ISAIAH 59: 1-8
SYMPTOMS OF A SOCIETY’S SINFULNESS
[Romans 3:4-18]
There are always reasons if God’s promises are not being fulfilled. It is not because God cannot fulfill His Word or does not want to fulfill His Word. Here God states He is not fulfilling His promises and delivering His people because their evil deeds had created a separation between them. Sin separates from God, be it the sin of a person or of a nation. God demands righteousness on the part of the people with whom He enters into covenant relationship. The fault of rejection is not the Lord’s but His peoples’ choice of the ways of sin.
I. SEPARATED BY SIN, 1-2.
II. RAMPANT VIOLENCE & INJUSTICE, 3-4.
III. HATCHING SPIDERS & WEAVING WEBS, 5-6.
IV. SOCIETY’S SETTLED BEHAVIOR, 7-8.
The prophet responses to the people’s complaint that God was gone or unable to hear and answer their prayers in verse 1. Behold, the Lord’s hand is not so short that it cannot save; Nor is His ear so dull that it cannot hear.
The people are asking why God does not seem to answer their prayers. Why do they have no sense of His presence and power in their personal lives and in their society? Why is God not keeping all the wonderful messianic promises (such as 58:8-9, l0b-12, 14)? The answers that they have been accepting - that God is not strong enough (His hand is too short), or that He is not really paying attention (His ear is too heavy)- are incorrect. God’s promises are prevented from being kept by one thing only: flagrant sin. [Oswalt, NIC Isaiah, 513].
The prophet reminded the nation that the Lord could save them in spite of their difficult circumstances. He is powerful enough-His arm (v.16; 40:10) is not . . . short. And He is caring enough-He is not dull of hearing. There must be some other reason God has not delivered His people from their circumstances.
The real reason God seemed distant and unconcern is given in verse 2. 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 prophet explains why the prayers of the people are not answered and why God seems so far away. It is because of their sinfulness. Those sins are a barrier (separation) between the people and God.
The Lord could save them but the nation’s sins had separated them from Him (Ps. 66:18; Prov. 28:9), from His face or presence. Though He could hear them, He chose not to listen.
Sin prevents prayer from being answered (Ps. 66:18). If we think we can have a relationship with God while living in sin, we are badly mistaken. Sin separates us from God (1 Jn. 1:6; Jer. 5:25; Hab. 1:13).
Surprising things can happen in a courtroom. A judge might throw out strong evidence against a defendant even a tape-recorded confession - if the proper rules of jurisprudence were violated in obtaining it. Even if he hears the confession, he disregards it. In a sense, a breach of the rules makes it nonexistent.
A similar thing can happen with prayer. Although God knows our every thought, He may disregard our prayers and petitions if we have allowed sin to destroy our fellowship with Him. The Bible says that God is not obligated to hear us if:
. we are living in sinfulness (Isaiah 59:1-2)
. our heart is cherishing some sin (Ps. 66:18)
. if we ignore the pleas of the poor (Prov. 21:13)
. there is discord in the home (1 Pet. 3:7)
. we doubt His ability to answer (James 1:6,7)
. our requests are self centered (James 4:3)
. we fail to read His Word (Prov. 28:9)
While the moon was experiencing AN ECLIPSE it complained to the Sun, "Why don’t you shine on me as usual?" "I am shining as I always do," the sun replied, "but the earth has come between us." And you, Christian, who have lost the joy of your salvation, and no longer bask in the sunshine of God’s presence, is it the earth and its pursuits that have come between your soul and Him, or what is it? He is the same, His love is as great as ever.
God wants us to talk to Him, to praise Him, and even to petition Him with our requests. But we cannot assume that He hears us just because we pray. We must first live in a way that honors Him and follows His standards. When we do that, we are assured that He will hear our prayers. Remember, James (5:16) said that it’s the prayer of the righteous that is effective.
Whenever a PLANE GOES DOWN, the FAA sends out investigators to find out what went wrong. Oftentimes, we feel as though our prayers crash before answers come or, worse, never even make it off the runway. And when our prayers crash or fail to take off altogether, we have a tendency to stop praying. But what we need to do is to be more like the FAA. We need to do some heavy-duty investigation, not looking-for the black box that houses the words of the pilots, but looking at the pages of the Word of God.
In the passage before us, God is talking to a group of people who, in the previous chapter, could not understand why they felt cut off from God. They gathered at the temple. They studied together. They even fasted consistently. But they still felt cutoff, distant, removed. Here in chapter 59, God the Father speaks pointedly to the problem when He says, "Your iniquities have separated us. Communication has been lost because of the separation that takes place through sin."
When our prayers crash, this is a key piece of evidence we need to sift through and carefully consider. "Is there some unconfessed sin in my life, Lord? Is that why You’re not responding to my prayers? Is that why I’m not feeling Your hand on my life?"
David declared in Psalm 66: 18, If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. Why? because if God continued to answer our prayer even when we we’re in a state of rebellion against Him, we would think all was well. We would go on sinning and destroying ourselves in the process. That’s why our loving Father says, "You’re going to know there’s a problem when you sense that I’m not answering your prayers. This red flag tells you something is wrong." It’s not that God is mad at us or wants to disown us. On the contrary He wants draw us to Himself so we can be more like Him.[Courson’s Application Commentary OT, Vol 2, 457].
If your prayers are grounded, I encourage you to carefully consider the reason why. Resolve it and soar once again on His highway to the heavens, the highway of holiness.
II. RAMPANT VIOLENCE & INJUSTICE, 3-4.
The people are charged with violence of deed and word in verse 3. For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity; Your lips have spoken falsehood, your tongue mutters wickedness.
The prophet launches into a vivid and biting description of what kinds of behaviors and attitudes are separating the people from God. He begins with the sins of murderous action and lying words. The words and actions are represented as the whole person by various parts of the body. The total person is implicated in the crimes that are taking place. The hands that the people lift in prayer are bloody (1:15) because their very thoughts (the things they mumble to themselves about others) are wrong. Their entire inner and outer being was habitually (preterite & future forms) committing iniquity. Man’s nature is depraved (Rom. 3:15-17).
The people are charged with injustice in verse 4. No one sues righteously and no one pleads honestly. They trust in confusion [tohu, desolation-emptiness] and speak lies [falsehoods-unfair reasonings-worthless & morally corrupt]; They conceive mischief [spitefulness] and bring forth iniquity.
No one gives public evidence with honesty. The reason why society is so corrupt is because the very concept of justice itself is distorted. Justice does not exist to hold all persons up to the same fair standard. Rather, the legal system exists so that the strong and the clever can twist it to their own purposes. The result is exactly as the prophet says: chaos and emptiness. When the standard is perverse, then the law of the jungle prevails. Then perversion and iniquity have as much a claim to be followed as goodness and truth, and the result is social collapse. [Oswalt, NIC Isaiah, 515].
What a just society brings forth is an innocent child. The embryo of future a society is formed and shaped and here what is born is twistedness and evil. Instead of the normal processes of life and regeneration, a society such as this gives its energies to the production of shame and pain (James 1:5).
III. HATCHING SPIDERS & WEAVING WEBS, 5-6.
In verses 5 & 6 we encounter images that depict the viciousness and futility of a society ruled by unrepentant sinners out for their own self-interests. They hatch adders’ eggs and weave the spider’s web. He who eats of their eggs dies, and from that which is crushed a snake breaks forth.
Verses 5 and 6 can hardly be surpassed in their picture of the menace and the futility of the society that is ruled by sin (note the repetition of iniquity in vv. 3, 4, 6, 7). What such a society produces is serpent eggs and spider-webs. Whether you try to partake of the eggs or crush them, the results are poisonous and deadly.
Eggs are a source of life, both good to eat and productive of yet more life through the animal inside. But not these eggs! They are the very opposite. The baby snake, whose poison is already as lethal as an adult’s, will kill a person. The words and works that the people spin have an appearance of usefulness but it is only an appearance. If you try to clothe yourself in such a society’s schemes, you will find them as unsubstantial and useless yet as difficult to get free of as a spider-web.
So it is with a society rooted in iniquity. It promises much and gives little. Instead of promoting life, it destroys life. Instead of offering quiet substance, it advertises glittering emptiness. What turns a productive society into an injurious one? Any number of things, but above all, devouring self-interest as expressed in the words iniquity and violence. Taken together, they mean that what is right is twisted to be what I want, and that any means of obtaining what I want, up to and including physical force, is always justified. Given the reality of original sin, unless a supernatural way is found to promote genuine concern for one another and a determination to do right regardless of immediate payoff, human society, far from being the peaceable kingdom of chs. 11 and 65, will produce only snakes’ eggs and spider-webs. [Oswalt, NIC Isaiah, 515].
You have all probably heard of MEDUSA. She was part of ancient Greek Mythology. Medusa at one time, according to myth, was very beautiful and very vain. She was very proud of her hair and how beautiful it was and one day she was punished and her hair was turned to hideous, poisonous snakes. Also her face was distorted and she was very ugly to look upon. She had snakes for hair. In our imagination we could think how horrible it would be to have snakes for hair. Always getting bit. How miserable you would be.
Society today wants to plant dangerous snake eggs in our mind. Its deadly schemes want to poison your way of thinking. Society lures Christians with its false hopes and promises to dabble in the way of the world. Once compromised many Christians can not let go of the world but live lukewarm lives that are not pleasing to God. We try to hang onto the world even though we know that we are supposed to hate the world 1 Jn. 2:15ff). We are supposed to be in the world but not of the world. If you are still participating in the things of the world and dabbling in sin or hiding a sin in your heart, the world is birthing its snake eggs in your mind and life.
Oh these subtle ways may seem helpful or useful but in the end what they hatch is poisonous. Beware or the sins of the mind. The thoughts that run wild and the imagination that is uncontrollable. On the outside you keep the appearance of righteousness but in the deep recesses of your mind there is a hidden chamber with a poison that infects your whole soul. A poison that you try to fight but can’t overcome. A poison that no one knows about but you..... and God. These sins are just as deadly as any other, whether they are hid or not. These inner sins are viper eggs waiting to hatch.
Verse 6 foretells the outcome of such a society. Their webs will not become clothing, nor will they cover themselves with their works. Their works are works of iniquity, and an act of violence is in their hands.
The deceptively evil words and works will produce no blessing but futility. People can see through cobwebs, which despite all their fancy weaving makes them inappropriate for clothing. The works of evil men are useless and produce evil not good (Mt. 7:16-19). God sees right through their evil deeds and warns His people where they lead. Those who devise and produce such webs will receive no real benefit or worth from them. As the saying goes, they go from bad to worse.
IV. SOCIETY’S SETTLED BEHAVIOR, 7-8.
Their proclivity to evil rushes faster down the hill to ruin in verse 7. Their feet run to evil, and they hasten to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. Devastation and destruction are in their highways.
The actions of the hands and feet are an expression of some interior propensity. Their feet or their way of life eagerly runs with the anticipation of participating in evil Even the abhorrent evil of shedding innocent blood is hasten toward. There is no restraint for they rush to evil with readiness. Their thoughts are bred in iniquity and sprout into in sin.
When the imagination and thought process is unhinged from God and good, it become corrupted. [Thoughts refers to plans, intents, or schemes, that have been carefully mulled over and developed until they are ready to be hatched. The designs have been conceived and now ready to be born.] In a hurry to do evil things, they were bringing ruin to others till all of society was traveling down destructive paths. The craving to take total advantage of others became the way of society until it destroyed itself.
The unhindered thoughts and ways of man become the thoughts and ways of the society in which he lives. When a society has become thoroughly perverse, all restraints are removed. In the mad rush of self-interest, those who can move the most quickly apparently reap the rewards. Those rewards though will be vipers’ eggs and spider-webs.
Somehow the ways and thoughts of fallen man must be replaced by the ways and thoughts of a righteous God.
The outcome of their actions or way of life is indicated in verse 8. They do not know the way of peace, and there is no justice in their tracks. They have made their paths crooked. Whoever treads on them does not know peace.
The outcome of their words and actions or their way of life is that men and society are broken down in discord. They are contentious and society is filled with contention. Peaceable behavior is unknown to them.
They are now in deeply entrenched tracks of habitual injustice. More than that they have twisted or perverted their paths. Their lives have been most diligently twisted around in dark deception and are totally devoid of peace.
They would not recognize the path of peace as the right way even if they saw it.
The Lord’s highways are peace, redemption and justice. Human highways are destruction and confusion, and lead toward greater and greater disintegration.
Their violence and injustice become more fatal to themselves that to those on whom the acts were perpetrated. As an emphatic result they knew no peace or shalom (48:22; 57:20-21).
Peace or prospering (shalom) is something God establishes through submission, obedience and faithfulness (Isa. 54:8; 38:17), it is not something humans achieve (26:12).
CONCLUSION / TIME OF RESPONSE
It was not from lack of power or willingness on the part of God that He had not come to rescue His people from the consequences of their sin. The fault lay in the refusal of God’s people to turn from their own sin. Their refusal to turn to God became a stronger and stronger inability to turn to God.
Whatever else the world may offer us, it can never offer us peace. Those who make or hatch the world’s ways do not experience peace, and neither do those who walk in those distorting ways.
God wants all peoples to come to Him for refuge. They can do so only when they have made peace with Him, when they have acknowledge Him as the One True God and dedicated themselves to live life in His way and not in selfish, materialistic worldly ways.
Peace comes from a life dedicated to righteousness and lived in quietness and confidence (Isa. 32:17). Once you have become obedient and faithful to the righteous life, the life of God, you can live peaceably. [Butler, Holman OT, Isaiah, 328] You can know the absolute peace of God if you will trust in Him and lean on Him for support.
If you would like to find the peace of God today, come and fall before His altar and surrender yourself to walk in His way of peace. Do it now; delay will only make it harder. You come as the HS empowers you to do so.
