Louder Than Words | Pastor Chip Parker | Week 1

In the late 1900s, uh the 1990s to be exact, uh, worship music was taken off.

Uh, contemporary music was flooding the scene, and one particular church in the United Kingdom, named Soul Survivor Church, was at the heart of this movement.

The church was growing, but the leadership couldn't shake the feeling that something was off.

There was something that had been lost, uh, specifically when it came to what worship was and what worship was supposed to be.

So one week the pastor just goes on stage, unplugs the sound system, and asks the band to leave the stage, to set down, to have a seat.

And for a time, they just stood there, sat there, looking at each other awkwardly, but finally they began to sing.

They raised their voices, no instruments, no sound systems, no lights.

They just began to worship.

And it was reflecting on that worship experience that the church's worship leader, Matt Redman, maybe you've recognized that name, wrote a now classic song called The Heart of Worship.

It was a song born out of that moment where everything was stripped away and they just started to worship.

It was a song of confession, a song of commitment, and really in a lot of ways, a song of hope.

Maybe the most famous words in that song go when the music fades and all is stripped away, and I simply come longing just to bring something that's of worth that will bless your heart.

I'm coming back to the heart of worship, and it's all about you, Jesus.

You've heard that song, I'm sure.

You've sang that song.

And in a lot of ways, that song was launched out of a moment, and that song began a movement meant to return Jesus to the center of worship.

To sing those words, it's all about you, Jesus, was really for us to admit, man, it had been all about me, and to say it's not gonna be that way any longer.

In a lot of ways, that's really the hope we have for this new sermon series that we're beginning today.

We're gonna be going through this series this month, and the idea there is that we want to be reminded that our worship is more than about speakers and lights, more than about rhythms and melodies.

Our worship is meant to be louder than the words that we sing.

And so, over the next four weeks, what we're gonna do is look at four songs that you are most likely familiar with and dig into the stories behind them.

Stories that help point us to the scriptural truth underneath these songs, truths that really should be what fuel our worship.

And we're gonna start right here with that song by Matt Redman, The Heart of Worship, and look at what happens when the worship on our lips doesn't match the posture of our hearts or the action of our lives.

And for our text, we're gonna look in this morning, Isaiah chapter 29.

Isaiah 29 · chapter mention

And so if you got your Bible, I want you to flip with me to Isaiah chapter 29.

Isaiah 29 · chapter mention

It's a big book, a large book of prophecy that spans uh, you know, a lot of uh history in Israel, a lot of issues that Israel was facing, some hopeful, some not.

But in Isaiah chapter 29, starting in verse 13, we read these words.

Isaiah 29 · chapter mention

This is the word of the Lord.

It says, The Lord said, These people approach me with their speeches to honor me with lip service, yet their hearts are far from me, and human rules direct their worship of me.

Therefore, I will again confound these people with wonder after wonder, the wisdom of their wise will vanish, and the perception of their perceptive will be hidden.

Now, when you read those verses, they seem like harsh words, and that's because they are.

This is a harsh indictment.

In fact, these are the words that Jesus himself uses, quoting this very passage when he condemns the Pharisees of his day, recorded in Matthew chapter 15.

Matthew 15 · chapter mention

But what is the point of these words here in Isaiah chapter 29?

Isaiah 29 · chapter mention

What is the point of this prophecy hundreds of years before Jesus comes on the scene to condemn the Pharisees?

Well, when we read those verses, specifically verse 13, that these people approach me with their speeches to honor me with lip service, yet their hearts are far from me.

I don't think that these verses are mainly attacking the idea of formal worship itself.

Now, what it is attacking is not the idea of formal worship, but worship that had become correct sounding, worship that had become temple-centered, politically expedient, but spiritually hollow.

The verse there in verse 13 says that the people draw near with their mouth and lips, but their hearts aren't near.

Their hearts are far away.

So the issue for us there is that these people that Isaiah was prophesying against, that the Lord was speaking about, it's not that they were irreligious, but that their religion had become empty.

It was just full of empty, rehearsed recitation that had been inherited by tradition and externally performed rather than worship that was truly covenantally faithful.

In fact, that phrase there, the end of verse 13, where it says, human rules direct their worship of me, the idea there is that they have learned by memory traditions of worship.

Now, historically, what this is talking about is most likely temple prayers, sacrifices that were offered, festival observances, vows made, priestly instructions, public professions about Yahweh.

And this isn't the first time we see this in Isaiah.

As a matter of fact, Isaiah had already condemned this same pattern in chapter one, where he talked about sacrifices, incense, solemn assemblies, appointed feasts, and lifted hands in prayer, all of which were rejected because they had become detached from justice, repentance, and covenant obedience.

Here in Isaiah 29, that same thing has popped back up, but this time it's sharper.

It's a harsher critique.

Worship had become near in location, it had become near in speech, but far removed from obedience.

In this day, in the days of King Hezekiah, worship in southern Israel, known as Judah, had begun being centralized around that capital of Jerusalem.

Archaeological and historical scholarship show a lot of Hezekiah's reforms as closing down idol worship in the country, where they would shut down local shrines to idols that existed in outlying villages and towns.

And at the same time as they were shutting all those things down, they were strengthening the temple there in Jerusalem.

They were making the temple and Jerusalem a religious and political center.

And I think that explains some of the irony of Isaiah 29.

Jerusalem on the outside looked more religious than ever.

The temple mattered again.

Priests were active, people were busy.

We had liturgies and confessions.

But Isaiah said that their worship of Yahweh had become something that was taught mechanically.

It was memorized.

It was wrote.

In other words, maybe we would say it like this: they knew the form of worship without the reality of worship.

And so these practices condemned in verses 13 and 14 were not pagan rituals, but that was worship of the one true God emptied of its covenant faithfulness.

It was lips without heart.

It was ritual without repentance, instruction without obedience.

And the sad truth is we still experience the same thing in our churches today.

That's what the heart of worship was all about when it was written.

Lips without heart, ritual without repentance, and instruction without obedience.

In our churches today, we know how to, quote, draw near to Jesus with our lips, or maybe with the closing of our eyes, or with the raising of our hands, but in reality our hearts remain unmoved.

And the scariest part for me is that this type of hypocrisy and worship can be a conscious or unconscious hypocrisy.

Even in Isaiah's day, this was true.

Sometimes it was conscious in their minds because that worship that they were going through the motions of was motivated by a fear of man or a desire to seek favor and adoration of others.

But sometimes it was an unconscious hypocrisy.

It wasn't an intended hypocrisy that was aware of these ulterior motivations, but it was a worship that was based more on a works-based righteousness.

People were contenting themselves with and even priding themselves on their outward in their eyes, their outward fulfillment of the law, while they ignored all of the many ways they were living outside of covenant obedience to the Lord because those ways had become non-come unconvenient for them.

I think that's still us today.

That's the American church today.

Sometimes we are aware of our hypocrisy, but man, we press on anyway.

It doesn't slow us down.

And sometimes we don't even see it.

Sometimes we don't even see the hypocrisy in our own hearts, lives, and worship.

But the truth is others often do.

And Jesus always does.

And the judgment and consequence that came from this hypocritical worship in Isaiah's day and even in our own today was a spiritual blindness, self-deception, and an overall hardening of the hearts of the people.

Look back at what he says in verse number 14.

In verse number 14, he says, Therefore I will again confound these people with wonder after wonder.

The wisdom of their wise will vanish, the perception of the perceptive will be hidden.

Even all the way back in verse 10, he says he's going to put a deep slumber on them.

The idea was the more they faked it, they became blind to the fact that it was even fake in the first place.

Therefore, they began deceiving themselves more and more, and it just multiplied on top of each other where they were convincing themselves that nothing was wrong.

This is what worship was.

And ultimately, their hearts were hardened to the point that they no longer felt the conviction that the Lord would graciously bring upon them.

And maybe that sounds like a different idea for you that the Lord would graciously bring conviction.

But don't forget the point of conviction.

Conviction is not the judgment of God, it is the grace of God to awaken us to our sin, to awaken us to our hypocrisy, and to draw us back to Himself.

But when we become spiritually blind, self-deceived, and have our hearts hardened, we miss that.

We become desensitized to the convicting work of God in our lives.

When's the last time that God convicted you?

And if it's been a long time, it's probably not because how righteous you are, it's probably because you've become numb to that conviction.

However, Isaiah just doesn't leave us with these two depressing verses.

There was hope for the people.

As a matter of fact, if we dig deeper in this section of Isaiah that goes beyond chapter 29, we see that in his graciousness the Lord had laid out a road back to him if the people would take it.

First, flip over just one chapter to Isaiah chapter 30 and look at verse 15.

Isaiah 30 · chapter mention

It says this for the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, has said, You will be delivered by returning and resting.

Your strength will lie in quiet confidence, but you were not willing.

And so he said, Even though you're not willing, there's still a road back, and that road is twofold.

He said, First, that road is returning.

I think maybe the idea there is repentance.

We have to begin by acknowledging that we have gone astray.

We have to acknowledge that we've gotten off track and we have to return.

We've got to head back in the right direction.

And then when we get there, secondly, we have to rest.

It's not about performing, it's not about doing.

It's not about we get to offer our worship to God because our worship itself is so valuable.

No, this resting is about resting in what Jesus has done, not in what we do.

We rest in who God is.

So we return and we rest.

And then if we flip a few more chapters over to Isaiah chapter 33, I think he sees that we shows us that we need to rediscover.

Isaiah 33 · chapter mention

Look at what he just says in verse 10 through 16.

Now I will rise up, says the Lord.

Now I will lift myself up.

Now I will be exalted.

You will conceive chaff, you will give birth to stubble.

Your breath is fire that will consume you.

The peoples will be burned to ashes like thorns cut down and burned in a fire.

You who are far off, hear what I have done.

You who are near know my strength.

The sinners in Zion are afraid.

Trembling seizes the ungodly.

Who among us can dwell with a consuming fire?

Who among us can dwell with ever burning flames?

The one who lives righteously and speaks rightly, who refuses profit from extortion, whose hand never takes a bribe, who stops his ears from listening to murderous plots and shuts his eyes against evil schemes.

He will dwell on the heights.

His refuge will be the rocky fortresses, his food provided, his water assured.

So there's a lot there.

But I think the core of it is that we need to rediscover an awe of the Lord.

God says, I'm gonna lift myself up, I'm gonna be exalted.

Those who are far, we're gonna hear what I've done, those who are near are gonna know my strength.

Who can stand?

We need to rediscover an awe, a reverence, a respect, a healthy fear of the Lord.

And so how do we return from this hypocritical worship?

We first return, admit that we got off track.

We rest not in what we do, but in who he is and what he has done, and we rediscover an awe of the Lord.

We find ourselves captured by his majesty, splendor, and greatness.

That's what worship is about.

It's not about memorizing the right things.

It's not about putting on a show.

It's not about the lights and the sound and the coffee and the donuts and the stage.

It is about getting to the place where we acknowledge the worthiness of Jesus above all things.

That's what worship really is.

And so as we start the series today, maybe you would stop to ask yourself, is my mer worship really louder than my words?

Or does my worship not go any further than the words that I say?

Am I drawing close with my lips while I'm still far away with my heart?

And if so, how can I get back?

Well, I think that's what we're gonna press into in this series is a worship that is louder than our words.

We're gonna look at some more popular songs and the truth behind them and the scripture underneath them.

And then we're gonna press into all that God is and all that He promises for us.

So let me pray for you.

God, thank you for this time to look at your word now.

And I pray that where our worship has grown stale and hypocritical, that you would bring conviction upon us, that we would not be too blind, deceived, and hardened to feel it, but that we would feel that conviction.

We would return to you, we would rest in you, and we would rediscover the awe of you so that our worship may be renewed.

And so, God, again, I pray as we go throughout this month leading into the beginning of our summer, that you would just reignite our passion for you, who you are, what you have done and promised to do.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.