Isaiah 1:18 ‘“Come now, let us reason together”, says the Lord’.
Stain devils clean clothes, Christ’s blood cleans souls.
INTRODUCTION.
How wrong can someone get it!
Through Isaiah, God has given a vision of condemnation, condemning a sinful and rebellious people; God’s people, Israel. Long before this time, the nation had broken into two kingdoms: Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Israel had been invaded, conquered and transported. The same had happened to most of Judah. Only the city of Jerusalem was left. It is in this scenario that God sends His prophet, Isaiah, to prophecy to the remnant of Israel and Judah.
What a start to this prophecy? Vv3 & 4.
V3: beasts know their master/Lord but Israel, the people of God, does not know its God or understand Him.
V4 they are a people loaded with guilt and spurned by the Holy One of Israel, the Almighty God.
Israel and Judah have felt the punishment of God (v5 >) but still they do not know or understand (v3) which is why God calls them a stubborn people (Hos 4:16). “The Israelites are stubborn, like a stubborn heifer”
Then we have the ultimate condemnation, and these are the words of God Himself, not those of Isaiah, (v10) “Hear the word of the Lord”. A blistering attack upon Judah, and in particular, its religious worship, its sacrificial system (vv10 – 14). An attack which is followed by an appeal for justice and obedience (v16 –20a). These two parts are linked together by what is probably one of the most awful verses of the Bible, (v15) God says “When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood;”.
What is going on?
ACCUSED
The people of Judah, but in particular the leaders and rulers, are accused of hypocrisy in the temple of God. They come in to the temple and make sacrifices for atonement, but without any meaning. In fact, God says that He does not want the sacrifice; He wants the heart of the people. The blood of the sacrifice does not cleanse away the sin or the guilt (v4); in fact it makes it even worse. The blood sticks to their hands and cannot be removed, so that God says, “Your hands are full of blood”.
What does God mean when He says this?
1. They have not cared for the orphaned or the widowed; the vulnerable in society. God’s law in Ex 22: 22 – 24 “Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives will become widows and your children fatherless.” One of the key social laws set by God. “Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan”, do not exploit them.
2. They have not come into the house of God with repentance on their hearts. It has become a formality, make the sacrifice and go back out again and carry on sinning. Paul reminds us, “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means!”, “should we go on sinning to make the sacrifice of Jesus even more meaningful”; of course not we need to come with repentance in our hearts. God will become weary of endless and meaningless sacrifice from closed hearts.
V11 reminds us of Ps 51: 16, 17, “You (God) do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”
The sacrifice has become revolting in the sight of our Father. To such an extent that He will hide His eyes from those who come into His House.
3. Their sacrifices have been empty and meaningless; therefore, instead of the sacrifice atoning for their sin it has actually increased their sin: they have killed the sacrificial animal needlessly, they have mocked the sacrificial system, and they have mocked God.
We need to be careful about our own life; how we spend it, and also how we come to God. Has coming to church become a mindless routine? It is a good habit to get into and Paul does remind us that we should not neglect the gathering together for worship. But has it become so mindless that it is actually a mockery of God?
When we come to God in prayers asking for forgiveness, are they meant? The Jews had a sacrifice for the sins they had committed, but there was also a general sacrifice that was made to cover all the sins that the people might have committed (Lev 16: 15, 16). The conscience cleanser, the catch-all sacrifice. Isaiah is here telling the religious leaders and the rulers of the people that they are abusing the sacrificial system. They could not come into the temple on the Sabbath and ask for forgiveness, and then go out and continue abusing and exploiting the vulnerable.
Do we come into the House of God on a Sunday in prayer and worship and then ignore Him for the rest of the week? Is God a part of our everyday life, or is He a garment that we wear on Sundays for church?
We are going to gather around Our Lord’s Table in a few minutes. Does it still have real meaning, or is it part of the Sunday ritual which has to be gone through to say that we are Christians? To make us feel comfortable.
If we forget what it is all about, God tells us that we are lifting hands to Him which are full of blood. Hands which are stained, which cannot be cleaned; stained with sin like scarlet, hypocrisy, red as crimson.
CONDEMNED.
Because of all this God says that He will have nothing to do with the people of Judah (15) “When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen.” This is awful; there is no way back to God!
The people of Israel and of Judah were being punished by God at the time that Isaiah was having this vision. Israel had been completely conquered and its people transported away. Most of Judah was in the same state. The only part that was left was Jerusalem. The people cried to God for help, for protection from the awful humiliation, the loss of loved ones in battle, the transportation to a foreign land. But God “hid His eyes”, “He did not listen”, because their prayers for salvation were self-centred, they were not caring about the vulnerable and needy in society nor about God. They were concerned to protect themselves and their wealth. God had become a talisman for good, which could be held up in the face of evil, so that the evil would have to retreat. But the evil did not retreat, because God is not a talisman that can be kept in a pocket or on a chain to be brought out at need.
How heavily they are condemned. They are called the “rulers of Sodom”, “you people of Gomorrah”. These are symbols of gross immorality and utter condemnation. These towns were so bad that God could not find one innocent person within them so that He would spare them, so He utterly destroyed them. The rulers of Jerusalem had become so greedy, so evil and so ignorant of the standards of God that they could be compared with the depths of evil.
We need to be careful when we read the condemnation. It was not just that they oppressed the poor and the vulnerable. More seriously, in God’s eyes, they believed that they could do this and then come into the temple and cleanse themselves with a sacrifice. But there was no repentance. Repentance means that we actually turn away from the evil that we have been committing, that we reject it and do not want to be involved in it again. This does not mean that we never commit those sins again. Paul reminds us of our failings on this score, when he cries out that he does the things he does not want to, and does not do the things that he wants to; “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:14 – 24)
What it does mean, though, is that we do not carry on with our old ways in a wanton manner, regardless of the life that God wants us to live. We are not to enter worship in a mindless and empty way; we are not to take part in Our Lord’s Table without regard for what we are doing.
FORGIVEN.
Is all lost? Has God closed His eyes and His ears so that no appeal can be made?
(v18) ‘“Come now, let us reason together”, says the Lord’. Your uttermost depths of sin can be cleansed away, but not by your actions.
God says that their sins are like scarlet and crimson. These are ‘fast colours’, which means that the colours are held within the fibres of the fabric and cannot be removed by washing. Washing powders and stain devils can remove grease and dirt, even ground in dirt (so the adverts tell us), but they cannot remove these fast colours. The stain of sin has become fast held within the clothes and cannot be removed by human cleaning.
Remember, though, the words of 2 Chronicles 7:14 “if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
What do we have to do?
1. Call upon the name of God,
2. In humility, and
3. in prayer, and
4. In repentance (turn from their wicked ways).
What were the missing ingredients: humility and repentance? We cannot walk into the House of God and demand. God will only hear if we are truly humble of heart and truly repent of our wicked ways. Then we will know forgiveness, God has promised it to us here in 2 Chronicles 7:14. He has also promised it to us in the Blood of Jesus.
Washing powders may clean clothes, but it needs the Blood of Jesus to clean souls.
Once we have been washed in the Blood of Jesus, our hands will no longer be full of blood. They will be clean. Our robes will also be clean. As it says in Rev 7:13, 14 “Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes – who are they, and where did they come from?”
I answered, “Sir, you know.”
And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.””
And Jesus said in Rev 22:12-14 “Behold I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
“Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city.”” The New Jerusalem.
Will you have white robes that are cleansed in the blood of the Lamb? Will you have a right to the tree of life? Will you enter the city, the New Jerusalem?
You will if you seek God’s face and truly repent, accepting the only the sacrifice that will leave you without blood on your hands. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
