With a Pure Heart

Pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace,

along with those who call upon the Lord out of a pure heart.

2Timothy 2:22

God once told Isaiah that the people of Israel “seek me daily, and delight in knowing my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and did not forsake the judgment of their God.  They ask me for righteous judgments; they delight in approaching God” (Isaiah 58:2).

That kind of people sounds like good company for sincere people to keep.  It is good to seek God every day, to delight in knowing God’s ways, to ask for God’s righteous judgments, and to enjoy approaching God.  But God was sending Isaiah to these deeply religious people to show them their wickedness, not to congratulate them for their religiousness!  He was angry with these people and commanded Isaiah, “Cry aloud!  Do not hold back!  Lift up your voice like a shofar and show my people their transgression and the house of Jacob their sins!” (Isaiah 58:1).

God is not a beggar, grasping after and thankful for any praise He can get.  He is the Creator, and a very great King.  It is a great honor for us if He accepts our prayers and our worship, and wise saints offer praise with humility and fear.  Our God is worthy of more devotion than we can even offer, but He is good, and He will humble Himself to accept worship from a pure heart, a heart completely subdued before Him.

We get no “brownie points” for worshipping God; what we get is a blessing if He accepts the worship that we offer Him.  Knowing this, David cautioned God’s people to “serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling!” (Ps. 2:11).  God will, and has, rejected the worship of many, many people around the world.  People of the earth can be impressed with the appearance of devotion, but God never is.  He is impressed only with genuine, obedient faith.

In Isaiah’s day, Israel had become proud of what God had given them, of being His chosen people, of how often they gathered to seek His face, and how often they asked Him for more revelation.  Yet, they were neglecting to live according to His judgments, which they knew.  Theirs was a life that was “like righteousness”, but they were not righteous within.  They had all the appearance of a holy people without hearts that were after the holiness of God.  May God save us from an appearance of holiness and to learn to live truly, from the heart, in the holy way of Christ!

Every Yoke

“If you put away from the midst of you the yoke. . .”

Isaiah 58:9b

On several occasions, I have reminded my congregation that the “yoke” within us, mentioned by Isaiah, represents the desire to impose our will upon others.  A yoke is an instrument used by a man to control an animal, but the yoke Isaiah is talking about is spiritual; it is one person manipulating and controlling another.  I have known people who stay unhappy if others do not do as they want them to do; they are not content unless they have hitched up someone else to their will.

God is not like that.  He would rather we have our way than His – except that He loves us and knows that if we do our own will, we will end up hurt and sad.  So, He counsels us to do His will.  If you have been around very long in Christ, you know that God will back off and allow you to do things your own way if that is what you insist on doing, and you have no doubt learned better than to do that.  God has no yoke in His heart that He will impose on us; on the contrary, He has love in His heart and is willing for us to learn that His way is best.

Other Yokes

But that yoke is not my point in this message, for as I said, I have taught that message a number of times.  Though I have read Isaiah 58 often, I noticed this morning for the first time that other yokes are mentioned which may burden God’s people.  Here is what Isaiah said: “Is this not the fast that I have chosen? to undo the bonds of wickedness, to loosen the thongs of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and that you remove every yoke?” (Isa. 58:6).  The “bonds of wickedness” are spiritual ropes that bind people, and ungodly men use those “thongs of the yoke” to oppress and control others.  And there are other yokes, or influences, upon God’s people which NOTHING but the anointing of God will destroy.  And thankfully, God has promised that someday, His anointing will destroy every yoke that burdens His people:  “It shall come to pass in that day that He will remove [the evil man’s] burden from your shoulder and his yoke from your neck!  And the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing” (Isa. 10:27).

God’s point in Isaiah 58 is that we may “be about our Father’s business” now, before that final, complete deliverance from all yokes, by removing the yokes that evil men have put around the necks of His people.  These yokes are superstition, sickness, false teaching, fear of man, and whatever else that His children are moved by besides the Spirit.  To be led by the Spirit is life and peace, and we have the opportunity now to show God’s people the way to live that happy life.

Jesus said, “Come to me, and I will give you rest.  My yoke is easy, and my burden light.”  His yoke is not a yoke at all; it is a new heart that wants nothing but what God wants.  His yoke is to make it our nature to agree with God and love to do His will.  Every other yoke is against us and leads us astray, and Jesus came to set us free from every one of them.  This is the liberty he was talking about when he said, “If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

May God give us all the wisdom and power, first, to destroy any yoke that is within us toward others, and second, to destroy every yoke we see that has been hung around the necks of God’s children.  That is part of what God considers to be a true fast, and fasting that way produces wonderful fruit.