Isaiah chapter number 1. And here is our topic for this evening, our theme for this evening. Worship is not for hypocrites. Worship is not for hypocrites. Let's look together at Isaiah chapter number 1, and I'm going to read verses 10 to 18. Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Give ear to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah. Let me just pause for a moment. Sodom and Gomorrah had been destroyed many years before this. What God is speaking to, God is speaking to his people, Israel, the Israelites, the people of Judah, and he is calling them people of Sodom and people of Gomorrah to tell us something and to tell them something about their moral condition. that they were destitute morally, that they had turned away from him. They were wicked people. And when he used these words, when he used the names of these cities, that would have been incredibly shocking because to the Jewish person, the most wicked thing, the most wicked group of people they could ever imagine were the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. And here God calls them the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. You think today about maybe the most wicked group of people that you can imagine in our day, and imagine if God then said Ennerdale, and instead of calling us Ennerdale, called us by that name, the name of that group of people. It'd be pretty shocking. It'd be like calling a girl Jezebel. A very shocking thing. God is making a point about their spiritual condition, what they're like. So he says, hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Give ear to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah. Now get this, to what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me, says the Lord? I have had enough of burnt offerings of ram, the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls or the lambs of goats. Again, this would have been shocking to them because all of this was prescribed by God. You read Exodus, you read Leviticus in particular, and you have all kinds of these guidelines laid out for how Israel was to approach God by sacrifice. And here God, first of all, calls them wicked and then says, I don't want, I'm tired of your sacrifices. Verse 12, when you come to appear before me, who has required this from your hand to trample my courts? Bring no more futile sacrifices. Incense is an abomination to me. The new moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies, I cannot endure iniquity in the sacred meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts, my soul hates. They are a trouble to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, and what it's talking about there is them spreading out their hands to pray, to lift up their hands in worship. He says, when you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear, your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now and let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Worship is not for hypocrites. I think we all understand what hypocrisy is. Hypocrisy is when we claim to hold things as valuable. We claim to believe things. We claim to embrace things that, at heart, we really don't. And I think that all of us, on some level, hate hypocrisy. If you hear of somebody that yells at you for wearing a fur coat, yells at you about that, and then you find out later that they have a whole closet full of fur coats, you'd be like, what kind of hypocrite is that? And you'd be angry at them. There's a certain environmentalist who I don't have a whole lot of respect for, and I'll tell you where all of my respect, when all of my respect was lost for this individual. I won't tell you who he is. You can probably guess. This individual was supposed to be all about the environment and how we should all care about the environment. He came to my hometown, Barrie, and he had a large group that he spoke to, and he berated them for driving SUVs and not caring about the environment because they drove sport utility vehicles. He himself was driven to that event in a coach that was only for him. It wasn't like there were 60 people crowded under the coach and brought him to that event that he was talking about the environment. He was the only one. And from that moment on, I was like, he may talk a good game, he may have a lot of things to say about the environment, he might even know a few things about the environment, but the guy's a hypocrite. He told people that they didn't care about the environment for driving a sport utility vehicle, having himself taken a big, huge coach to that event. We ourselves have a revulsion against hypocrisy on some levels. But as much as we despise hypocrisy, God despises it even more. God hates hypocritical worship. God hates it when people come before his presence to worship him as though they love him, as though they follow him, while walking contrary to his word. Now please understand, even from this text, we can realize that God is not expecting sinless perfection. After all, the Old Testament sacrificial system is still in place. People still had to bring forth their sacrifices to atone for the sins that they have committed. God here is not saying, unless you are perfect, don't bother coming and worshiping me. What God is speaking out against here is people who waltz before his presence, who come before his presence and sing songs like, oh, how I love Jesus, but their heart is far from him. And so God hates hypocritical worship. We have a tendency sometimes to think that if as long as we do those acts of worship, we're okay. So I live my way, I do my thing, I wander from God, but I come to church and I sing the hymns on Sunday, so I'm good. And I want you to understand that God does not like that kind of worship. God hates that kind of worship. The whole of scripture bears testimony to the fact that God hates hypocritical worship. Proverbs 21.3 is a passage that gives us some insight that contradicts our way of thinking so often when it comes to outward observances. It says this, Proverbs 21.3, to do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice. Now, God himself is the one that commanded sacrifices in the Old Testament. God himself is the one that prescribed worship and how worship should be done. And yet, the word of God says that if it were a choice between the two, God would rather have someone who is righteous and just than someone who just comes and worships and it's all a show. So we need to understand God's hatred of hypocritical worship. And understanding that, we need to then turn the spotlight on ourselves and think about, are we hypocrites? Some questions that we can ask. You can ask, do you judge others before you judge yourself? Are you an expert on everyone else's sins and shortcomings? And don't bother looking at your own. See, we're so often an expert on everyone else's sin, aren't we? You see this in school with the youngsters. Two youngsters get in trouble, and they're brought before the teacher. And the teacher says, what's wrong? Johnny immediately says, well, Susie did this and that and the other thing. And Susie says, well, Johnny did this, that, and the other thing. You don't very often have Johnny and Susie come before the teacher, and the teacher asks, what's wrong? And Johnny says, well, the problem is that I am a sinner. And today, my sinful nature expressed itself in pushing Susie. I regret that. I repent with ashes and tears. You don't hear that, do you? No, it's our nature to run and hide and excuse ourselves and become experts in somebody else's sin. So are you an expert on everyone else's sins and shortcoming and overlook your own? Do you condemn others for the same things that you do? Paul speaks about this in Romans chapter two. Do you condemn others for the same things that you do? Do you really hold the values that you try to emphasize in public? So the values that you emphasize in public, let's say, okay, I value punctuality. So you come to church and you say, listen, you gotta be in church on time, you gotta be here by the time that the first note, or even before that, you gotta be here when pastor stands up and greets. If you're not, you are walking a wayward path that's leading to perdition. But you failed to disclose the fact that you were late four out of five days to work this week. Do you really hold the values you try to emphasize in public? Do you truly believe in the God that you claim to worship? Do you truly obey the God you claim to worship? A great test of this is, do you regularly confess your sins to God? Do you regularly confess your sins to the God that you claim to worship? Shortest path to hypocrisy is a life of unconfessed sin. Because when you live a life of unconfessed sin, you are regularly overlooking your own sins and failures, It's not long before you bury that and hide it, put on a show, but the reality is so different. Remember Jesus, how he described the Pharisees? Jesus described the Pharisees as whited sepulchers. Now, it's kind of gross, but we're getting close to Halloween, so stay with me on this one. A sepulcher is filled with rotting corpses. Unless you're a little bit off, you don't generally ask to have a tour of the inside of a sepulcher. There's rotting corpses in there, it smells nasty, it looks nasty, it is nasty. And Jesus said to the Pharisees, you're like whited sepulchers. You've got the outside painted, but on the inside, it's full of dead men's bones. The text before us gives us God's perspective on hypocritical worship. For example, God would tell us that hypocritical worship is purposeless. We see that in verse 11. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me? And that is a rhetorical question. It's a question that's asked for effect. God is telling them hypocritical worship is purposeless. Furthermore, hypocritical worship gives God no delight. We see that in chapter 1, the second half of verse 11. God says, I've had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or goats. It brings God no delight. Furthermore, it irreverently tramples God's house. We see that in verse 12, when you come to appear before me, who has required this from your hand to trample my courts? Now, the guidelines for how you conducted yourself in the old tabernacle and temple were much different than conducting yourself, than the rules of conduct inside the church building that God has given us here. For example, in the Old Testament temple, Joel would not be allowed to run around like a maniac. Judson would not be allowed to run back and open the flower room door and talk about the choir, okay? All of that would be strictly forbidden. There were prescribed movements, people who could go here and not here. It was very, very strict. But God says that when people come before his presence with false worship, with hypocritical worship, it's like trampling his courts. It'd be like a herd of buffalo running through the tabernacle. The very opposite of reverence, the very opposite of bringing true-hearted worship is trampling God's courts. Another image would be of stomping on something, showing disrespect by stomping on something. And I've read of some of the persecuted church in communist lands and in some of the Muslim-controlled areas of the world, and often they will do that very thing. They'll stomp on holy items. They'll stomp on the Bible, for example, as an offense to God and to the faith. Well, here God says that hypocritical worship, coming to God and pretending before him and everyone else that everything is okay, when it really isn't, when you're walking apart from him, that's like trampling on holy things. We gotta move on. God then comes out, right out and says that it is an abomination to me. We see that in verse 13. It is an abomination. Verse 14, he says, his soul hates it. Now, some of you might remember when we were looking at the book of Proverbs, we talked about what an abomination is. Abomination is something that is absolutely detestable. You hate it. You can't stand it. It's nasty to you. And you might think of the revulsion that you have toward some insect or snakes. That's the kind of revulsion, the kind of internal despising, the internal, that is nasty, I hate it. That's the way God feels about hypocritical worship. God also says that it's wearying to him. I'm tired of dealing with it, God says. You know, if you've had to deal with someone who's troublesome over a long period of time, You understand that after a while, you just get worn out. And God says, having someone come with a heart far from him, offering worship to him as though everything is okay, without repentance, without confession, that is wearying to him. And we see as well in verse 15, that God will not receive hypocritical worship. We see that in verse 15, when you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear, your hands are full of blood. God hates hypocritical worship. And so we need to understand God's hatred of hypocritical worship. But then, I think the next thing we need to consider as we think about hypocritical worship is this, repent, then worship. Repent, then worship. This is the order that God requires. First repentance, then worship. We see this, for example, in verses 16, 17, and 18. God says, wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. God wants repentance and then worship. God wants a full repentance, no halfway measures. I was reading, one of the books that I have is by a guy named Charles Bridges, and it's a book about this big, and it's all on Psalm 119. The whole book is on Psalm 119. Now you might think that's excessive, but I actually have another author that wrote three volumes that same size, all on Psalm 119. But anyways, in the one volume, Charles Bridges talks about how very often our religious activities and our religious devotions we engage in, we do just enough to kind of appease our conscience for the moment. Well, I haven't been doing right by this for a while. Let me do this. And then we're okay with it. as though offering some sort of a half-hearted devotion, a halfway repentance is gonna clear everything up. God, you read this description of their repentance, wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. This is a full repentance. This would be, I surrender all material. God wants a full repentance. He wants a willing repentance. He wants a humble repentance. We very often offer hypocritical worship because we're too proud. We're too proud to deal with our sin. We're too proud to see our sin in ourselves as we really are. We're too proud, for example, here's an example. We're too proud to pass up on taking communion one week when we know that we're not in a right standing with God. We're like, what will people think? Listen, God would rather have you humble and repentant than have somebody think ill of you because you pass up the communion plate. God wants you to repent and then worship. And then I want to just conclude with a word of warning from our Savior. It's in Luke chapter 12, verse 1. Luke chapter 12, verse 1. Worship is not for hypocrites. Maybe right now you say, listen, I'm walking in humble dependence on God. I believe I'm walking in repentance. I know I'm not perfect, but I do confess my sins to God. I am striving to do right. I am seeking God's grace to live and obey him. I wanna say this to all of us, what Jesus says to his disciples. Luke chapter 12, verse one. Look down toward the end of the verse. This is the word of Jesus. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known. For whatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the ear and the inner room will be proclaimed on the housetops. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. The fact that Jesus says beware of it is meaningful because things that we need to beware of are things that can harm us. Sometimes, not regularly enough, but sometimes you go to someone's house or you're delivering papers or something, and on the fence there'll be a sign that says beware of dog. Why is that there? Well, because they want you to know they have a dog. If you're not aware of that, that dog may come up and bite you. And I had that experience when I was a paperboy, where a dog bit me when I was out delivering papers. It was not a fun experience. They did not have a beware of dog sign on their lawn. But we need to beware of hypocrisy. Beware, because hypocrisy can creep into an unguarded life. If we are not constantly on guard, hypocrisy can make inroads into our lives. We need to also beware, because hypocrisy can remain undetected for a time. Think about leaven. Yeast is what we're talking about. It's small. It's not a major component of anyone's baking of bread. If you put as much yeast into your bread as flour, you have a disaster on your hands. It's only a very little bit, right? And like yeast, hypocrisy may seem small, it may be undetected for a time. But in the end, hypocrisy can influence and corrupt every part of you. When you have yeast in a bread, it makes the whole loaf rise. It influences the whole loaf of bread. Hypocrisy can influence all of you. Hypocrisy can influence your speech. Hypocrisy can influence what you do with your time or don't do with your time. Hypocrisy can influence how you interact with others. Hypocrisy can influence how you interact with God. Brothers and sisters, beware of hypocrisy. All of us are sinners. All of us are people who need regularly to confess. No one, no one, I hope, would come to Ennerdale and think, listen, everyone at Ennerdale is perfect and holy and righteous. Because if that's the impression that you've gotten, there's probably hypocrisy at work in our midst. We're all sinners. We're all in need of repentance and forgiveness. Brothers and sisters, God is not expecting us to be perfect, but God is expecting us to be faithful and obedient. He is expecting us to confess. So don't come, don't come and offer worship to God when your heart is far from Him. Don't come and worship before God when you're walking a path away from Him. Don't come and worship God when the reality of your heart is not true worship. It's self-promotion and pride. Brothers and sisters, worship is not for hypocrites. As we come to the end of this message, I feel I must remind you that there is grace for every sin that's found in Christ. There's grace for the repentant. And maybe as you search your heart and as you examine your life, if you're honest with yourself, you might say, yes, I detect that there is hypocrisy that's present in my worship. Run to the cross and ask forgiveness. Remember from where you've fallen, return, repent, and the Father will receive you. God hates hypocritical worship. But God's grace extends to hypocrites. God forgives hypocrites. God restores hypocrites. And God loves hypocrites like you and I. So let us repent. Let us come and offer worship with pure hands and a clean heart. Let's not come in a hypocritical way.