Isaiah 29:13-14

This people draw near Me with their mouth

Ritualism

When any form so obtrudes itself as to be a hindrance instead of a help to the worshipper, that is ritualism.

(Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone.)

Formalism

All vice is said to be an abuse of virtue; all evil, good run mad. Generosity may become extravagance. So formalism really consists in the abuse of that which, up to a certain point, is absolutely necessary, which, up to a further point, may be helpful, but which, carried to an extreme, becomes a snare and a sin. (D. Jones Hamar.)

Formalism in doctrine and life

That we may see clearly who the formalist is, think of this truth: that there are formalism of doctrine, and formalism of life and practice, distinguishable and yet connected.

1. Formalism of doctrine--what is that? In one of its lowest phases we frequently meet with it. Have you not come across men who say “Yes” to every assertion of truth that you make; men who make you almost angry by their persistency in declaration of agreement? There are very few of all the thousands who are not, and know they are not, servants of Christ, who take the pains to deny what they nevertheless do not really accept. What can you say to such men? You cannot argue, for they agree with you already. You cannot appeal to them, for their creed seems to compass all that you hold as true.

2. There is such a thing as formality of worship and life. Just as truth must be put into words, but the word is not the truth, so worship has to be put into some expression, but the expression is not the worship. Isaiah’s great charge against the people was that they had reversed the thing entirely. (D. JonesHamar.)

Formalism unsatisfying

What must be the creed of the formalist in worship and in life! This: that what is said to be the means of grace is grace itself; that the mechanical reading of the Bible, without any reverent, hungering spirit, communicates in some mysterious fashion heavenly truth; that the prostration of the body, while another offers prayer, brings blessing; that to sing a hymn, be its meaning felt or not, is an expression of praise; that these things, with the enduring of the infliction of half an hour’s sermon, constitute Christianity. There is too much of formalism in the best of us. What is the creed of the formal worshipper This: “God doth not know, neither is there knowledge in the Meet High”; that He who receives the humble adorations of archangels will accept from men not only the imperfect praises they can render, not only the scarce articulate waiting of the troubled spirit, panting forth its prayer for help, but the sound of song without the spirit, the utterance of petition without desire; that He who searches all hearts is deceived, as men prostrate their bodies, and accepts that as homage; or that He cares for nothing, and to mock His presence is no insult. Does that creed shape itself in accordance with your ideas of God? Yet it is just an interpretation of the practice of the man whose worship is nothing more than a form. And as it affects yourself is it satisfactory? Does it do you any good? The sin in the heart is not to be cured by any sort of outward observance. The truth of God is not to be reached by any sort of mechanical contrivance. This Book has no mysterious sanctity in its paper and print, or in the sound of its words. It is the meaning and the spirit that alone are valuable. Our faith passes on the wings of the things that are seen and temporal, up to the things that are unseen and eternal, through the word to catch the revelation, through prayer and praise to hold communion with God. Why trifle with your nature’s deepest wants? Why mock the everlasting love? There is a reality in prayer. There is an expression of gratitude which Inspires praise. There is a Saviour of sinners. Come to Him. He only, appearing and speaking through the means He has appointed, can take away the burden and the sting of sin, and give to the weary rest. (D. Jones Hamar.)

The danger of formal worship

The best commentary on our text is just the history of the reigns during which Isaiah prophesied.

I. IT WAS NO SLIGHT CRIME WITH WHICH THE PEOPLE OF JUDAH WERE ACTUALLY CHARGEABLE--it Was, indeed, a denial of God’s sovereignty, although by that very sovereignty it was that they and their fathers had for seven hundred years been in possession of the land of Canaan. Though they might make an outward profession of respect for the ordinances of God, yet the spirit by which they were actuated was essentially an atheistical spirit, inasmuch as with all the outward observance of Divine ordinances they looked for continued prosperity or deliverance from adversity, not to the wisdom of God, but to their own counsels, and the help promised to them by their idolatrous allies.

II. THE JUDGMENT THREATENED. Was in accordance with the nature and manifestation of their sin. They were not to be overwhelmed with irresistible calamity, in order to punish their flagrant idolatry; but they were to be left to the effect of their own devices. They were to work by their own skill, and in so doing to be working their own ruin: and when all their plans were brought to their completion, the effect was to be to bring utter desolation on the land (verse 14).

III. MANKIND, WITH ALL THEIR VARIETIES OF CHARACTER, ARE ESSENTIALLY SO MUCH THE SAME IN ALL AGES, and the Scriptures do, on the one hand, so graphically portray the leading features of human nature, and, on the other, set forth so clearly the great unchangeable principles of the Divine administration, that none who read that book with soberness and attention, and look around them on the world with ordinary observation, can fail to see that the sins of individuals or of nations there reproved are, with some modifications it may be, the same sins which are still prevalent, and that, if unrepented of and unforgiven, their consequences must in the end be the same. No nation, it is true, is precisely in the same circumstances with the kingdom of Judah, but still the great principles of the Divine government are unchangeable and eternal. It is one of these, that sin is the reproach of any people. If there be among us, possessing as we do a full revelation of the will of God, a disposition to deny or overlook His supremacy as Sovereign Disposer of all events, and to trust to the wisdom of human counsels for national deliverance or prosperity, without any devout recognition of absolute dependence upon Him, are we not chargeable with the very sin with which Judah of old was charged, and which was the source of all their multiplied offences? And if, along with this, there be a profession of faith--an external compliance with the ordinances of the Gospel, are we not in the condition of drawing near to God with our months, and honouring Him with our lips, while our heart is far removed from Him? (R. Gordon, D. D.)

A wrong religious attitude

This spiritual insensibility of the people is the outcome of its whole religious attitude, which is insincere, formal, and traditional. (J. Skinner, D. D.)

Plain speaking

Let us use these words (Isaiah 29:13) as Jesus Christ used them in Matthew (Matthew 15:7). There are three points--

1. The importance of plain speaking on all questions affecting the interests of truth. Jesus Christ was preeminently a plain speaker.

2. The far-seeing spirit of prophecy. Jesus Christ said to the men of His day, “Esaias prophesied of you.” Observe the unity of the moral world; observe the unchangeableness of God’s laws; see how right is ever right and wrong is ever wrong; how the centuries make no difference in the quality of righteousness, and fail to work any improvement in the deformity of evil. If any man would see himself as he really is, let him look into the mirror of Holy Scripture. God’s book never gets out of date, because it deals with eternal principles and covers the necessities of all mankind let us then study the Word of God more closely. No man can truly know human nature who does not read two Bibles,--namely, the Bible of God as written in the Holy Scriptures, and the Bible of God as written in his own heart and conscience. Human nature was never so expounded as it is expounded in holy writ.

3. The high authority of the righteous censor. When Jesus Christ spoke in this case He did not speak altogether in His own name. He used the name of Esaias. All time is on the side of the righteous man; all history puts weapons into the hands of the man who would be valiant for truth. The righteous man does not draw his authority from yesterday. The credentials of the righteous man are not written with ink that is hardly dry yet. It draws from all the past. (J. Parlor, D. D.)

True prayer

The power of a petition is not in the roof of the mouth, but in the root of the heart. (J. Trapp.)

Lip service

Panchcowrie, a Hindu convert, thus spoke one day in the market: “Some think they will avert God’s displeasure by frequently taking His name on their lips, and saying, ‘O excellent God!’ ‘O Ocean of Wisdom!’ ‘O Sea of Love!’ and so on. To be sure, God is all this; but who ever heard of a debt being paid in words instead of rupees!” (Sunday at Home.)

The best treasure

A rabbi, who lived nearly twenty years before Christ was born, set his pupils thinking by asking them, “What is the best thing for a man to possess?” One of them replied, “A kind nature”; another, “A good companion”; another, “A good neighbour.” But one of them, named Eleazer, said, “A good heart.” “I like your answer best, Eleazer,” said the master, “for it includes all the rest.” (Christian Age.)

Heartless prayers

“I met in India an intelligent Sikh from the Punjab, and asked him about his religion. He replied, ‘I believe in one God, and I repeat my prayers, called Japji every morning and evening. These prayers occupy six pages of print, but I can get through them in little more than ten minutes.’ He seemed to pride himself on this rapid recitation as a work of increased merit.”

Fashionable church going

M. went to church because it was the right thing to do: God was one of the heads of society, and His drawing rooms had to be attended. (G. Macdonald, LL. D.)

Their fear toward Me is taught by the precept of men

A fear of God taught by the precept of men

I. THERE IS A FEAR TOWARDS GOD WHICH IS TAUGHT BY THE PRECEPT OF MEN. It is unquestionable that, although it is nothing but the recklessness of infidelity which would speak of religion as an engine of state policy, still no state policy can be effective which looks not to religion as an auxiliary. If there could be taken off from a community those restraints which are imposed on it by the doctrine of the soul’s immortality, and of a future dispensation of rewards and punishments, there would be done more towards the introduction of a universal lawlessness and profligacy than if the statute books of the land were torn up and the courts of justice levelled with the ground. But if religion be thus susceptible of being employed with advantage as an auxiliary, there is a corresponding risk of its being resorted to as a human engine and not as a Divine. All inculcations of religion which are dictated by the consciousness that it is politic to stand by religion would turn into inculcations of infidelity the moment it should appear that it would be politic to stand by infidelity. It is a possible case that rulers might do on the political principle what Hezekiah did on the God-fearing principle--they might busy themselves with exacting from their subjects attention to the laws of the Almighty, and so might bring round great outward conformity to many commands of the Bible. The result in the two eases might be similar: the tokens of the absence of God’s fear might be swept from the land; and there might, on the contrary, be seen on the whole outspread of the population, appearances of the maintenance of that fear. What is to be said of that fear of God which seems to discover itself in its attention to ordinances, but which is only dictated by habit--or respect for appearances--or concern for religion as an engine of state! If we could mark each individual, as he enters the house, who is only brought hither by custom--by the feeling that it is decorous to come--by the sense that it is right that old institutions should be upheld, why, since in the whole assemblage of such motives there is no real recognition of the authority of Jehovah, we should be bound to say of all those who thus render to God a spurious and inferior homage, that their fear towards Him was “taught by the precept of men.” The motive or sentiment which is the prime energy in producing that fear towards God which is not according to His word is the opinion of merit, the attachment of worth to this or that action, which is ordinarily described as self-righteousness. The cases of the fear towards God, which is taught by the Precept of men, might be further multiplied. If you went the round of even the religious world you would find much of a restless endeavour to bring down godliness to something of the human standard.

II. THE FEAR TOWARDS GOD, TAUGHT BY MAN’S PRECEPT, IS MOST OFFENSIVE IN THE SIGHT OF THE ALMIGHTY. We conclude the fact of the offensiveness from God’s express determination of punishing the Jews with a signal punishment. Our simple business is therefore to search after the reason of this offensiveness.

1. The fear must be a defective fear. If you take your standard from aught else than the Bible, you will necessarily have a standard which is low and imperfect; and although you may act unflinchingly up to this standard, where it is the standard of other men’s opinions or long practice or custom, you stand accountable for the adoption of the standard.

2. This fear involves a contempt of revelation; and on this account as well as on the former most peculiarly incurs the wrath of Jehovah. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

“Their fear toward Me” R.V.

“Their fear of Me,” i.e., their piety, religion. “Is taught by the precept of men.” Better as R.V. “is (or, “has become”) a commandment of men which hath been taught”;--a human ordinance learned by rote (Matthew 15:1). This pregnant criticism expresses with epigrammatic force the fundamental difference between the pagan and the biblical conceptions of religion. Religion, being personal fellowship with God, cannot be “learned” from men, but only by revelation Matthew 16:17). (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)