A translation and sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church, 20 April 2008
Last week, I discovered a website called AnswerBag.Com. It is a forum where people can ask questions and share answers to questions.
· Some of the questions were practical, like Where is the fuse for the power windows in a 1999 Pontiac Grand Prix located?”
· Some were funny, like, “Do cannibals avoid clowns because they taste funny?”
·
But some are very thought-provoking, like the one asked March 5 By justwonder: “Most people are basically good. Agree
or disagree?”
100% of the individuals who responded in the following month agreed that people
are basically good. (http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/628524)
Under the inspiration of God, Isaiah has a very different opinion - one we should carefully consider:
1. Look, Jehovah’s hand is not too short to save, and His ear is not too heavy to hear.
2. However, your iniquities have become causes for separation between yourselves and your God,
and your sins have caused [His] face to hide from you - away from hearing you.
3. For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity.
Your lips have spoken falsehood; your tongue mutters wrong.
4. No one calls in righteousness; no one is judged in truth:
trusting in emptiness and to speak worthlessness,
to conceive toil and to give birth to iniquity.
5. They have hatched snake’s eggs, and they weave spider webs.
The one who eats from their eggs will die.
The one that is squeezed will hatch into a viper.
6. Their webs will not do for clothing,
and they will not cover themselves with their doings.
Their doings are doings of iniquity, and deeds of violence are in their hands.
7. Their feet run to evil, and they hasten to shed innocent blood.
Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; demolition and cracking are in their highways.
8. The way of peace they have not known, and there is no justice in their ruts.
Their paths they have made crooked for themselves;
all who tread in it have not known peace.
9. Therefore justice has been far from us, and righteousness does not reach us.
We wait for the light, and, look, there is darkness – for brightness in the gloom we walk.
10. We grope along the wall like the blind – we grope as though we had no eyes.
We have stumbled in midday like the twilight, with the stout men like the dying men.
11. We growl like the bears – all of us; we mutter repeatedly like doves.
We wait for the justice, but there is none – for the salvation – it is far from us.
12. For our rebellions have become many before you,
and our sins have testified against us;
for our rebellions are with us, and, as for our iniquities, we know them:
13. rebellion and being untrue with Jehovah,
and turning back from following our God,
speaking injury and revolt,
conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.
14. Justice is forced back, and righteousness stands from afar,
for truth has stumbled in the open squares,
and straightforwardness is not able to come.
15. And it has come to pass that the truth is lacking,
and he who turns away from the evil makes himself a prey.
And Jehovah saw and it was bad in His eyes,
for there was no justice.
16. And He saw that there was no man,
and He was astonished that there was no intercessor,
and His arm caused to save for Him,
and His righteousness upheld Him,
17. and He put on righteousness as the breastplate and a helmet of salvation on His head,
and He put on garments of vengeance for clothing,
and He wrapped Himself in zeal like the cloak.
18. As it is with paybacks, so He will bring closure:
wrath to His adversaries – payback to His enemies;
He will bring closure to the payback for the coastlands.
19. and those from the West will fear the name of Jehovah –
and from the rising of the sun – His glory.
For distress will come like the torrent, the Spirit of Jehovah driving it on.
20. And a Redeemer will come for Zion
and to those who turn from rebellion in Jacob declares Jehovah.
21. “And as for me, this is my covenant with them,” says Jehovah,
“My Spirit which is upon you,
and my words which I placed in your mouth
will not depart from your mouth
or from the mouth of your seed,
or from the mouth of the seed of your seed,” says Jehovah,
“from now until forever!”
"People are Basically Good" - Proof to the Contrary, by Rich Deem (http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/peoplegood.html)
Many present day philosophies and worldviews claim the people are basically good and that bad or immoral behavior is the exception. The Bible states quite the opposite - that people are selfish and sinful as soon as they are able to express that kind of behavior. Because of this fact, people need a Savior in order to be acceptable to God. In contrast, the implication of the "people are good" worldview is that good people don't need a Savior. This paper will show that the biblical worldview and not the "people are good" worldview matches reality.
Human atrocities
If you examine the atrocities perpetrated by people within the last century, you find a huge number of murders. Adolph Hitler killed 6 million Jews prior to and during the second World War. Joseph Stalin killed 20 million Soviet citizens between 1929 and 1939 because they were not politically correct. Mao Tse-tung killed 34 to 62 million Chinese during the Chinese civil war of the 1930s and 1940s. Pol Pot, the leader of the Marxist regime in Cambodia, Kampuchea, in the 1970's killed over 1.7 million of his own people. These do not include all the people killed in "legitimate" wars.
Many would object to this analysis, since they could claim that these atrocities were perpetrated by only a few individuals. However, these individuals could not have done anything if they were not backed by others, who agreed with their "values." The vast majority of Germans willingly followed Adolph Hitler and gave their consent to his policy to get rid of the "Jewish problem."
People in the U.S.A…
[O.K. that was the Nazi’s and the Communists. What about
normal Americans? Would we do something so utterly despicable? Story of Amy Grossberg
and Brian Peterson
Amy Grossberg, a college freshman, was in labor when she called Brian Peterson,
Jr., her boyfriend, late one evening in November 1996. The two
eighteen-year-olds decided to rendezvous at a Comfort Inn in Newark, Delaware,
where Baby Grossberg was born at 4 A.M. Grossberg and Peterson claimed the baby
was stillborn. But state medical examiners said that the boy was born alive and
died of multiple skull fractures. Peterson reportedly wrapped the six pound,
two ounce, little boy in a garbage bag and threw him into a trash dumpster.
During the trial, Peterson and Grossburg were described by others as "a
couple of nice kids" from affluent families. The judge gave each of them a
sentence of 8 years in prison, and within about a year and a half, they were
released from prison. This is justice in America.
Maybe your depravity hasn’t showed up in killing anybody, but it does show up in “little” selfish ways:] Let me give you another example, from a group of people who are supposed to be committed to raising their children with strong moral values. In October, 2001, I went to Camp Cherry Valley with a group of 140 Webelos Scouts and 110 adults (mostly parents of these Cub Scouts). At meal time, there were two lines, equally divided to be served their food. However, your position in line did not correspond to when you would get your food. Every time we lined up for meals, there were children and adults who let their friends/parents/children cut in front of them. Parents were actively encouraging their children to cut in front of other people. It was so bad that our group ended up at the end of the line every time. However, this was not the end of the selfish behavior. When we got into the dinning hall, all the seats were either occupied or "reserved," even though there were enough seats for all Scouts and parents. We were forced to eat outside at every meal. Even though these "good" parents were "committed" to teaching their children strong moral values, they were actually teaching their children to be selfish and rude. And these are people who, if you asked them, would say that they were Christians. Our moral values have changed to such a degree that most people do not even recognize that their own behavior is immoral…
Solomon Asch's conformity experiments
Psychologist Solomon Asch performed a number of experiments to determine the degree to which experimental subjects will go along with the majority - even if they know the majority is wrong. The setup was simple - an experimental subject, along with a number of the experimenter's confederates, was to look at two cards and determine which line on one card matched one of three lines on another card. The lengths of the lines were sufficiently different that there was no question what the right answer was. Even so, one third of subjects lied about which lines matched just to go along with the group. Although the "sin" committed seems pretty innocuous, conformity to the majority has resulted in the support of human atrocities by some pretty evil regimes throughout history. (Asch, S. E. 1956. Studies of independence and conformity: A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs, 70 (Whole no. 416). Bond, R., & Smith, P. (1996). Culture and conformity: A meta-analysis of studies using Asch’s (1952b, 1956) line judgment task. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 111-137.)
In another set of experiments, subjects were asked to assign two different tasks - one to themselves and another to another (nonexistent) participant.5 One task was interesting and resulted in a reward, whereas the second was boring and unrewarded. Predictably, most subjects assigned the interesting task to themselves. When told that they could use a coin flip to assign the task, only about half used the coin toss. However, of those who used the coin toss, the majority still assigned the better task to themselves - even when they lost the coin toss. (Batson, C.D., E. R. Thompson, G. Seuferling, et al. 1999. Moral hypocrisy: Appearing moral to oneself without being so. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77: 525-537.)
This doesn’t mean that everyone is as bad as they can possibly be. Thank God for what we call “common grace” which restrains evil to some extent. Herman Bavinck once wrote, “If God were to abandon mankind and give them up to the desires of their hearts, earth would become a hell, and no human society would be possible. But just as the fire in the earth is kept in control by the hard crust of the earth, and only now and then - and in certain places - bursts forth in an awful volcanic explosion, so the evil thoughts and lusts of the human heart are restrained…”
Going back to the text in Isaiah, We are not good people.
· Notice the contrast between God’s holy hand, ear, and face and man’s defiled hands, bloody fingers, lie-breathing lips, wrong-muttering tongue, evil-running feet (v.7) and blind eyes (v.10).
· Those fingers made idols in 2:8, and 17:8, and they pointed accusingly at innocent people in 58:9.
· Those lips that were created for praising God (57:19) are unclean lips (6:5) that give mere lip-service to God (29:13).
· Isa 3:8 For Jerusalem has stumbled, and Judah has fallen, because their tongue and their deeds are against Jehovah, to defy His… glory.
· This muttering tongue that gives utterance to wrong thoughts is, I believe, complaining. It is saying things that are not true of God, thinking the worst of others, griping about how unfair it is that you did not get your way.
“We are defective because we have defected from God.” (Frank Barker, Jr.)
· Adam & Eve died spiritually when they rebelled and they passed their bent nature on to all mankind.
· v. 2 says that our iniquities separate us from God so that He hides His face from us.
· Isa 1:15 And when you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from them; and although you multiply prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood.
· Isa 57:17 With the iniquity of his profiteering I was angry, and I struck him to hide, and I was angry, but he went on turning back in the way of his heart.
· Isa 64:6-7 For we are all become as one that is unclean, and all our righteousnesses are as a polluted garment: and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. 7 And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee; for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us by means of our iniquities.
Three great virtues characterize God’s way in this chapter, they are Righteousness, Truth, and Justice. All three show up in v. 4, although different translations render them slightly differently, and perversions of all three show up in v.3 and v.4.
· Truth is replaced by lies.
· Righteousness (KJV & ESV = justice) is replaced with iniquity,
· and Justice (KJV & NAS = pleads / ESV = goes to law) is replaced with mischief and wrong things.
· Most English translations take v. 4 as a picture of a court of law that has become corrupted. Instead of God’s truth, judgment is made by some other human standard.
· 1:23 Your princes are rebels are companions of thieves: all of them loving a bribe and pursuing peace-offerings; they do not judge for the orphan, and the cause of the widow doesn’t get to them.
· But the wording is more general than a court of law. The word for “calling” or “pleading” at the beginning of v. 4 was the same word to describe the calling of a fast for the wrong purposes in 58:5, and calling upon God in prayer in 58:9.
They rely on emptiness/confusion (NAS), Vanity (KJV).
· This emptiness is described in 29:21 as injustice “Causing a man to sin by a word, they trap the one who pleads by the gate and entice the righteous with vanity.”
· and this emptiness is described in 41:29 as idolatry, “Behold, they are all a delusion; their works are nothing; their metal images are empty wind.”
· They speak lies/vanity/empty words of ruin, guile, and idolatry.
· They conceive mischief/toil/trouble/evil. (This is a quote from Job 15:35)
v. 5 compares our sin to snakes and spiders:
· People poke at our sinful selves and guess what comes hissing out? Instead of our light breaking forth (58:8), in our sin, it is snakes that break forth.
· He who eats those eggs dies. Our sin results in death – “the soul that sins, it shall die” (Ezek. 18:20)
· v.6 - And yet we continue to weave those spider webs of doing our own thing instead of obeying God. If I can just get that new thing they’re advertising; If I can just get the respect of so-and-so; If I can just get him to like me; if I can just cover up my mistake by telling a little lie.
· These deeds/fabrications/works are idols (2:8; 17:8; 37:19; 41:29).
· Brothers and sisters, those webs won’t do for clothing! They won’t meet your needs. They will trap and entangle, and they are easily wiped away like a spiderweb.
· 52:1 Awake, awake! Put on your strength, Zion! Put on your garments of splendor
· Spider’s webs come out of the spider itself, but the clothing that God wants us to put on – the clothing that will meet our needs – comes from Him, not from ourselves.
· Isa 61:10 I will greatly rejoice in Jehovah, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with a garland, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.
· We cannot take care of ourselves through doing good things; the thing we really need is forgiveness of our sin which comes through God’s plan of salvation.
Isaiah continues to pound his point in – v.7
Six of the seven things that God says He hates in Proverbs 6:17 are the very things that they love to do.
· Instead of waiting on God and running and not growing weary (40:31), their feet “run” to do evil (the same feet that were breaking the Sabbath in 58:13).
· They hurry eagerly to shed innocent blood. 2 Kings 21 tells us that Manasseh, king of Judah in Isaiah’s latter years, practiced child sacrifice to demons (Ps. 106:37).
· Shedding innocent blood like Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson did - and thousands of others who daily support and patronize the abortion industry.
· The wicked man is to forsake his thoughts for God’s thoughts (55:7-9), but he continues on thinking his (or her) thoughts of iniquity.
· Instead of preparing the way of the Lord, they choose their own highway – the highway to hell – which is pictured at the end of v. 7 as a road that has been demolished and is full of potholes and cracks. In fact, they’re purposefully making it crooked in v. 8!
The result of continuing in our sin and rebellion against God is a woeful loss of those three good qualities of Justice, Righteousness, and Truth.
· Pro 2:6-9 For Jehovah giveth wisdom; Out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding [truth]: 7 He layeth up sound wisdom for the upright; He is a shield to them that walk in integrity; 8 That he may guard the paths of justice, And preserve the way of his saints. 9 Then shalt thou understand righteousness and justice, And equity, yea, every good path.
· Justice, Righteousness, and Truth come from God, and when we turn away from God, we lose those things. “Justice is far from us, righteousness does not reach us, and there is no truth to light the way.” (v.9)
· They are hoping and waiting for a brighter day, but it will never come, because God has already told them seven times in the book of Isaiah to wait on God, not just on a brighter day for their personal well-being. Hope in the infinite personal being of God! (8:17; 25:9, 26:8, 33:2, 40:31, 49:23, 51:5).
· 50:10-11 “Whoever walked dark places and there was no brightness for him, let him trust in the name of Jehovah and lean into his God. Look, all you kindlers of fire who are clasping firebrands, walk in the light of your fire and with the firebrands you burned. This happened to you from my hand: you will lie down for anguish.”
· v.10 - Spiritual blindness and deadness sets in when we look to man rather than to God. It scares me when I hear our political leaders and candidates say they have to “look deep inside themselves” to find answers to abortion. If they do that, they are going to be groping in the dark for answers and it will lead to deadness. Anyone who wants to keep abortion “safe and legal” has a dying heart and is supporting the spread of death.
· Without God, you cannot know peace, all you can know is sin (v.12)
Dead in sin, we will continue in our rebellion, wreaking havoc and miserably complaining all the way. That’s what I think v.11 is saying.
·
Have you ever heard a bear groan? I have. (describe it)
If you look throughout the Bible, bears are unpredictable creatures that
suddenly appear and wreak havoc. They sweep through and kill people. That’s
what we’re like when we walk in rebellion to God. We can be touched off by
anything that offends our pride or selfishness, and come howling through and
hurt people.
· Now, have you ever heard a dove moan or coo? They do it over and over and over again and can drive you batty. The Hebrew text of v. 11 repeats the verb for the dove’s sound twice. Taking this repetition together with actual habits of the birds, I think it is a simile for our repeated murmuring and complaining against God and the things He does in our lives.
The response that God is looking for, therefore, is confession of our sin to Him with a heart of repentance, to turn toward Him and away from our selfish rebellion against Him.
This is what Isaiah does together with the people of God in v. 12
· Notice how the “they” has changed to “we” – it was “their works are works of iniquity” now it is “our transgressions… our sins”
· In Jesus’ parable of the two men in the temple: Luk 18:11-14 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. 12 I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I get. 13 But the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote his breast, saying, God, be thou merciful to me a sinner. 14 I say unto you, This man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled; but he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” Are you willing to humble yourself and pray, “God have mercy on me, a sinner”? That’s what God wants.
And He is not just looking for a general apology, He wants us to be specific in confessing our sins. Isaiah lays out a list of 6 things in v.13:
When we confess our sin and call a spade a spade, speaking the truth of the situation as God sees it, we have taken the first step towards making things right.
We see those three key words again in v. 14: Justice, Righteousness, and Truth.
· Instead of denying that they’re missing or looking to humans to provide them, we have an honest admission that our sin has damaged Justice, Righteousness, and Truth.
· Justice has “turned back” because we “turned back from following God” (v.13).
· Righteousness is standoffish because “he who turns away from evil has been taken advantage of” (v.15),
· and Truth has stumbled because nobody wanted to hear God’s prophets speak “straightforwardly” – they told them to shut up in 30:10 because they wanted “crooked” roads (v.8).
o It’s our natural tendency to make our sin sound less offensive than it really is. “I took a few too many” instead of “I stole” or “I was gluttonous.” I remember having conversations with Josh when he was a little boy, “Why did you hit your brother with that stick?” There’s Beni bleeding on the ground, and Josh says something like, “I didn’t hit him with the stick, I just swung the stick at him so that it would touch him.”
It is then that God kicks His prepared plan into action.
· Verses 15-17 describes actions of God in the past tense with Hebrew Perfect tense verbs. God already has a plan of salvation in place.
· When we confess our sins and turn away from them, He redeems us.
· I plan to go into the details of vs. 15-21 next Sunday, but for today, let’s go back to verse 1.
· It echoes 50:2 which said …Does my hand come up so very short from the redemption, and is there not strength in me to deliver?...
· God’s hand is not too short to save. He will hear us when we call out to Him in repentance. Take courage! If you are turning from sin, God will deliver you!
· Hear these promises from God:
Luke 1:77-79 In the words of Zachariah from the New Testament, Jesus came “To give knowledge of salvation unto His people in the remission of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the dayspring from on high shall visit us, to shine upon them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death; to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
Isa 4:3-4 And he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy, everyone who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem, when the Lord has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the bloodstains of Jerusalem from her midst
Isa 58:8-9 Then your light will break forth like the dawn and your restoration will spring up speedily, and your righteousness will proceed before your face; the glory of Jehovah will be your sweep. Then you will call and Jehovah will answer…
Isa 60:18-19 Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, desolation nor destruction within thy borders; but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise… Jehovah will be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory.
Isa 54:13-14 And all your children will be disciples of Jehovah, and great will be the peace of your children! In righteousness will you be established, you must get far away from oppression, for you will not be frightened, and from the terror, for it will not come near to you.
It all starts by recognizing that we are not basically good, and turning from our sin to God!
Nate Wilson’s website – Isaiah Sermon Expositions