Isaiah 59:1-21
Sin, Confession and Redemption
1 Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save,
nor his ear too dull to hear.
2 But your iniquities have separated
you from your God;
your sins have hidden his face from you,
so that he will not hear.
3 For your hands are stained with blood,
your fingers with guilt.
Your lips have spoken lies,
and your tongue mutters wicked things.
4 No one calls for justice;
no one pleads his case with integrity.
They rely on empty arguments and speak lies;
they conceive trouble and give birth to evil.
5 They hatch the eggs of vipers
and spin a spider's web.
Whoever eats their eggs will die,
and when one is broken, an adder is hatched.
6 Their cobwebs are useless for clothing;
they cannot cover themselves with what they make.
Their deeds are evil deeds,
and acts of violence are in their hands.
7 Their feet rush into sin;
they are swift to shed innocent blood.
Their thoughts are evil thoughts;
ruin and destruction mark their ways.
8 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.
9 So justice is far from us,
and righteousness does not reach us.
We look for light, but all is darkness;
for brightness, but we walk in deep shadows.
10 Like the blind we grope along the wall,
feeling our way like men without eyes.
At midday we stumble as if it were twilight;
among the strong, we are like the dead.
11 We all growl like bears;
we moan mournfully like doves.
We look for justice, but find none;
for deliverance, but it is far away.
12 For our offenses are many in your sight,
and our sins testify against us.
Our offenses are ever with us,
and we acknowledge our iniquities:
13 rebellion and treachery against the LORD,
turning our backs on our God,
fomenting oppression and revolt,
uttering lies our hearts have conceived.
14 So justice is driven back,
and righteousness stands at a distance;
truth has stumbled in the streets,
honesty cannot enter.
15 Truth is nowhere to be found,
and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey.
The LORD looked and was displeased
that there was no justice.
16 He saw that there was no one,
he was appalled that there was no one to intervene;
so his own arm worked salvation for him,
and his own righteousness sustained him.
17 He put on righteousness as his breastplate,
and the helmet of salvation on his head;
he put on the garments of vengeance
and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak.
18 According to what they have done,
so will he repay
wrath to his enemies
and retribution to his foes;
he will repay the islands their due.
19 From the west, men will fear the name of the LORD,
and from the rising of the sun, they will revere his glory.
For he will come like a pent-up flood
that the breath of the LORD drives along.
20 "The Redeemer will come to Zion,
to those in Jacob who repent of their sins,"
declares the LORD.
21 "As for me, this is my covenant with them," says the LORD. "My Spirit, who is on you, and my words that I have put in your mouth will not depart from your mouth, or from the mouths of your children, or from the mouths of their descendants from this time on and forever," says the LORD.
The Prophet Isaiah teaches us that our sins have hidden His face from us...Our sins keep us separate us from God...Isaiah then goes into detail and tells us how wretched man is...Here is a partial list of our wickedness from Isaiah: Our hands are stained with blood, our fingers with guilt, our lips have lied, our tongues have muttered wicked things, no one wants perfect justice, no one has complete integrity, our thoughts are evil thoughts, the way of peace we do not know, justice is far from us, like the blind we grope along feeling our way, and we have turned our backs against our God...Truth is nowhere to be found...
The LORD has looked around and there is no justice...No man has intervened, not one leader of any nation has done justice...No king has gotten with the priests or prophets and intervened for justice...
Isaiah goes on to tell us that God's own righteousness sustains Him...God has put on righteousness as His breastplate, and the helmet of salvation is on His head...He has put on the garments of vengeance...He will wrap Himself in the zeal as a cloak (St. Paul will write about spiritual armor later (Ephesians 6:14-17)...God will pay those to what they have done, so will bring wrath to His enemies, and retribution to His foes...He will pay the islands their due...From the west, men will fear the name of the LORD...From the rising sun, they will revere His glory...He will come like a pent up flood that the breath of the LORD drives along...Our Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins, says the LORD...
This is the LORD's covenant: My Spirit is on you, and My words that I have put in your mouth will not depart from your mouth, or from the mouths of your children, or from the mouths of your descendants for this time and forever...
Isaiah writes about our Redeemer hundreds of years before He came...He, in fact, did come to Zion, and came for sinners, who He wants and asks us to repent...Our Redeemer is Jesus...We know Jesus is the Word, and the Word was with God from the very beginning (John 1:1)...We know that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8)...He never changes...His love never changes...Truth never changes...
We learn that sin separates us from God...When we sin, our inequities make us drift from Him...Our sin separates us from Him...We often think that God hides from us, and we look and look for Him...When we seek the LORD our God with all our heart, we will find Him when we seek Him with all our heart and with all our soul (Deuteronomy 4:29)...When we sin, this is the complete opposite of seeking Him with all your heart, and with all our soul...God is not only love, but the pure energy of LOVE...He is the perfect LIGHT...His LOVE and His LIGHT never go out...God shows this LOVE by giving us free will, and allows us to make our mistakes...He even allows us to sin...But He created us, He gives us and puts in us a Holy Spirit...We know morally we are to be good, because the Holy Spirit is in us...Man tries to be good, but the closest thing we have to God are our Saints...The Great Saints tried and tried very hard to be good, holy, and perfect, but for one reason or another they (and we) just cannot make it...They get in the LIGHT, and then it seems drift from the good LIGHT...The LIGHT is always shining, it is always there and lit...That is what He is LOVE and LIGHT...Our love and our light go out, off and on, all the time...His LOVE and LIGHT never go out...One day or moment we feel close to God, and the next hour or the next day we feel adrift from Him...We are in His LIGHT for a few moments and then drift out of His LIGHT...An analogy might be when we are young and first married, we are intensely in love with our spouse...Our love is like a very tightly clenched fist...Our fist seems to loosen over the years, and as we age, and as we change, our love changes...Our love will change, from what it was like yesterday, today, and tomorrow as we age...This is the the way we are, we are wretched...When man and woman were originally created, they we in the Garden of Eden...When they were in the Garden, they were with God, and they were always in the LIGHT...In Eden we had paradise...Their fists remained tightly clenched, until they were forced to leave God's paradise...Adam and Eve had changed...Sin had changed them...Sin made them leave paradise on earth...Sin keeps us out of paradise...Sin makes us change...Sin moves us out of the LIGHT...The wages of our sin is death (Romans 6:23)...Sin makes us hide...God has never sinned...Jesus never sinned...God is unchanging...Jesus never changes...God is eternal...God is not hiding from us, we are hiding from Him...
The Redeemer, from Zion, promised and brought the Holy Spirit to us (John 14:15-30)...The Redeemer came for sinners and not the righteous (Matthew 9:13)...Our sins keep us separate from God...But the Redeemer is our Savior, who died for our sins...He is our path to God, He is our connection to God...Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life...No one gets to the Father, except through Me (John 14:6)...Jesus is our hope on earth...