God Acts Powerfully to Cure Spiritual Hypocrisy

Isaiah 29

These people approach me with their speeches to honor me with lip-service—yet their hearts are far from me. (Isa 29:13)

Main Idea: God uses a very painful cure—the siege of Jerusalem—to heal his people of the heart disease of spiritual blindness and hypocrisy.

1. God Humbles Jerusalem and Her Enemies to the Dust (29:1-8).
   1. God humbles complacent Jerusalem by a siege (29:1-4).
   2. God humbles her ruthless enemies by his sudden appearance (29:5-8).
   3. God’s enemies are bitterly disappointed.
2. God Exposes the Root Issues (29:9-16).
   1. Willful spiritual blindness (29:9-12)
   2. Cold-hearted, hypocritical worship (29:13-14)
   3. Worldly wisdom (29:14-16)
3. God Transforms His People from All Effects of Sin (29:17-24).
   1. Amazing promises! A full deliverance for the people of God
   2. Image after image of God’s lavish work of restoration

God Humbles Jerusalem and Her Enemies to the Dust

Isaiah 29:1-8

In this sin-cursed world most therapies for disease and injury in medical science involve hurting the body in order to heal it. All surgeries involve cutting through healthy tissue to reach the unhealthy. Radiation and chemotherapy both involve doing massive harm to the body to kill the cancer growing within the patient. Dentists regularly drill through healthy enamel to get to the decay exposed by x-rays. Physical therapists put their patients through agonies to retrain atrophied muscles and make them healthy and useful again. In a similar way, the Great Physician of Souls must often hurt his people in order to heal them.

In Isaiah 29 God deals severely with his people in Jerusalem; he humbles them to the dust by bringing a siege on them; then, suddenly, he turns and humbles their enemies also to the dust by showing up with wrath and power. In this chapter God exposes the heart issues in his people that brought on this judgment from God centuries ago, and we find that we struggle with the same sins they did. And as God works in our lives, he will seek to achieve the same purpose as in theirs: healing our hearts—from coldness, complacency, dry religion, formalism, spiritual dullness, and worldly wisdom—resulting in a people wholeheartedly passionate for his glory. To accomplish this, God must do some strange work in our lives; he must hurt us in order to heal us.

In act 1 of the drama (vv. 1-4), God addresses the sins of “Ariel” (Jerusalem, “the city where David camped”). He rebukes them by commanding that their endless cycle of religious festivals go on like a machine while he humbles them to the dust by a fiery trial, a siege. After that siege, Jerusalem will be so abased that she will barely be able to whisper a prayer.

But suddenly, act 2 changes everything (vv. 5-8). The besieging forces that are arrogantly assaulting Jerusalem will themselves be humbled to the dust by almighty God. He will break out powerfully against them in “thunder, earthquake, and loud noise, storm, tempest, and a flame of consuming fire” (v. 6). Many foes of God have dreamed of exterminating God’s people by genocide only to find themselves rudely awakened, their dream evaporated like a nighttime mist (v. 8). So also in this case: Assyria assumed they would soon be dancing over the corpses of Hezekiah and his rag-tag remnant. But the angel of the Lord went out and slaughtered 185,000 of their soldiers, and the dream died that very night (Isa 37:36-37).

God Exposes the Root Issues

Isaiah 29:9-16

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.

God Transforms His People from All Effects of Sin

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.

Applications

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.

Reflect and Discuss

1. What timeless lessons does Isaiah 29 have for the people of God in every generation?
2. Why is it vital to accept the three premises given in the application section above? (1) We share the same heart sins as they did; (2) Jesus is the Great Physician; but (3) the therapies for heart sins will be painful.
3. How do you see religious formalism in the Christian church of our day?
4. What is the significance of the fact that so many medical remedies must hurt the body in order to heal it? How does that also ring true in our spiritual lives?
5. How is the Scripture frequently like a sealed scroll to people (vv. 9-12)? Why is that their fault, not the Bible’s?
6. Jonathan Edwards said, “In nothing is vigor in the actings of our inclinations so appropriate as in religion, and in nothing is lukewarmness so odious” (Edwards, A Treatise, 238). How does this quote relate to Isaiah 29:1,13?
7. Why is Isaiah 29:13 one of the most important verses in the Bible on worship?
8. What should we do if we see that our hearts are “far from God”?
9. How do we display “worldly wisdom” in our lives?
10. What awesome words of grace do you see cascading in verses 17-24? How do these promises relate to our Christian lives?