The Church which God condemns.
Here is—
I. A CHURCH CONDEMNED OF GOD. It has four characteristics of which the Lord complains.
1. Unspiritual worship. "This people draw near me with their mouth," etc. (Isaiah 29:13). The service of the lip without the homage of the heart is an unacceptable sacrifice to God (see Psalms 50:1-23.; Psalms 78:36, Psalms 78:37; Isaiah 50:1-11.; Ezekiel 33:31; Matthew 15:8, Matthew 15:9; John 4:24). To take sacred words into the lips with nothing of their meaning in the mind, to assume the attitude without cherishing the spirit of devotion, is not to propitiate but to offend the Holy One.
2. Unauthorized doctrine. "Their fear toward me is taught," etc.—rendered in the New Testament, "teaching for doctrines the commandments of men" (Matthew 15:9). This was an early departure from the will of Christ (see Colossians 2:18-22; Titus 1:14; Acts 20:30). The Church has always been in danger from men who have represented, first to their own minds and then to the minds of others, their own reasonings or imaginations as if they were the pure truth of God. So the mind and will of Christ have been grievously and mischievously perverted.
3. Incapable teachers. "The wisdom of their wise shall perish," etc. (Isaiah 29:14). A Church fallen under the rebuke of its Lord is usually one that has wholly unsuitable and incompetent teachers—men who have lost their way, who have failed to discover or have abandoned heavenly wisdom, who cannot declare the way of life.
4. Unenlightened members. (Isaiah 29:15.) So destitute of the very rudiments of religion as to ask such a question as this, as to entertain such a thought as this. With a faulty and incapable ministry you may have a Church ignorant of those elements of the gospel with which it seems impossible that men should not be familiar.
II. THE DIVINE WANING WHICH IS ALSO A DIVINE PROMISE. (Isaiah 29:16, Isaiah 29:17.) He says—You have perverted everything, turned everything upside down, made nothing of my Word when you should have made everything of it, elevated the outward and visible above the inward and spiritual, acted as if you could conceal your doings from the all-beholding God, treated me as the clay might treat the potter, unworthily and irreverently. I will bring it to pass that things shall be turned upside down in your experience: "Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field," etc. The humble shall be exalted and the proud abased. Your false confidence shall be cast down, and that which you have neglected shall be honored in the eyes of all. The Church that has lost its first estate of truth, spirituality, wisdom, must expect a terrible reversal.
1. Its mistaken notions will be shaken from its mind to make way for God's living truth.
2. Its incapable leaders will be compelled to step down and give place to those whom they have arrogantly disregarded.
3. Its pompous but unspiritual rites will be exchanged for simpler and spiritual engagements.
4. Its luxurious religious enjoyments will be lost in earnest self-denying labors, or even in trying hardships. Thus will the fruitful field become a forest, while Lebanon is turned into a fruitful field. The revolution in the character and condition of the Church will be very intimately connected with, will be immediately followed by, a revolution in the character and condition of the world.—C.