Isaiah 58.1-10 (and Matt 5.13-20)

Synod lift anecdote – Sometimes “the button only works for her” and we often “follow the leader down the wrong corridor”

“Growing together” – the primary experience most of us have of this is in families. What does it mean to grow together as God’s people in God’s world? Especially in hard times…

• Matt 5.20 – what J is NOT saying is… “If you want to go to heaven when you die, you must be a strict follower of religious rules, even more strict than the scribes and pharisees.
• To get what he IS saying, back to Isa 58

Notice in Isaiah 58.1-5 what is motivating the people, where they are going wrong.

Is 58.6-10, striking similarity to Matt 25.31ff judgement parable of sheep and goats.

• In both passages, focus on behaviour seems odd – whether we see our membership of God’s people as ours by being born (Jews) or born again (Christians).

• But we are not being called to save ourselves by good Works either.

• We are being called to share God’s heart & concerns and DO SOMETHING ABOUT THEM.

• Look at Jesus to see exactly what God is like

• Eg concern to relief hunger & thirst; end oppression and the use of violence; provide basic care and shelter etc

• Isa emphasises empty/insincere religión is worse than none at all.

• Just adding a few ‘good deeds’ to our religión is no good either.

• What is called for is a change of heart, which can only come when we really belong to God in Christ.

• Then we can work with God to bring transformation.

• This doesn’t EARN righteousness, it IS righteousness…

• God’s goal was NEVER to separate a few righteous people from the wicked world into heaven.

• It was always and still is to bring the kingdom of heaven on earth. Meaning to bring the reign of God, the gentle, healing, peaceful reign of heaven on earth.

• Good deeds are important, but where they come from is also important. We are called to do good out of love for our neighbours and because of God’s love for us in Christ.

• To do this we need to be changed and saved from the inside out, freed from fear, especially the fear of death, and free from the need to compete with each other for our Father’s attention and approval! (like little children – mummy look, my picture is better than hers!, or vicars trying to catch the bishop’s eye, or perform better than each other…)

• … so that we can love as God loves and ‘leak grace’ everywhere… I love this idea of leaking grace which Justin, Dean of Liverpool used.

“The test of a man then is not, “How have I believed?” but “How have I loved?” . . . Sins of commission in that awful indictment are not even referred to. By what we have not done, by sins of omission, we are judged. It could not be otherwise. For the withholding of love is the negation of the Spirit of Christ, the proof that we never knew him, that for us he lived in vain. It meant that he suggested nothing in all our thoughts, that he inspired nothing in all our lives, that we were not once near enough to him to be seized with the fervency of his compassion for the world”.
Henry Drummond (1851–97 Scottish evangelist), The Greatest Thing in the World, 57–58.


• As you come to the Lord’s table today,may you know that you are loved and accepted, that you belong.
• May you be free from the feeling that you need to – or even that you are able to - prove yourself to God, or earn God’s approval.
• May you let go of the controls of your life and know God filling you with his grace.
• And may you go from this place with holes in your pockets, carelessly leaking grace as you walk around, and may the kingdom of heaven come on earth.

I’m going to end by reading slowly the words of Isaiah 58.10-12.