Cords of sin
Isaiah 26
Cords of sin
Announcements
Doxology “We will give thanks to Thee” (Scripture in Song 396 – Screen)
Call to worship
Bible Verse
Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth. Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. (Psalm 100:1-2)
The Lord’s Prayer
Blessing
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 1:2)
Hymn No 46: “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty”
Invocation
Scripture Reading 2 Timothy 3:1-9
Prayer of Adoration and Confession
Offering and Dedication
While the offering is taken up we sing, remaining seated,
Hymn 365: “We give You but your own” (Tune 276 – verses 1-4
Prayer for others
Scripture Reading Isaiah 5:18-25
Sermon: “Cords of Sin”
Introduction
There is this saying: the truth does not need propping up; it is the lie that needs support.
Draw
Guilt: i.e., a judicial state of being liable for a wrong done, and so receive a punishment or judicial sentence.
Rope: cord, line, i.e., implement used for binding in various contexts.
Vanity: desolation, wasteness, i.e., a state in which something is useless and unproductive, implying difficulty in living. Vanity is nothingness; it is without being and reality; it is a lie.
Cords: Rope
Utility cart: i.e., a wheeled vehicle usually pulled by ox or cow, used to transport relatively heavy objects, as well as a threshing device using the wheels.
Sin, wrong, iniquity, i.e., that which is an offense against a standard.
Sin is a severe taskmaster. Far worse that Egypt ever was towards Israel. These cords of sin are cords man weaves, but he cannot unweave them. These cords of sin and iniquity can only be broken by the Lord.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)
Woe – to announce God’s judgement. Now these mockers who go out of their way to prove that sin is not sin, that people are not sinners, go into the second stage of sinfulness: “If the Lord is going to work judgement upon us, let judgement hurry and come. If there is such a judgement as you Isaiah constantly claim, let it speed up and come more quickly so that we may see it. If we see it, of course we will believe it. You cannot expect us to believe if we do not see for ourselves. If it is coming, why does it not hasten?”
They often heard the message of Isaiah, but they did not heed it.
Of course they saw the destruction of sin. God did send as He promised. There were the signs if only they would have an eye and ear for it. What about the droughts? What about the wars? And the moral destruction? And the famine? And all the enormous social problems they ended up with. All these things God promised as a result of covenant disobedience. Maybe we should just listen to some of those again as they are recorded in Deut 28.
The LORD will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him. The LORD will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess.
The LORD will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. The LORD will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed. The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth. Your carcasses will be food for all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and there will be no one to frighten them away. The LORD will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. The LORD will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind. At midday you will grope about like a blind man in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you. (Deuteronomy 28:20-29)
The leaders of Israel, of course [as the leaders of our day] could not see the connection between mental confusion, illnesses, boils, tumors, festering sores, madness, blindness and confusion of mind and moral depravity. They refused to see the connection between sin and scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew. What about the so-called global warming? Does expressions like “The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron” sound just a bit familiar? And what about the “the rain of your country [that will turn] into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed”?
All these things happened, all these things are still happening and still the godless atheist cries out: If there is a God, let Him make himself known – and until then, I will go my way.
Godlessness this leads to moral corruption. Evil is called good and good is called evil. Darkness becomes light and light becomes darkness. Bitter becomes sweet and sweet bitter. Why? Because these godless humanists are just too wise in their own eyes to even contemplate the possibility that God is speaking to them through his prophet. They are their own standard.
In their own sight: the giving of light of knowledge as a figurative extension of light in the physical world. In the inner space of their own limitations they have their own understanding.
The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9)
Verses 22 and 23 connects very closely to what we have seen in the previous verses: Doctrine and ethics are close partners. When one no longer believes the doctrine of a judgement one turns aside from moral distinctions. Those who subvert all moral distinctions in effect introduce chaos and in place of true ethics substitute it with pragmatism and utilitarianism = we will do as we see fit under the circumstance.
The great names in this regard are those of the Soviet leaders Lenin and Stalin. Add the name of Hitler to it. Inflamed by the atheism of Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, they soon believed that man is not really evil, but that his evilness just needs to be controlled. They, of course, were on moral higher ground, and saw to it that the process of control was successful: they were responsible for the killing of more than 40 million people.
Hitler applied the principles of eugenics: Eugenics was, quite literally, an effort to breed better human beings – by encouraging the reproduction of people with "good" genes and discouraging those with "bad" genes. Francis Galton, an Englishman and cousin of Charles Darwin, applied Darwinian science to develop theories about heredity and good or noble birth. The problem, as in the case of Lenin and Stalin, someone was needed to take the control of this ostensibly good course. So, driven by his desire to produce the best race on earth, Hitler exterminated 6 million Jews.
These are examples of those who ridiculed God, who still go out of their way to “scientifically” prove that God does not exist – while the only leg they stand upon is evolutionism [which gave birth to the killing of millions in our age.]
They are the modern cart pullers. They use cords of vanity and sin. They pour millions of dollars into their programs, they are wise in their own eyes, they mock God, his church and his prophets and they deprive the righteous from justice.
Conclusion
Let’s repeat that verse again:
The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9)
Do you see the signs of forgiveness on the table? There is time to repent. Why work for a slave master that can only pay you the wages of death?
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)