False Confessions, False Righteousness

But not in Truth or Right

Isaiah 48:1-2 ESV

 

“Hear this, O house of Jacob,

    who are called by the name of Israel,

    and who came from the waters of Judah,

who swear by the name of the Lord

    and confess the God of Israel,

    but not in truth or right.

For they call themselves after the holy city,

    and stay themselves on the God of Israel;

    the Lord of hosts is his name.”

 

To make this passage of Scripture applicable to today this would be speaking of people who profess faith in Jesus Christ with their lips but by their actions they deny him. They may or may not have grown up attending gatherings of what is called “church,” and they may or they may not have known the Scriptures from birth, depending on their family heritage. But their professions of faith in Jesus Christ are not in truth. They are a lie!

 

They call themselves Christians and followers of Christ Jesus, but they don’t really follow Jesus Christ with their lives, and they are Christian in name only. Yes, they most likely attend weekly “church” services, or else they watch them on TV, or not. They may or may not go through the motions of religious practice. Some of them will give off the impression they are living righteously when they are not, when it is a lie. Others don’t bother.

 

But the point is that they go by the name “Christian,” and they make claims to faith in Jesus Christ, but their hearts are far from the Lord. For they are still walking according to the flesh and not according to the Spirit. They are still living for the pleasures of this sinful world and not to please God. No matter what image they may give off of themselves publicly or to others, the truth is that they are not living for Jesus Christ but still for themselves.

 

The Character of the Hypocrite

Isaiah 48:4,8 ESV

 

“Because I know that you are obstinate,

    and your neck is an iron sinew

    and your forehead brass.”

 

“You have never heard, you have never known,

    from of old your ear has not been opened.

For I knew that you would surely deal treacherously,

    and that from before birth you were called a rebel.”

 

Now we are beginning to get an even clearer look at these who fake their Christianity and/or who make willful false confessions of faith in Christ. They are the obstinate. They are the hard-headed and the hard-hearted who are stubborn and determined to do it their way and not God’s way. They are fixed in their ways and no one is going to change them. They are full of pride and so they don’t really listen to any voices of reason but only to their flesh.

 

They are willfully defiant and not reachable with the truth and they won’t listen for their minds are already made up. They are like little children who say, “My do it!” when they don’t yet know how to do it. But they aren’t the naïve and innocent like little children, but they are childish, self-indulgent, irresponsible, foolish, pleasure-seeking, and self-centered and self-absorbed. And so the choices they make are usually centered around pleasing self.

 

They do not have ears to hear, not that they cannot physically hear with their ears, for most of them can. But it is that their ears are not open to the truth and so even if they do hear it physically with their ears they ignore it and they cast it aside and reject it because it doesn’t fit with how they want to live. So many times they will claim that they did not know when indeed they did know, or they will claim they are hearing something for the first time when they have heard it hundreds of times but ignored it.

 

And to deal treacherously is to deal underhandedly, deceitfully, and unfaithfully. And one of the ways involves cheating on their spouses, i.e. deliberately and even habitually committing some type of adultery against their spouses by engaging in various forms of sexual immorality, fantasizing and longing to be with someone other than the one to whom they are married, and longing to have relations with someone other than with one’s spouse. For adultery can happen in the mind as well as in the flesh.

 

Then Your Peace Would Have Been

Isaiah 48:18,22 ESV

 

“Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments!

    Then your peace would have been like a river,

    and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.”

 

“There is no peace,” says the Lord, “for the wicked.”

 

Who are the wicked? They are not just those who make no profession of faith in Jesus Christ, who are living in sin, but they are many who falsely profess faith in Jesus Christ who deliberately and habitually continue in addictive sinful behaviors. And they are the stubborn and bullheaded who want what they want, and they will have no one telling them that they can’t have it. So, no amount of good counsel to them in the right direction will produce change because they love the darkness rather than the light because their deeds are evil. And that’s just the truth of the matter.

 

So, the Lord is speaking, and he is saying, “Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.” For, we can’t ignore God’s commandments and just do what we want to do and then claim the righteousness of God over our lives, nor his grace, nor his forgiveness of our sins, nor the promise and hope of eternal life with him. We must walk in obedience to his commands and leave our lives of sin behind us.

 

So, here is the crux of the matter. If we want to be in Christ and be saved from our sins and have eternal life with God we must die with Christ to sin and then walk with him in obedience to his commands. And that dying to sin is not just once but daily. And we must continue in these walks of obedience to our Lord and in the forsaking of sin until the day we die or until Jesus returns for his bride. For, if we continue in deliberate and habitual sin and not in obedience to our Lord, we do not have eternal life with God. So, please take this to heart.

 

[Lu 9:23-26; Jn 6:35-58; Jn 15:1-11; Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-17; Eph 4:17-24; 1 Pet 2:24; 1 Co 6:9-10,19-20; 2 Co 5:10,15,21; Tit 2:11-14; Jas 1:21-25; Rom 12:1-2; Php 2:12-13; Col 1:21-23; Col 3:5-10; Gal 5:16-21; Eph 5:3-11; Gal 6:7-8; Rom 2:6-8; Heb 10:26-27; 1 Jn 1:5-9; 1 Jn 2:3-6; 1 Jn 3:4-10; Matt 7:21-23; Ac 26:18; Rev 21:8,27; Rev 22:14-15; Eph 2:8-10]

 

Broken Cord

 

An Original Work / August 29, 2018

 

Your bond is broken

With your Lord and Savior

And, your testimony is

Separate from Him.

 

Your words not matching

Your actions today.

Repent of your sin and

Bow down and pray.

 

Live what you testify

In truth always.

 

Purity’s lacking in

Your life and witness,

For you profess one thing,

But other you do.

 

Not moral, spiritual.

Still of the flesh.

Not living in truth to

What you confess.

 

Lying about it

Puts you in a mess.

 

Living a lie is your practice,

‘tis true of you.

Masquerade righteousness –

None of it true.

 

Your heart is not given

To your Lord God.

Because of how you live,

You are a fraud.

 

Turn from your sin and

Give your life to God.

 

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