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Isaiah 59
! Introduction
Did you or do you ever use advent calendars?
I remember them from my growing up years and I remember the excitement and anticipation of opening the first door on December 1 and then one each day until we could open the last one on December 24.
Each day brought more excitement and anticipation.
Advent means coming.
It is a season of anticipation, in which we wait for the coming of a special event.
Do we have such anticipation as we wait for Christmas?
I know that as a child when I was waiting for Christmas, it was being off school, the celebrations, and especially the gifts I would get that I was looking forward to.
What are we anticipating?
There are a lot of passages in the Old Testament which express the longing for what God was going to do through His anointed one.
We live past the time of Jesus coming to earth and sometimes it is hard for us to understand the value of anticipating His coming.
The season of advent is a season of anticipation which can help us come to the place of really rejoicing and celebrating the coming of Christ.
Please turn to Isaiah 59 and let us read some of it in order to get a flavour of anticipation for God’s actions.
Read 59:1-4, 12-21.
!
I.
Where Is God?
Although verse one is an affirmation, it has behind it a doubt.
In the minds of people the question which was being considered was, “is God perhaps not strong enough to help us?
Is God perhaps unable to hear the trouble that we are in?”
Why were the people of Isaiah’s day even thinking about such a question?
There are a lot of times when we can see that they might have thought about such a question.
When they were slaves in Egypt for 400 years, it would have been natural to question where God was.
Every time the Amorites or Philistines or Edomites or any other nation around them attacked them and defeated them, they would have wondered where the power of God was.
Isaiah was written during the time preceding the attack of the Assyrians.
This powerful nation came against them from the north and eventually defeated and destroyed the northern ten tribes of Israel.
Isaiah prophesied about this coming destruction and as he did, many people would have wondered where God was.
Were they not his chosen people, his special nation?
Why was this devastation happening?
Some have suggested that this chapter was written after they had been exiled to Babylon and then had returned to Judah once again.
At this time, although they were back in the land, they were still under the domination of a foreign power.
They might have wondered what happened to the old promises of the land, the presence and power of God.
Where was God during this time?
Although they had all the promises of God, yet trouble seemed to follow them.
Except for the glory years of David and Solomon, they always seemed to have trouble.
One nation or another attacked, one difficulty or another surrounded them.
It looked like God had failed to deliver on his promises, that he was indifferent to the prayers of his people.
They were wondering, why has the promised deliverance not come?
Have you ever asked this question?
We do don’t we?
Although we have salvation, we wonder where God is when we still struggle so terribly with sin.
Although Luke 4 talks about the healing that will be brought when Jesus has victory, yet we still find that we are sick.
Although Jesus has won over Satan, he is still powerful and active in seeking to destroy lives.
Although the church is intended to be that tree which began from a mustard seed and spreads through all the earth, yet today, it appears so weak that it seems that it cannot even influence public policy in Canada.
Whenever any of these things happen, we also ask, “Where is God?”
!
II.
Your Sin Separates You
To those to whom Isaiah was writing in his particular historical situation, the answer is pretty blunt.
In contemporary terms, you have probably heard it put this way, “if God seems far away, guess who moved.”
However, Isaiah is much more accusing.
Imagine being near the top of a mountain.
As you walk along, you see a pretty little mountain stream.
You and the person you are hiking with decide to walk along the stream and each of you chooses to walk on opposite sides of the stream.
As you walk, tributaries are added to the little stream and it grows.
All of a sudden, you come to a portion of the stream in which you realize that the stream has grown so large and the banks on either side are so steep that you can no longer reach your friend.
The stream has become a barrier separating you.
That is what Isaiah says to his readers.
It is their sins which have separated them from God by a gulf so great that God cannot help them any more.
Have you ever seen a child turn the TV or radio up real loud in order to cover up the sounds of what is really going on?
Isaiah says that the noise of the sins of his people are so loud that God cannot hear them.
Their sins have obscured the face of God from being able to hear and see what their needs are.
So Isaiah is saying that it is not that God is not strong enough or that he can’t hear.
It is that sin has created a barrier and is so loud that God is not able to hear his people in order to help them.
This happened in the history of Israel many times.
Right after God had created a covenant with them at Mt. Sinai, they were down worshipping the golden calf.
Not many years before Isaiah wrote, Elijah was one of only a few prophets who followed the Lord.
Most people were followers of Baal.
By the time of Isaiah, the wickedness of the people had reached dreadful proportions and so we have this list of sins.
From verse 3 - 15 there is a litany of the evil of the people.
We have read some of this section, but I missed most of it.
Just look at what a list of sins is recorded here, murder and lying in verse 3; injustice and conceiving trouble in verse 4 and violence in verse 6.
One of the major sins that is recorded again and again in this section is injustice.
Notice verses 8, 9, “The way of peace they do not know; there is no justice in their paths.
They have turned them into crooked roads; no one who walks in them will know peace.
So justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us.”
In verse 3 we have an interesting literary device which shows how pervasively they were affected by their sin.
Notice that it talks about hands, fingers, lips and tongue.
Hands and fingers reflect on what is done.
Lips and tongue reflect on what is spoken.
The doing and speaking parts of their bodies were filled with evil.
It seems a desperately evil situation.
Isaiah declares in verse 12, “For our offences are many in your sight, and our sins testify against us.
Our offences are ever with us…”
The situation is so bad that we read about God’s judgement of the situation in verses 15, 16, “The LORD looked and was displeased that there was no justice.
He saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene…” God hated what he saw and it was totally appalling to Him.
Even worse, there was no one who seemed to care and no one who was prepared to do anything about it.
God could not act because of their sin.
It was an enormous tragedy and a hopeless situation.
The phrase “there was no one” is a statement of hopelessness.
What we read here is the human story.
It speaks of what the Bible has always told us.
People are sinners and utterly lost.
It tells us what Romans 1-3 tells us that all people on earth are without hope because there is none righteous not even one.
This passage poignantly tells us about a people cut off.
If God cannot enter into a situation, what hope is there for peace, freedom and forgiveness?
!
III.
He Will Come!
But the passage does not end with this hopelessness.
What we read in verses 16-21 is a story that we know well.
It is the gospel story.
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