Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.” — Isaiah 1:17
This verse was written by Isaiah in a time when God’s people were living for themselves. Infact verse 18 says, ‘…your sins are like scarlet.’
I find it interesting that when God tells them to trun from their ways, He doesn’t tell them that they need to be in church – that they need to worship Him with their words or their voices. Infact He says, ‘Stop bringing meaningless offerings.’ and. ‘even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen’.
Instead He says, ‘Take your evil deeds out of My sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right. Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.”
You see,TALK IS CHEAP! How easy is it for us to live our own life and continually come to him and ‘worship’ Him with our songs, using phrases such as:
- All I am is Yours
- Send me, I will go
- Take all of me
- Youre the only one that I could live for
Yet we leave the same way as we came in – living for ourselves, with no second thought to how we live our lives. TALK IS CHEAP!
That is why God calls us to action. He wants to see if our hearts are really committed to Him. He calls us to justice and our response becomes our worship to Him.
But how is feeding the hungry an act of worship? And why is befriending the friendless what God desires to see us doing more than voicing words to Him?
Because GOD IS JUST!
Wasn’t Jesus the most perfect example of this. The way that He would hang out with the poorest, the weakest, the most sinful. How He wouldn’t let the thousands of hungry people on the mountain leave before they had been fed, or how He dined with Zacheaus even though everyone was gossiping that he was having dinner with a sinner.
Now if God is just then would not the biggest compliment that we could give Him as His ‘followers’ to actually follow His example and do what He does?
As we give to the poor, we are saying to God that we want to be like Him. As we feed the hungry we show that we have chosen His way and His path!
That is true worship! And that is why justice and worship cannot be separated.