All Things New: Isaiah 65 (2)

Pray Psalm 141.1, 2.
LORD, I cry out to You;
Make haste to me!
Give ear to my voice when I cry out to You.
Let my prayer be set before You as incense,
The lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.

Read Isaiah 65.2-5.

Reflect.
1. How many different ways does God indict His people in these verses? What does He have against them?

2. What kind of “incense” were these people to the Lord?

Meditate.
In these verses we note many references to religious practices. The people made sacrifices (v. 3). They burned incense (v. 3), spent whole nights in solitude (v. 4), and touted their “holiness” (v. 5).

It was all a sham, as we recall from Isaiah 1. No amount of dutiful observance of religious practices can cover the stench of a life lived in rebellion against God (v. 2). God’s people were rebellious (v. 2). They resisted the many attempts He made, through His prophets, to stretch out His hands to save them (v. 2). They rejected His ways and walked in their own, according to their “own thoughts” about what was best for them (v. 2). Because of this, all their devotions only made God angry (v. 3), because they presumed to worship Him while in their daily lives they provoked Him by transgressing His Law. They boasted in their supposed holiness, but there is nothing holy about dutiful religious worship and other spiritual practices when your life is totally out of sync with the Lord.

They burned incense to Him, but the sweet smell of that offering was lost in the stench of their filthy lives (Is. 64.6). They were not a sweet smelling offering, as Psalm 141 indicates our prayers and lives can be, but “smoke” in the nostrils of God. Smoke stings, makes you flinch and draw back; and when a people’s lives burn like this “all the day”, what should we expect from the Lord, but anger and judgment?

True religion does not consist in religious activities, but in lives wholly devoted to God, living sacrifices that are sweet incense to Him all day long (Rom. 12.1, 2). Jesus stretched out His hands on the cross, so that we could apply our hands – and all our lives – to seeking His Kingdom and righteousness. Is this what He sees in us each day?

Prepare.
1. Which aspects of your daily life are a sweet incense to the Lord? Which are not? 

2. Meditate on Romans 12.1, 2. What can we do to help make every aspect and detail of our lives a “living sacrifice” and sweet-smelling offering to the Lord? 

3. How can believers encourage one another to greater consistency and worship in their daily lives?

The phrase “all day long I have held out my hands” refers to the care for them that he gave for all that time, but the saving suffering of the cross in which he stretched out his hands is also alluded to here. Theodoret of Cyr (393-466 AD), Commentary on Isaiah 20.65.2

I want to be a sweet-smelling offering to You, O Lord, in all my ways. Help me today to…

Pray Psalm 141.
This psalm encourages us to fortify ourselves against evil of all kinds, so that our lives and prayers will be like incense to the Lord. Lift your eyes to the Lord, and let the Spirit guide you by these words to commit yourself afresh to Him.

Sing to the Lord.
Psalm 141 (Truro: Shout, for the Blessed Jesus Reigns!)
O Lord, we call to You in prayer! To us come quickly; hear our cry!
Receive our prayer as incense sweet, our lifted hands as a sacrifice!

Lord, set a guard upon my mouth; let not my heart to evil bend,
Nor let me work iniquity in company with wicked men.

Lord, let a righteous man rebuke – a kindness this shall surely be.
Like healing oil upon my head, Your sweet rebuke shall be to me.

When to the judgment wicked men by God are cast, our words shall tell:
Like broken sod or fresh plowed ground, so shall their bones be cast to hell!

We lift our eyes to You, O Lord, and refuge seek; Lord, save our soul!
From every trap and snare redeem; deliver us and make us whole.

T. M. Moore

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. All psalms for singing adapted from The Ailbe Psalter. All quotations from Church Fathers from Ancient Christian Commentary Series, General Editor Thomas C. Oden (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006).All psalms for singing are from The Ailbe Psalter (available by clicking here).