Two verses from Isaiah 59 will
provide our text for this morning. Verse 1 reads, Surely the arm
of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull
to hear. Verse 16 reads, 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. There is a song
we sing from time to time at Grace Community Church, and it
provides the title and the inspiration for this message. Let me read
you the lyrics. Once my soul was astray from
the heavenly way, and I was wretched and vile as could be. 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. He gave me gladness complete
when He reached down His hand for me. How my heart does rejoice
when I hear His sweet voice! In the tempest to Him I can flee,
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 teaches us a very important
truth about God's salvation. Salvation is God reaching down
to us, not the other way around. Salvation is not us reaching
to God or aspiring after God, but is God reaching down to us,
pure and simple. Salvation is the work of the
arm of the Lord, not the arm of the 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. From Cain's
sacrifice, through the Tower of Babel, the self-righteousness
of the Pharisees, and the legalism of Galatia's church, 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 the thoughts of believers. This is why we
always preach the simple gospel to believers as well as unbelievers.
Those of us who have been saved by the long and strong arm of
the Lord still struggle with the flesh and its prideful insistence
on the ability to do some good thing which God can accept. But according to the word of
Paul, We come in this world with nothing good in us, and we remain
that way. There is nothing good that has
arisen in the heart of man or woman that God can accept or
find pleasure in. The only thing that God has ever
found good in a man is that which God himself put there. Does a
man have faith? It is the gift of God. Does a
man love God? That love was born of God's love
for him. As one songwriter put it, The
only good thing in me is Him. Isaiah tells us that it takes
nothing less than the arm of the Lord to save. There were
those in Isaiah's day who despaired of salvation, and well they might,
for their case was desperate. But Isaiah does not turn them
to thoughts of themselves. He does not say, your sins have
separated you from the Lord, but you can always quit sinning.
He does not call on them to bring even more sacrifices. Rather,
Isaiah turns their thoughts to God and His abilities. The arm
of the Lord is not short. 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 not a 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 strong arm of the Lord
cannot break it. It may be that you feel you are
out of reach of God's grace. You may feel you have sinned
too much. Maybe your sins are many. Or maybe you feel you have
not sinned so often, but you are guilty of some of the most
vile and wicked things imaginable. Or maybe you must confess that
your sins are both awful and many. It does not matter. It is irrelevant how often or
how seriously you have sinned. The fact is, you have sinned
much more often and much more awfully than you think. No, the
issue is not the greatness of your sin, but the greatness of
the God who saves from sin. Maybe you feel that your desires
after God are not enough to attract His attention. You do not feel
your sin enough, nor do you feel your need of Him enough, so you
think that you have not called out to Him often enough or loudly
enough. You think that you do not have
faith enough to bring salvation your way. Well, Isaiah goes on
to say that God's ear is not dull that he cannot hear. It
does not take a loud call to get God's attention. It is not
how loudly you call that is the issue. Rather, it is to whom
you call and for what you call that is at issue. Do you call
upon the Lord? It is written, whosoever shall
call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Do you see anything
in that promise about how loudly or earnestly you call? It is
not the call that saves, but the Lord that saves. God can
hear the lowest whisper, even the thought of the heart. 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 giving. The Pharisee
sought a reward for his righteous works, but God didn't hear his
call, even though it was prayed loudly in the street. But note
the publican off to the side. He could not so much as lift
his eyes to heaven. He was brokenhearted and in despair. He had nothing good to claim
and no reason to give to God for saving him. But his pitiful
cry was heard, for he prayed, God, be merciful. God delights
in mercy, and his ear is ever tuned to a cry for it. There
has never been a request for divine mercy that has been denied. What is the arm of the Lord?
Better we should ask, who is the arm of the Lord? It is the
Lord Jesus Christ. He is God's arm. In chapter 53,
Isaiah writes, Who has believed our report, and to whom is the
arm of the Lord revealed? John applies these words to Christ
being revealed. And again in chapter 59 verse
16 we read, He saw that there was none. 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 that not Christ? He is God's arm. He is God's
righteousness. Since the arm of man was unable
and unwilling to save, God did it Himself, and therein lies
the sinner's hope. We may think of many historical
instances which might be described as God's reaching down His hand
to save one of His own. Indeed, the people of God do
not experience only one salvation. They experience only one regeneration
or new birth. But God saves them from their
sins on a continual basis. And Paul says that we are nearer
our salvation than when we first believed. But I would like to
focus on two events in which our Lord reached down to save
His people. The point to be made in both
cases is that it is God that does the reaching, and that He
reaches way down in order to accomplish His work. God first
reached way down to sinners when His Son, His long and strong
arm, came to this earth 2,000 years ago. Before Jesus was conceived
in the womb of Mary, He was with God and was God. It would not
have been robbery for him to claim and grasp tightly all the
privileges of deity. He was rightfully God. But God cannot save us from our
sins while remaining in heaven. It was necessary that God become
one of us if he is to save any of us. Hebrews 2 verses 16 and
17 puts it this way, For surely it is not angels he helps, but
Abraham's descendants. For this reason, he had to be
made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become
a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and
that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. And
this is just what Christ did. Became like us in every way except
sin. It may not seem to us that this
was any big deal, but that is only because we do not realize
how high he was as God and how low we were through sin. Paul
describes it as making himself of no reputation. Most of us
are quite jealous of our reputation, so we guard it carefully. And
we must guard it, for our good reputations are mostly a lie,
so we must work very hard to cover the truth about us, lest
our reputation suffer for it. But Christ had a divine reputation. He was God, 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. His obedience was unto death.
Not that he merely obeyed to the point of death, but that
he became the servant of death. How can this be? Earlier I said
that Christ was made like us in every point except sin. That
is only half true. He had no nature to sin, no inclination
of any kind to disobey God. Furthermore, He never did any
sin, never once transgressed the law of God. But the Bible
tells us that He was numbered with transgressors. How can this
be? How can a just God number a sinless
man among transgressors? The scripture goes on 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 in 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 was laid on him and charged to him as though
he himself had done them. This is, to a great degree, a
mystery. But He, who is the hope of God's people, and who is God
in human flesh, became like us, without God and without hope,
in order to save a godless, hopeless people. 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 all the way down to
their godless, hopeless condition and experienced it in all its
awfulness. It takes a long, strong arm to
reach that far and drag the sinner back up. But there is another
instance in which it can be said that God's arm reaches way down
to the sinner. Sometime 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 so, He has to
reach all the way down to where the sinner is. The gospel is
not that God will meet you halfway or give you a second chance.
It is not you do your best and God will do the rest. Paul says
that God raised us up with Christ when we were dead in our sin.
Christ did not wait for Lazarus to get halfway out of the tomb
before He gave him life, did He? Rather, he spoke into that
tomb with the voice of God, and that voice, that strong arm,
went all the way to dead Lazarus and brought him out. God is not
looking for good people to save. He did not come to seek and to
save that which is near at hand, but that which was lost. There
are none of you so far from God that He cannot reach you, but
there may be some who are too close to God. There are folks
who think they have drawn near to God in their religious fervor
and moral behavior. Some think they have come near
to God through the performance of religious rituals. Such people
are too close for God to save them. His long arm reaches past
them, way down to the bottom of the barrel, and scrapes the
scum and the goo off the bottom, the dregs, and says, fear not,
for I have redeemed you. I have summoned you by my name.
You are mine. May God reach down his hand this
day, all the way to you, and deliver you from your sins.