Before we get started, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you first of all for bringing us together this morning. We thank you that it was you who brought us together this morning. We pray, Lord, that you will bless our time this morning, that it would be fruitful for our souls, that we can worship you as best we can, that our hearts would be lifted in once again a remembrance of who you are and what you've done for us, what you have replaced when it comes to our sin and your righteousness. what rest you have given us because of the work you have done. We pray, Lord, that the message this morning is solely yours and that it be solely the truth, the truth of Christ and him crucified and what that means to his people and that it would be a blessing to all who hear it that they can walk away resting in what Christ has done. We pray this same message and same prayer for all of your churches across the world. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. I forgot my glasses today, so if I'm doing that or that, I'm just adjusting depth, trying to make sure I can read this correctly. So Isaiah 59, I came across this as part of Joe's notes, which his notes, First of all, it had been a great blessing. At first, I was somewhat frustrated with his notes because almost all of them were incomplete, which if you know Joe, that is not a surprise. You know, it would have been really, really nice just to have a bunch of finished sermons when I started coming up here, but that's not how it worked. And I honestly believe very much that that was a blessing, actually, because he left a lot of unfinished notes in place for me to have to finish them, which was part of God's plan. And that's how this one started. It actually started because I came across some lyrics that he had written down of a song, and I'm gonna actually read those. It's a song that we used to sing. I have memories of it when I was a kid. I haven't sung it for a long time. It was in the old hymnal. It was called When He Reached Down His Hand for Me. Some of you old heads might remember that. So I'm gonna read them for you. I'm just gonna read through the lyrics because it very much provides the inspiration for this message along with Isaiah 59. It says, once my soul was astray from the heavenly way and I was wretched and vile as could be. which we just read a lot about the vile nature of man. A lot about it, and we'll get back to that. But my Savior in love, he brought me peace from above when he reached down his hand for me. I was near to despair when Christ came to me there and he told me that I would be free. Then he lifted my feet, gave me gladness complete, when he reached down his hand for me. How my heart does rejoice when I heard his sweet voice, and in the tempest to him I can flee, in the storm. There to lean on his arm, safe secure from all harm, since he reached down his hand for me. When Christ Jesus reached down for me, when he reached way down for me, I was lost and undone without God or his Son, when he reached down his hand for me. This hymn, along with Isaiah 59, teaches us an very important truth about the gospel of sovereign grace, of God's salvation. Salvation is God reaching down for his people, not the other way around. Salvation is not us reaching to God or aspiring after God, but God reaching down to us where we are. pure and simple. Beginning with Cain's sacrifice, salvation, again, sorry, I skipped a part here, salvation is the work of the arm of the Lord, that's what it says in 59 of Isaiah, also in those words we just read, not the arm of man. There is no greater point of the gospel than this, nothing that more clearly distinguishes the religion of God from the religion of man. is that it is God who reaches down for us. Beginning with Cain's sacrifice, all through the Tower of Babel, the self-righteousness of the Pharisees, and the legalism of the Galatians, man has shown his unwillingness to acknowledge his utter inability to help himself. and trust his soul's case to the work of God alone. And this wicked principle is by no means dead in present day or in the thoughts of believers. This is why we always preach the simple and plain truth of Jesus Christ. Those of us who have been saved by the long and strong arm of the Lord will still struggle with flesh and its prideful insistence on the ability to do something good that God can accept. But according to Paul, all through the book of Romans, and I'll go through some of these, there is nothing good in us. It is spelled out so simply, and we remain that way now. There is nothing good in us. on our own. I'm gonna go through these, you don't have to turn, because there's a lot of different spots I'm gonna hit in Romans. Romans 7, 18, it says, for I know that good itself does not dwell in me. Very clear, good simply doesn't exist in me, any of us. That is in my sinful nature, for I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. In Romans 3.10, it says, there is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks God. How can it be the arm of man reaching up when Paul says specifically, there is no one who seeks God? All have turned away. We not only don't seek God in our nature, we are enemies with God. We turn from him, not to him. They have together become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one. Again, we don't just not seek him, we turn away. In our nature, we are not indifferent towards God. We are enemies with God, and it says that in Romans 5. For if, while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life? There is nothing that has arisen or formed or began in the heart of man or woman that God can accept or find pleasure in. In Romans 8, it says the sinful mind is hostile to God. Again, we are not some indifferent individual. We shake our fist at God. That's who we are by nature. We are hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. It says it's not even possible on our own. Those controlled by the sinful nature, in other versions of the Bible it says, who are in the realm of the flesh, cannot please God. The only thing that God has ever found good in man is that which God himself put there. And those were told about in the scriptures. Does a man have faith? It's a gift from God. It's not of us. It did not start here. Does a man love God? That love was born of God's love for him. If you love God, It did not start in you. That was a gift from God and that only happened because God loved you first. As a songwriter put, and this is what Joe wrote, the only good thing in me is him. Isaiah tells us that it takes nothing less than the arm of the Lord to save us from the predicament and situation that we're in. They were those in Isaiah's day who despaired of salvation. And well, you know, they might, for their case was very desperate. It was a desperate time. Verse two through 15 casts a light on the desperation of Israel. We just read it. It's a very long, very detailed description of the position of man without Christ. And it is that long and detailed for a reason. To give us a real understanding of the position we are in without the salvation purchased by the blood of Christ. It says earlier in Isaiah 58, to declare to my people their rebellion and the house of Jacob their sins. So that's who he was talking to. My people, the house of Jacob, God's people. Verse two through 15 is an extremely sobering, downright frightening, detailed picture of where we stand in God's sight without Christ. And I'm gonna read through it again. 2 through 15, Isaiah 59, just so we can go through this slowly and get a grip and an understanding as much as possible as how detailed this description is of what we truly are and why we need a savior. Starts in verse two, it says, but your iniquities have separated you from God. There is no worse place to be. than to be separated from God. Your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear you. Your hands are stained with blood. They're not covered with blood. They're stained with blood. You can't get them clean. That's who we are. Your fingers with guilt, your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters wicked things. We are incapable of muttering anything else. No one calls for justice, no one pleads his case with integrity. They rely on empty arguments and speak lies. They conceive trouble and give birth to evil. We give birth to evil. What a sentence that is, think about it. The depths that God is having Isaiah go here to show us who we are. To give birth to evil, to hatch the eggs of vipers, they spin a spider's web, whoever eats the eggs will die. And when one is broken, an adder is hatched. Their cobwebs are useless for clothing, they can't cover themselves with what they make. Their deeds are evil deeds, all of them. Not some of their deeds. Their deeds are evil deeds. And acts of violence are in their hands. Their feet rush into sin and they're swift to shed innocent blood. You think of yourself and you're like, that's not me, it is. Their thoughts are evil. Their thoughts are evil thoughts. Again, it doesn't say some of their thoughts are evil thoughts. Their thoughts are evil thoughts. Ruin and destruction mark their ways. The way of peace they do not know. There is no justice in their paths. They have turned them into crooked roads. No one who walks in them will know peace. So justice is far from us and righteousness does not reach us. We will look for light but all is darkness. We'll look for brightness but we walk in the deep shadows. I'm only halfway right now. This is the length that Isaiah is going according to God's leadership to show us who we are. Like the blind, we grope along the wall, trying to feel our way like men without eyes. At midday, we stumble as if it were twilight. Among the strong, we are like the dead. We all growl like bears. What an awful picture. We mourn or moan mournfully like doves. We look for justice but find none. We look for deliverance but it is far away. For our offenses are many in your sight. And our sins testify against us. Our offenses are ever with us. Alone we cannot escape them. And we acknowledge our iniquities, rebellion, and treachery against the Lord. turning our backs on our God, fermenting oppression and revolt, uttering lies that our hearts have conceived. So justice is driven back and righteousness stands at a distance. Truth has stumbled in the streets. Honesty cannot enter truth, is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes prey. It's a very long and detailed description of the utter depravity of man. And it certainly doesn't make you feel very good, and it shouldn't. And to God's people, or to those that aren't God's people, this will seem like an offense. Well, I am not that bad. How dare you think that those are the thoughts in my head and those are the words that I speak. But to God's people who have been shown the truth, the very first thing you're shown is who you are. And even then we don't fully grasp the depths of who we are and the depths of our iniquities and our sins. These words get used a lot. But the truth and the depth of these words is so much greater than we realize. But Isaiah does not turn to them at that moment and say, this is what you need to do. He doesn't even turn with thoughts towards them. He takes this entire time to list out who they are and explain who they are and the depths of who they are. And what does he do? He says, he doesn't say your sins have separated you from the Lord, but you can always try to get a little better. or at least try to find the big sins that are real obvious to everybody and hold those back so that at least everyone else thinks you're trying and it looks a little better to the group. He doesn't say anything along those lines. What would that do to bring you closer to salvation, which as it says here is far away? What can we do to bring salvation closer to where we are. He does not call on them to bring more sacrifices. Rather, Isaiah turns their thoughts to God and His abilities because we have none. He makes this statement before mentioning that entire list of sins and depravity. Before explaining such depth, the deprivation of man without Christ, he reminds us first of Christ. Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, is the first sentence of Isaiah 59. Again, he makes that statement before making this entire list of sin and deprivation. The arm of the Lord is not so short that it cannot reach any and everyone he desires to reach. There is no depth of depravity so awful that the Lord cannot save a soul from it. There is no despair so deep that the Lord is unable to stretch his arm to the despairing one. There is not a heart so hard that the Lord cannot reach down and break it. It may be that you feel sometimes that you are out of the reach of God's grace, which is not an uncommon feeling. You may feel you have sinned too much. Maybe your sins are many. Or maybe you feel you have not sinned so often, but the ones you're guilty of are pretty bad. Or maybe you confess that your sins are both awful and many. It does not matter. That's the truth. Many sins, grand sins, small sins. It does not matter. It is irrelevant how often or how seriously you have sinned. The fact is you have sinned much more than you even realize. The issue is not the greatness of your sin. The issue is the greatness of God. The greatness of the God who saves you from sin is the issue. Maybe you feel like your desires after God are not enough to attract his attention. You do not feel your sin enough in your heart. nor do you feel you need him enough. So you think that you have not called out on him enough or called on him loudly enough. You think you have not faith enough to bring salvation your way. I don't believe enough. Isaiah writes that God's ear is not dull that he cannot hear. It says that right at the beginning, nor his ear too dull to hear. Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. It does not take a certain volume of call to get the Lord's attention. It is not how loudly you call that is the issue, rather it is whom you call. And for what? Do you call upon the Lord? It is written that whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Do you see anything in that promise about how loudly or earnestly you have to call? Does it say whoever shall call upon the Lord such and such, such and such, then the Lord will save you? Loud enough, often enough. It is not the call that saves, It is not the call that begins the work of salvation. If you're calling, that work has already started. It is not the call that saves, it is the Lord that saves. God can hear the lowest whisper. God can hear your thoughts. And I think quite often, calls to the Lord happen that way. If there is any fault to be found in calling on the Lord, it is to call on him for something that he is not offering or not giving. The Pharisee sought a reward for his righteous works when he prayed to him, but God didn't hear his call, even though it was prayed loudly on the street, which is not an uncommon sight in modern Christianity as well, to be as showy and loud as you possibly can in whatever you're doing. but knelt the publican off to the side. He couldn't even lift his eyes off the ground. He was so brokenhearted and in despair, he had nothing good to claim. He could find no reason for God to show him mercy. But his pitiful cry was exactly that. God, be merciful to me. God delights in mercy. And his ear is ever turned and tuned to the cry for mercy. There has never been a request for divine mercy that has been refused. Then we must look, and we all know the answer to this, but we still must look at it, what is the arm of the Lord? Because it talks about it multiple times. At the beginning of chapter 59, at the end, in verse 16, it says, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene, so his own arm worked salvation for him. What is the arm of the Lord? Or better yet, we should ask, who is the arm of the Lord? Turn back to chapter 53 in Isaiah, just a few pages. Chapter 53, I'm gonna read verse one and go through verse six. It says, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? What do they mean by that? They go on to describe who the arm of the Lord is. He grew up before him like a tender shoot. and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by man, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering, like one from men who hide their faces. He was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted. but he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. That is our Lord Jesus Christ, the arm of God. Isaiah applies these words, who has believed our message and to whom is the arm of the Lord, to Christ being revealed to them. And again in chapter 59, go back to 59. Verse 16, it says, he saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene, so his own arm worked salvation for him, and his own righteousness sustained him. Is this not Christ? He is God's arm, he is God's righteousness. Since the arm of man is completely unable and unwilling to save, God did it himself. And there is where the sinner's hope lies. That God doesn't rely on us to do anything. How could we? Look at how it describes us. Everything we do is to fly in the face of our creator. God knows he can't rely on us for anything good. We only speak lies. Our actions are only evil. And this is why sinners have hope, because God knows that, so he did it himself. He sent his long, strong arm to gather every one of his people exactly where they were, because they couldn't move. God first reached way down to sinners when his son, his long, strong arm came to earth 2,000 years ago. Before Jesus was conceived in the womb of Mary, he was with God and was God. It would have been robbery for him, it would not have been robbery for him to claim that I want to stay here with God forever, this is my rightful place. He could have done that. And there would have been nothing wrong with that, because that is where he belongs. But God cannot save us from our sin while remaining in heaven. It was necessary that God become one of us if he was to save any of us. In Hebrews 2, it's put this way, for surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham's descendants. For this reason, he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of his people. And this is just what Christ did. Because like us, in every way, he became, except sin. Beyond sin, he was like us in every way. It may not seem to us that that's that big of a deal, but that is only because we do not realize how high he was as God and how low we are through sin. We cannot understand that chasm. Maybe someday. Paul describes it as making himself of no reputation. Most of us guard our reputation pretty closely. I would dare to say all of us. And we must guard it because our reputations are mostly a lie. We hide our true selves from everyone. So we must work very hard to cover the truth about us to let our reputation remain what it is so that it might not suffer. But Christ had a divine reputation. He was God. He was king of the universe, adored by angels, praised by saints. But when he comes into the world, it says he made himself of no reputation. The same scripture goes on to say that he humbled himself and became obedient like a servant to a master. Imagine that. The king becomes a servant. The highest becomes the lowest. And this is not all. He was obedient all the way until death. Not that he merely obeyed to the point of death, but that he became a servant to death itself. How can this be? Earlier I said that Christ was made like us in every point except sin, and that is only half true. He had no nature to sin. no inclination of any kind to disobey his Father. Not even a thought. Furthermore, he never did sin, never once transgressed the law of God. It says, in spite of that truth, it says in Isaiah 53 that Christ would be numbered with the transgressors. The scripture's going to explain he bore the sin of many. It was not his own sins that he bore, but as Peter tells us, he bore our sins on his body, on the tree. So far as God's law was concerned, Christ became like us in every way, including sin. For the sin of God's people, were laid on Him and charged to Him just as though He had done every single one of them. This, along with a lot of aspects of the Trinity and different things, is a mystery to us. We can't understand this. But it is not for us to understand, it is for us to believe on Him. We cannot understand sins of an entire multitude being laid on the sinless one out of pure love and mercy. He who is the hope of God's people and God in human flesh became like us without God and without hope. We just read these 15 verses in Isaiah explaining who we are without him, without God and without hope. That is what Christ became. He cried out, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? How far did God reach down in order to save sinners? He reached down so far that he made his only beloved son the owner of every sin of every one of his people. He reached all the way down to their godless, hopeless condition and experienced it himself. It takes a long, strong arm to reach that far and drag a sinner back up. But there's another instance in which it can be said that God's arm reaches all the way down for a sinner. Sometime in life, in the life experience of every one of God's elect, God reaches down to them and by his spirit calls them to Christ. And when he does, he has to reach all the way down to where they are. There is no level you need to reach to get to the point where God says, okay, I'm gonna go save that one. There is no level we can reach. A matter of fact, the harder you reach to get to new heights, you're actually leaving the depths of where God reaches. God is here to save sinners. It says that over and over and over in the scriptures. Pure, sinful, wretches. If you think yourself higher than that, you are no longer in the depths of where God is reaching to save his people. It is not you do your best and God will do the rest. Paul says that God raised up with Christ when we were dead in our sin. Christ did not wait for Lazarus to get halfway out before he gave him life. He spoke into the tomb with the voice of God, and that voice, that strong arm, went all the way to the dead Lazarus, woke him up, and brought him out. God is not looking for good people to save. He did not come to seek and save those that were close. He came to save those who were lost. There are none of you so far from God that he cannot reach you. That is an impossibility. His grace is greater than all your sin. But there are, there may be some who are actually too close to God. There are folks who think they have drawn near to God in their religious efforts and moral behavior. Some think that they have come near to God through the performance of religious rituals. Such people are actually too close to God for him to save them. That he would. His long arm reaches right past them, all the way down to the bottom of that barrel. Into the muck. The dregs. the nastiest part of that barrel all the way down, scrapes the scum off the bottom and says, fear not, I have redeemed you. I have summoned you by name, you are mine. Is there a greater news Is there better news to hear than to hear where we are in these 15 verses of Isaiah to describe the depths, the bottom of the barrel where we sit with no hope of moving from the bottom of that barrel? We can do nothing for ourselves, nothing. And yet, God's long arm, our Lord Jesus Christ, goes exactly there and replaces us. And at the same time, picks us up and says, you belong to me. The gospel is the good news because it is the greatest news anyone can ever hear. This is who we are, and this is our perfect savior who will save every one of his people from this. It's amazing sometimes that we can forget this and move on into life because of what amazing news this is. But that's who we are. We have both flesh and spirit. And both of us, both parts of us are constantly, literally fighting. But if you've been known, made known to the truth of God, if he has come to you and said, you are mine, what a blessing. What an amazing God we have. And if you're not sure, call on him. Right now, don't wait. You don't have to have any certain type of knowledge. You don't have to get to a certain point of understanding. You don't have to call loud or often enough. Just go to him and say, Lord, have mercy on me. This is who I am. I need this. I need you. He will never say no. May God reach down his hand all the way to you and deliver you from your sins. Let's pray. Our Father, we come to you once again with as much thanks as we can come with. We thank you, Lord, for showing us who we are and what we need. and giving us nothing to do to earn salvation from our deaths. If any of it relied on us, we would fail, and you know that. We would turn on you and run away. Would you let us? But you have reached down and taken firm hold on your people and will never let go We may even fight it, kick and scream, but your mercy and your grace and your grip are so much stronger than what we have, so much greater than our fight and our sin. And we thank you so much, Lord, for your amazing mercy and grace that you've shown us every single day and, of course, for the rest of eternity. We thank you, Jesus, for being all we need. We pray this in your name, amen.