Jesus quotes Isaiah:
(Matthew 15:7-9 NKJV) “Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying: (8) ‘These people draw near to Me with their mouth, And honor Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me. (9) And in vain they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.'”
Isaiah spoke several hundred years earlier:
(Isaiah 29:13 GW) The Lord says, “These people worship me with their mouths and honor me with their lips. But their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is based on rules made by humans.”
As I was reading this one day, it leaped off the page.
They were worshiping God. They were honoring God. Don’t miss that in the text. We jump right to the “hearts far from me” and “hypocrites” and all that. But God in his word tells us that they were worshiping him and they were honoring him.
As we try to get a true perspective of our lives before God, we must understand the complexity of the human heart: deceitful above all things, desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17.9).
We have to get past our mouths and our lips.
It seems we easily throw around the “H” word so I will be careful but Jesus, in addressing the “hypocrites” gave a tell-tell sign: They did worship and honor God, but they let their mouths and their lips deceive them.
I believe I know what some of you are thinking: They weren’t really worshiping and honoring God because their hearts were at a distance from God, far away from God in fact.
BUT THEY DID NOT KNOW THAT. Their deceitful hearts used possibly the most powerful, moving act a human can accomplish – worship of God – to fool them into believing they were right before God.
Let’s stand this out by itself so we don’t miss it. They deceived themselves by their lives of worship and honor.
Do I have a witness?
Is there an echo in here? Can you hear Jeremiah? “Deceitful above all things. Who can know it? Desperately wicked.”
We gather to worship. We sing, praise, preach and pray with our mouths and lips. We are on the side of morality. And, gracious, do we like to study our Bibles. Whooo-weee! Surely we must be doing what pleases God.
Except…
Except everything on our list can be done with a heart far from God. It doesn’t matter what is on your list, Girl. What matters is the location of your heart.
So check your heart, Dude! Get past your outward service. Get past your church attendance. Get past your position. Get past your mouth and your lips. It doesn’t matter how many Bible studies you attend. Bow low, way on down there now, before God and let God speak to your heart.
Allow God to give you the data that matches reality: near to him or far from him.
