WHY DOES GOD SEEM SO FAR AWAY?

Text: ISAIAH 59:1-21

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INTRODUCTION:

1. I wonder what would happen if we were to take a survey today. And I was to ask each person in this room to answer one question. And the question would be: Do you feel close to God today or does God seem far away and distant?
2. Probably some would have to admit that God seems very far away, even here in church on the Lord’s Day. You sing the hymns and you pray and you have a Bible in your lap but you do not feel the presence of God!
3. There are many reasons why so many people sense this barrier between them and God, and we cannot consider them all today. But using Isaiah 59 as our text, we can look at a few.
4. Isaiah wrote this chapter back when Israel was in exile. Like all the other prophets, he reminded them that they were being punished for their sin.
5. God could hear them; God could help them; God could deliver them; and God could save them – but first they had to repent of their sin.

1. SIN SEPARATES PEOPLE FROM GOD (59:1,2).

1. The reason people do not get saved is simply this: they love their sins too much (59:1,2). Spurgeon said: "There is no real salvation except salvation from sinning, so your sin must be quitted. I put this question to any man here who is a hearer, and a seeker, and yet who does not find peace. Is there not some sin that you have yet to abandon? If there be, God help you, by His mighty grace, to get rid of it at once!
2. "There may be also some sin that has been forsaken, but is still loved. Sin hankered after is a great barrier to grace. When the cow’s calf is taken away, how she bellows after it! And there is many a man who has had his sin taken away from him, yet he still longs after it. He does not sin with his hand or his foot, but he sins with his heart, his soul goes a-lusting after his iniquities."
3. Note what Spurgeon said. Many do not sin with their hands or feet, but sin with their hearts. This is what is so horrible about the television set. There are some people here today who would not dream of committing adultery but they will sit in front of the TV and watch others commit adultery without even blushing!
4. They will not use bad language but they will expose their children to the filthy curse words; they will allow raw sewage pumped right out of hell, through the TV set right into their living room. And then the whole house is defiled.
5. Isaiah said, "But your iniquities have separated you and your God…" (59:2). The terrible nature of sin is that on the one hand it makes a separation between God and man, and on the other hand it makes a bond between man and the devil.
6. Some of the sins which have brought about this separation from God are listed here by the prophet Isaiah: violence and murder (59:3), deceit (59:3), injustice, dishonesty, and perverseness (59:4).
7. Notice the contrast between "the LORD’s hand" and man’s hands (59:1,3). God’s hand is strong and mighty to save, but man’s "hands are defiled with blood" (59:3).
8. Isaiah uses very colorful imagery in his prophecies. Here in verse 5, he compares the lost sinners of Israel to cockatrice hatching their eggs. The cockatrice was a very poisonous snake. Therefore, sinners are described as poisonous snakes producing poisonous offspring. What a horrible thought, and yet how very accurate.
9. I have observed this myself while out soulwinning. I will meet an unsaved mom and dad who are lost and on their way to hell. And apparently they are quite content in this wretched condition. Then I will meet their unsaved children. One can quickly discern that these children have already been ravaged by the degrading sins of this wicked, sin-loving world: rock music, immodest clothing, their lives already stained by immorality, drugs, and alcohol. Isaiah said these unsaved parents are like snakes hatching these poisonous and dangerous eggs. O! What a frightening picture!
10. Yes, this is a terrible picture, but Isaiah does not stop there. Those who participate in their wicked ways are depicted as eating their eggs and dying (59:5).
11. Another arresting image is that of the spider, that little bloodthirsty creature who weaves his web (59:5). Those who get caught in Satan’s snare are like victims caught in a spider’s web.
12. Harry Ironside wrote about a man who called himself the "human fly." One day he came to downtown Los Angeles. With huge crowds watching from below, this human fly climbed up the face of one of the large department stores. Slowly and carefully he went up, grabbing onto window ledges, jutting bricks, and whatever he could hang onto. Ironside writes: "Up and up he went, against apparently insurmountable difficulties. At last he was nearing the top. He was seen to feel to right and left and above his head for something firm enough to support his weight, to carry him further. And soon he seemed to spy what looked like a grey bit of stone or discolored brick protruding from the smooth wall. He reached for it, but it was just beyond him. He ventured all on a spring-like movement, grasped the protuberance and, before the horrified eyes of the spectators, fell to the ground and was broken in pieces. In his dead hand was found a spider’s web!
13. "What he evidently mistook for solid stone or brick turned out to be nothing but dried froth! Alas, how many are thinking to climb to heaven by effort of their own, only to find at last that they have ventured all on a spider’s web, and so are lost forever.
14. The apostle Paul quotes Isa.59:6-8 in Romans 3:13-18 to describe the universal guilt of all mankind. It is not just the nation Israel that has sinned against God, but "all" mankind (cf. Rom.3:23).
15. Sin separates people from God, and next we see…

2. DARKNESS SEPARATES PEOPLE FROM GOD

1. From Genesis through Revelation, the Bible tells us that God has separated light from darkness but sinful men prefer darkness (Isa.59:9,10; cf. Isa.8:22; John 3:19-21).
2. Not only are unsaved people in spiritual darkness, according to the Bible they are "as dead men" (59:10b; cf. Eph.2:1-3). I remember talking to a man right out here on the sidewalk. After a while, he looked at me and said: "I do not feel a thing." I had to warn him he was spiritually dead.
3. Sinners love their darkness – their dark and dirty movie theaters and nightclubs; their dark corners where they can indulge in sin. And as long as they stay in their beloved darkness they will remain separated from God (59:9,10).
4. Beloved, we must send the Light, the blessed Gospel light. Only when the light of the Gospel beams brightly do men start to recognize their great need for salvation.
5. The well-known radio preacher, J. Vernon McGee, was out hunting one day when it started to rain heavily. He ducked into a dark cave to get out of the rain. After a while he felt very cold so he started a fire. Once the cave was lit up he realized he was surrounded by snakes and other crawling reptiles. He ran out of there fast.
6. Sinners need to see the Light so they too can flee their darkness. I Timothy 6:16 says Christ "only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto." Darkness separates sinners from God.

3. FALSE RELIGION SEPARATES PEOPLE FROM GOD

1. Isaiah says in Isaiah 59:6, "Their webs shall not become garments…" What an odd picture! Who ever heard of a man or woman wearing garments woven from a spider’s web?
2. How futile are human efforts to cover sin! Spider’s webs will not avail to cover the moral nakedness of Christ-rejecting sinners.
3. All sin is profitless and comes to nothing. And all attempts to cover sin with religion is equally profitless and comes to nothing.
4. Lost sinners often try and cover their sins with religious observances, and other so-called "good works." But God sees through their religious charade and says "their works are works of iniquity…" (59:6; cf. 64:6,7).
5. Rather than repent from sin and get right with God, sinners seek refuge in religion. Beloved, religion without regeneration is wicked.
6. Rituals blind people. Candles and incense, genuflecting and bowing, pomp and ceremony, traditions and sacraments – all of this religious formalism blind people to the simplicity of the Gospel.
7. The blinding power of false religion obscures the light of God’s Word, and those who are in bondage to false religion are separated from God.
8. They hope to reach God through repetitious prayers and chanting but Jesus said not to use "vain repetitions, as the heathen do" (Matt.6:7).
9. They hope to reach God through priestly mediators, men with pretentious titles and flamboyant robes and costumes. But the Bible says there is only "one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus" (I Tim. 2:5).
10. How sad that people would rather follow the traditions of men than simply believing God’s Word.

CONCLUSION:

1. Like the other prophets, Isaiah saw way beyond his day to the coming judgment when God will judge all men "according to their deeds" (Isa.59:18).
2. Beloved, our "Redeemer shall come" (59:20). Are you ready?
3. If God seems far away, and if there is a barrier between you and God, the solution is found right here – "turn from transgression" (59:20).
4. Sin must be acknowledged (59:12), and then the barrier can be removed.