In Scott Brown's sermon on Isaiah 59, the speaker explores the theme of separation from God due to iniquities and sins. The sermon delves into vivid imagery presented by Isaiah to illustrate the spiritual separation and its consequences. Brown examines the contrast between chapters 58 and 59 of Isaiah, highlighting the dark imagery of chapter 59 as a representation of life apart from God. The sermon discusses the nature of iniquity and sin, emphasizing the inherent twisted nature of humanity and the specific acts of sin that separate individuals from God. It also addresses the hindrances to prayer and the reasons why God may not hear prayers, linking it to a lack of righteousness and justice. Brown emphasizes the role of the intercessor, who brings people back to God through His righteousness. The sermon draws connections to other biblical passages, including Deuteronomy 28 and Romans 3, to illustrate the themes of sin, separation, and salvation. Ultimately, Brown highlights the agents of revival, such as God's hand, ear, and intercessor, as means through which God seeks to save sinners and bring about spiritual renewal.

I'll be reading Isaiah 59 verses 1 through 14. Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, nor his ear heavy, that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity, your lips have spoken lies, your tongue has muttered perversity. No one calls for justice, nor does any plead for truth.

They trust in empty words and speak lies. They conceive evil and bring forth iniquity. They hatch viper's eggs and weave the spider's web. He who eats of their eggs dies and from that which is crushed a viper breaks out. Their webs will not become garments nor will they cover themselves with their works.

Their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands. Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. Wasting and destruction are in their paths, the way of peace they have not known, and there is no justice in their ways. They have made themselves crooked paths.

Whoever takes that way shall not know peace. Therefore justice is far from us nor does righteousness overtake us. We look for light but there is darkness, for brightness but we walk in blackness. We grope for the wall like the blind and we grope as if we had no eyes. We stumble at noonday as at twilight.

We are as dead men in desolate places. We all growl like bears and moan sadly like doves. We look 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 as for our iniquities we know them in transgressing and lying against the Lord and departing from our God speaking oppression and revolt conceiving and uttering from the hearts the heart words of falsehood Justice is turned back and righteousness stands afar off, For truth has fallen in the street and equity cannot enter.

Let's pray. Oh Father, we praise your name today for these words. Lord, even though they're hard words, they are true words. And Lord, we thank you for bringing us here today we pray for the preaching today of the word Lord that it might be heard that we might be doers of any application that might be brought to us today. In Christ's name, amen.

Well with Isaiah, you need no video clips, you need no PowerPoint, you need no imagery because he supplies some of the most remarkable imagery you'll ever read about in any kind of literature. I mean, look at how he's illustrating his message here today. And of course, he's painting a picture, as it seems that he always does. And this picture that he's painting really is a larger picture that goes before chapter 59 and actually continues on at least till chapter 63. And what chapter 59's focus is this whole matter that people are separated from God.

That God is so kind and he sends an intercessor so that they would not be separated but be brought near. But look at the imagery here. It starts out with a hand that's not shortened and it's heavy ears or ears that are not heavy and a face that's hidden. And then in verse 3 you have these hands that are there and they're defiled with blood and fingers and lips and tongues. All of them are defiled.

These are the images that he lays before us. In verse 4, you have words, but they're empty words. What's an empty word? Well, Isaiah is trying to draw us to understand this whole matter of what it means to be separated from God. And verse 5, you find yourself with viper's eggs and spider's webs and he who eats the eggs dies.

It's absolutely incredible. And then you have feet, you know, running to shed innocent blood. You have crooked paths. You have walking in darkness. You have people groping along a wall like blind men.

No, but it's worse than that, because they don't even have eyes. And here we're just in verse 10. And you have these people that are, it's like they're in the broad daylight, but why are they stumbling? Nobody stumbles in the broad daylight, but that's what happens here. And then you have these people growling like bears, they're moaning sadly like doves.

And In verse 14, you have this picture. It's so remarkable. You're on a street. And justice is turned away from the street. But it's not just turned away.

It's also fallen in the street. And then you have the people of God and they're a prey, they're being chased down, they're being hunted and hounded and hated. And then you get to verse 15 and you just continue on in this imagery. In verses 1 through 15 there's this imagery of separation from God. And then in the middle of 15 and then on is a picture of how God has brought men near through his intercessor.

Now today we're just going to focus on the first 15 verses and then and then we'll next week move into this this picture of really the Messiah this warrior who rescues his people But don't forget about the last part as we're speaking of this first part, because you really need to see it as a whole. They're not really disconnected at all. And we need to see this continuity with chapter 58, the previous chapter, because 59 takes us back to that question in 58 where the people are saying, why have you not heard? Why are you not blessing us? Why is it not going well for us?

And that's the question. And Judah is actually blaming God for their distance from God. And so this follow-up here in 59 is an explanation. And there are many messages in this in this chapter And I'd like to review some of them just to give you a little bit of taste For them before we walk through them one by one but the first matter that you see is is the absolute harshness of life apart from God. We just exited a chapter that's so full of light and delight and now there's this scene of darkness and this is so easily illustrated by comparing chapter 58 verse 10.

Go ahead and look at there with me. Turn back to chapter 58 verse 10 and if you compare 58 10 with 59 10 you'll see the contrast and how dramatic it is in 58 10 you say we read if you extend your soul to the hungry and Satisfy the afflicted soul then your light shall dawn in the darkness and your darkness shall be as the noonday the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your soul in drought and strengthen your bones and you shall be like a water garden and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail and then after that the people are building up the old waste places they're putting in foundations that people haven't seen from for generations it's a it's a beautiful picture of glory and light healing and restoration But then if you go to 59.10 in the next chapter, what do you see? We grope for the wall like the blind and we grope as if we had no eyes. We all growl like bears and we moan sadly like doves. There's just such a dramatic contrast between these two chapters, but they need to be thought of altogether as well.

And so these two chapters also, they're very much like Deuteronomy chapter 28, where the beginning declares the goodness of God blessed shall you be in the city, blessed shall you be in the country blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl, blessed shall you be when you come in and blessed shall you be when you go out. Well that's the result of obeying God. Those who obey the law of God find all these things. And then he turns and spins actually the larger part of the chapter and speaks of what happens to you when you have no heart to obey God. There just is no heart in you for it.

You're so distracted by the world and you love the world so much. But what happens? Cursed shall you be in the city. Cursed shall you be in the country. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.

Cursed shall you be when you come in and cursed shall you be when you go out. I think chapters 58 and 59 are very similar in terms of their structure that you find in Deuteronomy chapter 28. So you find this this harshness of being apart from God and then secondly you find what are the hindrances of prayer? Because there are reasons that God does not hear our prayers. Our sins are standing in the way.

And then thirdly it speaks of why some are saved and why some are not saved. And the issue has to do with sin, the hatred of sin. The desire to run from sin is the difference between the saved and the unsaved person. And the fourth thing that you see is really the means of revival because this chapter contains so many of the means of revival. Now, man's depravity is the barrier against revival.

But don't blame God for the lack of revival. Blame lawlessness for a lack of revival in the land. And so in chapter 59, at the same time, you see God's zeal to save sinners. And particularly in the first two verses and in the last six verses, you see God's zeal to save sinners and what he does, how he so desires to heal and to save. If you want to find the fulfillment of this text go to Romans chapter 3 where the Apostle Paul quotes this very text numerous times and what does he say?

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God? But what you what is there any hope? Yes in the righteousness of Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone And that's why you find the word righteousness or actually justice mentioned in this chapter a half a dozen times and we'll get to that a little bit later. I'll give you some more detail on that. But you find the zeal of the Lord to come and rescue, because his hand is not short.

And you find the same spirit of Isaiah in the Lord Jesus Christ who was weeping over Jerusalem and he said zeal for my house has eaten me up and so in his zeal for his house he must declare their sins. You cannot you cannot know the good news until you embrace the bad news. That you are desperately wicked beyond hopeless at all. You're nothing but groping like a blind man. Worse than that, you have no eyes.

And your only hope is that God's hand would stretch out to save you. And so you find this whole matter of the zeal of the Lord. And how is that expressed? Well, you begin to see it in verse 15, and the discussion of this intercessor that begins in verse 15 stretches all the way through chapter 63, verse 6, where there are these continued outpourings of imagery that describe the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ and what He has done to save sinners. And so there's this, in verse 15, there's this emergence of this unexpected individual.

He just sort of surprisingly shows up on this scene of degradation and hardship and tragedy and groaning like bears. Now, you children that are here, you just have to recognize what's in this chapter you have bears you have Doves you have you have spiders you have spider webs you have you have all these things just to help you understand the glory of God so that He's given you things in this world so that when you see them, they'll help you think rightly about yourself and about this world and about the Lord Jesus Christ. And particularly in this chapter, just how devastating it is to turn your affections toward anything except the kingdom of heaven. So let's begin in verses 1 & 2. You find this problem of the distances is identified in verses 1 & 2, But the first thing that we learn is really this beginning of the declaration of God's zeal to save His people.

And He begins with these words, behold. In other words, to look, look. But look at what? Look at the Lord's hand. That it is not shortened, that it cannot save, nor his ear heavy, that it cannot hear.

Now, he begins with this whole idea of a shortened hand and God's hand is not short. He can reach out. You know, one thing I was very well aware of, you know, when I was growing up and I was doing various sports, is that the guys with the long arms usually won. Okay? The longer your arms, the more balls you'll catch, the longer your arms, the more leverage you have, and you're just born that way.

You just, you know, I was always so frustrated, you know, because I just couldn't jump like some of my long footed long legged long ankle friends you know I Just wasn't born that way you know But it matters whether there's a long or a short hand or an arm or a leg. But God's hands are not short at all. And nor are His ears heavy. And again we come to this very same word heavy that we find in the previous chapter when when the Lord says that you should call the day honorable. It's the same word kavod heavy.

In the same way that you call the Lord's day honorable you regard it as as heavy and The this word is used often for the heaviness of treasure to just be surrounded with these with treasures that are so heavy you are heavy laden with treasure and and so he's using the same word for the ear but here now he's talking about an ear that stopped up with all this heaviness Just ears that are just jammed with heaviness. And so with heavy stuff, so nothing can be heard. He says God's ears are not heavy at all. These are the agents of revival, God's hands, God's ears. This is how God does save His people.

And this is why there are so many agents of revival that are revealed in here. And it's so important that as you understand the depravity and the darkness and just the defilements of sin and how important it is to turn away. At the same time, the agents of revival here are declared over and over again. In verse 1, it's the Lord's hand. And In verse 1, it's the Lord's hand.

And in verse 1, it's the Lord's ear. In verse 2, it's the Lord's face. And then from verses 3 on all the way to 15, there's this disclosure of all the sin. But when you get to verse 16, you have the Lord's intercessor. In verse 17, you have the Lord's armor.

These are all agents of revival These are the things that God has given to save you in verse 18. It's the Lord's fury in verse 19 It's the Lord's spirit in verse 20. It's the Lord's Redeemer in verse 21 It's the Lord's covenant and it's also the Lord's word in the very last verse here in verse 21. These are the agents of revival and you know what you know what they all are saying? They're saying the same thing that you read in first Chronicles chapter 7 verse 14.

If my people who are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray, then I will hear their voice and I will come and heal their land. That's the whole picture that's here. That God's hand, God's ears, God's armor, God's spirit are ready to save. These are the agents of revival. And then Isaiah in verse 2 begins to speak of these tragedies of separation from God and We're gonna spend you know Most of our time talking about these tragedies that are here and and the first tragedy is this separation verse 2 but your iniquities have separated you from your God and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear.

So there are things that will cause God not to hear you or me. And there are two words that describe it iniquities and sins. He uses these two words and I'm fairly confident they speak of different things. Iniquities is a word that speaks of our basic nature. It really means to bend, to twist, to distort.

It really speaks of our warped sin nature. That we are twisted by nature. And this is why the apostle Paul says, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. There's no righteousness in man at all. We are twisted.

We are twisted from birth. And there are always two problems that mankind has Sin like this this are warped Sinful nature that was passed down to us at the fall by Adam. We are warped. We are twisted we just don't think rightly at all without God. And of course this chapter has its focus in describing this twisted nature and what it does.

And then there's the word sins and this focuses on various failures. You've probably been aware of this whole idea of missing the mark. That's what this word refers to. You're picturing a target and there's the bullseye. You're always missing the bullseye.

You're always missing the mark. Because there are sins, specific sins that you commit against the Lord. And so He says that there are these two things that have separated you first of all your sin That's your sin nature and then secondly your sins the things that you do as a result of your sin nature And this is man's greatest problem. This is the reason for every problem in the world. It's declared right here.

There are iniquities and there are sins You know and the sins have to do with Revolting against the standard that God has set forth Now he says that these things these iniquities and these sins have separated you. Now, he uses a very dramatic word here. It's a word that you find in the book of Genesis where God says that he separated the heavens and the earth. And this separation is so dramatic. And so he uses this word to bring to people's minds just how drastic this separation is.

It's a hopeless separation. And there's nothing that can bridge the gap except for God's zeal to come and save and so here he is he says that that he does not see but it's not as if he does not see in one sense. Because his eyes go to and fro across the earth. But the idea is that God is distant in the sense that there's a spiritual separation. It's not that God is gone.

It's not that God doesn't understand what you're doing. It's not that kind of separation. He does see, but there's a spiritual separation. And it's a separation from birth because we were conceived in iniquity. And This is such a tragic thing to be separated from God, to find yourself without his hope, without his direction, without his comfort.

It's a picture of being cut loose from him, without his daily help, without his care for you, because you're on your own, because you've desired to be on your own, and as a result he gives the fruit of it. And there's so many examples of this kind of separation. Now, there are two kinds of separation in this passage of scripture I'm quite confident and the first kind is separation for all eternity but the alienation that you know today will only escalate until there is eternal damnation. That's one kind of separation. But there's another kind of separation that's implied in this passage, and that is separation for a time.

Not for all eternity, but just for a time. Time enough to repent, time enough to turn to God, time enough to cry out to him. It's that same kind of separation that the prodigal son experienced when he departed from his father. He was separated from all the blessings and finally he realized just how sweet it was in his father's house and how damaging it was and how harmful and unprofitable and how absolutely stupid and ludicrous it was for him to be separated from his father And so his separation was not for all eternity. And there are always these two kinds of people in a church, always.

And so I know I'm speaking to you. I'm speaking to those who will be lost for all eternity. And I'm also speaking to those who will turn, who will repent. And I'm just here to say, repent, turn, turn to the Lord Jesus Christ. Come to Him.

He says, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest." Now there are a number of tragedies here. It says that he will not hear. He will not hear because of your separation. And there are many places we can go in Scripture to find this very same kind of idea where God does not hear. One of the most remarkable places you can go to learn more about God not hearing you is 1 Peter 3, 7, where we learn that God does not hear the prayers of husbands who treat their wives poorly.

When a man, a husband, doesn't live with his wife in an understanding way, God does not hear. He does not hear your prayers. This is why he says in 1 Peter 3, 7, husbands likewise dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life that your prayers might not be hindered. This is one of the great tragedies of hardness of heart in a marriage. God does not hear And you are alone in the world without help.

And it's such a tragic thing that he speaks of here. But at the same time, in that same chapter in 1 Peter, If you go down to verse 12 or verse 11, he says, let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayers. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.

Now I believe Peter was most likely thinking about Isaiah 59 when he wrote these things. Because the language is just astonishingly similar. But the whole idea here is that God does save those who are separated from Him. And you might think that your sins have hopelessly separated you from God. And that is true if you persist in your sins.

But if you turn, his hand is not shortened, and his ears are not stopped up." What a blessing that is. You know, God saves the worst of the worst. If you just read the Bible through, you'll see it over and over again. In the very last hour of a man's life, a thief, a despicable man who was hung on the cross right by Jesus Christ. And the Lord Jesus Christ saved him right there on the cross.

You find the adulterous woman in John chapter 4 verses 7 through 20. She had so many husbands. You know, did you think she might have thought, God cannot forgive me, I have had so many husbands. But God does save the worst of the worst. How about a murderer, Saul, who was murdering and tearing homes apart because he hated the Church of Jesus Christ.

And yet God saved him. Well God does save. And we talked about the prodigal son, you know, that one who was separated just for a time. I pray that that's the only kind that we have here in this church today. Just those who would be separated for a time.

But don't let time pass. You have no time. Turn to Him. And then you see the results of this, the tragedies of the separation begin to be defined in verse 3. Now the whole body is defiled.

He says, for your hands are defiled with blood. Now just picture that for a minute. These are hands that are dripping with defiling blood. Fingers with iniquity, lips, spoken lies, and your tongue has muttered perversity. And what he's saying is that when there's this separation from God, your whole body, your hands, your fingers, your lips, your tongue, these things just represent the whole person.

He's just trying to describe how comprehensive the damage is in being separated from God and There's this blood guiltiness now blood guiltiness is is a category of scripture. That's very important for us to understand and There are there are different kinds of blood guiltiness in the Bible. Perhaps the most famous kind of blood guiltiness is the kind that Ezekiel speaks of in Ezekiel 3 and 33. Or Ezekiel says, if you know the sword of judgment is going to come upon sinners and you don't blow the trumpet, your blood will be on your hands. And the apostle Paul speaks of this very same thing when he says that he is innocent of the blood of all men, because he did not shrink from declaring the whole council of God.

He taught the things, he spoke of the things that were hard for ears to hear. They're actually offensive. He taught the whole council of God. He wasn't afraid of one single word of God. Often you have people, and we've done this I'm sure many times here.

If we counted up how many times we've done this collectively, how we have shrunk back from saying what was true because we were afraid of man. And as a result there's blood guiltiness. There's that kind of blood guiltiness. And this blood guiltiness should just help us understand the zeal of the Lord to save sinners. God is not guilty of any man's blood because he has declared to all men and he sent many many signs throughout the throughout the world but there's there's there's blood there's national blood guiltiness there's personal blood guiltiness that Ezekiel speaks about there's also national blood guiltiness And this has to do with the shedding of innocent blood.

And we live in a nation right now today that has shed more innocent blood than any nation in the history of the world. Do you understand that? We, in this sweet place called America, have a blood guiltiness like no other land. And we have large institutions being funded by our federal government. Here's one thing we know, God does bring down all governments that defy him.

He does. He always has, he always will, and America is not special. And you can see the smoke rising out of some of these abortion clinics, where they have their incinerators, where they actually burn the bodies of these babies. It's like Baal worship of old. One of the largest incineration sites is right here in North Carolina.

As you know, the guillotine of the sexual revolution, you know, feeds these baby-burning centers and they are dissipating the waste of this murderous practice in our world today. In Graham, North Carolina, you can go to Stericycle. It's one of the many incineration sites. It's a site that serves 20 different states. And it's the premier incineration site for the abortion industry.

Right here in sweet home North Carolina. Blood guiltiness. You know, I'm grateful to be in a church where people cry out. They cry out all the time here. And I'm grateful to be connected Literate with hundreds of churches who cry out every week at their abortion clinics.

It's astonishing. I'm so grateful for it Another tragedy of separation from God in addition to blood guiltiness is this aversion for justice and truth. Verse 4, no one calls for justice nor does any plead for truth. They trust in empty words and speak lies. They conceive evil and bring forth iniquity.

Now, verse four should be carefully considered. Look at the words here. Now, it focuses on the use of our voices. Do you see that? And these voices are calling for justice, pleading for truth.

The sin is identified as the sin of speech. Now, The word justice appears here first in Isaiah 59 in this chapter and it appears six times in verses 1 through 15. And there are two different words that are used for justice in this text. And this, I believe, if I can remember correctly, the word here is used one time, zedek. And it has to do with the moral standard.

And the root word of this justice in its use here is focused on morality and it and it it speaks of it uses it it uses terminology that you're really familiar with to be straight to be straight Now we know in our world what it means to be straight. But here this word zedek means to be straight. It's a straight moral standard, it's ethical purity, That's what he's talking about in verse chapter 4. And he's speaking of this emptiness, of this straightness, the lies, the unreliability that's there. And then in verse 5 another another set of tragedies are declared.

And here here the Lord switches to the third person and and what what you find in verses 5 through 8 are these remarkable images of vipers and eggs and spiders. It's just incredible how he describes us. But you know the Lord is so kind to give us vivid imagery. He speaks to us this way. He shows us the truth in images that you find in nature so that you wouldn't be confused, so that no man or woman could ever say, I didn't know.

Because he uses so many different ways to draw us into his kingdom to show us his glory and show us the danger that we're in and turning away from him and here he uses this imagery verse 5 they hatched vipers eggs and weave the spider's web He who eats of their eggs dies, and from that which is crushed a viper breaks out." You know, it's a picture of death by viper's eggs and viper's bites. And there are actually two illustrations here in this verse in verse 5 their first are the snakes and then they're off it's their offspring who break out of these eggs when they're crushed, and then you have the spider's web. And these are just figures to speak of what happens to those who are and those who follow, those who are separated from God. And Those who are distant from God They replicate they reproduce themselves and that's why verse 5 speaks of offspring using vipers eggs as an illustration. These poisonous eggs kill you.

But at the same time, so strangely in the imagery, they multiply vipers and they kill more. These two illustrations are very different. The first one about the vipers really speaks of the harm that's done to others. The second, the weaving of the spider's web, this has to do with uselessness. Now notice in the Hebrew language there are two different words that are used here for viper And some of the different other versions reflect this.

But the first is translated viper, and this is a poisonous snake. And then the second word is adder, translated adder, in some of the versions. And it's a more poisonous snake. It's the idea of from bad to worse. You know, all snakes are not equally poisonous.

I think we know that. We live in North Carolina and we understand that all snakes are not equally poisonous. Some are not poisonous at all. But here the picture is they get from bad to worse and they give birth to iniquity. And it's really about a multi-generational legacy.

It's how sin multiplies throughout the generations. The sins in your family multiply. We have to be so seriously concerned about sin in our families so that it doesn't multiply. We all know how this works. And our sins give birth and they multiply.

In Romans chapter 3 it quotes this. It is the premier fulfillment text of Isaiah 59. Read the whole chapter. It so focuses in on all these various messages. And it does present really the only hope, and that is the righteous one.

It's the righteousness of Jesus Christ, His righteous intercession for sinners. That's what Romans 3 is all about. It's about hopelessly being lost in sin, having eaten and crushed the viper's eggs, and you have been part of this terrible problem in the world, but you're not hopeless, because his hand is not short, and his ears are not stopped up. And so this separation, this distance from God just continues to be described and another tragedy of separation is declared in verse 6 and this gets to the spider's web imagery that Isaiah is bringing and he says their webs will not become garments nor will they cover themselves with their works their works are works of iniquity and the act of violence is in their hands. And so this image is really designed to teach us just how unprofitable sin is.

It leaves you unclothed. They don't become garments. You weave all these plans. You try to create your life on your own. You're separated from God.

You're trying to grab all the hot ideas about how to have a great life and fix everything up. Get all the categories of your life lined up and you're doing it all on your own and you're not on your face before God crying out to him for your life. You go to the world for your life. You know I was sitting with a friend of mine yesterday, a man who has had a very successful business for many, many years. And he pulled out this book from his bag and he said, there's this man that just gave me this book.

It was one of the hot new business books. I forget the name of it. And he said, you know, I used to read every one of these. You know, the next, here's how you, you know, go to the next level on something, you know. And here, this man, you know, this wizened man now, he says, he says, these books are totally worthless.

And I said, you know, it was about maybe 18 years ago I quit buying those books. But I had every one before that. Every hot new business book I would get and read but it's it's it's this life of Creating your life out of out of the world and here what he's saying is it's like a spider's web. It's It does not It does not become a garment it it doesn't it doesn't cover you at all Because it was born out of your separation from God. And This weaving, this idea of weaving, I think it has to do with making plans.

And your plans don't become garments. They don't work out like you thought they would. When God called you to simple things, the word of God and prayer and fasting and the hearing of preaching to deal with your life. But no, you want something different. You're weaving the spider's web and it just does a profit.

And another tragedy in verse 7, now you have this imagery of feet turning toward evil. You know, we had the picture of feet in the previous and it was turning away from your own ways in chapter 58. Now you have feet that are turned toward evil. And Isaiah continues to use this kind of imagery of feet and hands and eyes and ears and all these things. Now in verse 7 you have feet that run to evil and they make haste to shed innocent blood.

Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity, wasting and destruction are in their paths. And then another tragedy in verse 8 is declared. This is just the tragedy of disorderliness, disorderly directions in your life. Verse 8, the way of peace they have not known. There is no justice in their ways.

They have made themselves crooked paths. Whoever takes that way shall not know peace you know we live in a world where people don't have peace and they try to they try to cure that peace with so many things. There are a thousand cures for lack of peace and we all know what they are. These are the crooked paths. And then he says, whoever takes that way shall not know peace.

And he speaks of justice. He says there is no justice in their ways. Now with this appearance of the word justice we have a different word. This is the word mishvat. And the previous word zedek had a different twist to it, but this word speaks of the exercise of government.

It speaks of the division of the functions of government and how judgments are made. So he's talking about bad judgment, this kind of justice, justice that isn't justice at all. And unfortunately, justice is in a rut. It's entrenched in this crooked pathway. And the whole imagery is, your sense of justice is just stuck in this rut of crookedness of the path.

And the result is that there's no peace. Well then, after verse 8, when we pick up verse 9, There's a change to the first person, plural. And Isaiah, now he starts talking about himself and the people of Judah. He's been speaking in the third person, now he's speaking in the first person. And so Isaiah is speaking of himself and of his people at the same time.

I take this to mean that Isaiah is referring to himself and the remnant. He's referring to those who have turned to the Lord, who've realized how these paths of injustice are so bankrupt, and they've turned from them. They're always those who've not bowed their knee to Baal. And so The way I understand this section is that it's heavenly perspective about the consequences of sin. And here they're acknowledging the problems that they are in.

They're actually, Isaiah and that remnant who've turned to the Lord are recognizing where their sins got them. And they're admitting that. And it's a, is it repentance? Possibly. It's at least, at minimum it's acknowledgement.

They're seeing what has happened. And this is one of the most important things that any person can ever come to is the realization of just how destructive sin is and how beautiful the kingdom of heaven is. I can't think of anything more compelling about Christianity than to see the difference there. And it really was this that won my heart toward the Lord. When I was a very young man, it was the beauty of the Lord that won my heart.

It was the beauty of the Lord that won my heart. It was the beauty of the Lord that kept my heart. And here you've and in God's providence I was able to see, I was I was able to acknowledge the sin. And this is always the key to revival. That we need to be rescued from ourselves.

That we need to be rescued from delighting in our own ways. That we need to be rescued from building our own life, our own way, and in the ways of the world. This is the key to life. And God wants to replace your ways with His. And this is a good thing.

When God says, turn away your foot from your own ways, turn away from your own words, turn away from your own works. He does that to bless us, because He's replacing it with something better than our own ways. And Isaiah here is identifying himself with the people in that way. And there are many, many times that Isaiah does this. He does it in chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 6, chapter 8, chapter 9, chapter 32, and 33, and 53, and 63.

And he does it here again. He identifies with the people. He sees himself as having experienced this revelation of just how harmful it is to turn away from God and to make up your own life, your own way. In verse 9, he begins to itemize these things and he says there's just there's no justice for lack of light and There's no righteousness, but there's just blackness look at verse 9 therefore justice is Far from us now here. He's speaking about this kind of governmental judicial type of justice and and and he And he's speaking of our ability to think rightly about things, about categories, to say the right thing about what's happening.

Justice is far from us. We don't think rightly about the things we see because we're separated from God. You should expect this from people who are separated from God. They're not going to see it like it really is. And that's the problem with being separated from God.

You look, two people look at the same thing and they see something totally different because one is of the light and the other is of the darkness. You should just expect that to be true. And there's, you know, you Look around the world and the Christian can see the fang marks of the works of the devil. You can see the injustice. You can feel the darkness because you can see.

That's why Jesus said, I'm the light of the world. You know, when you have the light of life in your soul, you start seeing totally differently. All the things that seemed so normal to you now look so odd. They look out of place. They seem so inappropriate.

Well, that's what happens to a Christian. And you know, if that hasn't happened to you, you're not a Christian. If you don't have new eyes. If you're just going on and you still see the world the same way then you have no light in you. And then in verse 10 there's this lostness and I You know how could how could we fail to understand what he's saying?

We grope for the wall like the blind and we grope as if we had no eyes now Isaiah he wants he wants us to see what it's like not to see justice and righteousness. It's like you don't even have eyes at all. It's such a tragic and irreversible thing. It's one thing to be blind. You know, for people who are somewhat blind, they can come back.

But if you have no eyes, then you are hopeless. It's like being dead in trespasses and sins. There's no hope except for the hand and the ear of God and his intercessor. That's the only hope that's here. And then he, you know, so there's this picture of groping, and then you have this other image over here.

There's a man in the street, and it's in broad daylight, and he's just stumbling around, you know. It's so weird, it's so odd. I mean you can understand it when the light goes dim and people would stumble over things You know if you tripped over a curb in the dark that would be not unusual at all But tripping over a curb in the broad daylight. That's what you find here This lostness and groping against the wall, you know, in Deuteronomy chapter 28, the Lord says If you hate his law, if you do not desire to obey him from the heart, he says the Lord will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of heart, and you shall grope at noonday as a blind man gropes in the darkness. You shall not prosper in your ways.

You shall only be oppressed and plundered continually and no one will save you." And then in verse 11 you find this angry dissatisfaction, despair, deprivation. We're growling like bears. This is sort of an angry kind of a growl. You're just... You're upset with life.

But it's actually worse. There's also this sad moan, like a dove. He gives you both sides of it. There's this bitter, angry angst for what God has done to you. And the terrible deprivations that have come because you're separated from him.

But then it goes down into your heart. You're moaning like a dove. It's so hard. You are so lonely. You are so hurt.

And your only hope is to get it from a bottle, or a sport, or an entertainment, or a friend, or some kind of sexuality. And you will go and grasp and grasp and you will never ever escape the growling or the moaning. And then there's this piling up of sin in verse 12. Our transgressions are multiplied before you and our sins testify against us. They tell the story.

And Isaiah says, as for our iniquities, we know them. We know them. You don't have to have a preacher to tell you what your sins are. You have the Holy Spirit of God and the Word of God. God makes every man in his own image with a conscience.

Paul said every man knows deep within his heart. You have never talked to anyone who does not know. This right here. And then there's lying and oppression in verse 13. It acknowledges more sins of the tongue.

He's speaking of the ways that we lie to ourselves, and then we speak lies to others. And it's interesting here, he says these are words from the heart. In other words, they're sincere. These are sincere lies. They arise out of the heart because out of the heart, the mouth speaks.

But when the heart is wrong, the words are wrong. And that's what you find in verse 13. And then in verse 14, justice is subverted. Now here, Isaiah takes us right into a street. He does this.

He does this a couple of times, if I can remember correctly. So the scene in verse 14 is a street scene and there are four things that are happening There are things justice righteousness truth and equity all of those are doing something. He's like personified these things and all of these Personalities I guess are in the street So picture picture justice and righteousness and truth, and they're all in this street, and you're observing this street. You have this bird's eye view of all these things that are in the street. They're not persons, but they're personified.

Justice is facing away. Justice is going the other way down the street. It's just going with its back turned toward you and I say I think wants us to understand what happens when you're separated from Him. Justice is just going away. Your ability to judge rightly is going the other direction, away from you.

And it's so tragic. And then, righteousness is standing way way out there righteousness is so far you can't get to it and then truth What happened to truth? It's fallen down. Truth has fallen down in the street. And then equity.

Equity can't even get onto the street. Equity can't even enter. And there you are, you can see this whole scene. But it's this acknowledgement of what happens When we're separated from God and Isaiah is acknowledging that that's what happened I think he's telling the story of every man's life who is able to see. And then in verse 15, a remarkable thing is revealed here.

So, truth fails and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. Now, camp on that for a second. He who departs from evil makes himself a prey. Now camp on that for a second. He who departs from evil makes himself a prey.

That means it's really dangerous when you depart from evil. It sets you at odds with people in the world. It makes you a prey. This is a promise. Now this word prey has to do with plunder, being plundered.

You will be plundered in particular ways when you turn away from evil. God promises that he will in some ways plunder those by the hands of the wicked who turn away from evil. And there's so many examples of this in the Bible. Consider Cain and Abel, the very first brothers demonstrated this principle when Cain murdered Abel. Consider Noah, who was mocked.

Consider Elijah, whom the king branded the troubler of Israel just because he was calling out against idolatry and baby sacrifice. Think about all the prophets that were persecuted. Think of David when he said, they that render evil for good are against me because I follow the thing that is good. And our Lord Jesus Christ, the best man who ever lived, the most loving, the wisest, and he was crucified. Because you, when you turn away from evil, will become a prey to those who hate the law of God.

And it just really proves the conflict between light and darkness. It's said of Noah that in building the ark he condemned the world and this is what Christians do when they turn away from evil they condemn the world. They call the world in its bankruptcy And they say this is nothing but poison. These are nothing but adders eggs. And let's not eat them anymore.

And so then we see that this as we move on the second half of verse 15 We had we come again to the means of revival Then the Lord saw it And it displeased him that there was no justice. And what did he do? He sent an intercessor. And that's really the heart of the message of this entire chapter, is that God intervenes, His hand is not too short, He hears, He sees. And it's such a beautiful illustration of how there's hope.

There's hope for the sinner in the righteousness of Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ alone. And he can heal those who've eaten the spiders, or who've eaten the adder's eggs. He can heal those who find themselves unclothed with the spider webs of this world Because his hand is not short His ear is not stopped on His face can turn toward you There is an intercessor There is the armor of God there is his fury there is his spirit. There is his Redeemer There is his covenant there is his work. There is his word And this is how God has designed to bring revival in the world.

And how he can rescue those who've been so hurt by this world through the perfection of his son, the righteousness of Jesus Christ alone. Let's pray. Lord, Lord, I thank you for your clarity. I thank you for showing us the truth about our sin and about the greatness of your mercy. I pray, oh Lord, that you would give us as a church such hatred for sin to turn from it in every form that we know, that you would open up our eyes and that we would find ourselves seeking this intercessor and being clothed with his righteousness not a righteousness of our own for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Amen.