This is a series on the latter prophets (Isaiah – Malachi) and what happened to the people of Israel, how that affected the hearts, minds, and spirits of God’s people, and God’s plan for bringing them back and restoring them to His intended course. The sequence will look something like this: God’s Big-ness → Humility → Historical Identity → Internal vs. External Worship → Idolatry → Economics → Exile and Possession → Repentance/Justice → Restoration → God’s Love and Kindness
Worship is no longer worship when it reflects the culture around us more than the Christ within us. – A.W. Tozer
“You brood of vipers! How can you speak good things when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” – Jesus, Matthew 12:34, NRSV
“The correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting — no more — and then it motivates one towards originality and instills the desire for truth. Suppose someone were to go and ask his neighbors for fire and find a substantial blaze there, and just stay there continually warming himself: that is no different from someone who goes to someone else to get to some of his rationality, and fails to realize that he ought to ignite his own flame, his own intellect, but is happy to sit entranced by the lecture, and the words trigger only associative thinking and bring, as it were, only a flush to his cheeks and a glow to his limbs; but he has not dispelled or dispersed, in the warm light of philosophy, the internal dank gloom of his mind.” – Plutarch
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So far this series has explored God’s bigness (the thing Israel’s religion stands on) and Israel’s lack of humility and historical identity (the posture of Israel’s religion). The next three parts (worship, idolatry, and economics) will explore the outpouring of Israel’s religion. This is the practical part, where the rubber meets the road, and, because of a faulty foundation and posture, is where most of the Israelite struggles manifest.
Judaism recognizes the 613 mitzvot, or commandments, that are present in the Torah (the first 5 books of the Christian Old Testament). Follow that link and scroll through the headings and it’s astonishing that the first few sections deal with right relationship (i.e. how Jewish people should treat their God, their neighbors, their selves) before a shift occurs to the right practice of life. Take number 360 in the above list, not eating fruit from a tree before it’s three years old. In many ways that’s reasonable, it takes most fruit trees at least 3 years to produce fruit so that commandment checks out. But now think through a farmer maintaining an orchard. Trees die and need to be replaced, so age has to be tracked somehow. Trees are grafted onto other trees, and now a ruling needs to be made about whether or not that counts as a new tree and/or which tree’s age to use. On top of that, the fruit that comes through in the 4th year needs to be sent to Jerusalem as an offering (number 361) so that opens up a whole other logistical can of worms.
It’s easy to see that the 613 mitzvot might ask a lot of its practitioners, especially in times of ambiguity. While it might be simple to make fun of it from a modern Christian perspective it’s important to note that there are some really good practices for life. For example, “biblical agronomy” is agriculture built off of the commands in the mitzvot and focuses on right relationship with the land, something modern Christians struggle with, and right relationship with the poor, something modern Christians struggle with. It even improves upon some aspects of modern agriculture practice.
The point here is that though the mitzvot point to a right and good way of life, people throughout time have struggled with seeing the forest for the trees or, to keep the metaphor internally consistent, to stay at the well and never swim in the river. The tedium of the mitzvot can quickly bog one down and make one miss the importance of what these laws point to: right relationship with God and with others. These two outputs is where worship comes in.
The fact of the matter is that worship, which is the outpouring of religion, in its truest form, is for the benefit of the people, not just God’s (Jeremiah 7:18-19). All of the rules and regulations, the expectations and the traditions, should lead to a right relationship with God first and foremost (internal), and with others secondly (external) (Matthew 22:36-40). The formal religious structure (festivals, offerings, etc.) is given to Israel to set aside that time to reflect (as talked about in Part 3). This is all to say that there is an external component of worship and religion, but it should always lead to internal change. For Israel, getting caught living and worshiping solely in either externalities or internalities are both shortchanging YHWH and who he has called Israel to be. Instead the calendar and religious structure is meant to be an external event that leads to internal change which leads to external events outside of that structure (e.g. taking care of the widows and orphans).
Obedience, not sacrifice, is what God wants from His people as obedience points to steadfast love (Hosea 6:6, NRSV). The Law is only ever part of the point, obedience belongs to the covenant first, the Law is just a depiction of what that obedience could look like. More often than not, covenantal obedience looks differently than what is required by law (Isaiah 58:1-10); herein lies an inkling that the Law isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, but is instead much, much more. As Jesus would talk about in his ministry (“I have not come to abolish, but to fulfill” Matthew 5:17) and Paul would reiterate by his utter de-emphasis of it (e.g. Romans 2:17-29) since it had become such a stumbling block in the early church).
Israel was obedient much like drivers today drive the speed limit. Obedience to the speed limit typically doesn’t come from a place that is respectful of the sanctity of life and a sense of protecting the other drivers around, but instead typically stems out of fear of a ticket, or the repercussions of violating the law. After all, who among us doesn’t seek to find that sweet spot of driving faster than the speed limit but not quite fast enough to get pulled over? It becomes a lot easier to drive the speed limit after driving by an accident on the highway, external reminders are helpful, if not needed, to lead to reflection on mortality and communal responsibility. In the same way, Israel was driving their camels at the speed limit because of the societal pressures, and, as a whole, let that be their only form of worship. Such external displays of devotion that are not paired with internal devotion lead to rending clothes and not hearts (Joel 2:12-14, NRSV). It’s like Plutarch puts it in the quote above, Israel had come to worship expecting to be filled and by doing so, they lost out on being ignited. Worship, much like the knowledge Plutarch is referring to, is kindling, and Israel was caught being entertained. The shift from being filled by worship, instead of being ignited by it, is the hard work of heart work, and requires a lot of time and devotion to do it.
Due to the fact that Israel chose to worship externally, God shows them their injustice externally. In this way, Babylonian exile is fun house mirror to the people of Israel (Reference Habakkuk 1 & 2 and the way the Babylonians treat the Israelites mirrors the way Israel has treated their own people). The next two parts are going to dive into these other outpourings, specifically Israel’s statuary infidelity as well as their flawed conceptions of economics and possession. But first, idolatry.
I Am Just Here 