Isaiah 58:9b-14 Do not trample the sabbath

How many of you believe the words of the Old Testament?

How many of you then just got really nervous about our world today as I read this passage from the prophet Isaiah? Because you should.

We are Christians, Thank the Lord our God every day for that. As Christians, we are not subject to the Laws of Moses, therefore, we do not believe, for the most part, that we will be penalized for not following the Laws of Moses. We believe in salvation by faith alone. We believe that no action or inaction on this earth can prevent you from getting into heaven; you will be saved by your faith, not your actions. Forgiveness is bought with penitence, not money.

I’m not sure what part of this prophecy from Isaiah scares me more, the beginning about not pointing fingers at others, or the ending about not pursuing your own interests on God’s holy day. Either way, as a society, we are failing miserably at both. Anyone who has a sibling knows that when mom asks what happened, immediately a finger is pointing to someone else. “They did it!” When confronted with wrongdoing, our immediate gut reaction is “Wasn’t me.” We pursue our own well-being over that of others.

The word “if” itself brings us uncounted terrors. It is the source of all our anxieties in life. “What if I get hurt? What if the sky falls? What if things don’t go the way I want them to? What if something bad happens?” What if scares us so much it has created a billion-dollar pharmaceutical industry to combat our “what if” thinking patterns resulting from our refusal to remove the yoke from among us. Our refusal to turn things over and trust that whatever happens, God’s in charge, not us.

In this passage from the prophet Isaiah, the “if” is supposed to be comforting, not alarming. The “if” is the very control which we seek. If you want to not suffer pain, anguish, and torment, just do this and you’ll be fine. It’s the anxiety medication of our dreams and yet… like most anxiety medications, we’re inconsistent about taking them, or when we feel like we’re doing okay, we stop taking them.

“If you remove the yoke from among you.” This yoke, like other biblical yoke references, is about burdens. Carrying the weight of the world around on your shoulders like a backpack full of rocks on a hiking trip through life. After all, if you don’t take care of it, who will? We can’t expect others to take care of their own problems, can we? Oh no, the fun part about worrying is you don’t just worry about your own life, you justify it by worrying about other people’s lives that are even less in control than your own. You are not in control. You know who is in control? God.

The LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your needs in parched places and make your bones strong, and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never fail.

It’s not as if Isaiah just throws a bunch of “ifs” out there without also offering comfort and safety. Even though some of those “ifs” are supposed to be comforting.

If you remove the pointing of the finger… moving forward can only be done if you stop looking backward. The rearview mirror of the car is much smaller than the windshield for a reason. If you spend all your time looking back and trying to sort out how you got to where you are, you don’t stand a chance of getting to where you need to be.

Pointing fingers is to blame. Pointing fingers isn’t about fixing a problem; it’s about blaming someone for it. It doesn’t matter how the church has gotten to the state it is in. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is for being a control freak, scaring away would-be-Christians, bad management, or whatever else got us here. What matters is where we go from here. What matters is establishing how we can improve and working toward that goal, not blaming whoever got us here, because the truth of the matter all of us got us here, and it is going to take all of us to go somewhere else.

“If you remove the speaking of evil…” judgment. Plain and simple. Stop judging one another. Stop judging others as being better than you, worse than you, different than you, holier or less holy than you, older, younger, inexperienced, just stop it. We don’t gossip, we share information. We don’t judge, we offer consolation. We don’t do things for others, we help others.

If we offer food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then our light shall rise in the darkness, our gloom will be like the noonday. The ruins of our churches will be rebuilt upon the foundations of many generations. Those “ifs” of anxiety are burdens we need not carry. Solutions are offered “if” we’re willing to obey. And they aren’t exclusive. We cannot just offer food but not also satisfy the needs of the afflicted. We must do both.

If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;

Wow. That’s a lot to unpack.

We must prioritize our church. We cannot expect others to do it. We must establish the importance of worship in our lives and why it is important to us. It isn’t just a checklist; it’s what fuels our week and readies our hearts and minds to take on the world. It isn’t about having exactly the same theology as the person next to you, it’s about accepting them and loving them for who they are. IT isn’t about practicing your faith in the same way. One of you can raise your hands when you sing hymns that move you; it doesn’t mean all of us have to or that we look at you weirdly because you do.

Prioritizing worship in church, over judging and pursuing our own interests in church, is how we remove the yoke and keep it off, how we refrain from pointing fingers, and how we speak only good of others, even when we want to whack them alongside the head.

We must stop using the church to serve our own interests and instead use it as a place to serve the interests of others. It isn’t about what we want; it’s about what God’s people need. And God’s people need a sanctuary. A safe space and place to heal and grow that doesn’t pass judgment on them. A safe place to share different perceptions on who God is to each and every one of us. How God is working in our lives. And a place to commune with one another to help us see where we are struggling to see God at work. Not a place that offers advice, but a place that offers hope, sells hope. A place that takes delight in the Lord. If we obey, then when we call, the Lord will answer; when we cry for help, he will say: Here am I.