Micah McCormick: Turn over to Isaiah 59.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 59.
Micah McCormick: We're going through this book of the Bible together, and you might wonder, why are we here today?
Micah McCormick: Well, it's our normal pattern on Sunday morning to go through books of the Bible.
Micah McCormick: There's occasions where we'll take a Sunday to do a different passage, or we might at some point do a series on a certain important topic.
Micah McCormick: But there's a number of reasons why we tend to normally go through books of the Bible, a paragraph at a time, a chapter at a time, a few chapters at a time.
Micah McCormick: Won't go through all those reasons, but one of the reasons is God has told us to preach the whole counsel of God.
Micah McCormick: Not just what I think or what might be on my mind or what I'd like to talk about, but what does he actually say?
Micah McCormick: So when we go through a book of the Bible, half a chapter at a time, paragraph, chapter at a time, it helps us remember, well, this is what God says, and whatever he has for us is important.
Micah McCormick: So that's why we're here in Isaiah 59 this morning.
Micah McCormick: It's a dark passage, and it's nevertheless God's holy word.
Micah McCormick: I'm going to start by reading for us.
Micah McCormick: We'll look at the first 13 verses today, Isaiah 59, verses 1 to 13.
Micah McCormick: Indeed, the Lord's arm is not too weak to save, and his ear is not too deaf to hear.
Micah McCormick: But your iniquities are separating you from your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he does not listen.
Micah McCormick: For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity.
Micah McCormick: Your lips have spoken lies, and your tongues mutter injustice.
Micah McCormick: No one makes claims justly, no one pleads honestly.
Micah McCormick: They trust in empty and worthless words.
Micah McCormick: They conceive trouble and give birth to iniquity.
Micah McCormick: They hatch vipers' eggs and weave spiders' webs.
Micah McCormick: Whoever eats their eggs will die, crack one open, and a viper is hatched.
Micah McCormick: Their webs cannot become clothing, they cannot cover themselves with their works, their works are sinful works, and violent acts are in their hands.
Micah McCormick: Their feet run after evil, and they rush to shed innocent blood.
Micah McCormick: Their thoughts are sinful thoughts, ruin and wretchedness are in their paths, they have not known the path of peace, and there is no justice in their ways.
Micah McCormick: They have made their roads crooked, no one who walks on them will know peace.
Micah McCormick: Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us.
Micah McCormick: We hope for light, but there is darkness, for brightness, but we live in the night.
Micah McCormick: We grope along a wall like the blind.
Micah McCormick: We grope like those without eyes.
Micah McCormick: We stumble at noon as though it were twilight, we are like the dead among those who are healthy.
Micah McCormick: We all growl like bears and moan like doves.
Micah McCormick: We hope for justice, but there is none, for salvation, but it is far from us.
Micah McCormick: For our transgressions have multiplied before you, and our sins testify against us, for our transgressions are with us, and we know our iniquities, transgression and deception against the Lord, turning away from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering lying words from the heart.
Micah McCormick: Let's just briefly seek the Lord again.
Micah McCormick: Lord, we don't want to minimize the weight of your word.
Micah McCormick: We know that it's here with your authority, and yet we need the Spirit to bring that authority.
Micah McCormick: It's not my authority, it's the Holy Spirit at work.
Micah McCormick: So we pray for the Spirit's work today in Jesus' name.
Micah McCormick: Amen.
Micah McCormick: One pastor tells the story of how his children wanted to put on a church service for him and his wife.
Micah McCormick: Kids like to play act, you know, a tea party.
Micah McCormick: Why not a church service?
Micah McCormick: And this particular pastor has nine children.
Micah McCormick: Now, I don't know how many he had at the specific time this happened, but they were mostly young children.
Micah McCormick: But it's nice because you got many children.
Micah McCormick: One of them can be the usher, one of them can take you to your seat, can do a prayer, do a song, bang on the trash can lid for the music, you know.
Micah McCormick: So he and his wife are ushered into the basement for the children's church service they were going to put on for their parents.
Micah McCormick: And they sit down, there's some songs, a little prayer.
Micah McCormick: And then one of his sons gets up to preach.
Micah McCormick: Now, this was not a college-age, you know, son.
Micah McCormick: This was a this was a child.
Micah McCormick: And the pastor's thinking, you know, my son hears me every week.
Micah McCormick: What is it, what is this sermon gonna be?
Micah McCormick: And the child gets up behind the makeshift pulpit and proceeds to deliver a very brief sermon.
Micah McCormick: You're all sinners.
Micah McCormick: Let's pray.
Micah McCormick: I have to warn you in advance, that's what this sermon is going to be today.
Micah McCormick: It's gonna be more than one sentence, but that's really the sermon in a nutshell.
Micah McCormick: All have sinned.
Micah McCormick: When we move, though, from a children's drama to scripture, there's a there's a big difference.
Micah McCormick: Children are adorable, they just are.
Micah McCormick: Sin isn't.
Micah McCormick: It's grotesque.
Micah McCormick: Sin is really of itself no laughing matter.
Micah McCormick: And our passage today is filled up with sin.
Micah McCormick: We just heard it.
Micah McCormick: You heard it read.
Micah McCormick: Look again at verse 2.
Micah McCormick: Your iniquities are separating you from your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so he doesn't listen.
Micah McCormick: There's the important summary that indeed all have sinned.
Micah McCormick: As we work through these first 13 verses today, notice that there's a shift in the pronouns.
Micah McCormick: You're like, okay, wow, I was, you know, sin is one thing, a grammar lesson, that's even worse.
Micah McCormick: Look, look at verses two and three.
Micah McCormick: There, it's your iniquities, your sins, your hands, your iniquity.
Micah McCormick: Then in verse four, the you, you, you becomes no one.
Micah McCormick: And then in verse five, it's they hatch viper's legs.
Micah McCormick: Verse six, their webs, verse seven, their feet, verse eight, they have not known the path of peace.
Micah McCormick: Why does Isaiah move from you, you, to they, their.
Micah McCormick: Well, remember that Isaiah is prophesying here to the nation of Israel, especially to Judah and Jerusalem, but that's his first audience.
Micah McCormick: And yet, under God's inspiration, he's pointing to a deeper and more universal problem in the way this passage develops.
Micah McCormick: So hold your finger here and turn back over to Romans 3.
Micah McCormick: All right, hold your finger here in Isaiah 59.
Micah McCormick: Go back to Romans 3 if you've got your scriptures.
Micah McCormick: We read this earlier, and I want you to look again specifically at verses 15 to 17 of Romans 3.
Micah McCormick: There, Paul writes, their feet are swift to shed blood, ruin and wretchedness are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known.
Micah McCormick: Well, that's from Isaiah 59.
Micah McCormick: Paul quotes from our passage.
Micah McCormick: Why does he do that?
Micah McCormick: If you look here in Romans 3, uh Mike laid some of this out, but Paul is quoting from a number of different Old Testament passages, and he's doing that to make a point.
Micah McCormick: What's his point?
Micah McCormick: Well, go back earlier in the chapter, verses 9 and 10.
Micah McCormick: He gives us the point.
Micah McCormick: What then?
Micah McCormick: Are we any better off we Jews?
Micah McCormick: Not at all.
Micah McCormick: For we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin.
Micah McCormick: It's not just Jewish people who are sinners, it's Gentiles as well.
Micah McCormick: And Paul proves his point by going to Isaiah 59, among other places.
Micah McCormick: Israel's problem is the world's problem.
Micah McCormick: So you can go back now to Isaiah 59, but when Isaiah shifts from you, you, to they, there, he's hinting at a very profound point.
Micah McCormick: Israel's problem is not just Israel's problem, it's everyone's problem.
Micah McCormick: All have sinned.
Micah McCormick: And there's one more pronoun shift in the passage, verse number eight.
Micah McCormick: So verse number eight says, starts, they have not known the path of peace.
Micah McCormick: Then when you come to verse nine, it says, Therefore, justice is far from us.
Micah McCormick: We hope for light.
Micah McCormick: We live in the light.
Micah McCormick: Verse 10, we grope along the wall.
Micah McCormick: Verse 11, we growl.
Micah McCormick: Verse 12, our transgressions.
Micah McCormick: So Isaiah moves from you to they to we.
Micah McCormick: Isaiah is not preaching from an ivory tower.
Micah McCormick: He's including himself among the sinful people.
Micah McCormick: He's already done that in chapter six.
Micah McCormick: Woe to me, for I am a man of unclean lips.
Micah McCormick: Yes, I live in a midst of a people of unclean lips, but I myself am man of unclean lips.
Micah McCormick: So the message is not you're all sinners, it's we're all sinners.
Micah McCormick: We all have sinned.
Micah McCormick: Israel's sin, the world's sin, and our sin.
Micah McCormick: That's the path that the passage takes, and that's the path we're gonna take in the sermon today.
Micah McCormick: Israel's sin, the world's sin, and our sin.
Micah McCormick: So first, Israel's sin, verse three, your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity, your lips have spoken lies, and your tongues mutter injustice.
Micah McCormick: Isaiah says that Israel is a people of lying lips and bloody hands.
Micah McCormick: Throughout their history, generation after generation is marked by the rebellion of lying lips and bloody hands.
Micah McCormick: They come out of Egypt.
Micah McCormick: God has just rescued them.
Micah McCormick: They set up a golden calf, and they say, This is your God, O Israel.
Micah McCormick: Lies.
Micah McCormick: They complain in the wilderness.
Micah McCormick: But what is complaining?
Micah McCormick: Complaining is one of two things.
Micah McCormick: Either, God, I know you're not in control of my circumstances.
Micah McCormick: I don't like my circumstances.
Micah McCormick: Well, that's not true.
Micah McCormick: God's in control.
Micah McCormick: Or it's God, yeah, you're in control of my circumstances, but you're not doing a very good job with those.
Micah McCormick: Either way, it's it's complaining is a lie, and that's what they were marked by, time and time again.
Micah McCormick: The book of Judges shows us that, yes, lying lips and also bloody hands.
Micah McCormick: Judges chapter 19, you don't have to turn there, but it contains a gruesome story.
Micah McCormick: It's probably not the story they're doing in the children's Bible lesson today.
Micah McCormick: But in Judges 19, there's a Levite traveling with a woman, and they come to a town within Israel, and men of the town assault and rape this woman and leave her for dead.
Micah McCormick: And the next morning the Levite picks her up, puts her on his donkey, takes the body back to his house, cuts her up into 12 pieces, sends one piece to each tribe of Israel just to try to wake them up to the reality of how violent they've become.
Micah McCormick: Well, there's no king in Israel during the time of the judges.
Micah McCormick: Maybe a king could help out.
Micah McCormick: Doesn't always help out.
Micah McCormick: Sometimes the kings actually make it worse.
Micah McCormick: Remember the story of Naboth's vineyard?
Micah McCormick: There's a man, landowner, he's got a vineyard next to Ahab's palace.
Micah McCormick: And the king, Ahab, he likes that vineyard.
Micah McCormick: So he tries to buy it.
Micah McCormick: And Naboth says, no sale.
Micah McCormick: So what does Ahab do?
Micah McCormick: His wife helps him concoct a plan to have two guys lie about Naboth, that he's a blasphemer, so that they can kill him and just take the vineyard.
Micah McCormick: Lying lips, bloody hands.
Micah McCormick: And you fast forward to the book of Acts, Stephen preaches this powerful sermon to a group of Jewish people, and he's able to speak to them only because he's been accused of blasphemy by lying men, and they're talking about killing him.
Micah McCormick: And he's given the stage and he says this You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears, you're always resisting the Holy Spirit.
Micah McCormick: As your ancestors did, so do you also.
Micah McCormick: Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute?
Micah McCormick: They even killed those who foretold the coming of the righteous one, whose betrayers and murderers you've become.
Micah McCormick: And how do those Israelites respond to Stephen?
Micah McCormick: They stone him to death.
Micah McCormick: Now I say all this, no animosity whatsoever in my heart toward Israel.
Micah McCormick: Our prayer for them should be like Paul's prayer, his heart's desire that they might be saved.
Micah McCormick: We want more and more Jewish people to come to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: But in order to do that, they have to reckon with the reality that they are sinners, because all have sinned.
Micah McCormick: So we see not only in this passage, Isaiah 59, Israel's sin, when we move into verses 4 to 8, we see the world's sin.
Micah McCormick: And the world sin is also marked by lying lips and bloody hands.
Micah McCormick: You could say a lot, but Isaiah seems to highlight those categories especially.
Micah McCormick: Verse 3, your lips have spoken lies, yes.
Micah McCormick: Now what about verse 7?
Micah McCormick: They rush to shed innocent blood.
Micah McCormick: Is it really just Israel?
Micah McCormick: No, it's not.
Micah McCormick: We can go back all the way before Moses, all the way before Abraham, all the way to the beginning in the garden, when the serpent comes along and says, Did God really say, You won't surely die?
Micah McCormick: It's a lie.
Micah McCormick: A lie that Adam and Eve believed.
Micah McCormick: The very first sibling rivalry was not about who gets to play the trash can lids for the children's service for the parents.
Micah McCormick: The first sibling rivalry was between Cain and Abel, where one son killed the other son.
Micah McCormick: As you move on in the Old Testament, there's wickedness from the surrounding nations in all kinds of ways, some particularly grievous ways.
Micah McCormick: Yes, warfare, unnecessary desire to have more territory to kill others, even going so far as child sacrifice.
Micah McCormick: You can read that in places like Leviticus 20 and Jeremiah 19.
Micah McCormick: Think of how distorted that is.
Micah McCormick: God's command of the beginning, be fruitful and multiply.
Micah McCormick: God loves children, and yet to take those image bearers and sacrifice them.
Micah McCormick: And we want a better harvest in the future, so let's sacrifice a child now.
Micah McCormick: We want to be blessed with more family in the future.
Micah McCormick: Let's kill one of our own children now.
Micah McCormick: It's a twisted lie that lands in grievous violence.
Micah McCormick: Here in Isaiah, Isaiah's also had time to call out the people of Israel for their sin.
Micah McCormick: But even in this book of Isaiah, we've seen him pronouncing judgment against the surrounding nations.
Micah McCormick: Again, you don't have to turn there, but chapters 13 to 23 are a series of judgment oracles against Babylon, Philistia, Moab, right on down the list.
Micah McCormick: Israel's problem is the world's problem.
Micah McCormick: Who killed the Lord Jesus?
Micah McCormick: The truly innocent one of all innocent ones?
Micah McCormick: The Greco-Roman world or the Jewish people?
Micah McCormick: Yes.
Micah McCormick: The Jews helped to instigate his death, but the Romans were the ones that actually carried it out.
Micah McCormick: Pilate might have washed his hands, but he didn't change his orders.
Micah McCormick: He still had bloody hands.
Micah McCormick: And as we look out, even over the history of the world, we've seen Isaiah's prophecy coming true time and time again.
Micah McCormick: How much unnecessary bloodshed of image bearers has been shed.
Micah McCormick: You know, in the Western world, sometimes because technology develops or maybe economy gets a little better, we get the illusion that morality is greatly increasing, that humans are inherently good and they're going to find the answer and the success.
Micah McCormick: The last century, the 20th century, most estimates indicate that there was more death from warfare in the 20th century than in all the other previous centuries combined.
Micah McCormick: How can we say, oh, we're we're doing so much, so much better now?
Micah McCormick: Everything's about to be wonderful.
Micah McCormick: Humans are going to find within themselves the answer and the solution.
Micah McCormick: You find lies and blood.
Micah McCormick: And you might say, okay, well, I mean, it's America did have a civil war, brother against brother.
Micah McCormick: That was 150 years ago.
Micah McCormick: That was a long time ago.
Micah McCormick: Uh, you know, at least we're not like those ancient civilizations that that sacrifice their babies to the fire.
Micah McCormick: In the last 50 years, 50 million babies killed in America alone.
Micah McCormick: 50 million.
Micah McCormick: Let's get a better harvest.
Micah McCormick: Let's sacrifice a child.
Micah McCormick: Let me let sure my career goals aren't interrupted.
Micah McCormick: Let's sacrifice a child.
Micah McCormick: Is it really all that different?
Micah McCormick: And what often drives that violence are the pressures of sometimes parents, boyfriends, people in the public world assuring women it's okay.
Micah McCormick: You won't feel any.
Micah McCormick: It's better this way.
Micah McCormick: Lies.
Micah McCormick: Here in Isaiah 59, as we think about the world's sin, we move from Israel's sin to the world's sin.
Micah McCormick: We don't only move further out, we also start to move further in, into the heart.
Micah McCormick: It's not merely actions that God cares about.
Micah McCormick: It's the heart of Israel, the heart of the world.
Micah McCormick: Look at verse 4, the end of verse 4.
Micah McCormick: They conceive trouble and give birth to iniquity.
Micah McCormick: Verse 5, they hatch vipers' eggs.
Micah McCormick: Verse 7, their thoughts are sinful thoughts.
Micah McCormick: Cain's problem didn't just start when he actually killed his brother, it started with the anger of his heart, where he began to contemplate what it would be like to kill his own brother.
Micah McCormick: Genesis 6 gives us the indictment during Noah's day.
Micah McCormick: And listen to what it says.
Micah McCormick: It doesn't just say that every action of humanity was rebelling against God.
Micah McCormick: Genesis 6 tells us every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time.
Micah McCormick: If you go to Nebuchadnezzar's day, God judges him.
Micah McCormick: Not when he sets up this giant idol, as sinful as that was.
Micah McCormick: God judges Nebuchadnezzar, the king, when he's strolling along the roof of his palace and he says, Look at this Babylon that I've built.
Micah McCormick: Just the prideful thought of his heart was so revulsive to God that that's the point when God chooses to bring him low.
Micah McCormick: The Ten Commandments reveal the importance of the heart.
Micah McCormick: Yes, don't steal, don't commit adultery, but what's the very last one?
Micah McCormick: Don't covet your neighbor's house, your neighbor's wife.
Micah McCormick: One of the challenges with our world today is that they often think that what you think and feel, as long as it doesn't matter to anyone else, it's it's a category of irrelevant, not not wrong or right.
Micah McCormick: It's only the things you do that can be wrong or right.
Micah McCormick: And that's one reason why the world doesn't feel the weight of sin in the way that the Bible outlines what sin is and the way that it goes against God, not only in actions, but also even in thoughts and heart motives.
Micah McCormick: I mean, if you could, even leaving aside for a fact that there's no perfect place in the world, that cultures vary from one to the other.
Micah McCormick: You can never totally agree within one culture, even of exactly what's right and wrong.
Micah McCormick: People think that the only things that are wrong are things that are illegal.
Micah McCormick: That's just, even if you had a culture that was as good as you could possibly imagine, that had laws that were as just as possible, the things that are illegal are only the tip of the iceberg of what sin is.
Micah McCormick: And just for the record, I don't believe governments should prosecute covetousness.
Micah McCormick: So I don't believe scripture encourages governments to prosecute these thoughts of covetousness.
Micah McCormick: But God will.
Micah McCormick: And that's the important thing.
Micah McCormick: The important thing is not what the world around says is right or wrong.
Micah McCormick: The important thing is not measuring up to my own standard.
Micah McCormick: The important thing is, am I measuring up to God's standard?
Micah McCormick: 1 John 3, 4, sin is the transgression of the law of God.
Micah McCormick: So if sin is not measuring up to God's standard, then it makes sense that when the world doesn't measure up to God's standard, when it falls short, there's a separation between humanity and God, which we find in verse number two.
Micah McCormick: Iniquity separates us from God, and our sins hide his face from us.
Micah McCormick: That's how Isaiah begins.
Micah McCormick: He doesn't begin to Israel, or again, by implication here to all the nations, to everyone.
Micah McCormick: He doesn't begin by saying, Well, you know, your decisions are really hurting your future job prospects, or they're giving you feelings of guilt.
Micah McCormick: We got to work on those feelings of guilt.
Micah McCormick: That those things also have consequences.
Micah McCormick: He says the biggest problem is your sin is separating you from God.
Micah McCormick: That's the biggest problem in the world.
Micah McCormick: The biggest problem is not warfare from one nation to the next, that's downstream of the larger problem that the world has turned away from God and God is separated from humanity.
Micah McCormick: Jonathan Edwards gets it right.
Micah McCormick: The smallest sin is an act of cosmic treason against the holy God.
Micah McCormick: Sin cuts off the world from the best relationship they could ever have.
Micah McCormick: And we don't need to fear the wrath of any person or even government like we need to fear the wrath of the one that can cast soul and body into hell, as Jesus our Lord Himself says.
Micah McCormick: The world has a sin problem.
Micah McCormick: And then finally today, we have a sin problem.
Micah McCormick: Verse number 10, we turn to the we's of the passage.
Micah McCormick: We grope along a wall like the blind.
Micah McCormick: Sin is deceptive, it clouds our judgment.
Micah McCormick: Verse 12 ends, we know our iniquity.
Micah McCormick: That's almost a tension there.
Micah McCormick: Well, if if we're blind, how do we know?
Micah McCormick: It's the Romans 1 story.
Micah McCormick: People know God, but they intentionally suppress the truth and unrighteousness.
Micah McCormick: They know in their conscience that judgment is coming, but they press it down, they try to put it out of their minds, out of their lives.
Micah McCormick: We're all implicated, all have sinned.
Micah McCormick: And sometimes we can we need to be careful, even as God's people, that we begin to think like we're really, really wildly different than the world around us.
Micah McCormick: But isn't it true that even in our lives as God's people, sometimes our lives can be larked, can be marked by forms of lying lips and bloody hands?
Micah McCormick: Leviticus 20, uh, that's a place where God's instructing his people not to give their children over to Molech in sacrifice, the way some surrounding nations do.
Micah McCormick: And listen to what God says.
Micah McCormick: Proverbs 24, 11 and 12.
Micah McCormick: Rescue those being taken off to death, and save those stumbling towards slaughter.
Micah McCormick: If you say, But we didn't know about this, won't he who weighs hearts consider it?
Micah McCormick: Won't he who protects your life know?
Micah McCormick: Won't he repay a person according to his work?
Micah McCormick: How can we say we didn't know?
Micah McCormick: We we know about bloody hands, we know.
Micah McCormick: We just want to stay sometimes in our comfortable sanitized worlds.
Micah McCormick: You say, well, Micah, what am I supposed to do?
Micah McCormick: Just quit my job and become some kind of full-time advocate for this or that cause.
Micah McCormick: No, I'm not saying you need to quit your job.
Micah McCormick: And then it's gonna look different for different ones of us in how we respond and think about this, but is it on your heart to care?
Micah McCormick: What do you do when your friend says, yeah, you know, I'm thinking about getting an abortion?
Micah McCormick: Why are we so quick to say, well, I mean, it's none of my, who am I to say anything?
Micah McCormick: None of my business.
Micah McCormick: Wouldn't it be odd?
Micah McCormick: I'm gonna ask you this seriously, wouldn't it be odd if I was talking to a police officer and I said, So what do you got planned for this week?
Micah McCormick: And they said, Well, you know, I'm planning to kill someone.
Micah McCormick: And I said, Well, what do you mean?
Micah McCormick: And they say, Well, there's this guy on my block, and it's just he makes my life difficult.
Micah McCormick: He's drunk one day, he's jaywalking the next, and I just think my life will be a little, a little, a little better if I if I just kill him, not gonna torture him, but just kill him.
Micah McCormick: Don't worry, I cleared it with my boss.
Micah McCormick: Wouldn't it be weird if I said, Well, I, you know, who am I?
Micah McCormick: That's the way policing works these days.
Micah McCormick: I mean, he said he cleared it with his boss.
Micah McCormick: I don't know.
Micah McCormick: I I would hope that you'd want me to say, well, please don't do that.
Micah McCormick: And who is your boss?
Micah McCormick: We need to get that guy fired immediately.
Micah McCormick: Do do these considerations about death around us, in sometimes extreme and and and factory-like form, does it take any consideration into our civic life, our life as friends?
Micah McCormick: Christians can face all kinds of temptation to minimize sin.
Micah McCormick: And that extends to actions, it extends to the heart as well.
Micah McCormick: Because remember, Isaiah's told us sin is about the heart, not even just about behavior.
Micah McCormick: And sometimes Christians can be tempted to kind of split the difference between the world and God's word.
Micah McCormick: Let me give you an example of that.
Micah McCormick: The world says, well, you know, your a feeling can't be wrong.
Micah McCormick: Maybe some actions can be wrong, but not a feeling or a thought.
Micah McCormick: And then we see in scripture, certain behaviors are clearly condemned by God.
Micah McCormick: And we're tempted to split the difference.
Micah McCormick: Okay, so these patterns of behavior, we can't say those are okay because the Bible's clear about that, but we'll split the difference and say, well, as long as you don't actually act on those sinful desires, those sinful desires, you know, it's okay.
Micah McCormick: That's a lie.
Micah McCormick: That's that's that's excusing what the Bible says is a part of the sin that, yes, leads to death, it can lead to all kinds of actions, but it's the thoughts of the heart and not merely actions.
Micah McCormick: We don't want to hide sinful hearts.
Micah McCormick: We want to expose our sinful hearts.
Micah McCormick: There's a book called Deeper by Dane Ortland, and he has a very thoughtful chapter on sin.
Micah McCormick: It's called Despair, the title of the chapter, which even there says something truthful.
Micah McCormick: But at one point he says, evil is the oceans, not the islands of our internal existence.
Micah McCormick: You hear what he's saying there.
Micah McCormick: Sin is not just occasionally we do a wrong thing.
Micah McCormick: There's something about who we are that doesn't recognize God and that is okay with going against his word, with little thoughtfulness.
Micah McCormick: Or one other commentator writes, We may very well live in a dark world, but the darkness that first calls for rectification is within.
Micah McCormick: What about the angry thoughts of our heart toward others?
Micah McCormick: Doesn't Jesus say in Matthew 5, you've heard it said, don't murder, and whoever murders will be subject to judgment, to judgment.
Micah McCormick: But I tell you, everyone who is angry with his brother or sister will be subject to judgment.
Micah McCormick: If you're angry with your spouse, ask, is this really a righteous anger?
Micah McCormick: You you I think you know what the answer probably is.
Micah McCormick: Is there someone else in this church?
Micah McCormick: Is there someone that you just wish would leave this church and never come back?
SPEAKER_00: They might not know your attitude.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord knows it.
SPEAKER_00: And he sees.
SPEAKER_00: Beware that heart of anger.
SPEAKER_00: What about lying lips?
Micah McCormick: How eager are we to talk about our devotional lives when things are going well?
Micah McCormick: And when we neglect God, we just uh don't bring it up.
Micah McCormick: Or if someone asks us, we'll give them a devotional nugget from two months ago, like it was from two days ago.
Micah McCormick: Because we don't want them to see or know who we are.
Micah McCormick: Rather than asking for prayer, we lie about the truth.
Micah McCormick: Isaiah 59 highlights these categories of violence and speech, hands and tongue.
Micah McCormick: Those are two broad categories, but those categories, as we've seen through example after example in scripture, those categories of lying lips and bloody hands are often connected.
Micah McCormick: We don't mind slanting the truth to someone that we're angry at.
Micah McCormick: Isn't that how the internet works in significant ways?
Micah McCormick: Isn't that why some things are so successfully passed along and retweeted?
Micah McCormick: We're not concerned so much.
Micah McCormick: As long as the object of this negative article or post is someone we don't like, we're not as concerned about the truthfulness of it.
Micah McCormick: But oh, if it's a person that we like, now we're gonna say, well, we've got to fact-check this.
Micah McCormick: We've got to make sure it's entirely true.
Micah McCormick: Before you pass along that link that is negative towards some other person or group, ask the question, is this true or am I in the danger of multiplying lying lips?
Micah McCormick: And then even if you have good reason to believe that it is true, ask, well, why do I want to send this to others?
Micah McCormick: Is it is it really to help make them better informed or to stir up righteous concern?
Micah McCormick: Is that really the reason?
Micah McCormick: Okay, or is it I just want others to share in my vindictive spirit?
Micah McCormick: Many of us need to, on our internet browsers, have a permanent header from the Charles Wesley hymn.
Micah McCormick: Ye servants of God, your master proclaim and publish abroad his wonderful name.
SPEAKER_00: Israel's sin, the world's sin, it's it's our sin.
Micah McCormick: All have sinned.
Micah McCormick: Our passage today brings us into what's called the doctrine of total depravity.
Micah McCormick: Now that that doesn't mean every person is as bad as they possibly could be.
Micah McCormick: That's not what scripture says or that I'm saying.
Micah McCormick: We could all be worse if it wasn't for God's restraining grace.
Micah McCormick: But it does help us see that every part of us, from our thoughts to our hearts, to our lips, to our hands, every single part of us is tainted and captured by sin as we come into the world.
Micah McCormick: I know it's been a dark passage, uh, but it doesn't do us any good to paper over the reality.
Micah McCormick: You imagine if you had a doctor and you had some chest pain and you went to see the doctor, and he looks at the scan and sees that you're riddled with lung cancer.
Micah McCormick: And he comes back out and sits down with you, and you say, Doc, give me some good news.
Micah McCormick: He says, Oh, okay, I will.
Micah McCormick: It's looking pretty good.
Micah McCormick: Here's some Tums.
Micah McCormick: If you have some chest pains, pop a couple of these, you should be okay.
Micah McCormick: That's malpractice.
Micah McCormick: It makes you feel better in the moment, but it doesn't help your actual health in the long run.
Micah McCormick: Isaiah is a good doctor.
Micah McCormick: He's bringing us into the reality of how severe the problem is.
Micah McCormick: Micah, come on.
Micah McCormick: I mean, it's it's almost Christmas.
Micah McCormick: We got the decorations.
Micah McCormick: Can't we talk about mangers or something?
Micah McCormick: Why do you think Christ came?
Micah McCormick: And that's a serious question.
Micah McCormick: If you're maybe visiting today or just here because it is holiday season, I'll check out church.
Micah McCormick: Why did Christ come?
Micah McCormick: I wonder as I wander out under the sky.
Micah McCormick: Leave aside your phone for just two days and force yourself to think, what is the purpose of life?
Micah McCormick: Why am I even here?
Micah McCormick: Why did Jesus actually come?
Micah McCormick: Once more from Dane Ortland, he says, fallen humans are factories of filth.
Micah McCormick: And he he goes on, if you plunge down only a little into self-despair, you will rise only a little into joyous growth in Christ.
Micah McCormick: So this sermon has not been a passage of hope, I know, because the passage hasn't been a passage of hope.
Micah McCormick: I mean, even the way that it starts out, the Lord's arm is not too weak to save, okay, and his ear is not too deaf to hear, and yet your sins have separated you.
Micah McCormick: He's not listening to you.
Micah McCormick: So the passage moves from some kind of potential, like the Lord can do it, but will he do it?
Micah McCormick: And this particular passage just takes you further and further down into despair.
Micah McCormick: Not to leave you there, but it's where we're gonna be left today.
Micah McCormick: Now, the service itself had hope.
Micah McCormick: If you were listening to the songs we sang, if you were listening to Joy's testimony, there's there's hope there.
Micah McCormick: But if you want hope in the sermon, you gotta come back next week.
Micah McCormick: So if you're visiting, you might as well come back next week, because this chapter is going to progress to give the hope of what the Lord has done.
Micah McCormick: So we're not wanting to wallow in self-despair, but we've got to spend time there so we can understand the glory of all that God Himself has accomplished.
Micah McCormick: Now, before I close in prayer, let me hasten to say if you're in despair of heart today, don't wait till next Sunday.
Micah McCormick: Come talk to someone afterwards.
Micah McCormick: We're more than happy to talk with you after the service is over today.
Micah McCormick: But may God help us to see ourselves for who we truly are.
Micah McCormick: Let's pray.
Micah McCormick: Lord, who are we that we could even speak to you?
Micah McCormick: A holy God, when the sins of our hearts and our thoughts, our jealousy and our coveting ways, our anger and our intention to deceive.
Micah McCormick: That even our thoughts and motives are enough to separate us from you as the righteous and holy God.
Micah McCormick: And yet we know that it's your goodness to bring us to repentance.
Micah McCormick: It's your goodness to see our desperate condition.
Micah McCormick: It's your goodness to help us to know we cannot rescue ourselves.
Micah McCormick: We can't change ourselves.
Micah McCormick: No mere politician, not even the good influences of family and friends can change a leper spots.
Micah McCormick: But we wait on you, and our hearts wait on you, because where else can we go?
Micah McCormick: You alone have words of eternal life.
Micah McCormick: So even as we sing, that we would sing, expressing our need, expressing our hope, and even through song, expressing confidence that we can have as we come to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: We pray these things in the name of your only and all glorious Son.
Micah McCormick: Amen.