Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - This is True Worship | Historical Books | Isaiah 43:14-28

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

Does God care about our motives? What was the point of the sacrificial system? What is true worship? In today's episode, Keith shares how Isaiah 43:14-28 encourages us to bring heartfelt worship to God. If you're listening on Spotify, tell us about yourself and where you're listening from! Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Isaiah 43:14-28

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. Does the reason you do something matter? We all know that you can do the right thing for the wrong reasons. Think about the college student who signs up to volunteer because she wants to get into a good college, and she thinks volunteering will make her college application more attractive. Did she do a good thing, or does the selfish motive corrupt the act of volunteering?

or think about the person who donates a lot of money to a museum in order to appear on a donor list so that his co-workers will think well of him. We say that his donation was good, but maybe the motive was bad. Maybe we wish he would have given the money out of a pure heart instead of a selfish one. But the bottom line is we'd rather have the wealthy person give to the museum from a selfish heart than to not give it all. But what if we bring God into the picture? Does God care why we do what we do? The answer is unequivocally, yes. God cares about what we do and why we do it. The Bible teaches that we should do the right thing for the right reasons. Think of what Jesus said about prayer in the sermon on the Mount. There he tells people not to pray in public in order to be seen by people.

Jesus isn't saying it's wrong to pray in front of other people. He's saying it's wrong to use prayer to impress people. To pray in order to be seen or heard by others, cheapens prayer and turns it into a show instead of being a sincere conversation between you and God. What if I said you can go to church for the wrong reasons? While that sounds odd, I think we'd agree it's true. Just to be a little absurd for a second. A person could go to church because they lost a bet or to make fun of Christians who attend church. Those are obviously bad reasons to go to church, but there are other bad reasons that are a lot more subtle. Here's one to consider. When people walk out of church on Sunday morning, it's not uncommon to hear them say,

I didn't get anything out of that service. They might be talking about the music or the sermon. Well, it's hard to know exactly what everyone who says that means. We do know that you shouldn't go to church to be entertained. The service isn't about you. It's supposed to be about God. We shouldn't go to church as consumers. Too many people go to church as if they were there to write a Yelp review of their experience.

But the pastor and the worship leaders aren't putting on a performance for you to evaluate. to keep building on this idea that God doesn't just care about what you do but why you do it, consider that you can worship God the wrong way. Jesus says about the Pharisees in Matthew 158, These people worship me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. And then in the next verse, he says that kind of worship is offered in vain. God is always concerned with what we do and why we do it. He's concerned with both our behavior and our heart.

I say all that to set up where we are in Isaiah 43 today. In this chapter, God accuses the Israelites of improper worship. We'll pick it up in verse 23. But dear family of Jacob, now the family of Jacob is just a reference to Israel. But dear family of Jacob, you refuse to ask for my help. You have grown tired of me, O Israel. You've not brought me sheep or goat for burnt offerings. You have not honored me with sacrifices, though I have not burdened and weary

you with requests for grain offerings and frankincense. You have not brought me fragrant calamus. Calamus is just a plant that they used in worship. So you have not brought me fragrant calumous or please me with the fat from sacrifices. Instead, you have burdened me with your sins and wearied me with your faults. Now, God wasn't saying that the people weren't going to the temple or offering sacrifices or performing the rituals. They were doing all those things. He's saying that they did these good things, for the wrong reasons. They worshipped him with their ceremonies, but their heart was far from him. Therefore, the very sacrifices they were bringing weren't removing sin, but were themselves sin. God looked into their heart, and what he found there was weariness. The people were tired of God.

The Old Testament book of Leviticus laid out in detail how God was to be worshipped. All Israel had to do was follow God's instructions. On special occasions, Israel would worship. Israel would worship, God in a very lavish way. In Second Chronicles, we read that one time they offered 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep. But if the worship of God, however extravagant outwardly, sinks to the level of joyless duty, then it isn't God's will. It doesn't please God. In verse 24, it said, you have not pleased me with the fat of your sacrifices. Well, if God wasn't satisfied with the fat of 142,000 sacrifices, what more could he want? What he wants is for worship to free sinners from their bondage to sin. That's what the sacrificial system was for. God never meant the sacrificial system

to be a wearying imposition that burdened people. But throughout Israel's history, they treated worship as a means to try to control God and put God in their debt so that he owed them. And unsurprisingly, that kind of worship becomes wearisome. How could it not be? There's no joy in trying to earn God's favor by offering sacrifices. What Isaiah is saying is that God isn't pleased with it either. So what does this say about God? Is he being more demanding than ever? Is he saying, look, give me 142,000 sacrifices and put a smile on your face while you do it? No, God wants worship to set our hearts free from sin and guilt. The sacrificial system in the Old Testament pointed to the cross of Christ.

Jesus said, the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many. So what do we learn here about worship? Well, we violate worship when we turn grace into obligation. True worship begins with trusting in what Jesus did for us, not trusting in what we do for Jesus. The kind of worship that pleases God because he bears our burden. We don't bear his. Listen to the next verse, verse 25. God says, I, yes, I alone will blot out your sins for my own sake and will never think of them again. This is an awesome verse. Let's just break it down.

The promise is that God will blot out our sins and never think of them again. Now, blot is usually a negative. It means a spot or a stain, but Isaiah uses it positively. When God blots out our sin, he's covering the stain of sin. sin. He promises to never think of our sins again. That means when Satan, who is called the great accuser, when he points at us and asks God, why do you love them? Because all they do is sin, God says, I don't remember their sin. Now, God isn't like us. He never forgets. This is anthropomorphic language, helping us to understand God's promises. When it says that God will never think of our

sins again, it is saying that God does not hold our sin against us. Again, again, back to verse 25, I, yes, I alone will blot out your sins for my own sake and will never think of them again. God says he forgives our sin for his namesake. He doesn't forgive us because we deserve it, but because he wants his grace to be magnified. God is so gracious that he forgives undeserving sinners like us. Again, Isaiah 43, verse 25, I, yes, I alone will blot out your sins for my own sake and we'll never think of them again. God alone forgives sins. No other God can do that.

But something inside of us doesn't want to rely on His grace. We want to rely on ourselves. We don't want to admit that there's nothing we can do to save ourselves. Here's verse 26. God says, let us review the situation together, and you can present your case to prove your innocence. So God invites us to make a case for ourselves to explain how we are innocent and deserve his mercy.

Verse 27. From the very beginning, your first ancestors sinned against me. All your leaders broke my laws. That is why I have disgraced your priests. I have decreed complete destruction for Jacob and shame for Israel. Go back through the history of Israel. Go back to the very beginning. And all you find are sinful people who rebelled against God.

What's true of us has been true of all of our ancestors, both our physical and spiritual forbearers. That sin that we have all committed leads to our destruction. But thanks be to God who has come to rescue us. He blots out our sin through his blood. So how should we respond to what God has done for us? Well, with heartfelt worship. Not just going through the motions, but instead offering our whole lives as living sacrifices.

That is the response to the God who loves us, to the God who forgives us, to the God who shows us mercy. Father, we offer ourselves to you as living sacrifices. We put ourselves on the altar, and we say all that we are and all that we have, our past, our present, our future, it's all yours, God. We worship you. You are the God who loves us. And in response, we love you. It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.