A Study in Sin

In today’s chapter Isaiah is, once again, going after Israel’s sin. And it’s good for us that he does. I say that because of something Paul wrote about the history of Israel. ‘Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.’ It can be a little depressing to study sin, even if it is someone else’s sin. It can, however, lead to good. Isaiah wrote about Israel’s failures for your sake. You would do well to ponder their example. And the goal of this is, of course, that you might follow Jesus well. Let me say now that while we will be spending most of our time considering this dark topic of sin, the chapter ends on a very happy note. The Spirit intends to encourage you. As I have been doing recently, I’ll go through the chapter one section at a time. Each section has something to teach us about sin.

Listen as I read the first section, verses 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 situation here is much like what we saw last week when the issue was fasting. The people of Israel have been performing the appropriate religious ritual. They have been praying. But they don’t see anything happening as a result. Their assumption is that the problem is with Jesus. He must be deaf or too weak to act. Isaiah responds to this quite clearly. The problem is not with Jesus. The problem is with Israel and its sin. Because of their unrepentant attitude toward their sin, Jesus has decided not to respond to their prayers.

Let me mention two things. First, Jesus is not punishing His Church here. But He is disciplining it. Remember the difference. Discipline is about mercy. Discipline hopes for repentance and faith. Discipline is an expression of love. Punishment, however, is only about justice. It has no mercy in it. There have been and will be times when Jesus will discipline you because of your sin. Whether it’s related to your prayers or to something else, it will be clear to you that life isn’t working right. When that happens don’t just tell yourself, ‘Well, what are you going to do? That’s life.’ No. Instead, consider what’s going on. Discuss this with Jesus to see what’s up. There are many reasons why life might not be working right. Jesus’ discipline is only one of them. It might just be that you have a bad cold. If that’s the problem, then the right response might be something like getting more sleep. When life isn’t working right it would be helpful if you had some idea of why. If there is some sin that you need to deal with, once you see that you can repent of it. Let me encourage you to think about what’s going on in your life so you can respond with wisdom.

Here’s another lesson from this. Sin has consequences. In our text, one sin had led to another, and the result was Jesus’ discipline. You want to avoid this. Part of what is needed is for you to develop a sensitivity to sin. You need to develop a good conscience, one that is informed by biblical truth. This way you can see sin quickly and either completely avoid it, or if you’ve fallen into it, repent of it quickly. We are all at different places when it comes to developing our consciences. But wherever you are, this is an area that requires vigilance. Remembering that your sin has consequence will help you in this. You don’t want to find yourself in the situation that Israel faced in our text.

Listen to the next section, verses 3-8.

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. Their webs will not serve as clothing; men will not cover themselves with what they make. Their works are works of iniquity, and deeds of violence are in their hands. 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. 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.

Did you notice how Isaiah writes about parts of the body to describe the effects of sin? He includes hands and fingers, lips and tongues, and feet. In this way Isaiah talks about things we do, words we speak and places we go. When I read something like this in Scripture, or see it in someone’s life, I have several responses. Here’s one: I feel sad. Jesus created those hands, lips and feet, with some good purposes in mind. He made hands and fingers to create beauty. He made lips and tongues to speak truth that would give grace to those listening. He made feet to walk in His paths and thus discover wonders. But what do we have instead? Blood, lies, evil. The children of Adam and Eve were supposed to be glorious creatures, full of life and joy and beauty. To see what we have become instead is at least something to grieve. Sin kills. It strives to produce ugliness, and it does a very good job of it.

Here’s one more thought from this section. Your sin will not affect only one part of your life. Sin is like a cancer. It spreads. Sin doesn’t just affect hands that work. It also affects lips that speak. And it moves on from there. So, wherever you see sin affecting you, attack it. You might think that it is just a little thing in an area of life that isn’t all that important. Left alone it will neither stay a little thing nor will it limit itself to that one small area. Sin is your enemy. Deal with it as such. As one of the Puritans wrote: ‘…be killing sin or it will be killing you.’

Now for the third section, verses 9-15a.

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. 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. For our transgressions are multiplied before you, and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us, and we know our iniquities: transgressing, and denying the Lord, and turning back from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart lying words. 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.

I’ve read three sections to you. They differ in several ways, and one of them has to do with the grammatical concept of person. The first section is in the second person, ‘you’ and ‘your’. Here, Isaiah writes, ‘… your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God…’ But the next section moves us into the third person, ‘they’ and ‘their’. ‘Their feet run to evil, and they are swift to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity…’ Did you notice how Isaiah wrote this third section? First person plural, ‘us’ and ‘we’. ‘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.’ For the first part of our chapter Isaiah has been talking about the sins of the people around him. But here, when we get to some of the consequences, Isaiah includes himself. It’s not that justice is far from ‘them’. It’s far from ‘us’. He is also affected by the lawlessness of the day. And there is a reason why Isaiah writes like this. He understands that Jesus deals with His people as a group. So, to be sure, it is ‘they’ who have sinned, but it is ‘we’ who suffer the consequences. Isaiah has not joined in the sins of the people, but because he is one of the people, he has to face the results.

This shows up in other places. In the book of Joshua it was one man, Achan, who stole some things from Jericho but note how this is described. ‘But the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things, for Achan the son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of the devoted things. And the anger of the LORD burned against the people of Israel.’ Ezra, the scribe, hears that some of the men of Israel have taken pagan women for wives. He fasts and then prays, ‘We have sinned’. Did he marry foolishly? Absolutely not! But he knows that Jesus deals with His Church as a group. Daniel is another example of this. Read his prayer in Daniel 9. This isn’t only a negative. It is also quite positive. Paul teaches that we are the Body of Christ. Jesus deals with us as a group.

Here are some things to consider. As a church we have certain goals. But one of them is not that we need to become a group. We are already a group. This is who we really are. This is an indicative of the Gospel. Jesus, by the Spirit, has already created bonds between us. This is what it means that you have been baptized into the body of Christ. Now since we are a group, we need to act like it. That’s an imperative of the Gospel. In this we are not trying to create what is not. We are simply trying to be what we really are. So, on the one hand, this means encouraging each other as we deal with life, fight with sin, wrestle with the temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil. The flip side of that is that we are to lean on each other, to seek the encouragement and help that we need from the other people in this room. We are a group. Seeing things this ways also adds a certain motivation to approaching each other when it comes to dealing with sin. Jesus taught us, ‘If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone.’ We are reluctant to do that; cultural boundaries and all of that. But if we neglect going to an erring brother, there will be other brothers and sisters in the Body who may have to bear the consequences of the sin of this brother. Isaiah suffered the consequences of the sins of others. Jesus deals with us as a group.

To be sure, there is a balance here between the place of the group and the place of the individual. And the Church, through the centuries, has swung from one extreme to the other. But instead of waiting for the perfect balance, let’s try to work toward it. In our day we need to give more attention to the basic fact that Jesus deals with us as a group.

In the next section the focus shifts. Now, we see Jesus’ response to the sin of His Church. This starts with the second half of verse 15.

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; then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him. He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head; he put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak. According to their deeds, so will he repay, wrath to his adversaries, repayment to his enemies; to the coastlands he will render repayment. So they shall fear the name of the Lord from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun; for he will come like a rushing stream, which the wind of the Lord drives.

First, let’s look at two words. The first is ‘displeased’. ‘The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice.’ Literally, it is, ‘The Lord saw it, and it was evil in His sight.’ One of the smart people I read suggested replacing the word ‘displeased’ with the word ‘appalled’. The situation was not merely unpleasant. It was appalling. And part of what was so appalling is in the next sentence. ‘He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede…’ ‘Wondered’ here isn’t, ‘Hmm, I wonder why that is?’ It’s more about the word ‘amazed’. In fact, one translation used the word ‘shocked’. ‘He was shocked that there was no one to intercede.’ So, here is this awful situation. The people of God have run amok with their sins. It’s horrid. And what makes it worse is that no one is doing anything to deal with it. This seems to be a reference back to those silent dogs in chapter 56. The shepherds of the flock were supposed to make sure nothing like this happened in Israel, or if it did, to act decisively. But they’re off doing who knows what. If you want one example of decisive action in the face of sin take a look at Phinehas in Numbers 25.

Jesus sees the situation, is appalled and shocked and so, He acts. His response pictured in two ways. First, He is pictured as a warrior. Isaiah describes Him putting on His armor, getting ready for battle. Note the key words: ‘vengeance’, ‘repayment’. The first is a church word. Let’s translate it. How about ‘revenge’? Jesus is out for revenge. It’s payback time. We’re beyond discipline. It’s time for punishment. Jesus is going to exact justice. No mercy. And His goal is righteousness. And so, Isaiah writes, ‘According to their deeds, so will he repay, wrath to his adversaries, repayment to his enemies…’ You don’t want to mess with Jesus when He is angry. You really don’t.

But there is another picture of Jesus’ response.

“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.”

While Jesus is to some a warrior who is committed to bringing His justice to bear against their sins, He is, to others, a redeemer. Jesus comes to redeem. Let me point out two things that are included in Jesus’ redemption. One is forgiveness. Earlier in the chapter Isaiah described the sins of the people, the horrible things that they did with their hands and lips and feet. We sinners can do some pretty ugly things. And yet, Jesus, the Redeemer, promises forgiveness, complete forgiveness, for all of that. Complete forgiveness for all of your sins without exception. The forgiveness of the Gospel is a gift beyond what we can comprehend. And you will understand that better and better as you see the utter sinfulness of your sin better and better. But this forgiveness did not come about because the Father decided to sweep it all under the rug. Jesus suffered hell to provide forgiveness. Justice, without mercy, was not ignored. Jesus satisfied justice and suffered merciless punishment. I tell you that not to make you feel bad. Jesus never asked for sympathy. I remind you of this so that you would give yourself wholeheartedly to following Jesus. The Cross is proof that Jesus loves you. All He asks for is your love in return.

But redemption is more than forgiveness. It also includes being restored. By the Spirit, Jesus is at work taking hands and lips and feet that have created such evil and ugliness, and renewing them so that they would, instead, create the good, the true and the beautiful. The redeemed are being re-created. He is doing that in you right now. And just like His forgiveness, this is yours as a gift. One day you will awaken a completely changed person, to fulfill your personal creation mandate, using hands and lips and feet for much good.

But now notice: We’ve been talking about Jesus’ response to the sin of His Church. Jesus comes to His Church, and to some He comes to dispense justice for their sin and for others to redeem them from their sin. He deals with each either as warrior or redeemer. What makes the difference? Isaiah has told us. ‘And a Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression…’ It’s always a matter of repentance and faith. It’s always a matter of being honest with Jesus about your sin and its ugliness and its evil – and then, appealing to Him as Savior. Because of His kind favor toward you, that repentance and faith will bear good fruit. It will show as renewed efforts at following Jesus well, especially in the area of that sin, efforts that will, in time, succeed.

I have given you have a number of perspectives on sin and its consequences and its defeat. I would encourage you to choose one and meditate on it so that the Spirit can use some of His truth to do you good.