WORTHLESS HUSKS
Isaiah 1:15. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear.
The Jews had been likened unto the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah (Isaiah 1:10). As such, they are summoned to listen to a series of declarations of which this is the sum, that worship without holiness is a solemn mockery. Confining ourselves to our text only, we may see that it teaches us—
I. The worthlessness of ritualism without spontaneity. “When ye spread forth your hands,” &c.
1. Ritualism is an essential element of public worship. There must be some form by which thought can be expressed, and the devotions of others guided. There may be too little, or too much, but some is indispensable [285]
2. Ritualism may be the expression of earnest spiritual life, and a help thereto. It may be the outcome of sincere feeling and deep piety—such was the ritual which David and his devout companions devised and elaborated for the service of the Temple. It was costly and magnificent beyond even that which is observed in St. Peter’s at Rome; but as practised by them it was as spiritual as the baldest service that has ever been conducted in the barest conventicle. A splendid ritual may be acceptable to the Most High, and the followers of George Fox must not imagine that they are the only persons who worship God “in spirit and in truth.”
3. But ritualism may be, and often is, only a form. It may mean only an exhibition of millinery, a scrupulous observance of a prescribed series of postures and genuflexions. It may be, according to a too suggestive phrase, merely a service “performed.” In this case God passes it by with contempt. To all engaged in such histrionic performances He says, “When ye spread forth your hands,” &c. Supplication without desire will never draw down the Divine benediction.
[285] The external part of religion is, doubtless, of little value in comparison with the internal; and so is the cask in comparison with the wine contained in it: but if the cask be staved, the wine must perish. If there were no Sundays or holydays, no ministers, no churches or religious assemblies, no prayers or sacraments, no Scriptures read, or sermons preached, how long would there be any religion left in the world: and who would desire to live in a world where there was none?—Horne, 1730–1792.
Forms are necessary to religion as the means of its manifestation. As the invisible God manifests His nature—His power, wisdom, and goodness, in visible material forms, in the bright orbs of heaven, in the everlasting hills, in the broad earth with its fruits and flowers, and in all the living things which He has made,—so the invisible soul of man reveals its convictions and feelings in the outward acts which it performs. As there could be no knowledge of God without the visible forms in which He reveals Himself, so there could be no knowledge of the religion which exists in the soul of man without the outward forms in which it expresses itself. A form is the flag, the banner, the symbol of an inward life; it is to a religious belief what the body is to the soul; as the soul would be utterly unknown without the body, so religion would be unknown without its forms, a light hidden under a bushel, and not set up in a candlestick that it may give light to all that are in the house.
Forms are necessary not only to the manifestation of religion, but to its nourishment and continued existence. A religion which expressed itself in no outward word or act would soon die out of the soul altogether. The attempt to embody truth and feeling, to express it in words and actions, is necessary to give it the character of living principle in the soul: in this respect forms are like the healthy exercise which at once expresses and increases the vigorous life of the body, or they may be compared to the leaves of a tree, which not only proceed from its inward life, but catch the vitalising influences of the light, the rain and the atmosphere, and convey them down to the root.
What, then, is that formalism which is everywhere in the Scripture, and especially in the discourses of our Lord, described as an offence and an abomination in the sight of God? I answer, formalism is the substitution of the outward rite in the place of the inner spirit and life of the soul; it is the green leaf which still hangs upon the dead branch which has been lopped off.—David Loxton.
II. The worthlessness of prayer without purity of heart. “When ye make many prayers, I will not hear.”
1. Prayer is a necessity of the Christian life. A consciousness of weakness and want, and a profound conviction of God’s power and willingness to succour him, prompts the Christian to make “many prayers.” And each supplication so inspired finds its way to the throne and heart of God. To hear and answer the prayers of His children is one of our Heavenly Father’s joys (Isaiah 65:24).
2. But prayer, like ritualism, instead of being the expression of a realised need, may be only an empty form. The supplications that are offered may be uttered merely by rote, with as little feeling as a child recites the multiplication-table; or they may be devices by which deluded men seek to propitiate that God whom they are offending by their conduct every day,—mere lip-homage, which they imagine He will accept in condonation of their habitual disregard of His will. In either case, their “many prayers” are worthless husks which He rejects with disdain.
If we would have our worship accepted of God, there must be—
1. Scriptural conceptions of His character. These will prevent us from mocking Him by merely formal prayers or praises.
2. A solemn realisation of His presence. How often this is lacking in those who take part in the service of the sanctuary, and even in those who conduct them! But God is not throned in some distant heaven, to which our prayers struggle up we know not how: He is HERE! We shall never be nearer to Him than we are to-day!
3. An earnest endeavour after holiness in daily life (Psalms 66:18). See why God would not regard the uplifted hands of the Jewish suppliants—“Your hands are full of blood.” See also Isaiah 59:1-3. To no rebel is access to the presence-chamber of the King of kings granted: this is the high privilege of those only who can lift up “holy hands” (1 Timothy 2:8).—A. F. Barfield. [288]
[288] God doth not institute worship-ordinances for bodily motion only; when He speaketh to man He speaketh as to a man, and requireth human actions from him, even the work of the soul, and not the words of a parrot or the motion of a puppet.—Baxter, 1615–1691.
You think you serve God by coming to church; but if you refuse to let the Word convert you, how should God be pleased with such a service as this? It is as if you should tell your servant what you have for him to do, and because he hath given you the hearing, he thinks he should have his wages, though he do nothing of that which you set him to do. Were not this an unreasonable servant? Or would you give him according to his expectation? It is a strange thing that men should think that God will save them for dissembling with Him; and save them for abusing His name and ordinances. Every time you hear, or pray, or praise God, or receive the sacrament, while you deny God your heart and remain unconverted, you do but despise Him and show more of your rebellion than your obedience. Would you take him for a good tenant that at every rent-day would duly wait on you, and put off his hat to you, but bring you never a penny of rent? Or would you take him for a good debtor that brings you nothing but an empty purse, and expects you should take that for payment? God biddeth you come to church and hear the Word; and so you do, and so far you do well; but withal, He chargeth you to suffer the Word to work upon you hearts, and to take it home and consider of it, and obey it, and cast away your former courses, and give your hearts and lives to Him; and this yon will not do. And you think that He will accept of your service!—Baxter, 1615–1691.
REASONS FOR THE REJECTION OF PRAYER
Isaiah 1:15. When ye make many prayers, I will not hear.
God has characterised Himself as “the Hearer of prayer;” and it is the great consolation of His people that they cannot seek His face in vain. But here He declares that He will not hear the prayers of Israel, however many. This solemn and momentous declaration may well lead us to inquire why prayer is, in many instances, rejected. Prayer, to be heard, must be both right and real. If it possess neither of these characteristics, or only one of them—if it is neither right nor real, or is right without being real, or real without being right—it cannot fail to be rejected.
I. A man may pray rightly, either because he has been taught the principles of orthodoxy, and knows what language is conformable to those principles, or because he uses prayers composed by spiritual men, or, finally, because he uses the very words prescribed or sanctioned by God Himself. But in all these cases, while his prayer may be right, it may be altogether unreal. He may neither know the meaning of the requests it contains, nor desire their fulfilment [291] Thus do many men pray for a free pardon for Christ’s sake, for entire sanctification, and repeat the Lord’s Prayer. There is nothing in the heart corresponding to what is expressed by the lips; nay, the heart and the mouth are often completely at variance with each other.
[291] Will men’s prayers be answered? Not if they pray as boys whittle sticks—absently, hardly knowing or caring what they are about. I have known men begin to pray about Adam, and go on from him to the present time, whittling their stick clear to a point, with about as much feeling, and doing about as much good as the boy does.—Beecher.
I often say my prayers,
But do I ever pray,
And do the wishes of my heart
Go with the words I say?
I may as well kneel down
And worship gods of stone,
As offer to the living God
A prayer of words alone,
For words without the heart
The Lord will never hear;
Nor will He to those lips attend
Whose prayers are not sincere.
—John Burton.
II. Prayer may be real without being right. A man may really acknowledge mercies received, and petition for more; and yet neither the acknowledgment nor the petition may be regarded by God. The acknowledgment and the petition have reference to mere earthly desires already gratified or yet to be gratified. He thanks God that his “lusts have had the food which they craved;” he prays that they may never want it. Pride, vanity, the love of ease, pleasures, and worldly respectability are “lusts” on which he has hitherto “consumed,” and on which he intends still to “consume,” the good things which God has given, or may yet give him. The secret soul of all his supplications is not any zeal for the glory of God, but selfishness. His prayers are of the earth, earthy. The spiritual blessings which God holds out in His right hand he passes by in contemptuous neglect, and clamours for the natural blessings which are in God’s left hand.
III. Both the faults of prayer above referred to are often found in one and the same individual, and the guilt of both accumulated on one and the same head.
Let it not be inferred from what has been said that we lay an interdict on natural blessings, and forbid the seeking of them in prayer. Our Saviour has given us authority to ask for daily bread, and this fully warrants the conclusion that natural blessings, as well as spiritual, may and ought to form a subject of prayer. We ought to “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” and then ask Him to fulfil His promise of “adding unto us all other things.”—R. Nesbit, Discourses, pp. 308–319.
A STARTLING CHARGE
Isaiah 1:15. Your hands are full of blood.
Such is the reason which God assigns for turning a deaf ear to the prayers of His ancient people: the hands they lifted up to Him in supplication were blood-stained. It was as if Cain, red with the murder of Abel, had lifted up his hands in prayer to God for blessing. By this startling charge we are reminded—
I. That between the estimates formed by God and men as to what takes place in the sanctuary there is often an infinite disparity. Behold the court of the temple filled, apparently, with devout worshippers, who lift up their hands to heaven in earnest supplication,—what a pleasing sight! But God looks down, and says, “Those hands are full of blood.” The same contrast is repeated in another form (Isaiah 29:13). Other contrasts: Eli sees what he thinks to be a drunken woman; God sees a humble suppliant (1 Samuel 1:12-13). Men see an eminently religious man praying in the sanctuary; God sees a man prostituting prayer into a means of self-glorification (Luke 18:11-12). Men see a foul wretch whose presence in the sanctuary is a pollution; God sees a broken hearted penitent, and hastens to bless him (Luke 18:13-14). So it is in our sanctuaries to-day.
II. That God holds us responsible for the ultimate consequences of our actions. The men who thronged the temple in Isaiah’s time, and whose prayers God rejected, were not bandits and murderers in the ordinary and coarse fashion by which men are brought to the scaffold. Yet the charge brought against them was true. For there are other ways of murdering men than by acts of violence of which human law takes note. By grievous oppression millions of men have been brought to an untimely grave. If a man destroys another by slow poison, is he not as truly a murderer as another who kills his victim by means of prussic acid? In God’s sight oppression is murder; and of oppression in its worst forms the Jews had been guilty (Isaiah 1:23; Isaiah 3:14-15, &c.) It is in accordance with this declaration that opprobrium is heaped upon Jeroboam as the man “who made Israel to sin” (2 Kings 10:29); and that we are so sternly warned against leading others into transgression (Matthew 18:6, &c.) This fact—
1. Casts some light on the doctrine of future punishment. The results of the evil actions of men go on eternally propagating themselves, and it is therefore not unjust that the punishment of those actions should be eternal also.
2. Should cause us to halt when we are tempted to acts of unkindness and oppression. Unwillingly we may thereby become murderers.
3. Should lead us to be most watchful as to the example we set before others. If we hold our false lights by which they are caused to make shipwreck “concerning faith” and character, God will hold us responsible for the disaster (Romans 14:15, &c.)
III. That sin is naturally indelible. These Jews came into the sanctuary with hands carefully cleansed, but yet in God’s sight they were “full of blood.”
1. The stains of sin cannot be washed out by time. Time obliterates much, but it does not obliterate guilt. Men are apt to be troubled in conscience about recent sins, but to be at ease concerning those committed many years previously. But this is a mistake. Lapse of time makes no difference to God; the inscriptions in His books of record never fade. Hence the wisdom of David’s prayer (Psalms 25:7).
2. The stain of sin cannot be washed out by worship. That it might be so was the vain dream of the Jews, as it is of millions to-day. But worship itself is an offence when it is offered by ungodly men; so far from diminishing their guilt, it increases it (Proverbs 28:9, &c.)
3. The stain of sin cannot be washed out by sorrow. Sorrow for the past alters nothing in the past: the crime remains, no matter how many tears the criminal may shed [294]
4. The stain of sin cannot be washed out even by reformation of conduct and character. Men speak of “turning over a new leaf,” and when they have done what this phrase implies, they are apt to be at peace. But this also is a mistake. They forget that the old, evil leaf remains, and that for what is inscribed thereon God will call them to account. As there is a “godly sorrow” and a “worldly sorrow,” so there is a religious and an irreligious reformation of conduct. The former is the result of evangelical repentance, and is of exceeding worth (Ezekiel 18:27-28); the latter is a mere act of prudence, and is of no moral account. In one way, and in one way only, can the stain of guilt be effaced from the human soul (1 John 1:7-9).
[294] Repentance qualifies a man for pardon, but it does not, cannot, entitle him to it. It is one of the most elementary and obvious truths of morality, that the performance of one duty cannot be any compensation for neglect to perform another duty. But when a sinner is penitent for his sins, he is merely doing what, as a sinner, he ought to do; and his feelings of contrition do no more to absolve him from his guilt than the gratitude a man feels to a doctor who has cured him from a dangerous illness does to discharge the doctor’s bill. As in this case there ought to be both gratitude and payment, so in the case of the sinner there must be both penitence and atonement. The sinner’s sorrow for his sin, while in itself a proper thing, is no more an atonement for his sin than is the remorse that fills the breasts of most murderers any atonement for the murders they have committed. Judas was sorry, profoundly and intensely sorry, for having betrayed our Lord Jesus Christ, but did that do away with the guilt of that betrayal? Was Peter not to be blamed for his denial of his Master, because afterwards “he went out and wept bitterly”? Did the tears he shed give him any right to say in after years—“Yes, I denied my Lord, but I was sorry for it, and go made it straight”? Do you think that just as with soap and water you can wash the dirt off your hands, you can with a few tears, or with many tears, wash the guilt of sin from off your soul? No delusion could be more groundless. Oh no! You have the real fact and the true philosophy of the matter in the well-known verse—
“Not the labours of my hands
Can fulfil Thy law’s demands.
Could my zeal no respite know
Could my tears for ever flow,
All for sin could not atone:
THOU must save, and THOU alone.”