In November of 1988 a 19 yr old woman fell asleep behind the wheel of her car at about 2:15 in the morning. Her car plunged thru a guardrail and was dangling by its left rear tire.
A half dozen passing motorists stopped, grabbed some ropes from one of their vehicles tied the ropes to the back of her car, & hung on until fire units arrived. A ladder was extended from below to help stabilize the car while firefighters tied the vehicle to tow trucks with cables and chains.
One of the rescuers later said “Every time we would move the car, she would yell and scream. She was in terrible pain.”
For nearly 2 ½ hours police officers, tow truck drivers, firefighters and passers-by (about 25 people in all) – to secure the car and pull the woman to safety.
All through the episode, the woman kept repeated a phrase over and over to rescuers. She kept saying: “I’ll do it myself.’”
(November 20, 1988, the Los Angeles Times)
APPLY: This woman was in horrible pain.
She was pinned inside her car,
And she unable to change her circumstances
Or save herself from her danger
Ultimately, it took the efforts nearly 25 people to rescue her from potential death
And yet, she kept thinking she could solve the problem all by herself.
The Bible tells us that this has been the problem for mankind almost from the beginning. Mankind has been trapped by sin… and we continue to contend that we can fix the problem all by ourselves.
In the Garden Adam and Eve sin against God by eating of the tree.
And what was the first thing they noticed once they’d eaten of the fruit? They were naked.
So what did they do to cover their nakedness?
They sewed together fig leaves for garments. But these clothes must have been kind of breezy because when God comes calling - they hide.
Why did they hide? Adam says it was because they were naked.
Their home-made clothing couldn’t quite get the job done.
So God had to fix the problem.
It says in Genesis 3:21
“The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.”
He covered their nakedness
He helped them deal with the results of sinfulness
Now, here in Isaiah 59 we’re told about the trap that we find ourselves in.
We’re been trapped by our sins
We’re ensnared by our past.
Paul wrote to Titus: “At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.” Titus 3:3
LOOK at Isaiah 59:10 "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."
Then in vs. 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”
And then in vs. 15: "Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey…”
You can’t get away from the difficulties that sin brings on us. Even when you SHUN evil… you become a prey.
Now, a lot of people TRY to get by by pretending that their sin doesn’t exist.
As Mark Twain once said: “Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side, which he never shows to anybody.”
Some people DO succeed (for awhile) in covering up that dark side.
ILLUS: Recently, the Governor of New York - Eliot Spitzer - went on TV admitting he had hired prostitutes for 1000s of dollars, and eventually was forced to resign.
Why did he think he could get away with that kind of behavior?
Why did he believe he could get away with it?
How did he think he’d ever be able to cover his sin?
Well, he was a powerful man.
He was wealthy and influential.
And he thought he’d done a good job of covering his tracks.
Just like Adam and Eve in the garden he thought he could hide his sin. He thought his home-made garments could cover his nakedness.
But it didn’t work for him.
And it won’t work for anyone else.
As Numbers 32:23warns us "… you may be sure that your sin will find you out.”
You can only hide your past for so long.
You can only cover your shame for a period of time.
Because eventually it will come to light.
As Isaiah 59:12 says: “For our offenses are many in your sight, and our sins testify against us.”
I don’t care who you are.
There are those times when you’re in the shower… or laying in bed… or driving along in your car. And all of a sudden – unbidden – the memory of some past action, or word, or thought will come into your mind. It will be something that you’ve regretted, but it will come and visit you time after time after time. And you’ll find yourself cringing - hating yourself.
It’s that guilt and that shame over the things we’ve done in the past that brings us down.
We’re like the woman trapped in her car… hanging perilously by a one wheel on the guardrail
(pause…) But she had 25 people helping her out.
Isaiah 59 tells us that God looked around for someone to help and there wasn’t anybody who could save us from the damage of our sin.
There was no one to cover the nakedness of our shame and guilt.
So what did God do???
This is the great part.
Look again at Isaiah 59:16-17
“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. 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.”
He couldn’t stand to see us trapped in our sins.
Enslaved by our guilt and shame.
So… He put on his armor and He went to war for us.
No one else could do it… so his own ARM worked salvation for Him.
Now, this is an intriguing image that Isaiah has used before.
Isaiah 52:10 says “The LORD will lay BARE HIS HOLY ARM in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.”
It’s like He rolled up His sleeves and He got down to business… because this is a serious matter for Him.
By contrast, when God created the heavens, Psalm 8 says: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” Psalm 8:3-4
The heavens were finger-play for God… they were a mere diversion for a powerful deity.
But when God saw our distress.
When He saw the damage our sins and guilt and shame bro’t upon us He put all of His power and might into solving our crisis.
Nobody else could do it for us.
Only God…
There are people who have a problem with that idea.
Last year, Gallup did a poll for Baylor University to understand how some people viewed God
They found that nearly 25% of Americans see Him as a “Distant God” - a God who kicked off the human experiment on Planet Earth and then backed away to see what would happen. (From "USA Today" Sept. 12 2007)
I once heard a poem that reflected this mindset:
God created the world in six days flat, then He said, I’ll rest
Then He let the thing into orbit swing to give it a dry run test
A million years went by and then He looked at the whirling blob
He shook His head and then He said:
"Oh well, it was only a six day job.”
ILLUS: A couple of years ago - physicist and Templeton Prize winner, Paul Davies commented “As a physicist, I feel very uncomfortable with a God who intervenes” in human affairs.
ILLUS: Thomas Jefferson had that same aversion to a God who intervenes.
In 1820 Jefferson literally took a pair of scissors to the New Testament and cut out any verses that referred to miracles of any kind… including the resurrection. He believed Jesus was a highly moral teacher, but the idea that God could or would do intrude upon the history of mankind deeply offended him.
Why?
Why would men like this reject the idea of God reaching down into our lives? Why? Because there are always people out there saying to God:
I’d rather do it myself!
I don’t need your help!
I don’t want your help!
They’re uncomfortable with a God who wants to step into our lives and make a difference.
But Isaiah tells us that God is uncomfortable NOT stepping in.
Isaiah’s tells us that God created this world and then watched in dismay as it suffered from the wounds of its own wrongdoings.
He was displeased
He was appalled
He could find no one else to solve the problem so He set about solving it Himself.
He bared His holy arm Isaiah 52:10
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. Isaiah 59:17
Why did He do this? (pause)
Because He loved us
John 3:16 says "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” NKJV
God loved us and cared for us.
He looked upon the world that our sins had damaged.
He looked upon our lives filled with grief and pain.
And he ached with the sadness that drove Him to give us the ultimate gift…
His only begotten son.
Now, that’s not generally how people view God
In that survey I mentioned earlier… they found that:
· Not only did about 25% of people believe God was distant
· Another 16% pictures Him as The Critical God who stands in judgment of us. But even though they saw Him as a critical God, they had little expectation of either divine wrath or help.
· Another 30% or so believed in an Authoritarian God. What he sees principally angry toward what He saw He wants us to shape up and fly right. And there are harsh judgments pending for those who don’t.
In other words, nearly 70% of American visualize God as uncaring and unconcerned.
Their kind of God doesn’t care about them
And if He cares at all, He stands in judgment and anger over their failings.
But “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
ILLUS: Author James Black once wrote of a dream he had. It must have been that he’d been thinking that week about the gods of ancient Greece,because in his dream he found himself moving among Greece’s beautiful temples.
Near one of those temples he met a priest and began to talk to him. Pointing to some people who were approaching with their gifts, he said to the priest:
"I suppose these people honor and love their god."
The priest was surprised: "Honor? Love? What do you mean? They fear him… because he may destroy them. But love? . . . ." With a harsh laugh the priest continued: ’Whoever loved a god?’”
That’s been the mindset of mankind down thru the ages. I used to love reading Greek Mythology, and I can tell you - James Black’s dream was on the mark. Ancient people didn’t love their gods… AND they didn’t expect to have a god that loved them.
The gods were to be appeased.
Sacrifices were meant to buy them off.
As long as the gods were “over there” and they were “over here”… people could live their lives in relative peace without the meddlesome involvement of capricious deities. Or so they thought.
But there was still that sticky problem of sin. And of shame and guilt. There was still the problem that all cultures seem to understand – that their offending their gods’ standards resulted in death.
“For the wages of sin is death…”
But the message that God has created for us is this:
Yes “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” Romans 6:23
There’s a favorite poem of mine that goes this way (if anyone knows the author, I’d love to give them proper credit):
Hard it is, very hard, to travel up the slow and stony road to Calvary, to redeem mankind;
Far better to make but one resplendent miracle,
Lean through the cloud, lift the right hand of power
And with a sudden lightning smite the world perfect.
Yet this was not God’s way. Who had the power, but set it by,
choosing the cross, the thorn, the sorrowful sounds.
Something there is, perhaps that power destroys in passing, something supreme.
To whose great value in the eyes of God that cross, that thorn, and those 5 wounds bear witness.
In order to change our destiny and deal with the enslavement of sin in our lives, God had to do something that was far more challenging than the power He displayed in creation. It was far more complicated than simply reaching down with “the right hand of power” and smiting “the world perfect.” It required sacrifice on His part. It required pain, and loss and suffering from our God in order to salvage our lives.
And He did all this because He loved us.
CLOSE: Charles Swindoll once told this story:
“I’m told that when I was a small child, perhaps three years of age,we lived in a one-bedroom apartment and my little bed was located beside the bed of my parents.
Dad said it was not uncommon during that time for him to awaken at night and hear a little voice whispering, "Daddy? Daddy?"
He would answer quietly, "What, Jimmy?"
Then I would reply, "Hold my hand!"
My dad would reach across the darkness and grope for my little hand, finally engulfing it in his. He said the instant he encompassed my hand, my arm would become limp and my breathing deep and regular. I had gone back to sleep. You see, I only wanted to know that he was there!
The consistent message of Scripture is that God reached through the darkness to take our hand. All that is required now of you is that you reach out and take His hand in yours.
Believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the living God.
Acknowledge your past sins and be willing to turn your life over to Him.
And be willing to have your past buried in the waters of Christian baptism and rise up to become a new creation in Christ.
