“These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.” Isaiah 29:13
I was reading Isaiah 29 this week and I came across this challenging section in verse 13, “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me“. The prophet Isaiah is calling the people of Israel to repent for their empty worship based merely on human rules. Jesus in Matthew 15 quotes this verse and charges the pharisees with the same offense – offering to God empty words from a apathetic heart. Holding fast to the traditions of men, instead of drawing near to their God. I think we can learn much from these words. Outwardly proper worship offends God if it is way of evading him at a deeper level. God is after our hearts, not the words of our mouth.
Listen to this quote by Jack Hayford, “The exercises of our enlightened minds may deduce God, but only our ignited hearts can delight Him – and, in turn, experience His desire to delight us.” Throughout scripture God is looking for men (and women) after his Heart. God said that King David was “a man after his own heart” 1 Samuel 13:14 and throughout the psalms you can see his passion on display.
It is so easy to slip into ‘lip service’. Honoring God with the words of our mouth – empty, meaningless words, while not letting him invade the deepest portions of our being. It is so easy to just sing songs about Jesus and consider it ‘worship’, but in reality true worship is an attitude of the heart. Tradition is not enough, in fact it is repulsive to him if it is not infused with a heart brimming with passion. Worshipping God strictly out of duty is insufficient. The thing Jesus would not tolerate about the Pharisees was their hypocrisy. They said one thing with their mouths, but didn’t mean it with their hearts.
I think all of us have at times said or sung things to God that we didn’t entirely mean or feel. “Jesus, You are all that I want”, and I believe that is ok with God if they are things that we desire to mean or feel. God does not require perfection out of us, but he is searching for hearts that desire Him.
Ray David often exhorts us not to slip into just ‘business as usual’ in our Sunday services. In our liturgy and our music it can be all too easy to just go with the flow and miss the heart of true worship. Ask God to help you slip out of the trap of just reciting nice comfortable words or singing pleasant catchy songs. God wants so much more from us than just lip service. He wants hearts after his heart.
Some things to consider…
Does your worship well up from deep within your heart or is it mere lip service?
What is more important to you – the traditions of men or the word of God? Matthew 15:6-9
Are you a man or woman after God’s own heart?
