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Episode 652: In this episode, we dive into Isaiah chapter 1, where God expresses His displeasure with the empty rituals of worship being performed by the Israelites. We discuss how God desires genuine faith and devotion rather than mere outward expressions of religion. This leads to a deeper conversation about the importance of sincerity in our worship and the dangers of going through the motions without a true heart for God.
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Join Jeff and Chris for honest conversations about Scripture, faith, and the everyday stuff we all navigate. With humor, personal stories, and plenty of back-and-forth, The Bible Guys explore what the Bible says and how it connects to your life.
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You're listening to the Bible guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in practical ways. Hey, everybody walking to the Bible guys. Hey, let's let's do our best today. Oh you know what? You know what, Jeff, When I woke up, I thought to myself, my goal was to do mediocre. Mediocre. Yeah, but now that you've said that, I'm going to strive to do my best. Thank you. Get in there, give it your best. Yes, I'll tell you what now now wait for buckle up guys. Amazing, that's so funny. Hey. I always make that joke when I'm at church. You know, I've been pastors as long as you have, you know, just about the same amount of time. And people come in and they'll go, hey, I brought my friend today, so you better be good. And I'd say, I'd say, oh my goodness. I'm like, I'm so glad you said that. I was shooting for mediocrity today. But now I'm going to really kick it up. In nots. I was walking through the green room a couple of weeks ago and it was between we have to do four identical services on Sunday morning. Yeah, right, So eight thirty, ten thirty and one, because our auditorium has like seven hundred and fifty seats, so we need we need more space, and so we do four services. So I was walking into the green room between our third and fourth service and some of the band was back there. I said, all right, we got one more service, and I think this time I'm going to do the best I can at it. And they're like, well it's about time, right buddy. That's yeah, okay, Well, hey, today's we're going to do the best we can. And hey, here's a fun segment. By the way. You know, we had that visiting church that came from Chicago and really good church. Yeah, just a partner, they knew you, and they were just coming just to trade best practices, right, And two of the guys pulled me aside and they said, do you really do four services in a row? And I said, yeah, we do every Sunday, and he goes, that sounds exhausting, and I was like, you know, what's. It's a lot. It is, it's tired, it's a lot. And then my wife and I host a small group for young adults right now on Sunday evenings. Oh, Sunday evenings. Yes, being five, bro, I didn't know your. Small group of Sunday evenings. Oh i'd want to jump. Anyways, it's great though, we love it. So today our segment is stump the pastor. Stump the pastor, which people. Get excited about that segment. But let's just be honest. It's not very hard to stump us, right right. I was just thinking, like, what would the I answer usually as we don't know I was. I was thinking, what would the jingle be for stump the pastor the pastor Stump stomp, stump, Stump the pastor. I don't know. It's something like from the w W E or something. Yeah maybe so yeah, well, I mean, let's let's be honest. I'm responding to what you just said, most stumped the pastor answers and with I don't nobody knows. Because that's why this one, that's why it's a stump question. Yeah, this this one's has an answer. You want me to read it and you answer it. Well, okay, here we go tackle it. I often hear people, even pastors, pull one verse out of the Bible and apply it universally when in context, the verse was responding to a specific circumstance or event. Here's an example. Jeremiah twenty nine to eleven. If I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord plans to prosper You're not the harm of your plans to give you hope in the future. This verse was spoken by Jeremiah to the people of Israel when they were exiled. What are your thoughts? Can these verses be applied universally or is it just speaking to the individual group in exile? And that's from Paul c. Hi, Paul cy Hey, paulsy what's going on? Yeah, good question. It's a great question, really good question. So here's a question about context. Well, I mean, think about it this way. Let me We're happy to take everything up. Let me do this, let me do this Jesus style. I answered the question with a question, okay, which is so, wouldn't that apply to everything? For instance, in the New Testament, Jesus would be just teaching crowds and he would say, blessed are. The poor, right, for they shall inherit the Kingdom of God. Well that you could ask the question and say, oh, is he meaning just the poor of that community, or was he meaning the poor for all time, right, blessed of the meek, blessed of the humble. Right. And then if you if you take, for instance, like First Corinthians, and you know, here's Paul writing to the Church of corinth because he's you know, sort of I don't want to say rebuking, but he's sort of trying to solve problems. Is that a better way to say it. He's problem solving and these are specific problems of that church. In that city, and yet he gives all these truths. And if not careful, what you could say is, oh, well, that wasn't written to me. That was written to those guys for a specific reason. Right, So technically you could probably apply that to most of, if not almost exclusively, all of the Bible. Right. Yeah, it's true. So there's the question about context, I think is very important because cults get built off of people taking Bible versus words out of context. Oh for sure. And that's like the story of the guy that was so upset and was miserable and he's just looking for a sign from God and he says, God, just show me sign. He flips the Bible open and he says, and Judas went out and hanged himself, right, and he slammed the book and he goes, no, no, no, no, okay, okay, this is the one. Whatever you say to do, I'll do that. He flipped the Bible back open and they said, go and do that likewise. Right. So, if you just take a phrase, you can make the Bible say almost anything you want to say. So context is extremely important. So Paul is correct that Jeremiah is writing to the exiled Israelites and saying God is saying, hey, listen, Judgment's not going to stay with you forever. I know the plans I have. My plans are coming to an end with regard to the exile. I'm going to prosper you again. Right that that's what we're saying. So there's the context of it is the direct thing, so there are the meaning of it, the direct meaning, and that's important to understand the history, the story stuff. There are also general principles that we can take from the Bible. And so while the direct promise is to the people of Israel, the principle is God is sovereign, He's in control. The principle is that God's character is good, that God genuinely loves his people, even when his people are in the middle of discipline, and that we can trust that His plans are not always evil plans or terrible plans for us. Now judgment may be coming, we may be in the middle of judgment now, but his mercies do and endure forever that he does plan to extend his mercy to us. So the principle we can apply even while the promise wasn't written directly to us, so you can be. Inspired by it, right, especially when the verse describes the characteristics of who God is, because God is the saying yesterday to in forever. So when he says, God's desire is never to harm you, but to prosper you. And that is true about God, which is applicable for you and for me because it is a principle of describing God. So oftentimes you know when Paul, for instance, in the New Testament, who wrote almost half of the New Testament, when he writes things down that are rules to follow for the Corinthian Church or the you know Church in Ephesis, or the Church and PHILIPI, or whatever it is, we can say, well, these are general principles of how the church should love one another or forgive or behave or submit to one another, or or act in humility, or help one another or encourage one another. These are general principles to. Describe how Paul is saying, this is how the church should act, And yes it is to that church, but it is a general principle that describes how the church should act. And so yeah, there are definitely. Any promise that describes the character of God or God's intent or God's. You know, commitment. Right, what He's committed to is definitely transferable to you and to me today. And the Bible is really clear that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever yep. Right, So it's not like, oh, he only meant his mercy and his kindness and his goodness was only in that moment, right, And so this is why we have there's so many passages in the Bible. Romans fifteen four says that everything was written in the past was written to teach us. Right, that's really powerful. First Corinthians chapter ten says, these things occurred as examples to us. Right. First Corinthians chapter eleven, these things happened to them as examples, and we're written down as warnings for us, right. Two Timothy chapter three, verse sixteen. All scripture. All scripture is God breath and is useful, useful for teaching, for rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good word. Right, So that included the Old Testament Hebrews ten. The Law is a shadow of the good things that are coming. Right, So all the Old Testament was just a shadow of what was coming. So if God said something good in the Old Testament, that's just a shadow of even what's better coming through Christ. Right, that's what's talking about the entire Hebrews chapter eleven recounts the heroes of the faith that examples examples for new believers in the Christian era. Right. And then Jesus even said I didn't come to get rid of the Old Testament. I came to fulfill it. And so all of these these passages are are reminding us that some people would want to say, let me say it this way. Some people want to say, dismiss the Old Testament. It doesn't mean anything to you. Quit taking things out of context. I would look at a passage like Jeremiah chapter twenty nine eleven, and while I know that that promise is not to me that God's going to make me rich today. Right, I can look at that as a promise that God is always good and that God always is hoping and working towards redemption. And if you read the next passage or the next verses, he says, if you seek me with all your heart, you'll find me. That's a principle that's true to me. And it was written He spoke that to the Israelites, but he left it in the Bible for me, right and for you. And it's actually amazing the number of verses in the Bible that actually talk about itself. Yeah, right, So like so the Bible has dozens of verses that say, hey, yes it was written by humanity, but it was inspired by the Holy Spirit. And just like those verses that you reference, is it is for us today and the validity of the Bible. The Bible validates itself, and it actually talks about not only that one scripture, but there are just so many more that say that this scripture. Is the or the words of God. And so yeah, I believe that the reason why God put together and he allowed actually, you know, the building of the Bible right. You know, either the Holy Spirit was involved and either God orchestrated that or he didn't, right, And so you have to just have a certain amount of belief about God is going to accomplish that which He's going to accomplish through human people. And by the way, that's no different than anything. Right. God will use wicked caesars and rulers and kings to eventually accomplish his purposes. So God could use anybody, anything, at any time to accomplish what he wants to accomplish. So now we have the Bible, which is by the way, the best selling book by a very large margin of all time, of all time, right, it's not even close. And it's been translated into almost every language. There's some languages that's still not there yet, but they think by probably within the next twenty five to forty years, we'll have it in every language. Yeah, which is great. And then and so it's endured, it survived, and so God put this in place. And so either that is a miraculous work of God, and God has just done this, and it's incredible. And the books that are in here are supposed to be in here, you know, And and God, God's in charge of all of it, or he's not in charge of it and he didn't do it. So to summarize it, the specific statements are there's always context, and so we want to find out what is the context of that. At the same time, there are general principles that can always be applied. Another summary for what you said. In Exodus chapter twenty, God says don't kill. He's saying it specifically to the Israelites, right, But you and I can take the general principle that God's expecting us to honor life and not be killing murdering people. Right. Right. He says don't don't sleep with somebody who's not your wife, represent speaking directly to Israel and the tank commandment. So those those kite tablets weren't for you and me. They were for the Israelites. But the principle is God expects us to be holy in our marriages, right, and so and. We look at the intent of everything that God said about how my people should act. That's right, right, That's why the law was given. That's right. So that's great. That's really really good question, Paul. Ye, great question, Paul. So context is important. You can apply principles even as you look at the context. So I think that's super great. Yeah, that's great. And speaking of great, you know it's not great. But Samia getting killed by Syria. Yeah, they got wiped out. Yeah. And and and you know what else isn't great? I think, did we forget our transition yesterday? No, no, we got that. Do we do it? Okay? And then you know what else isn't great? But Judah's heading in the same direction. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right. I forgot we skipped we're. Doing the second king So we're in Isaiah chapter one today. Yes, yeah, Isaiah skipped. Over, So we moved out of order just a little bit. And the reason being Israel winds up going into Judgment first, in exile first, even though the beginning of Isaiah Isaiah's warning Judah, but Judah winds up going into exile second. It's because Israel, the Northern Kingdom, was way out ahead of Judah with regard to their pagan practices and walking away from God. So God extended, you know, some more time to Judah because Judah was behind them in the amount of time that they were wandering from God. But they also are going in the same direction. So in Isaiah chapter one, it says, these are the visions that Isaiah, son of AMA's saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. He saw these visions during the years when Usiah, Jotham, ah Has and Iszekiah were kings of Judah. Listen, o heavens, pay attention to earth. This is what the Lord says. The children are raised and cared for have rebelled against me. Even an ox knows its honor, its owner, and a donkey recognized it's master's care. But Israel doesn't know it's master. He's calling the donkeys. You call it dumb ox, dumbas and ox. Right, yeah, and then I'm not going to say the other word for donkey, but you're thinking it. People don't recognize my care for them. Oh what a sinful nation. They are loaded down with a burden of guilt. They're evil people, corrupt children who've rejected the Lord. They've despised the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on him. Why do you continue to invite punishment? Must your rebel forever? Your head is injured, your heart is sick, You're battered from head to foot, covered with bruises and welts and infected wounds, without any soothing ointments or bandages. Your country lies in ruins, and your towns are burned. Foreigners plunder your fields before your eyes and destroy everything they see. Beautiful. Jerusalem stands abandoned, like a watchman's shelter in a vineyard, like a lean to in a cucumber field after the harvest, like a helpless city under siege. If the Lord of Heaven's armies had not spared a few of us, we would have been wiped out like Sodom and destroyed like Gomorah. Listen to the Lord, you leaders of Sodom, quote unquote, listen to the Lord, our God, people of quote unquote Gomorrah. What makes you think I want all your sacrifices, Sayslord. I'm sick of your burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fat and cattle. I get no pleasure from the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. And when you come to worship me, who asks you to parade through my courts with all your ceremony, stop bringing me your meaningless gifts. The incense of your offerings disgusts me, as for your celebrations of the new Moon and the Sabbath, and your special days for fasting. They're all sinful and faults. I want no more of your pious meetings. I hate your new moon celebrations and your annual festivals. They're a burden to me. God stand them. When you lift up your hands in prayer, I will not look. So you offer many prayers, I will not listen, for your hands are covered with the blood of innocent victims. Wash yourselves and be clean. Get your sins out of my sight. Give up your evil ways to do good, seek justice, help the oppressed, defend the cause of orphans, fight for the rights of widows. Come, let's settle this, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlett, I'll make them as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool. If you will only obey me, you'll have plenty to eat. But if you turn away and refuse to listen, you will be devoured by the sword of your enemies. I, the Lord have spoken, Wow, there you have it. There's a way to end that chapter. I the Lord have spoken, Yeah, I remember yesterday I said. So let it be written. So let it be done. Yeah, and so Isaiah is it's it's just a wonderful book. And poetic in the way he writes it. Yeah, it's very poetic. It is. It's almost like it's it's it's almost you know. He he refers to Sodom and Gomorrah and quotes, you know, he talks about, well, I mean, this is God's saying it. So he says, I'm sick of your meaningless gifts. The incense and your offerings disgust me, and just goes on to talk about, you know, all the things that you do, the offer the incense, the offerings, the Fatti calf, all those things. And that's the part that actually stands out to me. I mean, well, the crimson wool, you know, makes sense as. White as now. That's obviously the key verse there. But besides that, this, this, this is the part that stands out to me. Stop bringing your offerings. Yeah, I mean, you know, what. Did David say, you don't desire sacrifice or else I would bring it right? You don't want you want to burn offerings? What did you say? Psalm fifty one? He said, for the offerings that you want, or a broken heart, a broken in contract heart, Oh God, these things you will not despise Versus sixteen and seventeen. So that's what that's what David is saying. David saying like, hey, obedience is better than sacrifice. So and. I always think of like people who played church, but they're not really honoring God. So a lot of our churches, you know, if you've ever had a bad church experience, it's really the people who are our age and above, isn't it right, that are classified as people who had like a bad church experience and they've walked away from God. But like, for instance, the new generation coming up, those who are twenty something, they've just had no church experience, you know I'm talking about. Yeah, what I'm. Saying is a lot of people of our generation and older, they were involved in church, but then they walked away from church because they had a bad church experience. They could be classified as that, right, that was the will of model. Right? Oh yeah, and oh I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, Okay, I was having hard time tracking with what you were saying. Yeah, And what I'm saying is that model is not necessarily geared toward like my son's age or my daughter's age. Yeah, most of the people that had so Yeah, what you're saying is like the Boomers and the gen Xers, yeap, many of them them left church either because for a lot of reasons, but left kind of mad at the church. Yeah, some because of abuses within the church, some because they didn't like all the rules and regulations. And usually that would be the result of kind of halfway Christianity, just showing up on a Sunday morning on occasion and not really understanding, not living out their faith, their family, their parents, not truly living out their faith, not really spending time in the Word, and so on the surface, if you just open the Bible and you see don't do this and don't do that, all of a sudden you're like, right, I don't like that. I want to do whatever I want to do. And so during the sixties and seventies, the whole the Boomers just kind of throwing off religion. And then the gen xer is kind of the same thing people, you know, forcing it down our throats, but again misapplying scripture or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, And in the ur now the church is up this game leadership. Right, There's still a lot of sin, there's still a lot of abuse from different Christians, just like there is in every area of society, school teachers and government officials, and you can just go on down the line. There's really good ones and really bad ones, right, and it's the same within the church. So I think people can still be hurt today. But I think that that giant exodus from the church back in the seventies and eighties was mostly built around the fact that people quit faking it. Right. They were hurt because there were a lot of fake Christians, And now people quit faking more because society doesn't put pressure I need to go to church. If you wanted to open a good bakery in town, you better be in church. If you wanted to be a real estate person, you better be in church. That's the way it used to be, right, and now in society it's not that way. So way fewer people are faking it, and I think that as a result of that, there's way fewer young people growing up with a frustration with a mom and dad acting like Jesus on Sunday and being fake the whole rest of the week. That's sure a good point, right that whereas today now the young people are they didn't grow up in church at all. Right, and so maybe their frustration is optics because it's something they saw on TikTok about what they think Christians are, but they don't really know because they haven't been a part of it. Yeah, but they're going to have an opinion. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well you know, if you watch enough tiktoks, you're going to develop opinion. So there's a spiritual awakening I think happening in the current young younger generations where for a while they threw off everything that appeared to be religious because professors told them too, or because TikTok did, and then all of a sudden, they start hitting this wall where secularism hasn't worked, humanism hasn't worked, building a religion around myself hasn't worked, and my own thing, and they're looking for real truth and hope because now they've piled up all the sins and the guilt that goes with that. Now they're looking for help and hope and they're finding it in Jesus. And so yeah, there's a new opportunity in this current generation. But yeah, anyways, I'm sorry, I was having our time understanding what you were saying. Hey, I get it now, what. You said was money because you said, you know, people decided to stop faking it. And that's really what Isaiah saying. He's saying, like, I don't want your burn offerings. They're all fake because you're not obeying. You're not really truly giving me your hearts. You know, you're not truly following me. You're just going through the religious motions, right, and well. There's a great note here for that passage in the Life of Kish Stuffy says God was unhappy with their sacrifices, but he wasn't revoking the system of sacrifices that he'd initiated with Moses. Instead, God was calling for sincere faith and devotion. The leaders were carefully making the traditional sacrifices and offerings, the holy celebrations, so it was just ceremony, right, But they were still unfaithful to God in their hearts. Sacrifices were supposed to be an outward sign of their faith in God, but the outward signs became empty because no faith existed inside. Right, Why then did they continue to offer sacrifices Like many people today, they had come to a place more faith in the rituals of their religion than in the God that they worshiped. Imagine your own worship experience. Is it just entertainment as you enjoy the music and go along with what others do, or is it genuine how heartfelt praise to God. God does not take pleasure in our outward expressions if our inward faith is missing. That's really what he's saying there. So he wasn't throwing away his sacrificial system. He was just saying, it's only supposed to be an outward expression. What's on the inside, that's right, And you're fake on the inside, so I don't even want what's on the outside, right. Yeah, yeah, inside out, not outside in. That's right. And you know what's interesting is so many times this verse Isaiah one eighteen is quoted, Come now, let's settle this, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlett, that would make them as white as snow. Though they are red le crimson, I would make them as white as wool. But the thing that we sort of look over is the part that says, let's settle this right? Settle what right? And if you if you look up a couple verses in verse sixteen, he says, wash yourselves and be clean, get your sins out of my sight, give up your evil ways, learn to do good, seek justice, help the oppressed, defend the cause of orphans, fight for the rights of widows. Come now, let's settle this, says the Lord. So your sins are like scarlett, I'll make them what of snow. So what he's doing is it's a plead to stop, you know, pretending, stop faking it, but actually to let God transform your heart, which will literally transform your life. It'll it'll be shown in your actions. And if you're a person who truly loves God, then you will love the things that God loves, which is which is all the things that were listed there. Right in this case, you know, pay attention to the orphans and the widows, and do good, seek justice, give up your evil ways. These are things that are translating into all sorts of behaviors. Right. But to learn to love God, your actions are going to change. And that's why he says, hey, you know, give your heart to me, and then I will make your sins as white as snow. Yes, which is great. You know. I think in literature there's the idea of the scarlet letter, right, and what a devastating thing that this idea, Oh hey, here's a sinner now covered in this this scarlet letter, that you can never be forgiven. It always stands out, your guilt is always with you everywhere, And it's kind of I think Hawthorne kind of represents is representing this kind of idea here that for some of us, you know, the things you've done in your past, you feel like are catching up with you. The things that you've done are so shameful. You know, red really stands out. I don't know if you noticed. I saw a thing again here recently. The you know, sometimes people forget but even red red automobiles get more tickets, not just red sports cars, any kind of red car. It's actually the number one right. Right, isn't that funny? Do you know what the color gets the least amount of tickets? White? White? Yeah, that's true, because it blends in more with everything around it, and just. It's for some reason it is attached to a certain personality type, just like red is. But but red red also just stands out more, is more visibly aware, you see it more. It's harder to disappear in traffic, all those things. Right, So, so the officer can stay on it a little more, we'll notice it quicker. All those kinds of things, and and red just stands out. And that's why God's saying, man, you're covered in this crimson stain, and then natural crimson will stain you for days and days and days. And days and days. Off get it on you. It won't come off it us stain. And God says, listen, even though you're covered in this red stain, I want to make you white. So God's not wanting you to have to carry the shame. God's not wanting you to just stay totally stained in your life. God says, listen, I promise you I love you so much, I'll clean you up right, which is really the whole idea. So as we're wrapping up, I think that that's the big idea, is that God desires to clean us. Yeah, that's great, that's beautiful. Well that's our time for sure. So thanks for being here and we will see you tomorrow hopefully on the Bible gush