“The Problem”
[Isaiah 59:1-13]
May 14, 2023 YouTube
We will remember in the text preceding this one, God tells Israel that going through the motions of keeping the Law is not enough. They must actually obey the Law and show it by loving God and loving neighbor. And the example is given of the fourth commandment in which God commands all of those who believe in Him for salvation that the Sabbath is to be kept – and it is to be a delight to believers, because the Sabbath is a gift to humanity of rest from normal work, it is a picture of Jesus Who brings us into His rest, and it is a picture of the everlasting rest believers will be brough into in the Kingdom.
As we turn to this morning’s text, we see:
The problem is not God, but our sin.
Israel asks, “If these things are so, why aren’t we receiving them? Isn’t God strong enough to bring them to pass? Can’t God hear us when we cry out?”
We can hear Isaiah respond with incredulity and anger.
“Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear;”
“Listen up! God’s strength and power are not lacking in the least – He is all-powerful and is able to save anyone He chooses to save. And there is no problem with God’s hearing – God hears all things and responds as He wills.”
So what’s the problem?
“but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies; your tongue mutters wickedness. No one enters suit justly; no one goes to law honestly; they rely on empty pleas, they speak lies, they conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity. They hatch adders’ eggs; they weave the spider’s web; he who eats their eggs dies, and from one that is crushed a viper is hatched.”
The problem is not God, but our sin. It is our sin that separates us from God. It is our sin – asking for things that are against God’s Will – that make it seem to us that God is not hearing us. If we do not believe, we are dead in our sins – we are separated from God – and until the Holy Spirit brings us to life, God will not hear us – He will not give us His Grace – He will not give us the sin we ask for and desire.
Our hands are covered with blood and our fingers have been working sinful acts. As the Sacrificial Law tells us – these things defile us – they make us unclean – we are not able to enter the Presence of God – just as Israel are not able to enter the Temple when they are defiled and unclean until they have performed sacrifices and waited a period of time.
And we are liars. “Well, maybe I tell little white lies.” We are liars. The Psalmist writes, “I said in my alarm, ‘All mankind are liars’” (Psalm 116:11, ESV).
Then Israel’s leagal system is condemned: no one enters a trial honestly, their pleas are empty, they lie, they look to cause mischief for innocent people, and this all leads to sin. Like those who hatch adder’s eggs – sin breaks forth. Like those who weave webs and think them to be a secure future – they fall apart. When they eat the viper’s egg – when they dedicate themselves to pursuing sin – they die. When they step on the viper’s egg, the viper springs forth – there is no escaping the penalty for sin – the sin that separates us from God.
Sadly, this is often the case in our legal system, is it not? Read the newspaper, watch the television, serve on a jury. Is righteousness always being sought – is justice always being sought?
Second, we do sinful deeds rather than righteous ones.
Again, the problem is not God, but our sin.
We try to hide our sin – we try to keep even God from seeing the evil we have done:
“Their webs will not serve as clothing; men will not cover themselves with what they make.”
Israel though they could keep their evil deeds hidden – they thought they could cover their defiled flesh – their unclean flesh – from their neighbors and God.
We remember in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve eat of the forbidden fruit they are made aware that they are naked – their sin reveals itself – so they think to hide their sin by covering themselves. “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths’” (Gensis 3:7, ESV).
In the same way, Israel – and we – know our sin – and we try to cover it up by knitting clothes of webs. Like Adam and Eve, we try to fashion something so no one will know we have sinned – that we would even fool God and keep Him from knowing what we have done. And, if we are worried that knitting clothes might give us away, we simply hide.
It wasn’t enough for Adam and Eve, and it isn’t enough for Israel.
“And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them” (Genesis 3:21, ESV).
Do we see? Adam and Eve made clothes out of fig leaves – a symbol of their attempt to save themselves – of finding forgiveness through their own actions, but God rejects their fig-leaf clothes. Rather, God sheds blood and puts the skins of animals on them. God covers them according to His choosing. God covers them with blood.
Isreal was trying to cover her sins with clothes of woven web. God rejects this.
And so we look fowrad, knowning the fulfullment of the symbolism on this side of the cross: “For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:13-14, ESV).
This is what Israel looks forward to – all those who believe – it is what we know and believe if we are believers – we have been clothed in the Blood of Christ and are forgiven of all our sin. But we’re not there yet.
In Isaiah’s day, God is angry with Israel – with the sin and the sinner – that they thought they could keep God from knowing their sin. They are working off their initial lack of knowledge of God – that He is not powerful enough – that He is not aware enough – that He doesn’t hear. But He knows.
God evaluates those who think they can sew their own coverings – those who believe they can pay the wages of their own debt – whether it is Israel or us or others throughout time and space:
“Their works are works of iniquity, and deeds of violence are in their hands.”
Their works are not works of righteousness, but of evil. The works that they do are works of violence – they are against all things that are good and true and peaceful.
“Their feet run to evil, and they are swift to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; desolation and destruction are in their highways.”
They don’t causally make their way into sin – they run to do evil. They love to do evil and search it out. They want to shed innocent blood – again and again – they want to pull those down who are trying to follow the Law of God. They seek people out to draw them into their sin. All they think about is sin and how they can be involved in more and more sin. Their highway – the way they travel through the world and through their life is nothing but desolation and destruction. Their way is the broad way of sin that destroys and brings all things to a wasteland.
“The way of peace they do not know, and there is no justice in their paths; they have made their roads crooked; no one who treads on them knows peace.”
They do not want the yoke lifted from themselves or those they make like themselves – they do not want true peace for anyone – just the peace of the haunting results of sin. They don’t want justice – they want what they want with no one getting in their way or telling them that what they are doing is wrong. They are their own lawgiver. They make the straight roads crooked so anyone who follows them will be denied the peace that they have been denied.
And we recognize this imagery that Isaiah gives us earlier:
“A voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken’” (Isaiah 40: 3-5, ESV).
This comes later and in the midst of those still trying to make the straight crooked – and it continues to this day. With every sin, we seek to make the straight crooked. And just like Israel, we do sinful deeds instead of righteousness.
Third, we search for truth and light, but we don’t find it.
Isaiah tells Israel that the problem of their sin and their following after sin rather than righteousness is why they do not find the light and truth they have fooled themselves into believing they are looking for.
There are plenty of people in the world – as we once were – children of wrath – seeking only after evil – and yet many say that they can find peace without the God – without the Savior. They believe they can be moral and ethical and know the truth while denying that there is a God. They say it doesn’t matter what you believe so long as you love others.
Isaiah says:
“Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not overtake us; we hope for light, and behold, darkness, and for brightness, but we walk in gloom. We grope for the wall like the blind; we grope like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among those in full vigor we are like dead men.”
Those who believe that injustice is justice and unrighteousness is righteous will never be overtaken by them. They are like the sellers in the Temple who provide a good and needed service but use false measures and false coins. The good they believe they are doing for the worshippers and themselves becomes nothing but evil.
Israel – and those who do not believe – are like those who say they are searching for truth – for light – that they are seekers – that they are spiritual but not religious. They are searching for light in a dark room. They are searching for bright light in the night of gloom. They are all twisted around and can’t find what they believe they want because they are looking where it will never be.
They are searching in a dark room – feeling along the wall. They are groping around as the blind – as those who have no eyes – stumbling and falling when the sun is at its brightest like it were pitch dark – thinking themselves strong and wise and on the right track when they are no better than dead men.
I have a new doctor, and as I am want to do, I talked with him about religion. He showed me that he has a red string around his wrist, which is a Hindu device to protect from evil. He also has a rosery around the other wrist, and an icon of Padre Pio in his pocket, and a Torah in his pants pocket. He believes he is looking for light – or may even have found it, but the one thing he has not looked for is the Light.
Those in Israel who did not believe – we who do not believe – those around us who think they are faithfully seeking the light – but in the darkness – are dead and blind. And over time, this will fail for many – it will become a source of frustration as they go from one supposed light to another not finding what they truly want and need to be filled.
“We all growl like bears; we moan and moan like doves; we hope for justice, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far from us.”
Israel comes to the point – as all honest people who have sought where truth and light cannot be found – where the pain and frustion comes out in growls and moans of pain and anger and futility. We get to the point where we understand we are not finding justice – we are not even looking for justice – and we are crushed. We understand that everywhere we have looked and believed that salvation was to be found – there it is not to be found.
Light and truth have not yet been found, but we see that:
“For our transgressions are multiplied before you, and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us, and we know our iniquities:”
Israel understands that they have been sinning and sinning – building up sin upon sin against God. There is no need for witnesses to be brought against them – their sin testifies against them. They know that they bring their transgression – their iniquities – their sin along with them – especially in this way:
“transgressing, and denying the LORD, and turning back from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart lying words.”
They sin – and they sin in denying the Lord. No matter what they realize about the futility of their sin – they won’t look to the Lord. They turn away from following the Lord – they will follow every god and idea and sin they can think of, but the Lord is a step beyond what they are able to consider. Rather, they speak oppression and revolt -- they tell others what words can be said – what actions can be done – and they conceive these things from their heart of lies – they utter them from their heart of lies.
Israel needs to understand – everyone who does not believe needs to understand – we who do not believe need to understand – the problem is not with God; it is with people who love their sin and pursuing it and believe they can find light in the darkness.
Let us pray:
Almighty God, Israel is at a point in her history in our text when she doesn’t want to hear God’s Word or believe it or follow it. We were at that point once, and the Holy Spirit convicted us of the Truth and showed us the Light of Jesus Christ. Cause us to show the Light and the Truth of Jesus to those around us and cause the Holy Spirit to bring people out of the darkness and out of their sin to You. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
