Then you go to work and use crass language. You engage in questionable business practices. You point fingers and accuse others, and assume their motives, feeling yourself to be righteous more than they. Do you forget I can see your heart?  Do you think this is the service I want from you?

In David's instructions to Solomon, he doesn't even mention actions -- he begins with the heart.  I Chronicles 28:9 says, 

"And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought." 


God wants my heart, not my actions. He knows my actions will follow my heart. When I get things out of order and put on actions without a true heart, I become holier-than-thou. I use my good behavior to beat others over the head and make myself feel better. 

I think, especially lately, that Facebook is a prime example of this. Heart attitudes show up on Facebook, and especially during such a time of political upheaval and all-out hatred as we are experiencing now. I say this carefully but honestly:  some of my Christian friends spew hatred on Facebook, then turn around and speak God's truth and love at church. God sees both our church behavior and our Facebook rants. We can put on all the holiness we want to for church, but God sees our heart.

Would God say to me, "I saw your Facebook post and I heard you joking with your co-workers on Monday, right after you put your hands up in praise to me at church on Sunday.  Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord?"

Lord God, let my heart be yours so wholly, so completely that my actions naturally follow suit; that they become an irrepressible picture of Your love; that You find them pleasing in Your eyes because my heart is pure. Lord, make me unafraid to be known by You.

Isaiah 58: He First Loved Us

Lessons from the second reading of Isaiah chapters 58-60 (ESV quoted):

"Cry aloud, do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins." (58:1 ESV)

My people....God does not forget for one second, even in the midst of His displeasure, that these are HIS people. He doesn't disown them; He doesn't disassociate Himself from them. The possessive tone of that phrase is beautiful:  whatever I do, however far I wander, I am HIS and He won't forget me.

That's not to say there won't be consequences for my sin, and I don't want to minimize that -- Isaiah 58 is all about the sin of the Israelites and the consequences for their sin. We're getting to that, but for now, I want to stop and revel in the knowledge that I am HIS....always.

"Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God." (58:2 ESV)

The first time I read this, I almost thought the Israelites were pleasing to God in their behavior, but the phrase beginning with "as if" tells the tale. If God found them pleasing to Him, they would have been behaving righteously, in addition to seeking the judgment of God, and delighting to draw near to Him.

"Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves and you take no knowledge of it?" (58:3 ESV)

Now we're getting to the truth! This is the heart of the matter. The Israelites are saying, "We did _____ in your name, and then we even _____, just so you would think well of us." That might not sound so bad at first, but let's put it in terms of our marriage. What if I took the day off, cleaned the house, and did all the laundry, in hopes that my husband would take me out to eat and then take me shopping when he got home? When my husband got home, he thanked me for what I had done but didn't offer to take me out at all. So...I stomped my feet and cried, and said, "Why did I clean the house and you didn't reward me? Why did I do the laundry and you didn't take me shopping?" I didn't clean the house and do the laundry because I loved my husband and wanted to please him -- I did it because I wanted acknowledgment and reward.

Oops...my heart attitude is showing. So was Israel's, and God called them out for it. It's a fine line, this doing the right thing. It's not enough to do right for the sake of doing right. Our well-doing must come as a result of the overflow of a thankful and loving heart, a heart that can't help but do right because it is so thankful to God for His great love, His grace, His mercy, His sacrifice, and His innumerable daily blessings on our lives. God wants our adoration to be a direct response to His love. He loved us first, before we ever knew Him. He called us, chose us in Him, and brought us to Himself. We love in response, not in expectation. This was Israel's downfall.

Lord God, lover of my soul...let me love you more and more today because You first loved me. Let my love be true, not in expectation of anything I'll get from loving You. Let it be just for the beauty of who You are, just in gratitude for my very breath and life today. I owe all I am and have to You, and I am grateful.

No Longer Dry

I'm not quite sure how I want to use this blog...for now, I think it will just serve as a place to put my thoughts on my current Bible study.

I'm just coming off of a long spiritual dry period in my life. I want it to end. I want God's light to burn inside me again so brightly that others can see it again. I want my good works to be a response of gratitude instead of a resume or a job application applying for God's blessing on my life. I want to long for Him again in a way I haven't felt in a long time. I want to know Him and be unafraid to be known by Him.

I've been praying to "want to" for a long time. Today I want to again. Thank you, God.

It started two days again when I had to drive an hour and a half to a team meeting for work, and I listened to Christian radio all the way there and back. I heard Danny Gokey tell where he found his inspiration for the song "Rise." It was from Isaiah 60:1, and it sounded like a good verse for me to research and apply in my own life.

So today I read it. It seemed to stand alone, unrelated to anything around it, so I read ahead through the rest of the chapter. Still, I couldn't find context and application.

So I read the passage before it in Isaiah 59. The verse still felt isolated and unconnected.

Then I read chapter 58, and there it was:  a whole text of tangled ideas that left me more confused than enlightened, but that clearly applied to my initial text. My husband was in the same room reading his own devotional for the day, so I asked him to help me decipher the text, and he had good insights. Here are the questions and answers we discussed from this text:

Q:  In verses 1-2 I see that the people of Israel were seeking God daily, delighting to know His ways, asking for His righteous judgments, and delighting to draw near to Him. Why was he displeased with them? I couldn't figure it out.

A:  My husband's insight was good:  Verse 3 shines a light on the heart attitude of the people, which was more important to God than all the righteous activities and fasting. The people asked "Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?"  Telling words, aren't they? We DID this, we ACCOMPLISHED that... why aren't you impressed, God?

Q:  So what DID God want?

A:  He wanted righteous activity born from a pure heart, with no selfish motivation behind it. The activity was not the important part -- it was the heart attitude behind it. Verses 6-14 are full of these cause and effect kind of phrases:  "Is not ______ what I desire?"  "THEN shall ______ happen."  "IF you _______"  "THEN shall ______ happen."

God wants a pure heart, not a bunch of actions that spring from ulterior motives. He delights in the sweetness of the kindness we show to others, not because we want to be accepted by Him, but because we are so thankful we already ARE loved by Him, and we can't help but share.

This passage has a lot in it, and I'm planning to park here for a while to keep unpacking it, a little at a time.

God, apply these principless to my life. Let my activity come from my love for you, not my striving to be holy. Let my works be sweet, easy, natural, and irrepressible because I am so thankful to You for what you've done for me already.