LIKE A TRUMPET!

LIKE A TRUMPET!

Isa 58:1

Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.

          It is hard to show religious people their sins. They become indignant very quickly and begin to list their religious practices. In verse 2 they responded that they sought God daily; daily mind you! They DID but not DO righteousness. Their righteousness is in the past but not the present tense. Something had happened. They had become hypocrites. Yet their religious observances were intact. Warren Wiersbe says: “When we worship because it is the popular thing to do, not because it is the right thing to do, our worship becomes hypocritical.

          We now call the preliminary musical portion of our services “worship.” In fact Christian music itself has come to be named “worship!” The result is that those who sing, or stand listening to singing, think that they are worshipping. It is all as formal as a Gregorian chant and often less appealing. When our “worship” resembles a popular music concert, complete with lights and smoke, we have lost the true meaning of the word.

          Isaiah had a hard topic and a hard task. His was to stir religious fervor in those who already thought themselves to be religious. He was assigned the task of arousing devotion in those who thought themselves to be devoted. His was to install a heart into a lifeless body of religious practices. Warren Wiersbe once again comments: “When people live on lies, they live in a twilight zone and do not know where they are going.”

Isa 59:9-11

9 Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness.

10 We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men.

11 We roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves: we look for judgment, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far off from us.

“It would be more comfortable to shrug off what our eyes behold and loyally declare our belief in the intrinsic goodness of all men; but our eternal welfare forbids that we deal dishonestly with reality. The truth is, men are not basically good; they are basically evil, and the essence of their sin lies in their selfishness. The putting of our own interests before the glory of God is sin in its Godward aspect, and the putting of our own interests before those of our fellow men is sin as it relates to society. We know men are sinners because when they must choose between others and themselves they choose themselves every time.”

~ A.W. Tozer, The Set of the Sail

Dear Lord, let me show your people their sin today, both lovingly and faithfully. AMEN