1. Love God Personally
   a. So what do we do about: lip service?
   b. So what do we do about: distant hearts?
   c. So what do we do about: the commandment of men?
2. Depend on God
   a. So what do we do about: deeds in a dark place?
3. Submit to God
   a. So what do we do about: making ourselves?

Isaiah 29:13-16, NASB20 Translation
13 Then the Lord said, "Because this people approaches [Me] with their words And honors Me with their lips, But their heart is far away from Me, And their reverence for Me consists of [the] commandment of men that is taught;
14 Therefore behold, I will once again deal marvelously with this people, wondrously marvelous; And the wisdom of their wise men will perish, And the understanding of their men who have understanding will be concealed."
15 Woe to those who deeply hide their plans from the LORD, And whose deeds are [done] in a dark place, And they say, "Who sees us?" or "Who knows us?"
16 You turn [things] around! Shall the potter be considered as equal with the clay, That what is made would say to its maker, "He did not make me"; Or what is formed say to him who formed it, "He has no understanding"?

I'm going to walk through this in three chunks: verses 13-14, verse 15, and verse 16.

Before going farther, let's talk about where this passage of the Bible occurs both historically as well as in context.

The book of Isaiah in the Bible occurs in the 700s BC, before and during Assyria's invasion of Israel. It is divided into 66 chapters; 1-39 deal with God's character and judgement, and 40-66 deal with comfort and redemption. This chapter specifically, Isaiah 29, is part of a section of six chapters called the 'six woes' (Isaiah 28-33). Chapter 29 is addressing Jerusalem.

In the Old Testament, Jerusalem was the center of God's chosen people; today, Christians should listen with care to the instructions God gave to Jerusalem—this isn't just 'outdated,' but has direct relevance today.

Love God Personally:

Isaiah 29:13-16, NASB20 Translation
13 Then the Lord said, "Because this people approaches [Me] with their words And honors Me with their lips, But their heart is far away from Me, And their reverence for Me consists of [the] commandment of men that is taught;
14 Therefore behold, I will once again deal marvelously with this people, wondrously marvelous; And the wisdom of their wise men will perish, And the understanding of their men who have understanding will be concealed."

Looking at this passage, it describes the opposite of what we should do:
- drawing near to God with words and honoring God with lip service
- removing our hearts far from God
- having a reverence for God (or 'fear of God' in other translations) that consists of tradition learned by rote (or 'taught by men' in other translations)

With a good list of things not to do, what do we do now? What does the right thing look like?

So what do we do about: lip service?

The exact phrase "with their mouth" here is also used in Psalm 78:36:

"36 But they flattered Him with their mouth And lied to Him with their tongue. 37 For their heart was not steadfast toward Him, Nor were they faithful with His covenant."

From that Psalm, the opposite of flattering merely with our mouths or paying lip service might be having a "steadfast heart toward God" or being "faithful with His covenant."

Practically, both of those boil down to belief: do I really believe God, or do I merely know what He has said without actually believing it? When I reference belief here, I'm talking about internal understanding that drives trust and action. For example there are people who know that planes are safe forms of transportation, but don't believe it, and although they may fly because of their knowledge, they are fearful the whole time because of what they believe.

I think belief may be an act of will. When it comes to knowledge I happily act as if it is something I control; I can choose to learn, study, and research, or I can not. But when it comes to belief I act as if it just has to happen to me externally through the sheer weight of accumulated knowledge or come directly from God.

Belief is similar to love; it is emotional, and it does come externally, but it isn't just those things. Loving well requires will and decision. For example, you cannot love your spouse well if you only care for them on the days where you are brimming with affection for them. There are thousands of books, essays, conferences, speeches, articles, and counseling sessions addressing the necessity of choice and will in love, but belief is (certainly in my life, but also it seems in the lives of many other Christians) considered to be categorized under 'things that are out of my control'.

Belief often requires will. I don’t think Peter was just overcome with the ‘emotion of belief’ when he stepped out on the water to join Jesus and then ran out of ‘belief juice.’ I think it required willpower to step out.

I want to be careful here to clarify that I’m not saying ‘you can make anything happen that you will.’ But I am saying that you have to work to believe, and you have to make a decision to believe.

There is risk here, and you only have to look around at acquaintances, coworkers, family members, friends to see that people can make the decisions to believe all sorts of crazy things. When you choose what to believe you need to be careful. Believe God. Read what the Bible says, pray, and then decide to believe that. Don’t just believe Leader X, Pastor Y, Inspirational Speaker Z. Or even Logical Argument A.

In the meantime, while you are making decisions to believe, don’t claim to believe what you don’t. Doing that may require you to look ‘less Christian.’ If that idea concerns or offends you (as it did me, initially), that may be a sign that tradition and appearances are more important to you than honesty is.

So what do we do about: distant hearts?

The answer to distant hearts is a lot simpler on the face of it: draw our hearts near God. Before we can change the 'location' of our hearts, we need to find out where they are.

In Matthew 6:19-21 , Jesus says:

19 "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 "But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; 21 for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Consider what you treasure: where do you spend your time, money, thought, emotions? I am very imaginative, so for me, a big part of this is how I spend my imagination: I discovered that spent a lot of time winning arguments I had lost, or I would even manufacture arguments where I said brilliantly cutting things that shut my antagonist down. This revealed a lot about my having very high self-regard, and frankly cowardice and meanness as well. I have spent time praying about that habit, and have committed to shutting those imaginative scenes down. That is still an occasional tendency I work against, but it is less frequent or immediate.

If it is somewhere it should not be, choose to treasure something else and spend your time/effort/money there to train yourself. Paul says in Philippians 4:8:

8 Finally, brothers [and sisters,] whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Does a simple and blunt assessment of the kinds of entertainment you engage in or consume align with that? Some of my entertainment does, but honestly a lot of it does not.

So what do we do about: commandment of men?

How do we avoid our faith being just "the commandment of men that is taught?" Two things:
- Change how we ingest learning; and
- Seek the Holy Spirit

Change how we learn:

First, when we come to the Bible, prayer, church, or a community group, don't come seeking mere knowledge; come looking for what God has for you to do.

James 1:22, 25 22 But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not just hearers who deceive themselves. ... 25 But one who has looked intently at the perfect law, the [law] of freedom, and has continued [in it,] not having become a forgetful hearer but an active doer, this person will be blessed in what he does.

Don’t just look for tradition, look for a relationship—tradition and learning is not bad, Jesus loved tradition, but ‘just’ tradition and learning is bad.

I would love to give you concrete pointers and tell you how I did this. But I don’t do this well yet.

First Corinthians restates the importance of knowing and loving God instead of just seeking knowledge:

1 Corinthians 8:1-3 1 Now concerning food sacrificed to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge makes [one] conceited, but love edifies [people.] 2 If anyone thinks that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know; 3 but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him.

Again, just seeking intellectual knowledge is not what we need to do; we need to be pursuing a relationship with God through the Holy Spirit.

Seek the Holy Spirit

Seeking the Holy Spirit requires being willing to see Him. Part of that is welcoming miracles instead of explaining them away. When a prayer is answered, accept and believe that it is miraculous, instead of considering it coincidence or not-miraculous if you can identify a 'natural cause.' God created this world, and loves it, and it is reasonable for Him to use the natural mechanisms He designed to accomplish His will.

I think part of why we don’t see ‘big’ miracles in the US is because we reject the ‘little’ ones:

Matthew 25:21 21 "His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter the joy of your master.'

Verse 14 of this passage in Isaiah talks about wisdom perishing and concealing understanding:

Isaiah 29:14, NASB20 Translation
14 Therefore behold, I will once again deal marvelously with this people, wondrously marvelous; And the wisdom of their wise men will perish, And the understanding of their men who have understanding will be concealed."

I think this is both a warning and a gift.

The warning: if we rely on learning taught by teachers we will be betrayed. This is not God being mean, it’s how things function—if I use an umbrella as a parachute I’m going to be disappointed. If I rely on something that is not designed for, and is incapable of holding, that trust then my trust will be betrayed.

It’s how things work.

I think the American Church is seeing such a steep decline, is suffering so much from moral failures in religious leaders, and is mocked in our culture, partly because Christian ‘fear of God’ has consisted of ‘the commandment of men that is taught’ and now our “... the wisdom of [our] wise men [is perishing], And the understanding of [our] men who have understanding [is being] concealed."

We need to seek the Holy Spirit and rely on Him.

The gift: We won’t be left to rely on unreliable things.

Depend on God

Isaiah 29:15
15 Woe to those who deeply hide their plans from the LORD, And whose deeds are [done] in a dark place, And they say, "Who sees us?" or "Who knows us?"

We need to rely on God for our plans, and not hide our plans from God.

The first few times I read this passage I misread it. Isaiah 29:15 actually says "whose deeds are done in a dark place," but the meaning that I read was "who do dark deeds."

The focus is on the hiddenness of the deeds, not the 'goodness' or 'badness' of the deeds.

This felt like some significant revelation, but as I thought more about it that distinction is a bit nonsense, frankly. The distinction would be significant if it is possible to do good deeds "in a dark place." But considering that you can do ‘good things’ hidden from or apart from God is foolishness. There is no such thing as ‘good apart from God.’ God is Good.

I don’t think that my tendency to believe that I can 'do good' on my own is unique to me; I think this is common (at least) in our society

So what do we do about: deeds in a dark place?

The solution is depending on God. Dependence is not something that Americans like very much ideologically (although practically we are awash in our dependence on other things and people), and so this may feel like a very large task. Partly it is, but it isn't a binary switch of dependence/independence that has to get switched overnight. We can take actions to grow our dependence on God. Spend time talking to Him, praying, reading His word.

And as we make plans, talk to God about them and hold them loosely when we do. Don't just tell God our plans after we have made them, but talk to God about our plans as we are considering them and ask for His guidance.

All of this requires submitting to God.

Submit to God

Isaiah 29:16 says:

16 You turn [things] around! Shall the potter be considered as equal with the clay, That what is made would say to its maker, "He did not make me"; Or what is formed say to him who formed it, "He has no understanding"?

Isaiah here describes reluctance or rebellion against God's creatorship. The opposite of this is submission to God with respect to our identity and purpose.

This means not trying to make ourselves. We are ‘made in God’s image’ (Genesis 1:27), we are formed by God, we are made and remade by Him. Saying “He did not make me” or “He has no understanding” (He made me wrong) doesn’t only take the form of explicit or angry rebellion, it is a big affront to God and perhaps the original sin.

Temptation to be the Maker

• Isaiah 14:14 comes in the midst of a section addressing the King of Babylon, but some Biblical scholars believe that at 14:12 it begins to also address Satan as it begins to say "How you have fallen from heaven, You star of the morning, son of the dawn." A quote attributed to the King of Babylon/[potentially] Satan in Isaiah 14:14 is (emphasis mine): “'I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.'”
• In Genesis 3:5 Satan tempts Adam and Eve saying (emphasis mine): "For God knows that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing good and evil."

In both of these sections there is a foundational temptation to try to become like God, and try to do that by making oneself (rather than submitting to God's will and being what He has created one to be).

God is the Creator (Job, and much of the OT stresses this when discussing God’s role to us); saying that we will make ourselves (we are our creator) is putting ourselves as equal to him.

So what do we do about: making ourselves?

Our culture is big on ‘you can be anything you want to be,’ so submission to God here requires intentionality not just in rejecting sin but in working against the waters we swim in culturally. Don’t make or remake yourself, let God make or remake you.

God is shaping you and has good plans for who He wants to you be:

Jeremiah 29:11 11 'For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans for prosperity and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.

I think this idea of letting God make and shape us is frightening because we don't know God. This is a terrible idea if God is not good. But if God is good, if He truly loves us deeply and as John 3:16 has famously said "so loved the world" that He gave His son Jesus as a sacrifice so that we could be freed from our sin and live in relationship with God, if He knows us intimately and He pursues us with His goodness and faithfulness, then submitting to His making and shaping is not frightening.

Go ahead and work to become a better person. But when you ‘be better’ don’t just target something that you like or dislike. Pray and ask God, and then take action. Don’t do deeds ‘in a dark place’ as you strive to become better.

You don’t need to wait for God to strike you with the magical improvement wand (this is my tendency, the tendency of the servant in the parable of the talents who just buries the talents). Keep your deeds in His sight, listen to Him, and act boldly.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash