God Acts Powerfully to Cure Spiritual Hypocrisy

The question presses on any of God’s people whom he severely hurts: “Why, O Lord? Why are you doing this to me?” Scripture is able to stand with clarity in the suffering of God’s people and tell us why he must hurt us in order to heal us. Though the heart issues may differ from person to person, a relatively small number of common themes arise in every generation. Among them are spiritual blindness, cold-hearted worship, and worldly wisdom.

In verses 9-12 Isaiah speaks powerfully to the spiritual blindness of the people of Judah. They stagger around drunk but not from strong drink. They are blind because they do not understand the words of Isaiah’s prophecy; they stagger because they are in terror at God’s judgment through Assyria. The prophecy is like a sealed scroll: those who should have been skilled enough in the laws of God to understand Isaiah’s prophecy (priests and prophets) cannot read it because it is sealed. The rest of the common people cannot read at all. No one understands what God is doing by bringing these vicious Gentile warriors to destroy their cities and ravage their lands. The words of the prophecy are a sealed scroll. God would have to speak more clearly by means of the invasion itself (Isa 28:11).

In Isaiah 29:13 God exposes the coldness of their hearts toward him. They are going through the motions of all their religious machinery, for Hezekiah had restored the lawful patterns of temple worship (2 Chr 29). But just because the king was wholeheartedly pursuing the Lord doesn’t mean the people were. As in Isaiah 1:11-15, there was an endless trampling of the courts of the temple with meaningless offerings and hypocritical festivals. The people honored God with their lips, but their hearts were far from him. Their lukewarmness in worship was despicable to God; it was the ground of their astonishing judgments from God in verse 14. In Jesus’s day the scribes and Pharisees carried on the hypocritical spirit of their forefathers. They were meticulous in their religious observances, but Jesus exposed their hypocrisy by quoting this verse in reference to them (Matt 15:7-9).

The third cause of Judah’s painful judgment from God is in Isaiah 29:14-16: worldly wisdom. Hezekiah’s counselors were pouring this “wisdom” into his ears, effectively saying, “We must not be naïve; we must make an alliance with Egypt to survive Assyria!” Perhaps these plans were being formed in secret, even hidden from the king. However, “No creature is hidden from [God], but all things are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account” (Heb 4:13). These perverse people have forgotten that they are merely the clay and God is the omniscient potter who will expose all their sins.

Isaiah 29:17-24

The chapter ends with a cascade of gracious promises from the Great Physician. God will work a full deliverance for his chosen people to rescue them from their own cold hearts. God promises to level the forests of Lebanon (the humbling of human pride) and to turn it instead into a fertile field for his glory. God promises to give spiritual hearing and sight to formerly deaf and blind people, so they will at last hear the words of his scroll and see him by faith. The result of this faith will be genuine spiritual joy; having been humbled by the judgments of God, they will drink at a fountain of “joy after joy” (v. 19). Ruthless oppressors (the wicked among Judah itself as well as the Gentile invaders) will vanish, removed by God’s terrifying power. The true sons and daughters of Abraham, the godly remnant of Jacob, will see their own children as the evidence of the supernatural power of God. In the end, the transformation of former rebels into humble disciples is the centerpiece of God’s healing work.

First, we have the same disease. We can be quite complacent in our religious lives, mindlessly doing out of habit what should be done out of passion. We can honor God with our lips while our worldly hearts remain far from him.

Second, the Great Physician is Jesus, able to heal spiritually diseased people through repentance and faith (Luke 5:31-32). But genuine repentance from these deep-seated heart issues never comes easily. The Great Physician must bring into our lives deep pains, bitter sufferings, to get at such profound heart sins. So . . .

Third, we should expect painful trials, knowing that Jesus must hurt us to heal us. We should learn to hate anything that makes us distant from God. Jesus shed his blood on the cross to save us from all sins, including religious formalism, hypocrisy, deadness of heart, worldly wisdom, and secret sins. We should plead with him to heal us, however painfully, by trials and by the Holy Spirit.