True Worship: Heartfelt Sincerity Over Empty Rituals

1. "Not taking the Lord's name in vain, then, is not limited to cursing or something like that, but it means to treat God with irreverence, to treat God with superficiality. With insincerity, with phoniness, to bring to God empty worship, hypocritical worship, hypocritical honor. And someone has said, frankly, that God's name is taken in vain more often in the church than outside of it, where people come and offer empty worship with their needless repetition, their empty praise words, singing without thought of God, praying with indifference, hearing the Word, and never applying it." [01:45] (54 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2. "In other words, God wants to cleanse your hearts. God wants to wash you on the inside. God will not otherwise tolerate your empty, vain worship. Now, at the end of Isaiah, you have basically the same thing. In fact, this entire prophecy is bracketed by a call for true worship. God says in 66, the last chapter of Isaiah, Isaiah, that He has made everything, but He still looks for one more thing. In all that He has made, there's one thing He still wants. I look for one who is poor and of a humble spirit, who trembles at my words." [03:23] (40 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3. "Jesus rejected their shallow, self-centered, indulgent ambition. He said no to their political definition of a kingdom. He said no to their economic definition of a kingdom. He said no to their self-indulgent definition of a kingdom, and He sent the crowd away, and He went back to being with His disciples. Well, that was the peak, and from here on, it's downhill. He rejected the shallow, sham kind of interest. It was superficial. It was political. It was self-centered. It was self-indulgent. They wanted food. They wanted healing. They wanted freedom from Rome and the Herodians, but they did not want their hearts changed." [07:48] (41 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4. "It's the same basic message that when you come to worship God, it must be with a pure heart, and you must worship Him from the inside, not only externally. Now, let's look at the text beginning in verse 34 of chapter 14. And when they were gone over, they came into the land of Gennesaret. When the men of the place had knowledge of Him, they sent out into all the country round about, and brought unto Him all that were diseased, and besought Him that they might only touch the hem of His garment. And as many as touched were perfectly made well." [10:42] (32 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5. "And here again, we want to remark that again the compassion of God is demonstrated. This is the compassionate healer. It is so that God may be revealed as a compassionate God, a God of loving kindness, a God of tenderness toward people. But while they were somewhat sensitive, and while we see the compassion of God, there is a note of pathos in this. And it strikes me that this again is a classic example of the fact that people inevitably came to Jesus to get what they wanted. And having what they wanted, they left." [17:41] (34 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6. "And even today in our contemporary kind of Christianity, Jesus is seen as a genie who responds to our wishes. And having received our wishes, we abandon any meaningful relationship. It's as if Jesus is offered as one in gratitude toward God and Jesus Christ, which, by the way, may be the ugliest of all sins, as these were in that day. And so, in spite of their ingratitude, in spite of their self-centeredness, in spite of the fact that their commitment to Him was one of great faith and one of great need and not one of great adoration, He healed them. That is the compassion of God." [17:41] (42 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7. "They are representatives of the legalistic, self-righteous, external, hypocritical, phony religious establishment. They are of Satan, not God. They hate Jesus Christ. They lie about what they teach. And so, they despise the truth that is in Christ. They are in darkness, so they despise the light. They are the enemies of our Lord. Now, among the people of Israel, there were some who believed. There were some whose hearts were turned toward God. These are not among those. These were the bitter, legalistic people who were leading the religious, hypocritical establishment, and they were threatened by the truth of Jesus Christ." [20:36] (41 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8. "And so, you have the religion of external ceremony and the religion of internal spirit on a collision course. And that is ultimately what resulted in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The ceremonialists would not accept the religion of the heart. And they both cannot exist. One must die. And we find out in this text which one. And may I hasten to add, this is the same battle that Isaiah fought, Malachi fought, Amos fought, the same battle we fight today with hypocrisy in the church, with people all over the world who call themselves Christians." [23:24] (31 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


9. "True religion is all bound up in one basic word, obeying the commandments of God, isn't it? From the heart. From the heart. Well, so we go through the confrontation and the condemnation to the commentary, and Jesus in verses 7 to 9 offers a commentary on them right out of Isaiah chapter 29, verse 13. He quotes directly, not mincing words. Hippocrates means you people covered with a mask, you spiritual phonies, you frauds. Well did Isaiah prophesy of you. In other words, he's saying when Isaiah said this in 29, 13, it was not only true of his own people, but boy, he was speaking right to you." [45:17] (45 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


10. "Jesus is not interested in tradition. He is not interested in people who draw near with their mouth, who honor with the lip, but whose heart, is far from God, an empty pretense of worship. And that, of course, is the indictment that He rendered in Matthew 23. And we'll see that as we get along in the book of Matthew, but that, it's just a blistering attack on them. Whited sepulchers outside, painted white inside, stinking full of dead men's bones, you know. And all these indictments of the hypocrisy of ceremonial, external, ritualistic religion that, you know, is not interested in the truth." [46:53] (45 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)