But your iniquities have separated you and 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 mutters wickedness.
No one sues in righteousness, and no one pleads in truth. They trust in vanity, and speak lies. They conceive mischief, and give birth to iniquity.
They hatch adders’ eggs, and weave the spider’s web. He who eats of their eggs dies; and that which is crushed breaks out into a viper.
Their webs won’t become garments. They won’t cover themselves with their works. Their works are works of iniquity, and acts of violence are in their hands.
Their feet run to evil, and they hurry to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. Desolation and destruction are in their paths.
They don’t know the way of peace; and there is no justice in their ways. They have made crooked paths for themselves; whoever goes in them doesn’t know peace.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv3–5 Read Isa. 1:15.
Read Isa. 1:15.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv2–8 Isa 59:2 But your iniquities have separated between you…
Isa 59:2 But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid [his] face from you, that he will not hear.
Ver. 2. But your iniquities have severed,] i.e., Have set you at a very great distance (hinted also by the redundance of speech that is here in the original), or rather defiance. {Psa 5:5 Pro 15:29; Pro 29:13} Nothing intricates our actions more than our sins, which do likewise ensnare our souls, while they are as a wall of separation between God and us, {Eze 43:8} and as an interstitium, such as is the firmament that divideth the upper and the lower waters. {Gen 1:6}
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And your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.] Crudelem modicum intemperans aeger facit. {a} Sin is as a devil in the air, saith one, to hinder our prayers; turning from sin will charm the devil, and make him fall from heaven.
{a} Mimus.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv2–8 Have separated; have been as a thick wall between…
Have separated; have been as a thick wall between God and you; have set him at a great distance, Pro 15:29.
Have hid his face: this may be put synecdoehically for the whole person; and the prophet speaking of God by an anthropopathy, may understand his presence; and then it is, hath made him hide or withdraw his presence, as one that turns away his face from some noisome thing; or rather his favour, that though you cry to be delivered out of Babylon, yet you shall not find that favour.
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He will not hear, i.e. he will not grant it; thus it is used Psa 45:12; Hos 5:15; See Poole "Isa 1:15": see Jdg 10:13.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv2–8 Like a partition wall dividing between them, so that…
Like a partition wall dividing between them, so that they enjoy no communion with him in his worship and ordinances; which is greatly the case of the reformed churches: they profess the true God, and the worship of him, and do attend the outward ordinances of it; but this is done in such a cold formal way, and such sins and wickedness are perpetrated and connived at, that the Lord does not grant his gracious presence to them, but stands at a distance from them:
and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear; or have caused him to hide himself; withdraw his gracious presence; neglect the prayers put up to him; deny an answer to them; or, however, not appear as yet for the deliverance and salvation of them, and bringing them into a more comfortable, prosperous, and happy condition.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv3–8 Perverseness - Perverse words are such as are contrary…
Perverseness - Perverse words are such as are contrary to God's word. Words every way contrary to God's will.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 8 Verse 2. His face] For פנים panim, faces, I…
Verse 2. His face] For פנים panim, faces, I read panaiv, his face. So the Syriac, Septuagint, Alexandrian, Arabic, and Vulgate. פני panai, MS. Forte legendum פני panai, nam מ mem, sequitur, et loquitur Deus; confer cap. lviii. 14. "We should perhaps read פני panai; for מ mem follows, and God is the speaker." - SECKER. I rather think that the speech of God was closed with the last chapter, and that this chapter is delivered in the person of the prophet. - L.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 7 Isa 59:3. Your hands are defiled with blood —…
Isa 59:3. Your hands are defiled with blood — Here the prophet proceeds from a more general to a more particular charge against them. By blood, we are to understand, either murders and bloodshed, properly so called, or ways of injustice, extortion, oppression, and cruelties, whereby men are deprived of a livelihood: hence, hating our brother is called murder, 1Jn 3:15, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem murderers, Isa 1:21. And your fingers with iniquity — This is added to aggravate their sin; as if he had said, Not only your hands, but your fingers are defiled, and not the least part of you is free from injustice. Your lips have spoken lies — Not only properly so called, but perjuries, slanders, and false accusations: you have not only offered violence to your neighbours by your hands, but circumvented them by your lips. Your tongue hath muttered perverseness — Perverse words, or such as were contrary to God’s word and will. When they could not, for shame, utter their malice against their neighbours aloud, nor dared to do it for fear of being convicted of falsehood, and put to confusion, they muttered it secretly.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv2–8 But your iniquities - That is, the sins which…
But your iniquities - That is, the sins which the prophet had specified in the previous chapter, and which he proceeds further to specify in this.
Have separated - The word used here (בדל bâdal) conveys the idea of division, usually by a curtain or a wall Exo 26:33; Eze 42:20. Thus the ‘firmament’ (רקיע râqı̂ya‛, “expanse”) is said to have “divided” or “separated” (מבדיל mabedı̂yl) the waters from the waters Gen 1:6. The idea here is, that their sins were like a partition between them and God, so that there was no contact between them and him.
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And your sins have hid his face from you - Margin, ‘Made him hide.’ The Hebrew word here is in Hiphil, meaning ‘to cause to hide.’ Kimchi and Aben Ezra understand it as causing him to hide his face; Vitringa as hiding, his face. The metaphor, says Vitringa, is not taken from a man who turns away his face from one because he does not choose to attend to what is said, but from something which comes between two persons, like a dense cloud, which hides one from the other. And, according to this, the idea is, that their sins had risen up like a thick, dark cloud between them and God, so that they had no clear view of him, and no contact with him - as a cloud hides the face of the sun from us. A similar idea occurs in Lam 3:44 :
Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud,
That our prayers should not pass through.
But it seems to me more probable that the Hiphil signification of the verb is here to be retained, and that the idea is, that their sins had caused Yahweh to hide or turn away his face from their prayers from an unwillingness to hear them when they were so deeply immersed in sin. Thus the Septuagint, ‘On account of your sins he has turned away his face (ἀπέστρεψε τὸ πρόωπον apestrepse to prosōpon) from you, so that he will not have mercy’ (τοῦ μὴ ἐλεῆσαι tou mē eleēsai). It is universally true that indulgence in sin causes God to turn away his face, and to witchold mercy and compassion. He cannot pardon those who indulge in transgression, and who are unwilling to abandon the ways of sin (compare the notes at Isa 1:15).
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv2, 4, 5, 8 Iniquities. The history of Susanna shews that the captives…
Iniquities. The history of Susanna shews that the captives were not all free from sin, which alone prevented their liberation, Lamentations iii. 44. (Calmet) [Daniel xiii.] --- God is willing and able to save. He punishes for sin, to cause us to repent, ver. 20. (Worthington)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–8 hid--Hebrew, "caused Him to hide" (Lam 3:44).
hid--Hebrew, "caused Him to hide" (Lam 3:44).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv3, 5, 7 3, 4. Hands… fingers… lips — The sins of…
3, 4. Hands… fingers… lips — The sins of Israel are sins of deed and word, by which accusation is to be found in every organ.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv2–8 2. your iniquities have separated] Lit. “have been separating.”…
2. your iniquities have separated] Lit. “have been separating.” The expression is that used of the firmament in Gen_1:6; it implies that guilt has been a permanent cause of alienation between Israel and its God.
have hid his face] i.e. caused Him to withdraw His favour (cf. ch. Isa_8:17). Instead of “his face,” the Hebr. has simply “face” as in Job_34:29. Various explanations are offered of this peculiar expression; perhaps the easiest is that “the Face” had come to be used absolutely of the face of God.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv2–7 (2) Have separated—i.e., have become, as it were, a…
(2) Have separated—i.e., have become, as it were, a “middle wall of partition” excluding them from the Divine presence.
His face.—Better, the face. The Hebrew has neither article nor possessive pronoun, the substantive being treated almost as a proper name.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv2–8 Attention from God.
Attention from God.
"Your iniquities have separated between you and your God." Here is the secret. We can resist God"s arm. Until the "iniquities" be confessed, deplored, and forsaken, there can be no salvation. God is ready to forgive; but are we ready to be forgiven? God has provided a Saviour; but it may be true of us, "Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life." Man is not a heart only; he is a will. And here lies our condemnation, not that we are not sometimes ashamed and even sorry, but that we will not repent, return, and believe.
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I THE TERM GIVEN TO SIN. "Iniquities;" that is, "inequities." Read the fourth verse, "None calleth for justice;" and the sixth verse, "The act of violence is in their hands." Unless we are willing to forgive and love and do justice to our brother, it is idle to talk about turning to God. Such religion is a sentiment, not a salvation. Then there are "inequities" in relation to God. We have been:
1. Unjust to his government.
2. We have robbed him of ourselves.
3. We have aided the forces of rebellion.
4. We have, in one word, done iniquity.
II THE DISTANCE CREATED BY SIN. The separation is moral. He is near to us close, indeed, to us as the air we breathe. But we are at opposite poles of the moral universe.
1. Separated in nature. We are not renewed in his image.
2. Separated in purpose. Our will is set against his will. All separations are painful. We see them in the family and in the nation. Wars and feuds abound on every side. So" we are alienated from the life of God. Christ, and he alone, can break down the middle wall of partition, and through faith in him we may be reconciled by one Spirit unto the Father. W.M.S.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON Vers. 1, 2. The true and the false account of Divine inactivity.
How comes it to pass that the people of the Lord are in such distress? How do we account for the fact that the cause of Christ makes such slow progress or even shows symptoms of decline and failure? Where is the Lord God of Israel? Is the Spirit of God present in the midst of the Churches?
I THE APPARENTLY INEXHAUSTIBLE FORCES AT OUR COMMAND. For our resources we have:
1. The fulness of Divine pity. The ear of God is open to the cry of destitution, of pain, of sorrow, of spiritual yearning. His heart of tenderness is touched by the miseries and necessities of his children.
2. The almightiness of Divine power. The "right hand of the Lord" is on all the springs and forces of the universe; he can compel all things to serve him, to minister to his people and to establish his kingdom.
3. The perfectness of Divine wisdom. Who shall measure "the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God"?
II THE POVERTY OF SPIRITUAL RESULTS. In how many instances have we occasion to be profoundly discontented with the condition of things, spiritually considered! It is so in regard to:
1. Individual character. Considering the resources at command, men do not make the progress in spiritual growth, in moral attainment, or in excellency of behaviour, which might be expected of them; they remain where they were, or move backward and forward, making no substantial progress toward "the mark goal which is set before them.
2. Christian Churches. Taking into account the number of privileges which are theirs, and the variety of opportunities which are within reach, there is a very considerable proportion of Churches compelled to acknowledge retrogression rather than advancement, defeat rather than success.
3. Missionary operations. After all that has been done through the centuries, by all societies of Christian men, how much land "remains to be possessed"!
III THE FALSE AND THE TRUE ACCOUNT OF THE MATTER. It is not Divine negligence that explains our position. It is not that God"s hand is shortened or that his ear is heavy; it is not that his power is diminished or that his pity has failed in the very smallest degree. He abideth faithful and omnipotent. We are not straitened in him, but in ourselves. It is sin that has come between our praying lip and his hearing ear between our pressing need and his opened hand.
1. Refusal of his righteousness makes our prayer ineffectual, his interposition impossible. If we "regard iniquity in our heart, he will not hear us;" i.e. if we decline to enter his service, if we "will not have him to reign" over us, if we stubbornly and haughtily reject the salvation which he offers us in Jesus Christ, (Rom_10:3) we take an attitude in which we have no right to expect any answer to our petitions. The first thing, the only right and acceptable thing, for one that has not yet returned to God in self-surrender, is to "arise and go to the Father" in penitent submission; then he may call, and the Lord will answer.
2. Special sins may prove a stumbling-block; some are specified in the following verses cruel violence, falsehood, litigiousness. We are expressly told in the later revelation that some particular sins are absolutely inconsistent with personal piety, and therefore with the efficacy of prayer impurity; (Eph_5:5) strife; (Gal_5:20) drunkenness; (Rev_21:8)
3. The absence of essential Christian graces will account for the nonintervention of God on behalf of a Christian Church: of unity; (Psa_133:3) of faith; (Heb_11:6 Mat_13:58) of zeal; (Rev_2:4 Rev_3:15, Rev_3:16) of fidelity to the truth. (Rev_2:14) The true account of our failure is not in Divine indifference, but in human shortcoming. C.
HOMILIES BY R. TUCK Ver. 1. Misconceptions of the Divine delay.
This is a plea with the murmurers, who doubtingly asked Where are the signs of the fulfilment of these great Divine promises? Things looked black and hopeless right up to the time of Cyrus. The Lord appeared to be delaying his coming, and it was easy for unbelievers to say that God delayed because "his hand was too short to deliver, and his ear too heavy to hear" Keble renders the text thus"Wake, arm Divine! awake, Eye of the only Wise! Now for thy glory"s sake, Saviour and God, arise, And may thine ear, that sealed seems, In pity mark our mournful themes! "Thus in her lonely hour Thy Church is fain to cry As if thy love and power Were vanish"d from her sky; Yet God is there, and at his side He triumphs who for sinners died.
It may suffice to answer the murmurers who remind us of the Divine delayings, and would have us misunderstand them, and join them in doubtings of the Divine power or the Divine good will, that there are high and gracious ends served by this particular method of Divine dealing. These things at least we can see
I IT INCREASES OUR DEPENDENCE ON GOD. It teaches us that we have not just to "ask and have," but "ask and have" in accordance with God"s will, in dependence on God"s wisdom, and in agreement with God"s time and way. We should never learn that, if we were not sometimes made to wait. We teach our children to trust us by making them wait until we think best.
II IT ENHANCES THE VALUE OF THE EXPECTED BLESSING. What we wait long for becomes increasingly valuable in our eyes. What is obtained easily and at once is sure to be under-estimated. The value of a gift very constantly depends on the moral preparation of those who receive it; and delay is a cultivator of moral preparation.
III IT PRODUCES A MORE EARNEST WATCHFULNESS AND MORE BELIEVING PRAYERFULNESS FOR THE DESIRED BLESSING. It does, if we regard the delay aright. It does not, if we persist in misconceiving the purpose of the delay. Then delay will weary us, and we shall leave off to watch and be sober. Delay may be borne wisely and cheerfully when we recognize it as only the hush, the stillness, the breathlessness that ushers in the glorious showers of Divine awakening and Divine comforting. R.T.
Ver. 2. Have separated; literally, have been separating. The force of the form used is continuous, and implies that Israel had now for a long time been heaping up a barrier between itself and Jehovah. Your sins have hid his face; literally, your sins have caused his face to be hidden from you, i.e. "have made him avert it.
Vers. 2-8. The unsatisfactoriness of sinful courses.
"What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye now are ashamed?" asks the apostle of those whom he had converted from a life of sin to a life of righteousness. (Rom_6:21) What good did the life of sin seem to do you? Of course, if the life of sin had no pleasures at all to offer, it would have no attractiveness, and would not be led by any. But what, after all, are the attractions, compared with the counterbalancing disadvantages?
I THE PLEASURES OF SIN ARE SLIGHT, EVEN WHILE THEY LAST, No doubt there is a gratification in the satisfaction of every desire, in the venting of every passion, in the full indulgence of every lust and appetite. There is a pleasure also in the mere indulgence of self-will, the setting aside of every restraint, and the determination to be free and do exactly what we choose. But put all these things together; and to what do they amount? What is their value? Is the game worth the candle? Are not the pleasures themselves always mixed with pains, which detract from them? Do they not generally involve as their consequences worse pains, so that mere selfishness should make us decide to decline the pleasures? Does not conscience offer a continual protest against the life of sin? and is not that protest painful often severely painful? Again, are not those who lead a life of sin, even while they lead it, always more or less ashamed of it? And is not that shame a very bitter feeling? Is not the disapproval of the life by friends and relatives, especially the nearest, who should be the dearest, a very substantial set-off against any balance of pleasure that might otherwise remain? Do the wicked ever "know peace"? Can they ever calmly review their lives, and derive from the review any feeling of satisfaction? Can they even boast in all their life of a moment"s perfect restfulness, content, calm, quiet, sense of ease?
II THE PLEASURES OF SIN ARE FLEETING; THEY DIE OUT AS TIME GOES ON. The great pleasure-seekers have always acknowledged that the end of all indulgence is satiety. The cry of the sensualist is for "a new pleasure;" but the cry is vain. New pleasures are not forthcoming. Sensualists tread the same weary round over and over again, with" less of satisfaction each time it is traversed, and with a growing feeling that they are slaves, compelled to grind perpetually on the same futile treadmill. Almost every passion dies out after a time. If any one remains, it is avarice, which reduces its victim to the most miserable condition possible.
III THE PLEASURES OF SIN SEPARATE FROM GOD. If God is, as even the heathen acknowledged, the supreme good; and if man"s highest good is, as some of them also allowed, communion with him, then anything whatsoever that separates from him is weighted with a disadvantage which must necessarily overbalance all possible good that it can possess. Were the pleasures of sin ten thousand times greater than they are, and were they absolutely permanent, instead of being, as they are, fleeting and evanescent, the single fact, here mentioned by Isaiah (ver. 2), that they erect a barrier between man and God, should render them utterly unsatisfactory to a reasonable being. To be cut off from God is to be cut off from the source of all joy and peace and happiness; it is to be shut out from light, to lose contact with the Life which sustains all other life, and to be left to our own miserable selves for the remainder of our existence. Nothing could possibly be a compensation to man for such losses.
Sin-clouds between us and God.
In a former homily it has been shown how, in judgment, and in order to awaken us to a sense of our sin, God may pass a cloud across between us and him, hiding from us his smiling face, and leaving us in the dark and the chill. Now we see how, in our heedlessness and wilfulness, we may put clouds, even little clouds, into our own sky, and hide his face. The reference of the text is to the doubting ones, the unfaithful ones, in Babylon, who let their own sinfulness spoil their vision, and either hide God from them or distort their view of him. The prophet reminds them that they had put the clouds, and in reminding them thus he calls on them to put the clouds away. These are our two divisions.
I MEN PUT THE SIN-CLOUDS BETWEEN THEM AND GOD.
1. They may be very small clouds, yet suffice to hide. Often a cloud no bigger than a hand will keep the light and warmth from us. Illustration: David Rittenhouse, of Pennsylvania, was a great astronomer. He was skilful in measuring the size of planets, and determining the position of the stars. But he found that, such was the distance of the stars, a silk thread stretched across the glass of his telescope would entirely cover a star; and, moreover, that a silk fibre, however small, placed upon the same glass, would cover so much of the heavens that the star, if a small one and near the pole, would remain obscured behind that silk fibre several seconds. So small faults, secret sins, little doubtings, can become effective fibres, dark clouds, obscuring veils, that hide the "face." "Little foxes spoil the grapes." The psalmist puts a passion of holy feeling into his prayer, "Cleanse thou me from secret faults.
2. They may be very big clouds, and mean long hiding and deep misery for us under the darkness, and in the chill. Illustrate from David"s open and shameless iniquity. It was right that "his bones should wax old through his roaring all the day long," while the black storm-clouds of passion, and its consequences, hid away his God. We cannot negligently sin, and hope to keep the smile; if we openly and wilfully sin we shall not even care to keep the smile, but we shall gladly put our clouds across, and hide the "face.
II MEN MUST PUT AWAY THE SIN-CLOUDS THAT ARE BETWEEN THEM AND GOD. And there is only one way of doing this. Men must put away the sins that make the clouds. God will not burst through such clouds. He will not dispel such clouds, until men turn from their iniquities, their big or little sins; but then he will breathe on the cloud, as the hot Eastern sun breathes on the clouds of morning, and they shall fade away from the sky, and we shall see the face, and live in that heaven which is the "shining of the face upon us. R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv2, 5, 6, 7 But your iniquities have separated between you and your…
Isa_59:2
But your iniquities have separated between you and your God,--
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Sin separates God and men
I.
A DREADFUL EVIL THAT THIS PEOPLE WAS UNDER. Separation from God.
II. THE PARTY AT WHOSE DOOR THE BLAME LIES, they who have made the breach.
III. THE PROCURING CAUSE OF THIS EVIL, your iniquities. (T. Boston.)
The dreadful efficacy of sin
I. WHAT IS THAT SEPARATION WHICH SIN MAKES BETWIXT GOD AND SOULS? Not a local separation, for He is not far from every one of us, for in Him we live, etc.
1. In it there is something negative; i.e the Lord denies them the influences of His grace, countenance and fellowship.
2. There is something positive in it: sin kindles a fire against the soul.
(1) There is a standing controversy God has against sinners (Amo_3:3).
(2) There is a pursuing of this controversy against the sinner; some positive outgoings of Gods anger against the soul.
II. THE GREATNESS OF THE EVIL OF SEPARATION FROM GOD, which many go so light under. Alas! many reign like king Saul, when God departed from him; but how sad a thing this is, will appear if we consider--
1. What God is. Everything in God speaks terror to those that are separated from Him.
(1) God is the chief good; and therefore to be separated from God is the chief evil.
(2) God is all-sufficient in Himself, and to the creatures. The enjoyment of Him makes truly happy; therefore to be separated from Him is a dreadful evil.
(3) The omnipotence of God.
(4) The absoluteness of God.
(5) God is eternal.
2. All created things are empty and unsatisfactory.
3. To be separated from God is the saddest plague out of hell.
4. It is a very hell to be separated from God.
5. Those that continue in a state of separation from God, have no quarter to which they can turn for comfort in an evil day.
III. HOW SIN MAKES THIS SEPARATION BETWIXT GOD AND A SOUL.
1. There is a guilt of sin, whereby the sinner is bound over to misery for his sin.
2. There is the stain of sin. (T. Boston.)
Sin the great separator
I. SIN SEPARATES MAN FROM GOD AS TO PLACE. Of course it remains true of every inhabitant of earth, and even of hell, that God is not far from every one of us. But sin has blunted, has even destroyed the sense of His nearness, has led men to feel as though He were far distant. As a mans iniquities increase God seems farther and farther from him, until at last he feels that heaven is too distant for him to reach, and God too far off to hear his prayers.
II. SIN SEPARATES MAN FROM GOD AS TO CHARACTER.
III. SIN SEPARATES MAN FROM GOD AS TO WILL. Separation of will is the most complete of all kinds of separation. Continents and oceans may divide men, and yet they may be one in heart and aim.
IV. SIN SEPARATES MAN FROM GOD AS TO INTEREST. It is to the interest of the sinner that there should be opportunity for indulgence in sin, that the punishment of sin should be removed, that the restraints of virtue should be broken down. We may well rejoice that Gods interest is with all that is the opposite of this. It is Gods aim that sin should be destroyed. Hence by fearful sufferings He brands it with disgrace. But God in His wonderful love has taken means to destroy this separation, and to draw us back to Him. (Homilist.)
The tragic schism
When separation comes to pass, the force of disseverment and alienation can only be that of sin.
1. He who is the spring of life can know neither impoverishment nor limitation, and the changes and fluctuations of the universe can no more project themselves into His being than the casting of a leaf or the shedding of a blossom from the tree can impair the vital force entrenched in its roots. The heathen man will sometimes say, The gods are growing old; they are not so ready in helping their worshippers as when we were young. An eternal Spirit is secure against such an innuendo. His arm is not shortened that it cannot save.
2. And there can be no failure of care for our welfare or slackening off in His inclination to help us. Unless God be a fiction of the brain He must be predisposed to save and succour the people He has formed for Himself. The age-long impulse by which He draws men to religion is a sufficient proof of that. When we take into account what God really is, the chief mystery of the world is that any prayer in it should go unanswered, and the mystery is one with the mystery of iniquity itself. It was no wonder that He whose everlasting home had been in the bosom of infinite love should marvel at that which is so commonplace to us--unbelief. What a side-light does this cast upon the terrible significance of sin! It is the one thing which keeps God and His creatures apart.
3. The conditions of modern business life are sometimes adduced as an excuse for the waning spirit of prayer and the outfading consciousness of Divine help. If business does unfit its votaries for realizing Gods presence and power, it can only be for one of three reasons, all alike bearing the taint of sin and justifying the declaration of the prophet. You seek unlawful ends in business, or you seek lawful ends by unlawful means, or the methods of conducting business tend to kindle within you unlawful passions.
4. We are sometimes ready to put down this tragic schism to the progress of scientific thought. Mens hearts are petrified by the new dogma that the order of the universe is unalterable, along with its godless corollary, that to pray is to fritter away time, strength, and vital force, and to vex ones own soul. Let the difficulties raised by the new science be freely allowed. Upon even devout minds these views of the uniformity of Nature and her methods, be they proven or unproven, may so act as to check the temper of prayerfulness. Temptation does take on intellectual forms as it addresses itself to thinking people. If a child were to find out that his fathers estate had been signed over to trustees, and that for a certain term of years that father could not be altogether a free agent in providing for the wants of his household, all immediate expenditure being determined by some outside authority, and if on that ground the child were to break off relations with his father, would not that be the mark of a mean, depraved, repulsive character? Supposing that God had made Nature His plenipotentiary, or trustee, and for the time being had surrendered His own power of answering supplication for temporal benefits, it would surely be base in us to use that as a plea whereby to justify ourselves in restraining prayer before Him.
5. The problems of temperament are sometimes brought in to explain this tragic schism. Men palliate their callousness to prayer and their misgivings concerning its benefits by putting them down to deficiency of sentiment or imagination, matter-of-factness, poverty of the religious instinct, congenital disability answering to colour blindness in the physical realm. It is assumed, upon very slender proof, that a peculiar poise of the faculties disqualifies for enthusiastic spiritual beliefs. It may be allowed that from the intellectual standpoint people are variously endowed and equipped; but a mans religious history is not determined by the quality, condition, or specialized habits of the brain. It is simply impossible for a man to have capacity for common truth, practical righteousness, philanthropy, family life and friendship and yet to have no capacity for converse, with God, whose nature is the spring and animating principle of all these qualities. Man is religious by constitution and irreligious only by errancy of habit and practical life. Does prayer seem barren and God unresponsive and heaven very far off? It can only be explained by our lack of oneness with the Divine will and law.
6. The inscrutable methods of Gods sovereignty are sometimes adduced to explain away this ominous separation referred to by the prophet. Now and again occasions arise when the Lord does seem to withdraw Himself from HIS people. There are inexplicable factors in Gods dealings with us, but those factors belong chiefly to the sphere of providence rather than to that of grace. More often than not, it is sin which veils God and His goodness from the sad, breaking, woe-begone heart, and we shall not get out of the gloom by closing our eyes to the explanation and assuming that this terrible silence of the Most High, this apparent indisposition to help, at the mere thought of which the heart sickens and faints, is one of the decrees of His unsearchable sovereignty.
7. This separation is often veiled from us by the illusions of the senses and the pomps of this present evil world. It needs much courage and sobriety of mind to realize the perils with which it is fraught. The form assumed by our personal sin may be so secret and subtle that it is easy for us to think that, in our case at least, this is not the malign force which separates from God and makes His presence fleeting as a dream. We have not been guilty perchance of glaring, flagitious, anti-social transgressions which provoke the reproaches of those who watch our behaviour. Yet spiritual sins may cleave to us which work portentous mischief in the religious life. (T. G.Selby.)
Visions which lure to destruction
Near the source of one of the great rivers of the East there stands a Buddhist monastery of widespread fame, built on the edge of a beetling cliff. In the chasm beneath clouds are often seen floating, upon which the pilgrims who have climbed to the shrine look down. Under certain conditions of the sun and atmosphere a magnificent phenomenon appears. The sun, greatly enlarged and begirt with coruscations of prismatic splendour, is reflected upon the screen of vapours. From the central disc shafts of gold and purple and violet pulse and throb. The devotees call the sight the glory of Buddha, and when the prismatic marvel appears, half mad with religious frenzy, they cast themselves into the palpitating mass of colour, falling unconscious suicides into the grim gulf below, to which only vultures and jackals can approach. And the separating chasm between ourselves and God is often filled up with a meretricious pomp that disguises its tragedies, and men are again and again betrayed into self-destruction. Perhaps it is a vision of the world with its wealth and power that scintillates there, the gorgeous phantoms which passed before the eye on the mount of the temptation. All the hues of Vanity Fair shimmer beneath our feet, and we think surely we may plunge into the iridescence that seems to beckon us. Or it may be the glory of Nature spreads itself athwart the yawning gulf. She interposes the magic of her shows, entices with the glory of her stately order, usurps the nimbus of a factitious sovereignty, and takes the very place of God Himself. The gulf dividing from God is hidden by her enchantments. Or, the rainbow glories of an aesthetic religion veil the deep moral separation. Men sometimes commit ethical suicide under the cover of an ornate worship. We cultivate art, music, the devices that enthral the senses, and call the product piety, forgetting that we are in no sense at one with God. Pageants superimpose themselves upon unwelcome facts, and underneath the circles of deceitful splendour there gape gulfs of deep and irretrievable perdition. If sin is ignored, unconfessed, unforsaken, if unflattering truths are obstinately disguised, we shall find at last that our capacity for communion with God is lost and our doom is an abyss from which there can be no uplifting. (T. G. Selby.)
Inconspicuous sins may hinder communion with God
Pathologists found difficulty in identifying the bacillus of an epidemic that has become sorrowfully familiar to us; not only because it was one of the tiniest of all microscopic organisms, but chiefly because it could not be stained with the dyes used in studying other minute forms of life. Yet what a messenger of sorrow and death it was! This hideous trifle brought swift and cruel separation to husband and wife, parent and child, lover and friend, and put the silence and deep gloom of the grave between thousands of victims and the sweet sunny homes in which they would fain have tarried. Now some sins have a criminal dye put upon them by statutory, law, are branded by the damnatory force of public opinion, or show red like crimson because of the disintegrating influence they begin to exert at once upon the individual and the society to which he belongs. Other sins do not stand out in conspicuous colours. Men have no apparent interest in describing them as atrocities. Unless we are watchful and cultivate keen spiritual perceptions, these more obscure forms of sin are apt to elude our consciousness. And yet they may separate between us and our God. (T. G. Selby)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v6 Isa_59:6. Their webs shall not become garments
WEBS BUT NOT GARMENTS
Isa_59:6. Their webs shall not become garments
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What a telling blow the prophet deals at the corruptions of his age! His illustration is homely, but, on that account, all the more forcible. The whole passage presents an appalling picture of the state of society,—powers perverted, &c. The two things always go together—the practice of wickedness, and recourse to vain excuses to palliate it. An evil course cannot long be pursued without some plea which justifies it to the sinner’s mind. These fictions are the very food on which his sin lives. Tear them away, and you strip him of those defences behind which he fortifies himself in the practice of iniquity. This is what God’s prophet is trying to do; not only denouncing sin, but exposing the worthlessness of the pleas by which it is encouraged. These fancies he characterises as “spiders’ webs” (Isa_59:5); and, continuing the metaphor (Isa_59:6), he declares—“Their webs shall not become garments.” It is a kindness to undeceive one who labours under a fatal mistake, however unpleasant the task. Some of you are the victims of soul-destroying delusions; but soon you will pass into a world of reality, where every dark subterfuge in which you try to hide yourselves, will be illumined in all its corners by the fierce and searching light of eternity. You are weaving your subtle webs of fancy and practice now, bestowing pains upon them, thinking well of them, and gaining the approval of others; but they are mere shoddy, which, though it pass from the loom, is worthless for wear. Let us visit some of the looms in the great factory of human life, and see what sort of fabrics the weavers are turning out.
I. There is one who is weaving the web of a respectable life. Living for appearances, squaring his opinions and behaviour by the maxims of the world; pleasant and accommodating whatever company he may enter, and putting up even with Christian society, if they are not too decided. No strong principles has he to bring him into collision with other people. His principle is to have no principles, but to fall in with those of others. If ever he offered a real prayer it would be—“O God, keep me on good terms with the world; save me from anything that would incur its censure, or draw down upon me its frown.” He worships the goddess of respectability. It would never do for him to be anything but sober, honest, and industrious. He cannot throw into his web the dark threads which they use who have sunk so low as to have no regard even for public opinion. It has attractive colours and a glossy surface. Such goods are in demand in the world’s market; but with no higher purpose, his web shall not become a garment. He has lived without the thought of God, and tried to do as others do, not what conscience and Scripture command.
II. At another loom sits a busy worker weaving the web of formalism. The formalist sees something good in religion, but is mistaken as to the way in which its blessedness is secured. His trust is in the outward observance of religious ceremonies, forgetting that the Kingdom of God is a thing of the heart. Precise and regular in his church attendance and Sabbath observance, he is yet cold and heartless. No warm, loving impulse stirs his soul. He has made a god of religious routine (Job_8:13-14). It is hard to undeceive such a man, just because of his familiarity with sacred things (Mat_21:31). He who weaves such a web, is only preparing a winding-sheet for his dead soul.
III. There is another weaving the web of self-righteousness. Not blindly trusting in ceremonies, but relying on an upright life. Without a change of heart he tries to obey the law (Rom_10:3), but his view of sin is defective. So long as the Divine law is regarded as an outward rule, you may think you render a tolerably perfect obedience, but let its light shine into the heart and it reveals the sinner’s guilt (Rom_7:7-9). Self-righteousness may be a web, but it never shall become a garment (Isa_57:12; Isa_64:6). We are to work not for but from acceptance and pardon. Never can we fulfil the law until the heart has been changed by the experience of God’s mercy (Php_3:9).
IV. Further on we encounter another who is weaving the web of reliance on the future. A young man who promises himself long life and abundant opportunity. He is bent on trying some experiments in weaving before he settles down to serious work. He means to attend to religious matters, but not just now. Can he count upon the uncertain future? can he promise himself inclination and opportunity? That is the web which the young are prone to weave. How is it with those more advanced in life?
V. Here is an old man busily weaving the web of amendment, thinking thus to atone for the vices and follies of an ill-spent youth. But can any resolution for the future wipe out the guilt of the erring past? If he wishes to begin life anew he must go to the cross, and make that his starting-point, but he blindly imagines that reformation of life will supply the garment which he needs.
VI. Have I exhausted the various classes of weavers? Alas for our race if I have! Many find the requisite garment provided for them in the righteousness of Christ (Rom_3:21-26; Rom_4:5). It fits us, becomes us, protects us, will never grow old, and will never be out of fashion. How can you appear before God in the flimsy dress of your own manufacture? (Mat_22:11-13). But do we cease to be weavers when we “put on the Lord Jesus Christ?” The weaving of the right sort can only then begin; for, the righteousness wrought out for us and imputed becomes a righteousness wrought in us and imparted. Christ takes the web of our life into his own hands (1Co_1:30; Gal_2:20). Instead of leading to licentiousness a free justification alone can sanctify the life (Rom_6:1-4).
To which class of weavers do you belong? Look at your life—how profitless, purposeless, and polluted! Can that web clothe you for standing before God, when it is finished and removed from the beam? Throw it away, tear it to shreds, abandon alike your good and bad works, and listen to the Redeemer’s voice (Rev_3:18). You pity the poorly-clad amid the biting frosts and snows of winter, but more to be pitied are they who advance into the winter of declining years, the chill region of death, and the storms of judgment, with no sufficient clothing for their defenceless souls!—William Guthrie, M.A.
Isa_59:7. Depravity. I. Has its seat in the heart. II. Its expression in the conduct. III. Its issue in misery and ruin.—J. Lyth, D.D.
Isa_59:8. I. The characters described. Those who make crooked paths—
1. From the line of duty prescribed by the law.
2. By the Gospel.
3. By conscience. II. Their awful condition. Cannot know peace. In life—death—eternal world.—C. Simeon, M.A.
The path of transgressors is one—I. Of contention. II. Of injustice. III. Of perverseness. IV. Of misery.
Isa_59:9-15. I. The misery of sinners. No light, comfort, certainty, security, relief, salvation. II. The cause. Transgression multiplied, acknowledged, aggravated, open, wilful, exciting justly the displeasure of God.—Dr. Lyth.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v6 Isa 59:6. - Rev 3:18.
Isaiah
FLIMSY GARMENTS
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Isa 59:6. - Rev 3:18.
The force of these words of the prophet is very obvious. He has been pouring out swift, indignant denunciation on the evil-doers in Israel; and, says he, ‘they hatch cockatrice’s eggs and spin spiders’ webs,’ pointing, as I suppose, to the patient perseverance, worthy of a better cause, which bad men will exercise in working out their plans. Then with a flash of bitter irony, led on by his imagination to say more than he had meant, he adds this scathing parenthesis, as if he said, ‘Yes, they spin spiders’ webs, elaborate toil and creeping contrivance, and what comes of it all! The flimsy foul thing is swept away by God’s besom sooner or later. A web indeed! but they will never make a garment out of it. It looks like cloth, but it is useless.’ That is the old lesson that all sin is profitless and comes to nothing.
I venture to connect with that strongly figurative declaration of the essential futility of godless living, our second text, in which Jesus uses a similar figure to express one aspect of His gifts to the believing soul. He is ready to clothe it, so that ‘being clothed, it will not be found naked.’
I. Sin clothes no man even here.
Notice in passing what a hint there is of the toil and trouble that men are so willing to take in a wrong course. Hatching and spinning both suggest protracted, sedulous labour. And then the issue of it all is- nothing.
Take the plainest illustrations of this truth first-the breach of common laws of morality, the indulgence, for instance, in dissipation. A man gets a certain coarse delight out of it, but what does he get besides? A weakened body, a tyrannous craving, ruined prospects, oftenest poverty and shame, the loss of self-respect and love; of moral excellences, of tastes for what is better. He is not a beast, and he cannot live for pure animalism without injuring himself.
Then take actual breaches of human laws. How seldom these ‘pay,’ even in the lowest sense. Thieves are always poor. The same experience of futility dogs all coarse and palpable breaches of morality. It is always true that ‘He that breaketh a hedge, a serpent shall bite him.’
The reasons are not far to seek. This is, on the whole, God’s world, a world of retribution. Things are, on the whole, on the side of goodness. God is in the world, and that is an element not to be left out in the calculation. Society is on the side of goodness to a large extent. The constitution of a man’s own soul, which God made, works in the same direction. Young men who are trembling on the verge of youthful yieldings to passion, are tempted to fancy that they can sow sin and not reap suffering or harm. Would that they settled it in their thoughts that he who fires a fuse must expect an explosion!
But the same rule applies to every godless form of life. Take our Manchester temptation, money or success in business. Take ambition. Take culture, literary fame. Take love and friendship. What do they all come to, if godless? I do not point to the many failures, but suppose success: would that make you a happy man? If you won what you wanted, would it be enough? What ‘garments’ for your conscience, for your sense of sin, for your infinite longings would success in any godless course provide? You would have what you wanted, and what would it bring with it? Cares and troubles and swift satiety, and not seldom incapacity to enjoy what you had won with so much toil. If you gained the prize, you would find clinging to it something that you did not bargain for, and that took most of the dazzle away from it.
II. The rags are all stripped off some day.
Death is a becoming naked as to the body, and as to all the occupations that terminate with bodily life. It necessarily involves the loss of possessions, the cessation of activities, the stripping off of self-deceptions, and exposure to the gaze of the Judge, without defence. The godless soul will ‘be found naked’ and ashamed. All ‘works of darkness,’ laden with rich blossom or juicy fruit though they have seemed to be, will then be seen to be in tragic truth ‘fruitless.’ A life’s spinning and weaving, and not a rag to cover the toiler after all! Is that ‘productive labour’?
III. Christ will clothe you.
‘White raiment.’ Pure character. Covering before the Judge. Festal robe of Victory.
‘Buy’-how? By giving up self.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v4 (See Scofield "Psa 2:12").
trust
(See Scofield "Psa 2:12").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv3, 5, 7 General Information:
General Information:
Isaiah continues speaking to the people of Israel.
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For your hands are stained with blood and your fingers with sin
Here "hands" and "fingers" refers to their actions. This means they are guilty of doing violent and sinful things. "Your" is plural. AT: "For you have committed violent sins" (See: Metonymy and Forms of You)
Your lips speak lies and your tongue speaks maliciously
The parts of the body that make speech represent what people say. AT: "You speak lies and malicious things" (See: Metonymy)
they conceive trouble and give birth to sin
"Conceiving" and "giving birth" emphasize how carefully they plan to do sinful things. Here "they" still refers to the people of Israel. AT: "they work hard to do sinful things" (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
hand
blood
sin
tongue
call
righteous
true
trust
word
trouble
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv2, 4, 5, 7 59:2 your sins . . . cut you off:…
59:2 your sins . . . cut you off: The Israelites, like all people (Rom 3:15-17), had sinned, which resulted in alienation from God (he has turned away).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.