Charles Spurgeon Commentary Isaiah 1:16-17

"Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." — Isaiah 1:16-17 (ASV)

Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well;

Repentance, practical change of life, renewal of heart, the giving up of evil, the following of right, this is what the Lord approves.

Otherwise, all your fripperies and trickeries of worship are loathsome to him.

Do you think that your finest music is sweet to the ear of him who listens to the angels' everlasting song? Do you imagine that you can build temples worthy of him who made the heavens and the earth? What does he care for temples made with hands?

He despises all material things when the heart does not go with them, but purity, holiness, true spiritual worship—these are the things in which he delights.

Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.

That is to say, "Bring forth fruits meet for repentance, so that it may be seen that your heart is really changed, and that you desire better things, and things more pleasing in my sight." Then listen further to this marvelous message:

Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.

This is what God asks for: Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.