Isaiah (29:13) speaks of a people that draw near to God with their lips, but not with their hearts, and whose knowledge of God is through the words of men \u2014 a people who have never known God for themselves by divine revelation\u2026<\/p>\n
In this our 20th century church, to contrast divine revelation with men\u2019s teaching, seems almost blasphemy\u2026 but revelation was the way that Moses, Samuel, and Paul learned of God.<\/p>\n
Matthew quotes this prophecy, and then gives God\u2019s summing up of this situation in the next verse (Mt. 15:9), \u201cIn vain do they worship Me.\u201d Ezekiel (33:31) puts it in a slightly different light, \u201cWith their mouth they show much love, but their heart goeth after covetousness:\u201d In other words with their mouths they are GIVING with their hearts they are intent on GETTING. [cf. Wisdom of Sirach 4:31]<\/p>\n
Isn\u2019t so much of our Christianity preoccupied with our getting rather than giving? Even our giving in \u201cpraise and worship\u201d is contaminated with the expectation of getting feelings of peace, joy etc. We have set ourselves up for deception. We want for ourselves whatever it is that God is giving out! This is what we have been taught. The important thing seems to be not our relationship with God, but our ability to plunge headlong into the \u201cmove,\u201d to \u201csurf the wave,\u201d and then repeat the process over and over.<\/p>\n
We have leaned too much on man\u2019s teaching, exhortation and \u201cencouragement\u201d and sought too little for the Presence of God behind the words. Paul (2 Cor 13:5) exhorts \u201cexamine yourselves\u2026 prove your own selves\u2026 \u201c The faith which is the product of man\u2019s instigation will soon fade when real shaking comes, but the faith built on God alone will endure and bring forth the fruit of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Isaiah (29:13) speaks of a people that draw near to God with their lips, but not with their hearts, and whose knowledge of God is through the words of men \u2014 a people who have never known God for themselves by divine revelation\u2026 In this our 20th century church, to contrast divine revelation with men\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[983],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4828"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}