September 27, 2020 “Truth” – Isaiah 59

Isaiah 59 (Immerse Prophets pp. 160-162)
“Truth”
September 27, 2020 – Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

When I was a child I would plop down in the front of the television and be thrilled to hear the words:

Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird.

It’s a plane

It’s Superman!

Yes, it’s Superman, strange visitor from another planet who came to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Superman, who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands. And who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never ending battle for truth, justice and the American way.

Back then I didn’t know much about that last bit, but “truth, justice and the American way” sounded like awfully good things. Isaiah did not know anything about the third item in the list, but he had much to say about the first two. In our text this time, Isaiah 59 in our usual Bibles, the prophet laments the absence and abuse of truth and justice.

We are reading from the third major section of Isaiah, chapters 55 to 66 in a regular Bible. It starts on page 154 in Prophets. There was a shift in time perspective between the first part of Isaiah, chapters 1-39, and the second part, chapters 40-54. We went from Isaiah’s own time around 720 B.C. to a hundred and eighty years later, toward the end of the Babylonian exile. Now in this third part the time frame is after the exile, focusing on people’s relationship to God and to each other now that they are back in their own land.

As we read this section we found that, despite the punishment and lessons learned in exile, the same old issues are still there. The idol worship we talked about last week remains a huge problem. Likewise for social injustice: the Lord’s people are still exploiting and mistreating each other. This week I read a suggestion that this third section of Isaiah is about a kind of “postexilic exile.” The people have “come home,” but they are still far from God and from each other in their hearts.

I thought about that spiritual “exile after the exile.” We might wonder how people who had received so much grace and mercy and forgiveness could still be so distant from the Lord. Why, after God had come and saved them brought them home, were they still so far from him?

The answer is at the beginning of our text. Isaiah says,

Listen! The Lord’s arm is not too weak to save you,
nor is his ear too deaf to hear you call.
It’s your sins that have cut you off from God.
Because of your sins, he has turned away
and will not listen anymore.

It’s the same old story: idolatry and injustice. After being punished severely for those sins by losing their homes and their land, they came home and just picked up where they left off and maybe more. On page 157, which is chapter 57, it’s not carved wood or metal idols anymore, but plain, “smooth stones in the valleys.” And they are not just sacrificing wine and wheat to those gods, but sacrificing their own children. At the bottom of the page we see the god Molech named, the one who demanded child sacrifice.

At the very same time, and with equal weight, just two pages further on the bottom of 159, chapter 58, God tells them their fasting and sacrifice, even to Him, mean nothing. What He really wants is justice:

No, this is the kind of fasting I want:
Free those who are wrongly imprisoned;
lighten the burden of those who work for you.
Let the oppressed go free,
and remove the chains that bind people.
Share your food with the hungry,
and give shelter to the homeless.
Give clothes to those who need them,
and do not hide from relatives who need your help.

I’ve already spoken a lot about idolatry and injustice, so today I would like to zero in a bit on that other concept Isaiah shares with Superman. After saying, “Your hands are the hands of murderers, and your fingers are filthy with sin,” the prophet goes on,

Your lips are full of lies,
and your mouth spews corruption

No one cares about being fair and honest.
The people’s lawsuits are based on lies.

It’s not just a justice problem. It’s a truth problem. People are unjust, but on top of that they are lying about it. On that page 161 Isaiah goes on to pile up an even more horrendous list of sins, comparing the people to spiders and snakes. Two thirds of the way down, it’s verse 8, he says they don’t even know “what it means to be just and good.”

Then in the last third of the page, Isaiah speaks for his people, offering a kind of confession which begins, “So there is no justice among us.” As I preached from Hosea a few weeks ago, confession before God and before others is a good thing. And this confession is one we need to make in our own time and country: “There is no justice among us.” It’s not that we just need to fix a few things, get the right judges appointed, weed out a few bad apples. It’s that there really is no justice. The whole thing, from individuals to the basic system, is rotten all through. As Isaiah says for his people, “and we know nothing about right living.”

The problem is that it’s pretty hard to make that confession when we’ve bought into and keep repeating the lies which say that everything is O.K., that we are mostly pretty good people, that God is actually really close to us, and that we are His best buddies. That’s why Isaiah gives us these words of confession too:

Our courts oppose the righteous,
and justice is nowhere to be found.
Truth stumbles in the streets,
and honesty has been outlawed.
Yes, truth is gone,
and anyone who renounces evil is attacked.

That image, “truth stumbles in the streets,” gripped me, especially when so much is happening in our streets right now. Once again protestors across the nation and here in Eugene are out there mourning Breonna Taylor and declaring that “our courts oppose the righteous and justice is nowhere to be found.” People declaring that sort of truth are getting literally knocked down and attacked.

Yes, yes, I know all too well that there are a handful of people out there on the streets who use the passion and the anger against injustice to commit further acts of injustice, like shooting two police officers. But does that unjust violence get to veto all the voices that want to speak the truth? Should all those who truthfully seek justice peacefully just stay home and shut up? That seems like just another way to trip up truth in the streets.

As both Superman and Isaiah knew, there cannot be justice without truth. Unless there are those willing to stay standing and speak truth about injustice, confessing the sins of all of us, we can never get to justice.

Two months ago I went fishing on the Middle Fork of the Willamette. To get to what I read on-line was a good spot, I hiked to where Salmon Creek flows into the Willamette and waded across the creek at its mouth. Halfway across I knew I had to be careful. It was only knee deep, but I was on large round stones and the creek was running very fast down the hill. Any misstep and I’d stumble and fall. I wouldn’t drown, but I might easily break something. I’d certainly get very wet. My wife didn’t like hearing this story.

The thing is, the good fishing was on the other side of that treacherous route. I had to stay upright and wade through without stumbling to get to it. That’s how it is with truth and justice. The truth has to stay standing, avoid stumbling, if we’re ever going to get to justice. We cannot just leave truth lying fallen in the street, maybe with someone kneeling on its neck. We cannot accept leadership which keeps telling us lies and expect we will get to justice somehow that way. It’s not going to happen. Truth is too important to let it fall, even if we think we’re doing it for a good cause.

In Hebrew the word used by Isaiah for truth is ehmet. Some rabbis like to point out that the three Hebrew letters of the word are the first letter, a middle letter, and the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. They conclude that truth embraces the beginning, middle and end of every question, of every idea. That includes justice.

The truth of God’s justice is that it is a holistic picture. Look at those beautiful descriptions at the end of Isaiah, like on page 172, chapter 65, of how God’s new earth will look someday. No death in infancy and no premature death for the old. Everyone will have their own house. Everyone will have enough to eat. There will be no fear of invasion. Even the natural order, nature itself will be at peace. That’s the truth about justice, a whole, complete truthful justice. Beginning, middle, end.

We may focus for a moment on some piece of justice. Black lives matter. Abortion is a terrible evil. But in righting those wrongs we can’t lose sight of the whole. We can’t let truth stumble. I couldn’t get so focused on the fish I was going to catch that I lost sight of where I was putting my feet in that creek.

Like that creek, it’s all pretty hard to navigate. When we start to talk about truth these days we might ask whom we should believe. As Christians we are quick to say that we should believe the Bible, believe our Lord. But what about when it’s not clear? What if some Christians interpret the Bible one way and some another? How do we get to the truth of the matter, of any matter?

Let me make some suggestions. First, remember that truth is a whole. You need beginning, middle and end. Put that verse in context. Read the whole chapter, the whole book, the whole Bible. If it’s a news article or a Facebook meme, try to find the larger sources of information, use the Snopes web site to debunk hoaxes and false information, get a bigger picture.

Next, I would suggest that Christians learn how truth works. Christians invented the university. Jews and Christians created a great tradition of thought and inquiry focused on seeking the truth both in God’s Word and in the world He created. Go on-line and take a course in logic or critical thinking or scientific methodology. Learn to spot when someone is arguing from a false premise, or making unproven assumptions, or just pretending to be an expert when they are not. Learn the rules of evidence in scientific investigation. Take a Bible study course that doesn’t just explain verses for you but which teaches you how to judge between good and bad interpretations.

You may be asking, “Pastor, what’s all this got to do with following Jesus? Are you asking me to study philosophy or science in order to be a better Christian and a good citizen?” Yes, I am. Our Lord Jesus told us that He is the Truth. How in the world can we expect to truly know and follow Him if we don’t know what truth is and how it works?

The blessing is that we will have some help in it all. As Isaiah often does, he follows all the bad news of sin, injustice and untruth with the good news that God Himself is going to do something about it all. The next section of the text on page 162, beginning in what is the second half of verse 15, reads,

The Lord looked and was displeased
to find there was no justice.
He was amazed to see that no one intervened
to help the oppressed.
So he himself stepped in to save them with his strong arm,
and his justice sustained him.

Then there are beautiful pictures which may ring a bell for us as Christians. God is going to put on righteousness like armor, and salvation like a helmet on his head, “a robe of vengeance,” and “a cloak of divine passion.” If human beings are not going to get truth and justice done, then God Himself will get it done, with a vengeance, literally.

Now once again we get that temptation to just sit back, to stand down. God has promised to take care of it. He’s going to come flying in like Superman to make truth and justice happen. We just need to look up in the air and marvel as He zooms along. But I said that picture of armor should ring a bell. Many of you know what I’m talking about. Debbie and Beth just taught it to the children in Sunday School. In Ephesians 6, Paul tells us to put on the armor of God, starting with the “belt of truth.” Yes, God’s coming to help, but it starts with us, and it starts with truth.

Notice then what it says about salvation and redemption near the end of our text. It’s verse 20 in an ordinary Bible.

“The Redeemer will come to Jerusalem
to buy back those in Israel
who have turned from their sins,”
says the Lord.

We can’t just keep telling lies and believing them. We can’t just keep doing injustice or ignoring it when it happens. The Redeemer comes and saves those who turn from their sins. The Lord Jesus saves those who turn from sin to follow Him. We need to start turning in another direction right now. We need to seek the truth and speak the truth about what is happening around us.

Please let me tell you some truth I heard from a black friend in regard to racial justice this past week. He’s one of our Covenant leaders and he lives in the south part of Chicago. As we spoke on Zoom Wednesday morning, he asked for our prayers because he was getting ready to go with other pastors in the area and stand in between protestors and police to do what they could to keep violence from happening.

But my friend said he understood the anger out there on the streets. He feels it himself. He’s an educated, successful church leader. He lives in a middle class neighborhood. But he fears for himself, for his wife and for his four adult children. One of his sons serves in the armed forces for our country, but as that young black man looks at the racial injustice of our nation he’s having a crisis of faith. He’s wondering how true Christianity can be if white Christians look the other way as black people receive no justice.

My friend also said that he can drive just a little way west into a white community where he will see no less than four houses with Confederate flags flying proudly in their front yards. Or he can drive east into a white community where every black person around knows that if they even look the wrong way at a police officer there will be trouble. This is Chicago, not Georgia.

That’s the truth. That’s what my friend deals with every day of his life. The truth is that it’s gotten worse, not better, under the present administration, no matter what the president might say. I know probably half a dozen other African American Covenant pastors who would tell you the same. My friend and the rest of them are not radicals. They are not Marxists. They hold to a biblical sexual morality. But they want you and me and every white Christian to know the truth that “Black lives matter,” because what Isaiah said is true, “There is no justice among us.” Can we just please tell the truth about that?

I’m trying to tell the truth by repeating what Isaiah said and making some connections with our lives in this time. I’m not perfect and I too may have let truth stumble in all of this. I hope not. But the gracious promise at the end here is that God is going to keep truth on its feet among us if we will let it stand. Truth needs to stay standing.

If anything is true, what God says is true, and this is what the last verse says, “My Spirit will not leave them, and neither will these words I have given you.” The truth of God stands even if no one listens or believes it. But again, like that armor of God, we need to pick it up and put it on. God says that His words, “will be on your lips and on the lips of your children and your children’s children forever. I, the Lord, have spoken!”

May it be. May God drive all the lies out of our hearts and minds and put the truth on our lips, the truth that will bring justice and peace and the kingdom of God into our world.

Amen.