We can’t save ourselves

Bible passage: Isaiah 59:1-21

Last time – how sin came into the world – why there is a problem. Defined it as seeking our own glory and not God’s glory.

Today the seriousness of that problem: sin is serious and we can’t, by our own efforts do anything about it.

Remarkable chapter – Is 59 – prophetic, speaks into a time before Jesus a lot of truths that are only fulfilled and clarified in the coming of Jesus. 700 years before Jesus, Isaiah could see the truth about sin and its consequences.

Live is society that doesn’t understand sin: One newspaper did a survey to discover what people thought sin meant today, and these are three of the answers they came up with:

? Taking coat hangers from hotels
? Not clearing away your tray at McDonald’s
? Taking ten items through the nine items or less checkout

Bible says sin is rather more serious than that:

Sin and its consequences

Isaiah starting place is with the state we’re in: (1-2)
Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you.

God is God – able to save, willing to hear, but what we have done has separated us from God. Isaiah goes on to point out the consequences of our actions:

1. Guilt

v. 3 – “your hands are stained with blood, your fingers with guilt”

Blood on our hands! As we stand before God we are guilty of breaking his laws

Your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters wicked things (3), acts of violence are in their hands.
Their feet rush into sin; they are swift to shed innocent blood (6,7)

Every part of us is involved – stand before God guilty. Difference between feeling guilty and being guilty. Possible to feel guilty without any guilt. Possible to be found guilty in a  court when you are innocent. This isn’t about feelings or a court – we are guilty before God.

2. Separation from God

your iniquities have separated you from your God (2)

The consequence of sin is being separated from God – not God’s doing, it’s ours.

Alienated from God by our sins.

3. Estrangement from one another

Isaiah says that sin doesn’t only separate us from God, but separates us from each other: state of estrangement from the world – describes a society torn apart by violence, injustice and deception.

No one calls for justice; no one pleads his case with integrity (4)
they are swift to shed innocent blood.(7)
justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter. (14)

Sinful people make up a sinful society, lack of justice, lack of caring for one another, lack of truth. Times we live in are violent and unjust - just as they were in Isaiah’s time

4. Suffering

Sin brings suffering – through violence, through uncaring, through a world out of balance with the way God intended it. Most suffering in the world is caused by human sin.

Four consequences of Sin in this chapter.

No one to save

Towards the end of this chapter Isaiah pictures God looking at the human race in our fallen condition. What does he think about us? Yes, he’s not pleased. He sees us all trying to glorify ourselves and not him, and suffering the ill effects of our actions. But what upsets God most is that we’ve got ourselves down a dead end – there’s no way out, no way to be saved.

The LORD looked and was displeased that there was no justice. He saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene. (15-16)

Being lost is one thing: being lost with no map, no-one you can ask the way, no way to find the right road – that’s worse.
The story of the human race is a story of improving ourselves. We’ve developed technology previous generations can’t have dreamed of. We’ve made medical advances to cure diseases and bring better health. We get more and more prosperous - although many people in the world are still hungry. We can create beautiful art and literature and develop communications.

But there is one thing we can’t do and will never be able to do. We can’t save ourselves. We can’t deal with alienation from God and the guilt of sin which is on us.

We are guilty and we can’t remove our own guilt.

In Ch 64 Isaiah says “all our righteous acts are, like filthy rags”. In other words we can do good things, but we are still morally guilty. Not a moral balancing scales – good might outweigh the bad. Verdict is still guilty before God – nothing we can do about it.

Real belief in the sufficiency of the human race. Any disease we will cure it: any problem we will solve it. Belief we can pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. But when it comes to our moral and spiritual condition we just can’t do it.

The God who saves

Matt 19, after hearing Jesus talking about the Kingdom of God, his disciples say to him, “how then can anyone be saved?” and Jesus says “For people this is impossible, but with God everything is possible”

Didn’t take our quotation from Isaiah far enough:
The LORD looked and was displeased that there was no justice.   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. (15-16)

Our God is the God who saves. When we couldn’t do anything God intervened and worked salvation.

Bible says again and again that salvation comes from God, not from ourselves;
Psalm 118 “the Lord is my strength and my song, he has become my salvation”
Titus 3:4 “when the kindness and love of God our saviour appeared, he saved us… because of his mercy”