The Service God Seeks

KEY VERSE: “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.” —Micah 6:8

SELECTED SCRIPTURE: Isaiah 58:5-11

OUR lesson deals with the Lord’s reproof of the Jews for their hypocritical, merely outward forms of worship. In his instructions to the prophet he states, “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.” (Isa. 58:1) The thought of crying aloud without restraint would seem to emphasize the Lord’s urgent concern regarding the condition of his people. Many of their fasts and other ceremonies were not of divine appointment and were observed simply as an outward form. Even so, the observances would have been acceptable to God if they had been conducted with the right heart attitude. But they were not truly humbled or sorry for their sins that had provoked the wrath of the Lord against them. They did not abandon their ways, and the object of their oblations was not to the glory and favor of God, but rather was an expression of self-righteousness or ostentation.

The entire nation was involved in this hypocritical form of worship, a mere formalism, and yet they looked to the Lord for forgiveness and deliverance from their difficulties. In verse three, the Lord repeats their lament, “Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? Wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labors.” That is, they exacted the full measure of hard labor from their servants or their usurious claims from their starving debtors. Then the Lord, in verse four, tells them, “Ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high.” The Lord states he will not hear them under these circumstance.

God attempts to reason with his people. “Is it such a fast that I have chosen, a day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord?” In other words, could it possibly be supposed that the fast that the Lord approved was for a man to afflict his soul for a day, with only external appearance of sorrow and shame, and with only a show of self-denial, with no real repentance or reformation? In verses six and seven, the Lord answers his own questions. “Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house, when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?”

While these admonitions were directed to the nation of Israel, they apply equally well to all at any time who are endeavoring to be obedient and serve the Lord. The words of the Apostle James seem most appropriate for us. “Therefore discarding all impurity and overflowing of malice, embrace with meekness that implanted Word which is able to save your souls. But become doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone be a hearer of the Word, and not a doer, he resembles a man viewing his natural face in a mirror; for he viewed himself and went away, and immediately forgot what kind of a person he was. But he who looks intently into that which is the perfect law of freedom, and continues in it, not becoming a forgetful hearer, but a doer of its work, this man will be blessed in his deed.”—James 1:21-25, Diaglott

The Apostle Paul explained to the Jews that just being a Jew by birth and being obedient to the letter of the Law was not sufficient to gain favor with God. It is the spirit of the Law manifested by proper works that constitutes an Israelite indeed. “For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.” (Rom. 2:28,29) And so, we too, if led by the Spirit, will find favor with the Lord.

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