Isaiah 59 - Leaving Sin

SERMON TEXT:

Let’s open our Bibles this morning together to the 59th chapter of the book of Isaiah.

Since we read this chapter for our Old Testament Reading this morning, I will read only verses 14 and 15 of this chapter, even though we will consider the entire chapter.

[READ ISAIAH 59:14-15]

As has so often happened in this book, we discover that the answer Isaiah is giving here is toward a question asked in the previous chapter.

Look back up to Chapter 58:3:

Isaiah 58:3 “‘Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’

You may remember that the rest of chapter 58 offered the first part of the answer to that question, but we find here in the very first verse of chapter 59 a challenge by God to such people who would even ask the question.

The heart of that question is this: Why did God not save us from calamity?

We prayed; we fasted - and God didn’t show up.

He didn’t listen to our prayers;

He didn’t show up to save us with His mighty hand.

Was He unable or unconcerned for us?

Why is He separated from us, deaf to our prayers, and blind to our plight?

And the Holy Spirit, through Isaiah, sums up the answer of God for us:

Isaiah 59:1–2 “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; 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.”

The truth is that it is not God who has caused His separation from His people, but it is the iniquity, the warped perversion of His people, that causes this great separation.

YOUR iniquities MADE this separation...

Your sin has dug this great gulf between you and God, separating you from His blessings.

Your rebellions, your love for the things of this world - they have hidden His face from you.

You, who He created in love and honor, have become deformed, warped, useless for any good work toward Him.

The sin we so easily tolerate or shrug off is TREASON against God.

His face is against EVERYONE because of their sin.

His back is turned to YOU; His face is turned away.

We must not dare comfort ourselves with thoughts like:

But we come to church every week.

I sing hymns and songs of praise to Him.

I pray my heart out to Him.

I am the best person I know when it comes to obeying Him.

I am part of His people!

AND SO WAS JUDAH.

SO WAS ISRAEL.

Romans 11:21–22 “For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off.”

Your sin is not just misbehavior.

It is not just being human.

It is not something God accepts or expects:

Your sin is an offense to the loving, holy, good Creator who put breath into your lungs and blood in your veins.

Your sin is a perversion of those good gifts, chasing after the things of this world, the things of your flesh,

Using the very life God has given you to hurt Him, to grieve His Holy Spirit.

Your sin is the height of ingratitude, unthankfulness.

Isaiah 59:3 “For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies; your tongue mutters wickedness.”

We hear that, and we are tempted to think that the Jews were remarkably wicked.

They were - but no more wicked than we are today.

Have we conducted ourselves with perfect love toward others?

Have we used our every faculty, every ability, for the glory of God, or for ourselves?

Have the words we have spoken truthful, both in content and intent?

Have we built everyone we spoke to up, or have we demolished others with our tongues?

It was almost easier to consider the fasting and Sabbath of the last chapter;

These sins hit too close to home.

But they are the collective sins of our rebellion.

They are the outcome of OUR wills and willfulness allowed to run.

Why are you troubled?

Why are you exhausted?

Why are you terrified of the world around you?

Because you are embedded in the world around you.

Like Lot sitting at the gate of Sodom, you may sit in happy judgment over the heinous sins around you,

But never realize the cost this daily familiarity has for your own soul.

It is not an honor for a child of God to understand every dirty and off-color joke that is bandied about.

It’s not a good thing that we understand the new and novel perversions of this world.

And it is not to our credit if we are open-minded enough to try to explain away sin and accept it.

Why would we even be curious about the shameful deeds people do in darkness?

Why would we want to pollute our minds with the depraved thoughts of this present world?

Ephesians 5:12 “For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret.”

That was the Jews’ problem here, and it is the church’s problem today.

We take our cue from the world around us rather than seeking God’s way first.

We satisfy our curiosity of the darkness rather than walking in the Spirit.

I could have, and I should have, lived my entire life quite happy NOT knowing some of the sinful things I know.

O, to be innocent again.

To not have gone to the tree of knowledge of evil over and over again.

To never collect in my mind the evil thoughts or the perverse ideas of this world.

Because they are [Isaiah 59:5] “adders’ eggs; they weave the spider’s web; he who eats their eggs dies, and from one that is crushed a viper is hatched.”

Please notice the subject of these verses:

Verses 2-3 are to “You”.

Verses 4-8 are about “Them”

But the sins are identical:

Bloodshed, lies, wickedness.

“You” are these things because you follow “Them” who do these things.

The Spirit gives us a clear warning:

[READ ROMANS 1:29-2:5]

So what shall we do?

We can’t go back and undo our sin.

And, like Isaiah, we can, at our best, cry out:

Isaiah 6:5 “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips”

But that doesn't pay for sin.

That doesn’t erase our guilt.

We are left with the situation in verses 14-15 in our text today:

Isaiah 59:14–15 “Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far away; for truth has stumbled in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter. Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.”

Have you ever been afraid to NOT go along with the crowd into sin?

Have you ever thought that your friends would abandon you if you stopped sinning?

Have you ever thought that your boyfriend or girlfriend or spouse would leave you if you STOPPED sinning with them?

You felt like a prey - like someone who would be consumed by the evil people of this world.

Consumed by the evil itself.

How did you deal with it?

Did you honor God?

Lot didn’t. He offered his daughters to be abused by the crowd of men.

What have you sacrificed to this world so you might feel safe?

Or even that you might be among the strong?

Isaiah 59:15–16 The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede;”

When it says He “wondered”, it’s not that God said, “Hmm - there’s supposed to be someone interceding”

It means He saw it and was appalled, even astonished, that not one man could be found to stand for truth.

Sodom, at least, had one.

As His eyes went to and fro over the earth, He found no one who did right - not even one.

All the earth was evil in His eyes.

Before I get to what God did, I would like for us to wrestle with the question: what should WE do?

Perhaps you almost despair of being able to do anything about your sin - and you would be largely right.

There is nothing you can do to erase your past sins.

And there are still many sins in all our lives that are more subtle than we are capable of recognizing.

But in our passage today, we DO see the people doing something regarding their sin: They are CONFESSING it.

Like I said a few minutes ago, we see the first verses addressed to “You”; then verses 4-8 talking about “Them”.

But then in verse 9, we see these verses about “Us”.

We, the people of God.

We, the guilty of rebellion against Him.

We, the sinful people He has loved.

We, who have been ungrateful and unfaithful.

See what “We” say in verses 9-13:

[READ ISAIAH 59:9-13]

I suspect we are not nearly as good at confessing our sins as we ought to be.

We are quick to confess our need of a Savior.

We are even swift to confess we are not perfect.

We might even be humble enough to confess in general that we are miserable sinners.

But that’s NOT confession.

Confession is admitting ACTUAL INDIVIDUAL sins.

It is seeing those sins the way God sees them, and hating them.

Confession isn’t about seeking forgiveness;

It’s about admitting our guilt and knowing we don’t deserve mercy or understanding for our rebellion.

Confession isn’t about justifying ourselves, or explaining WHY we practiced such hateful sins.

It’s about understanding we have sinned, and there is no reduction of the offense to God that can be gained.

Psalm 51:3–6 “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.”

We too easily accept our sinfulness as the reality we live in.

We are too quick to shrug off grievous and ungodly evils and glibly say, “I’ll go confess it, and God will forgive me.”

Confession before God requires of us the following things:

To know the guilt of our sin.

That is, to know the guilt of that INDIVIDUAL sin we just committed, whether we planned it or we realized our sin after the fact.

If we don’t feel the guilt, acknowledging it before God, knowing in the depth of our soul that this one sin was sufficient cause for God to JUSTLY send me to eternal hell.

If we don’t understand the guilt of our sin in this way, we will always be in danger of treating it too lightly.

This is the enemy of our soul - the thing that tries relentlessly to drag us away from God into hell.

And once we come to understand the guilt of our sin, we judge that guilt for ourselves.

We come to see our own sin as the cancerous tumor on us that God sees it as.

We beg to be freed of it, not just the guilt or the effect of it, but to be rid of it entirely.

We will do whatever we can to stay far away from that sin;

Not strolling past it to see how close we can get to sin without crossing the line.

When I was young, I would consider very often the question of “how far can I go without crossing into sin?”

I pray I have matured since then.

Because that leads us to an unspiritual fascination with the Law of God,

Trying to use the Law to see how close to sin we can get without crossing the line.

Why would we want to APPROACH sin that closely?

How does it honor God to move right up to the verge of sin, then try to stop?

If our brother sees us doing so, will he be able to stop in time, or will we have led him to fall over the cliff of sin?

Finally, confession of our sins to God calls us to faith in His promises to forgive our sins and cleanse us from them.

We see in our text today, verse 20:

Isaiah 59:20 ““And a Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression,” declares the Lord.”

1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Do you really seek to be freed from your sins, or do you just want them to be forgiven?

That’s an important question.

Confessing your sins is a plea to God to free you from them, not a call to merely pass over them and make them ok.

Your sins will never be ok before God.

Your sins, both the tiny and the great, required the blood of our Innocent Lord, Jesus Christ, to pay for them.

If you are in Christ, you aren’t forgiven because God waved His hand and took away your guilt;

You are forgiven because nails pierced the hands and feet of the only innocent man,

Thorns, grown as a direct result of God’s curse upon Adam, pierced His head;

Scourges ripped His flesh,

And bruises covered His body.

A spear pierced His side,

And the full wrath of God, a punishment infinitely more terrible, was poured out on Him:

All for the sin you think is hardly worth mentioning.

Come to Him today,

See your sin for what it is - your mortal enemy, not your warm cuddly friend.

And confess your sin to God through Jesus Christ;

Hebrews 12:22–24 “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”

The blood of Abel spoke of guilt; the blood of Christ speaks of the New Covenant - a covenant of grace and redemption:

Isaiah 59:20–21 ““And a Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression,” declares the Lord. “And as for me, this is my covenant with them,” says the Lord: “My Spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouth of your offspring, or out of the mouth of your children’s offspring,” says the Lord, “from this time forth and forevermore.””