(I have made some deletions for brevity)
So far we have been thinking a great deal about what we can do in worship - admittedly in response to the Holy Spirit - but nevertheless our actions of praying, praising, listening, loving and obeying. And of course there is nothing wrong with that. But there is a much deeper level of worship, one in which we are unable to express ourselves verbally or non-verbally - where we are utterly passive. The highest and most intense worship takes place when we can do nothing but be amazed, when we are rendered helpless and speechless with wonder and gratitude, when we just sit back and watch God work. This is what Isaiah is talking about when he says, "For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved~ in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength." (19: 30:15).
In worship at this depth we are kept from even saying, "Thank you." For, at the risk of being misunderstood, I am prepared to say that our gratitude sometimes gets in the way of praise. Gratitude can be an attempt to get the balance even again: Probably you have experienced on a human level something of what I am getting at. Someone does something for you, and you know very well that he or she wants you to be thankful, and you are, so you express your gratitude. You try to be extremely thankful so that this person will really see how you feel. Or you try to return the favour in some way. This gives you a feeling of satisfaction.
Have you ever been placed in a situation in which there was nothing you could say or do? Someone did something immensely wonderful and you weren't able to do anything but feel grateful? Perhaps the person went away, and you wished you could find him or her to say how much you appreciated what was done. And maybe you felt frustrated, and some of your joy was taken away because it was not possible to express your gratitude. On the natural level, we always feel that we must do something.
But Isaiah says that our salvation lies in the fact that we do nothing: "In returning and rest shall ye be saved." I did not say that we feel nothing, but that we do nothing. This, says Isaiah, is the best way to live - the way God wants us to live. It constitutes the greatest joy there is. And even though we are rendered helpless - as though we are just standing there with our mouth wide open - God sees how we feel and knows that we are grateful.
Yet, though this is what God wanted, the people Isaiah was speaking to would not do this. It reads: ". . . in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not." The people wanted to "do" instead. They said, "No; for we will flee upon horses… We will ride upon the swift." And that's the way so many of us are. We can’t imagine getting satisfaction from anything but doing. We must be always working – always on the go. We feel guilty if we are not on the move.
Isaiah 30:15 is set in the context of a solemn rebuke. The people of Israel thought that they had better ideas than God on how to fight their battles - and they had actually turned to Egypt for help. The chapter begins, "Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord, that take counsel, but not of me… That walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth; to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt!" (vv. 1-2). They thought that God would understand if they turned to the resources of Egypt for help to fight his battles. They wouldn't listen when God said, "This is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the Lord" (v.9). They only wanted to hear pleasant things. Verse 10 says they were a people "which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits."
As a result, although they claimed that they were doing the Lord's work, they were really rejecting the Holy One of Israel. And the Lord said to them, "Therefore this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instant." (v.13). They would be destroyed as completely as pottery breaks in pieces: "And he [God] shall break it as the breaking of the potters' vessel that is broken in pieces; he shall not spare: so that there shall not be found in the bursting of it a shard to take fire from the hearth" (v.14).
Our Christian life must be lived without confidence in works. I don't mean it's to be lived without works, but it is to be lived without relying on what we do to get God's approval. We must not feel conscious of any good we are doing, but must consider that what we are doing is nothing. Jesus said, "But when thou doeth alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth' (Matt. 6:3). And Paul says in Galatians 2:20: "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life I now'live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son who loved me, and gave himself for me." As long as we are so impertinent as to conclude that we are saved because we do good things – then we grieve the Spirit and cut ourselves off from the joy which can be ours by trusting in his word alone.
If we are living in frustration and bondage, always checking our spiritual pulse to see whether or not God loves us, and whether we are saved, we show that we are only looking to ourselves. As Calvin said, "If you contemplate yourself, that is sure damnation." It is idolatry, for it shows we are not looking to God. God just wants us to believe his word. And his word says that if we look to him we are saved. "There is life in a look," said Spurgeon.
When we are in heaven singing the praises of God we will know that God did it all from start to finish. But Isaiah’s point it: see this now. Live like this now. Because that is where our strength in living lies. When some people get to heaven and finally realize that they were saved by grace alone, they will look back and think of all the guilt and frustration they went through here below, all their anxiety and rushing about, all their questioning, "Am I a Christian?," and will see just how useless it all was.
After years and years of the Christian life many people still worry about whether they are really Christians. But this is of the devil. He tries to paralyze us and keep us looking inward for our confidence. Whereas if we settled it once and for all by trusting God's word, we could get on with our life and with worshipping God. Don't wait until you get to heaven to find out that you were saved all along! See it now and it will change your whole lifestyle. You will see God work in a manner that you never dreamed of!
I fear also that so much of our worship today is motivated by self-righteousnes. We sing our hymns and pray pious prayers and tell God how much we love him. Hen we leave the church feeling really good inside – but it makes God sick We are like the person who talks about himself all the time; he may enjoyn it, but everyone else is thoroughly fed up!
We may get a good feeling out of saying, `Lord, I love you.' But he sees right through us. So much of our worship is aimed at getting a good feeling for ourselves. We think we have shown God how much we love him, or we feel we have paid our dues, as it were, or have gained some leverage with God by going to church.
Isaiah very much wanted the people to enjoy hearing the voice of God: The way to do this is rest! Hebrews 4:10 says, "For he that is entered into his rest, he alsoe hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his." And the key phrase here is, "from his own works." We need to stop feeling the need to be always on the go. We must stop getting our joy from being involved. If we are frustrated and burnt out, then there is no trust. But when we cease from our work and just do nothing - then we see that God likes us just the way we are - and that is when we worship!
Do we think that we are only important to God when we are doing something? This is the way God wants us to live. When someone does something wonderful for us, we may not always be able to thank them, and they'll never know how we feel. But with God we can be left in awe, and he does know how we feel; He just wants us to enjoy seeing him do what he by himself alone can do.
This is far more than the first ABC of holy living. Some people are paralyzed because they have never got beyond the first steps in sanctification. The first steps are important, but we need to move beyond that level. What Isaiah is doing here – and what the Holy Spirit is doing today - is giving each of us and invitation to enter the big league.
But as long as we are always on the go, trying to bring in the kingdom by our activism, God will just fold his hands and say, "You want to do it? Go on then." Have you wondered Why God isn't working? It's because you're doing the work. So God says, "I'll just wait." And when we run ahead rather than rest, we will always be sorry. When the Israelites said, "We will flee upon horses... We will ride upon the swift," God said in effect, "You certainly will run. You'll stay on the run, and your pursuers will be swift. The day will come when you will have to look to me, and I will be gracious then to you.'"
Many people can't imagine that doing it God's way - the way of faith alone - could turn things around. Some people are running their business affairs in a way that is dishonouring to God, and they say, "Well, we live in a wicked world. We just have to do some of these little shady things." They're frustrated and in trouble because God has folded his arms and said, "Go on - you try it your way." But if they would get it right with God, he'd bless them. He may not make them millionaires, but they'll have peace - which is something they don't have now.
Some people, though they are Christians, are looking to the world for happiness. They think that by living with that worldly crowd, or by going to one more cinema or one more pub, they will somehow get satisfaction. And they justify themselves by saying, "God understands that I have needs." And God lets them do it - but they don't have peace.
There are two principles here which, if we can grasp them, will result in the kind of worship God seeks of us. The first, as we have seen from Isaiah 30:15 and Hebrews 4:10, is that of operating without any fatigue. This is what happens when we get right with God. We just come to him and do it his way. As the NIV puts it, "In repentance and rest is your salvation.” Repentance means "change of mind." It means saying, "God got it right. I agree with him."
How many people are utterly frustrated? They have tried everything and the result has only been fatique. I was talking recently to a minister who had said to me, "I've had to ask for a sabbatical. I’m burnt out." When we don't wait on God and are always trying to do things ourselves, the result is endless turmoil. But if we really want assurance of salvation, God will knock everything out from under us, untile we trust him alone.
To rest in God means that we leave everything to him. We leave it to him to put us in the right place at the right time, and with the right people at the right time, even in the right financial position at the right time. And why is this the way of no fatigue? Well, it is because we get our approval from the blood of Christ, and not from our works, and because we live by the authority of the Spirit of Christ.
The result is that we live and worship in a state of amazement, awe and admiration: which is the second principle I want us to see from Isaiah 30:15. This is because we believe the promise of I John 1:9: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." The blood of Jesus washes away our sin as though it had never been committed and a fresh beginning always follows. The result is quietness, peace and ease.
And we have quietness over the most difficult situations. Quietness over our deepest fears. For God says, "Leave it to me." We lose the desire to get even with those who have hurt us, and we feel little need to prove ourselves.
Real worship is directed towards one who doesn't want anything from us for what he has done for us. There are no strings attached: God only wants us to trust him. He wants us to experience the joy of doing nothing, nothing but resting on the fact that he loves us. God wants us just to look to him and say, "Lord, I don't know how much I love you. But I know how much you love me." Rest on that and let God love you. Then you will stand in awe.
Then to our surprise we begin to hear God's voice giving us clear instructions. As verse 21 of Isaiah 30 puts it: "Thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying: This is the way, walk ye in it." Note the order: first we rest on the fact that God loves us and then we hear him speak. It is a way of no fatigue and of continual amazement.
Mr Poole Connor, the man who founded the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches, lived into his nineties and before he died he said, `The longer I live and the older I get, the more amazed I am that God sent his Son into the world to die on a cross for my sins.'
That's the way we are saved. That's the way we are to live. And that's what will bring true worship by the Holy Spirit.
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