Is 1:16 Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes! Cease to do evil,
Is 1:17 Learn to do right! Seek justice, relieve the oppressed, and correct the oppressor. Defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.
Is 1:18 Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool.
The dearly beloved AW Tozer wrote:
"Let us suppose we are back in the old days of the high priest, who took incense into the sanctum and went behind the veil and offered it there. And let us suppose that rubber - the worst smelling thing I can think of when it burns - had been available in those days. Let us suppose that chips of rubber had been mixed with the incense, so that instead of a pure smoke of the spices filling the temple with sweet perfume, there had been the black, angry, rancid smell of rubber mixed with it. How could a priest worshp God by mixing with the sweet smelling ingredients some foul ingredient that would be a stench in the nostrils of priest and people?
So how can we worship God acceptably when there is within our nature something that, when it catches on fire, gives off not a fragrance but a smell? How can we hope to worship God acceptably when there is something in our nature which is undisciplined, uncorrected, unpurged, unpruified - which is evil and which will not and cannot worship God acceptabley? Even granted that a man with evil ingredients in his nature might with some part of him worship God half acceptably, what kind of worship is that?"
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What kind of worship is that? In most churches people don't hear much on worship of late. Oh they might hear about the arts, and the dance, and the orchestra, the lovely voices, comotion without devotion. Is this worship?
Oh I am just now reminded of that old hymn, "Nothing between, my soul and my Savior". Oh it is the cry of my heart, for me, and for you.
There can only be worship when there is purity and holiness. There can only be holiness when there is an intimate and abiding love relationship going on between man and God made possible by the Holiness of Jesus imparted to us by faith in His shed blood applied to our hearts.
Worship flows out of that kind of relationship. It is not taught in the classroom. It is the spontaneous reaction of anyone who encounters the real manifest presence of the living God. Selah.
