Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
“Stain Removal”
August 8, 2010 - Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

         I was standing at the grill, flipping hamburgers, when I realized I was wearing a good dress shirt. I came home, saw the hamburgers ready to go, and just carried them out to the barbecue without bothering to change clothes. I looked down and saw it was too late. The grease spatters from our nice, juicy burgers were now little dark freckles on the front of my light blue shirt. Washing didn’t help. Now I had a work shirt at best, a rag at worst.

         There was a dark stain on God’s people. As the book of Isaiah opens, we read prophecy sent to the kingdom of Judah in the south. We know from chapter 6 that Isaiah received his call to prophesy in 740 B.C., the year Judah’s king Uzziah died. Uzziah ruled strong and well for 48 years, including successful military campaigns, tribute coming in from other nations, large building projects, and overall prosperity. But their spiritual life was stained.

         Israel in the north also enjoyed prosperity at the same time under Jeroboam II. We’ve heard Amos and Hosea bring word of God’s judgment on Israel for the stains on their spiritual life. They broke the two great commandments. The northern kingdom failed to love God by worshipping idols from its very beginning, and failed to love their neighbors by ignoring and exploiting the poor and needy among them.

         Overall, things looked better down south in Judah. The country was as strong and prosperous as it had ever been. Uzziah and his predecessors did a pretty good job of keeping their people faithful to the Lord. Unlike their neighbors to the north, the prosperous people of Judah seemed to love God. After all, He had been good to them.

         So temple worship and offerings were going strong, too strong. Isaiah’s first message to Judah is that as beautiful as their religious life might appear, it was stained. Verse 10 has God comparing them to Sodom and Gomorrah. Judah believed that large, extravagant rituals and offerings allowed them to do as they pleased in their personal and business lives. Show up at the Temple with a “multitude” of sacrifices as verse 11 says, and they thought their commitment to God was fulfilled. But it turns out God didn’t want any of what they were bringing Him.

         Verses 11-15 carry out a theme that we also heard in Psalm 50 this morning. We should never suppose that God really needs or even wants what we’ve got to give Him. For the ancient people of Israel, it meant that God did not need all those animal sacrifices of “bulls and lambs and goats” as verse 11 lists them. For us, as I’ve said every now and then, sometimes to the worry of a church treasurer, God does not need your money.

         God is not any richer or poorer because of our offerings. In our psalm God says in verse 10, “all the beasts of the forest are mine, the herds in their thousands upon the hills.” In verse 12 He declares, “the whole world is mine and all that is in it.” God had all the animals He could want. He has all the money He could want. It all belongs to Him. We’re not going to please God just by giving Him more of what we’ve got.

         It’s not just the sacrifices. God was fed up with all of Judah’s religious observance. In verse 11 it’s the animal offerings. In verse 12 God is offended by “this trampling of my courts.” The people showed up often and in great numbers, as if just being there was enough. They crowed the Temple courts. We have mega-churches, they had a “mega-temple.”

         In verse 13 God says even the incense burned in worship was “detestable.” Verses 13 and 14 list the various holy days being observed, the New Moon once a month, the Sabbath every week, convocations who knows how often. God hated all of it, the offerings, the incense, the festivals, “with all my being. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.” We know God commanded these things, but now He’s sick of it all.

         Even prayer doesn’t cut the mustard. In verse 15 God says, “When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen.” Imagine that. You and I probably think that if we just prayed more, maybe a lot more, God would be pleased, God would bless us. But here not even prayer is acceptable.

         The end of verse 15 begins Isaiah’s explanation of the problem, the reason God gets so disgusted with His people that He doesn’t even want worship or prayer anymore. “Your hands are full of blood” He says. It’s as if those very hands people are raising to God in honor and petition are themselves dirty and stained, stained with the blood of others.

         Verse 16 entreats the people of Judah to wash off the stain, to “make yourselves clean,” to quit doing evil deeds and wrong things that stain their hands and everything they have to offer God. Their religion was all show, all on the surface. Underneath was a stain of sin that kept coming through, like that rusty spot you keep painting over above the shower in your bathroom.

         You may have noticed that a national institution and national joke ceased all operations last month. Earl Scheib auto body and paint shops closed for the last time. You may remember those commercials where Scheib would tell us he could paint any car any color for just $29.95.

         My brother-in-law took the family car to Earl Scheib one day and brought it back looking really nice… until he later took it to the do-it-yourself car wash. As he applied the spray jet, he noticed a bit of paint peel up. Then another. And then as he moved the jet over the car’s surface, long strips of that nice new paint job just peeled off and ended up on the car wash floor. Before the long the whole vehicle was down to dull gray primer.

         Human religion can be merely a cheap paint job on lives that aren’t actually devoted to God at all. It doesn’t matter how beautiful or how orthodox it looks on the outside, underneath there may be nothing to it. It’s all phony, with nothing that sticks or stays or really pleases God. Jesus warned against the same sort of thing in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6. God gets sick of that kind of spiritual or religious offering, that kind of hypocrisy.

         It’s a nice bit of irony that the translators of the Revised Standard Version were oblivious enough to colloquial English that they translated verse 9 of our psalm, “I will accept no bull from your house…” Now the real meaning is obvious as other translations show. God won’t accept a calf or bullock or young bull as a hypocritical offering. But the RSV’s accidental overlap with English slang, in which decades of young Bible students have delighted, is right on target. God is tired of all the “bull,” all the B.S. people offer up to Him in such abundance. He wants something better.

         What God wants is plain in verse 17, “Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.” It’s language of the law, language of the courtroom. What God wants more than a gaudy paint job of religious activity is a people and a society where there is justice and compassion for those who need it most.

         You are probably aware of two court matters raising the ire of some of us conservative Christian recently. In California a state law which banned gay marriage was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge. On the national scene we’ve seen the appointment to the Supreme Court of a woman many regard as “liberal.” Christians are properly concerned about such things, but what I don’t see is much Christian concern about whether our judges are doing what Isaiah says needs to be done, defending the oppressed, the orphan, the widow, the homeless, the poor, the sick and the helpless people of this great country. Until we are worried about that, says Isaiah, says God, the stain remains, and our Christianity is all just a paint job, all just bull.

         None of this means that worship and offerings and prayers are pointless. It just means God wants them balanced and filled out with lives that care about what God cares about, about showing His love to a world of people in need. There are two great commandments and the first still comes first, “Love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” But Jesus our Lord wouldn’t let that commandment get separated from the second, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” You aren’t doing the first if you aren’t doing the second. Otherwise your religion is just for show and stained with your failed love.

         Yet the problem Judah and Israel had is the same problem you and I have. We keep blowing it. It’s like my oldest daughter’s recent attempts to learn to ride a bike. We keep leaning too far to one side or the other and falling over. It’s part of what’s created the divide between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives emphasize being faithful to God and forget about loving those in need. Liberals push for more love and help for the poor and oppressed and forget about God. The only way out is a balanced faith that refuses to be guided by political forces, but instead reads the whole Bible and loves God and loves others with genuine rather than hypocritical worship.

         We cannot come to that true, balanced faith on our own. We keep messing it up. Often we mess up both sides. We forget about God and we forget about others. We focus on ourselves, worrying about our own needs. We can’t take time for devotion to God or for service to others because it takes so much effort just to keep the boss happy, the bills paid, and the family dressed and fed, not to mention paying for college tuition, saving for retirement, and getting adequate health care. With all that, you and I find ourselves more or less incapable of obeying the two great commandments. We can’t get rid of the stain of our selfishness, of our sins against God and against others.

         That’s why verse 18 has been treasured by God’s people down through all the ages. Hymns like the ones we are singing this morning celebrate the promise that God will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. “Come let us reason together…” It’s courtroom language again. “Come let’s argue your case,” says God, “Let’s come to some verdict together on what will happen to you in all your sin and selfishness.” And God does exactly what He is asking us to do. There in His own heavenly court He defends us and hands down a judgment that is full of mercy and help because we cannot help ourselves.

         “Though your sins are like scarlet…” Remember the blood on those hands raised in prayer? Even if the stains on our souls are bloodstains from the lives of those we’ve failed to help, they can be washed away. In ancient times the color scarlet was made from the crushed bodies of a worm that lived in oak trees. It was the most indelible of all ancient dyes and could not be washed out of cloth which it had dyed. That’s exactly like sin’s stain upon our souls. We’re not going to get it out by ourselves. On our own, we will never just wake up tomorrow and be more loving toward God and toward others.

         So God promised to do for us what we cannot. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool.” God will do what we can’t, will do what king David prayed for in Psalm 51:7, what we will sing in a few minutes, “wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” We cannot do it for ourselves, but God will wash away the stain of our sins against Him and against our neighbors.

         Jesus addressed the same thing at the beginning of our Gospel lesson from Luke 12:32. We are worried about ourselves, so He tells us “Don’t be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.” That’s the way this stain removal works. It’s not about what we give or do for God. It’s what He does for us. It’s His gift of grace, of a cleansing that goes deep into our hearts and lives. We don’t need to worry. We can give to others, because in His grace God is giving us all we really need.

         Yet we can’t just believe in Jesus, sing “Whiter than Snow,” and go merrily on our way without some changes. That’s why verse 19 of Isaiah 1 goes on, “If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land.” Our heavenly Father will give us His grace, give us all the riches of His kingdom, but you and I must be willing, willing to receive and be changed into people who obey His great commandments.

         True faith is not just you and I pretending we love God through extravagant displays of worship and giving and prayer when it’s all stained by a selfish and sinful heart. True grace is not just God pretending we are sinless and clean when the stains on our lives are deep and dark. No, the grace of Jesus makes us truly clean. It really removes that stain.

         Some stains look like they’ve gone away, but keep coming back. I mentioned painting over rust. A grease stain on a jacket or a carpet can be like that. You dab at it with soap or spot remover and scrub with all your might and for the moment it looks good. But in a day or do as you wear it or walk on it, the remaining residue picks up dirt and the stain reappears. It hasn’t really been removed. But the grace of Jesus Christ isn’t a cover-up or temporary spot remover for sin. Jesus came and died and rose again to take away our sins, to remove them permanently.

         God asks us to be willing to receive that gift, the gift of a genuine and actual stain removal. It’s the gift of a life being changed from a focus on oneself to a focus on God and on others. It’s a gift that shows up in obediently doing the loving actions which He asks of us, not out of our own goodness and strength, but out of God’s.

         God’s holy work of stain removal completely can be a long process. Over the past year I’ve talked a few times with a man in another state who trusted Christ as Savior and found his life cleansed of some habits that stained him and his relationships badly. He’s gotten free of drugs and is holding a job and paying his bills. He knows he’s still not there, still not whiter than snow. He’s praying for strength to forgive some who’ve hurt him and to show amends to those he’s hurt. He’s trying to find a church where he can serve and give back some of the grace he’s received. Getting clean is a long process. It is for all of us.

         My hope is that we all will be willing to be cleaner than we are right now, to give up trying to clean up by covering up with phony devotion. I don’t even really want to talk about the possibility that ends our text in verse 20, “but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.” That was God’s warning to Judah. If they resisted, their enemies would eat them up. It’s true for us. If we resist God’s cleansing, our stain, our selfishness and sin, will grow until it covers and devours our souls.

         I hope and pray no one here will resist. There’s no need. “Your heavenly Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.” God is pleased to wash you white as snow. May we all enjoy His cleansing grace and become the people of love He made us to be.

         Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2010 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj