“Hear, all ye people; hearken, O earth, and all that therein is: and let the Lord GOD be witness against you, the LORD from his holy temple.
For, behold, the LORD cometh forth out of his place, and will come down, and tread upon the high places of the earth.” ~ Micah 1:2-3
“We ought to note the meaning of these ‘high places,’ for they served as substitutes for worship. It wasn’t so much that the Jews intended openly to reject God or his services. Rather, not content with possessing the Temple alone, they set up numerous chapels and altars. There was scarcely a nook or cranny that did not house some religious paraphernalia. Everywhere one spoke of worshipping God.”
“But we know what Jeremiah thought of all this, ‘Did God command you to do these things? No! For God does not wish to be worshipped in accordance with human fancy’ (Jeremiah 6:19-20; 7:20-24). Hence, whenever approaching God in a manner we find good, we must not suppose that God is required to accept it. For anything that God has not commanded us to do, or put his stamp of approval upon, results in wages that can be collected only in hell.”
“Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, mine anger and my fury shall be poured out upon this place, upon man, and upon beast, and upon the trees of the field, and upon the fruit of the ground; and it shall burn, and shall not be quenched.
Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Put your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat flesh.
For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices:
But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you.
But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward.” ~ Jeremiah 7:20-24
“God condemns anything of human invention that mankind introduce as means of worshipping God. As we have just seen in Jeremiah, if God has not required such a form or act; he will reject it as an abomination.”
“In truth, humanity abuses the name of God. For, while worshipping their idols mankind completely reject what the living God himself has ordained. For we cannot invent forms of worship, based on our fantasies, without at the same time inventing a new god.”
“Therefore, we should not be astonished to discover that God both rejects and condemns all forms of worship invented by mankind. For the only thing that pleases God is our obedience.”
“What does the Lord say? In the first place: ‘He will destroy the high places,’ that is, the temples. For though they were built with the intention of worshipping God, in appearance, promoted holiness an devotion, God rejected them as bordellos of disease and infamy.”
“Hear, O earth: behold, I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto my words, nor to my law, but rejected it.
To what purpose cometh there to me incense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country? your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet unto me.” ~ Jeremiah 6:19-20
“How today’s humanity confides in its own inventions! How they fashion arguments in their ignorance, claiming, ‘But my intentions were good!’ Our Lord, however, retracts nothing of his sentence against such. Therefore, it behooves us to endorse his condemnation. For unless we have honored God by holding to his pure doctrine, by accepting it as sound and trustworthy, without adding to it, not only will anything we do to the contrary be rejected by God as an abominable practice, but we ourselves will be severely punished for being so foolish and presumptuous as to have added anything to God’s Word.”
“If we sincerely want to adopt the true order of worship that pleases God, then we have to pay heed to what God has commanded us. For if we allow only what seems best to us, without basing it on God’s Word, it will result in nothing but vanity and will constitute a true abomination on our part.”
“One might argue that God is unfair to respond so sternly toward persons who act out of ignorance, or, in doing so, act with good intentions. It must be noted that, though we might find ignorance acceptable, God does not consider it acceptable. Therefore, it is wrong for us to claim: ‘O, I didn’t know that.’ Rather, let our knowing be based on what God says in Scripture. For we can feign ignorance only if we deliberately close our eyes.”
“Once God has graciously revealed his will and taught us what to do, we shall be all the more culpable if we fail to follow the path that we know pleases God. Whoever, thus, deliberately declines to follow that path can no longer feign ignorance. Our condemnation will be even greater, if we dismiss what God has already said: ‘This is how I want you to worship me,’ because we prefer to obey mortals rather than the living God.”
“Let us take heed, therefore, that, insofar as God has introduced us to his righteous path, we pursue it, and that we never allow ourselves to veer from it, regardless of what might happen to us.”
~ John Calvin (The above excerpts were taken from Calvin’s sermons on Micah, 1550)
Are we worshipping God according to man’s “inventions” or “fancies?”
As we go to our various places of worship this coming Lord’s Day, may we offer to God worship that is acceptable and pleasing to Him.
