Remember, you're the pot, not the potter.
Isaiah 29:13-16 (NIV)
13 The Lord says:
“These people come near to me with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship of me
is based on merely human rules they have been taught.
14 Therefore once more I will astound these people
with wonder upon wonder;
the wisdom of the wise will perish,
the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.”
15 Woe to those who go to great depths
to hide their plans from the LORD,
who do their work in darkness and think,
“Who sees us? Who will know?”
16 You turn things upside down,
as if the potter were thought to be like the clay!
Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it,
“You did not make me”?
Can the pot say to the potter,
“You know nothing”?
Listen to passage & devotional:
Belgic Confession of Faith, Article 32: The Order and Discipline of the Church
We also believe that
although it is useful and good
for those who govern the churches
to establish and set up
a certain order among themselves
for maintaining the body of the church,
they ought always to guard against deviating
from what Christ,
our only Master,
has ordained
for us.
Therefore we reject all human innovations
and all laws imposed on us,
in our worship of God,
which bind and force our consciences
in any way.
So we accept only what is proper
to maintain harmony and unity
and to keep all in obedience
to God.
To that end excommunication,
with all it involves,
according to the Word of God,
is required.
Summary
One commentator put it this way when describing the situation the LORD spoke into here in Isaiah 29: "Religion remained, but the reality had perished." Israelite society, designed to be centered around the worship of God, had become a mere façade. The right words were still muttered on their lips, but their hearts were nowhere to be found.
The LORD provides an analogy to explain the upside down situation resulting from replacing God given principles and practices with worship based merely on human rules. He compares it to the pot rejecting the potter as it could form itself into the image it desires for itself, rather than what the potter intended for it.
If you asked people at random what attributes they associate with God, you'd likely hear lots of answers related to peace, love and kindness. And those attributes definitely describe who God is! But those aren't the attributes God reveals about Himself in this passage. Here we read of His wrath which will be poured out to bring woe to these pretenders who think they can fool God by just going through the religious motions.
What's surprising about the target of God's wrath here is that they wouldn't otherwise fit the profile of those that deserve God's wrath. In all other aspects of life, they were probably decent people. So notice how seriously God takes hypocritical worship!
Dig Deeper
Our Confession helps us understand what it means to adhere to the Regulative Principle of Worship, because there are two aspects to it. Most Protestant churches get the first part right by not doing anything in our formal worship (or even lives, for that matter) that directly contradicts God's law. In other words, you're not likely to see flagrant violations like golden calves.
But true Biblical worship must be more than just not violating God's commands. In passages like today's, we see that God is not interested in our improvements to His design for worship. This is why Reformed churches adhere to both aspects of the Regulative Principle. We don't just do not do what God forbids in worship, we don't do anything that God doesn't command either.
The abundance of negatives in that statement makes it hard to understand. More positively, we worship God the way He's commanded in His Word without adding "human innovations" to it.
But as the LORD reminds us today from Isaiah, even the purest Biblical worship service is a farce if the worshippers are simply going through the motions. God demands that your worship be more than just checking boxes and guarding from errors. He wants you to worship Him with all of your heart, mind and strength.
ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, who formed us as a master potter forms clay;
ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray that your worship will be both orderly and sincere;
ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:
Read the New Testament in a year! Today: John 7
