Viper's Eggs, Spider Webs, & Traffic Jams

Well, good morning. It is truly good to be here this morning.

I just want to say at the beginning here I've been struggling with a very annoying, nagging cough, so I'll try not to get it out of control here this morning. But if I do, that's the culprit. You can turn your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 59.

The title of the message this morning is "Viper's Eggs, Spiderwebs, and Traffic Jams."

Viper's Eggs, Spiderwebs, and Traffic Jams. I'm going to read the first two verses of Isaiah chapter 59. He starts out and he says, "Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, nor His ear heavy that it cannot hear.

But your iniquities have separated you from your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear."

The subject we want to look a little bit at this morning is the subject that Isaiah sort of hammered on time and time again was the seriousness of sin.

And many times our tendency is when things are going wrong, maybe our life is in disarray, maybe we feel like we're disconnected from God, we're having a hard time, is to put the blame on someone else. And many times whether we think about it or not, we ultimately place the blame on God. And here Isaiah just says to these people, he says, "I want to make it clear that the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, and His ear is open that He can hear.

But it's your iniquities that are causing the problem."

And back in the '70s, I think 1973, there was a psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Carl Menninger who wrote a book, and the title of the book was "Whatever Became of Sin." And his theme in the book was just that. I mean, no longer do people call sin sin. And someone has said it this way, sin today has been relegated to the no longer relevant trash heap of modernism. And so we see shamelessness, just shamelessness in dress, language, behavior, gestures in our society all around us. Stories told of a rural area somewhere in the south, and we see barns with quilts painted on them or maybe some advertisements. But in this area there was bullseyes painted on all the barns.

Someone got to looking one day and they realized that in the center of every one of those bullseyes there was a bullet hole. So they got to thinking, "Well, there's only about one guy in the neighborhood that is sharp, sharp enough that it would be. It must be Zeke.

Old Zeke, the sharpshooter, must have been out and about." So they went and talked to him and he admitted that he was responsible. But they said, "No one's that good." I mean, every single one the bullet was a dead center in the bullseye. And then he admitted that he shot the barns and then painted the bullseye around the bullet hole.

And that's a little humorous in a lot of ways. But isn't that exactly what people do? Sin is missing the mark. Missing the mark. But whose standard are we using to do that? And so what we do is we claim a bullseye, but we've made the target we've made that bullseye around our own target, our own standard.

And so we have this tremendous thing that goes on in our society, and that's relabeling of sin. So drunkenness and alcoholism becomes a disease. Homosexuality is a lifestyle choice. Adultery is a mistake. We made a mistake based on irresistible circumstances, and we could just continue on and on and on and on with the relabeling of sin.

There's millions of dollars spent on cancer research. Some of us are some of you here are facing that in a real, real, real way. And cancer is an awful thing. And so there's millions of dollars being spent. How can we study this so we can know how to root out this thing that's so destructive? But in our society today there's a lot of talk about all the ills of society, all the problems that we face as a country. And you read constantly, and people are trying to do their research to figure out what is the cause. But I guess we want to ask ourselves the question, how often do you hear people say the problem is sin?

The problem is that we have strayed away from God. And that is the issue that we all face and what we're facing as a nation. And when someone has cancer, the cruelest thing you could do would be to joke about it and make light of it.

Proverbs 14:9 says, "Fools mock at sin, but among the upright there is favor." And I guess I was thinking about that. Our world mocks at sin.

Their programs, their comedies, their whatever is mostly mocking at sin. We take it lightly. We try to cover it up. There was a lady once who had skin cancer on her face, and her solution was to put makeup on it until it finally became pervasive and it took her life.

Proverbs 28:13, "He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy." And so I'd like to look at three things here that sin does. We've already touched on the first one here.

Sin separates. And our God is a holy God, and there's this sense in which sin and God can never be together. And so he says here that your iniquities have separated you from God. And so when you feel like things aren't happening and that God isn't hearing and that your life is somehow disconnected, he's saying that there's a good chance that we have something between us and God. So sin separates. The other thing sin does is it spreads like a cancer. And I'm going to read verses 3 to 8.

It says, "He will not hear" in verse 2, "for your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity. Your lips have spoken lies, your tongue has muttered perversity. No one calls for justice, nor does any plead for truth. They trust in empty words and speak lies. They conceive evil and bring forth iniquity.

They hatch viper's eggs and weave the spider's web. He who eats of their eggs dies, and from that which is crushed a viper breaks out. Their webs will not become garments, nor will they cover themselves with their works. Their works are works of iniquity, and the acts of violence is in their hands. Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. Wasting and destruction are in their paths. The way of peace they have not known, and there is no justice in their ways. They have made themselves crooked paths. Whoever takes the way shall not know peace."

This sin begins in the mind, he says, in verse 7. "Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity.

Your tongue," it says, "mutters perversity." And I thought about it. We can look at this and say, "Well, these are pretty drastic," and we can sort of put it out there. But this phrase, "Your tongue has muttered perversity," really convicted me. How many times have I muttered something, maybe under my breath? Maybe it's a bad word, or maybe it's a vile thought you had towards somebody. You wouldn't say it out loud, but it says, "Your tongue has muttered perversity." Something perverse, something that's not right, and you mutter it.

He gives three illustrations here. He said sin spreads. He says it's like a person that conceives and gives birth, like a woman that conceives and gives birth. And James 1:13-15 says, "Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am tempted by God,' for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He..."

I made a misprint here. "He Himself, nor does He Himself tempt anyone, but each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death." And that's what Isaiah is trying to say here. Sin spreads. Sin separates, and then sin spreads like a cancer, and it just continues with its fingers to grow out. And James says that the end result of that is death.

Sin when it's full-grown, desire conceives, gives birth to sin; sin when it is full-grown, brings forth death.

He says it's like viper's eggs. Now this really reminded me of the story of Ricky Ticky Tavvy. How many of the children here know the story of Ricky Ticky Tavvy? Ricky Ticky Tavvy is a story that Rudyard Kipling wrote. It's set in India, and a family moves into an estate, and they rescue a little mongoose, and they named him Ricky Ticky Tavvy. But what they didn't know was on this estate lived two cobras, Nag and Nagina.

And Nag and Nagina had a whole clutch of eggs. And these cobras were of very vile intent. They were intent on killing little Teddy, which was the little boy that lived there. And so Ricky Ticky Tavvy ends up killing Nag, the daddy snake, and he goes to town on the eggs. Why is it so important that we get the eggs? Because you think about the fear that these people had. There's these two cobras, and there's a whole clutch of eggs. And what's going to come forth from that? A whole bunch more cobras, a whole bunch, a whole little whole abundance of cobras. And so that's why destroying the eggs was so important. And so Ricky Ticky Tavvy destroys almost all the eggs.

Just about when he's finished, he discovers that Nagina has Teddy trapped in the house, and so he uses that last egg as a bait. And he says, "This is your last egg, and I have it here, and I'm going to destroy that." And he lures Nagina away from Teddy. She goes down in the hole with her last egg because she's so concerned that that egg makes it out. And of course, Ricky Ticky Tavvy does what mongooses do, and he went down the hole and was the hero and killed the snake in the hole.

But what Isaiah is saying here is sin is like viper's eggs. When they hatch, it says when they're crushed, a viper breaks out. So you not only have two cobras, all of a sudden you have an abundance of cobras.

The third illustration he uses is he says, "You weave a spider's web." And he says, "Your webs are not going to become garments that cover you." And sometimes we see a web, especially in the morning, especially if it's a really tight-knit web, and it almost could look like cloth. Would you ever take your finger and just knock a couple of those little strands that it's connected to, and it goes to nothing? And the story is told of one of the human flies, a person who climbs buildings. This was a long time ago when Los Angeles was a city, but it wasn't as big as it is today.

And this human fly said he was going to scale this building on the outside. And so thousands of people gathered to watch, and he started at the ground, and he grabbed a ledge and a window, and up he went. He got very close to the top, and he was having trouble finding another handhold. And then he saw something above him, and it was sort of out of his reach, and he sprung for it and fell to his death. And when they found in his hand a clump of spider web.

And that's what he's saying here. It's nothing. In the end, it dissipates, and it's totally gone.

Sin spreads. It's like violence, bloodshed. And the illustrations he give here all sort of give you the idea of venomous. It's just ugly, venomous, horrible, horrible things.

And verse 8 says that a person that's involved in this is going to be on crooked paths, and there's no peace. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. Wasting and destruction are in their paths. The way of peace they have not known. There's no justice in their ways.

Crooked paths. And it says, "Whoever takes that way shall have no peace." And I just see that a lot in our world today. There's no peace. Not only does sin separate, not only does sin spread, but sin spoils. Let's read verses 9 to 15.

It says, "Therefore, justice is far from us, nor does righteousness overtake us. We look for light, but there's darkness. For brightness, but we walk in blackness. We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes. We stumble at noonday as at twilight. We are as dead men in desolate places. We all growl like bears and moan sadly like doves. We look for justice, but there is none. For salvation, but it is far from us. For our transgressions are multiplied before you, and your sins testify against us. For our transgressions are with us, and as for our iniquities, we know them. In transgressing, lying against the Lord and departing from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood, justice is turned back, and righteousness stands afar off.

For truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. So truth fails, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey." Here's the traffic jam that he's talking about. "Truth is fallen in the streets, and because truth is fallen in the streets, justice is turned back, righteousness stands afar off, and equity cannot enter." And I think we've all experienced a traffic jam. Something's in the way.

A tree falls over, or there's an accident, and there's a traffic jam. And he's saying, "When truth is fallen, when truth falls in the streets, justice is turned back, righteousness stands afar off, and equity cannot enter." Sin spoils everything.

The result? We look for light. What do we find? We find darkness. It says, "We grope for the wall like a person who doesn't even have any eyes.

We growl like bears, very unhappy. We moan like doves."

Sin spoils. Sin will take you farther than you want to go, and sin will cost you more than you want to pay. And we live in misery with a guilty conscience in verse 12.

Verse 12, he says, "Our sins testify against us. For our transgressions are with us, and as for our iniquities, we know them." So here we are. We're in this horrible mess. We feel this separation from God. We feel this sin that's spreading just like viper's eggs.

And we see it ruining and spoiling everything: relationships, our relationship with God, our relationship with each other, our relationship to the truth. Verse 13, we have the root of that is rebellion and treachery against God. "I'm my own boss."

Ends in darkness, confusion, misery, and sadness. And a lot of people today, that's the path they take. "I'm my own boss." But let's remember, sin spoils. Sin separates, sin spreads, sin spoils, and we're in a mess, and we need help.

That's the bad news. But I'm really thankful for the devotional this morning because I feel like this book ends our whole service today. The good news is Jesus saves.

Let's read verses 15b to the end of the chapter.

"We're in a mess. Then the Lord saw it, and it displeased Him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no intercessor. Therefore, His own arm brought salvation for Him, and His own righteousness, it sustained Him. For He put on righteousness as a breastplate and a helmet of salvation on His head, and He put on garments of vengeance for clothing and was clad with zeal as a cloak. According to their deeds, accordingly He will repay. Fury to His adversaries, recompense to His enemies. The coastlands He will fully repay. So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west and His glory from the rising of the sun.

When the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him. The Redeemer will come to Zion, and those who turn from transgression in Jacob, says the Lord. As for Me, says the Lord, this is My covenant with them: My Spirit who is upon you and My words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart from your mouth nor from the mouth of your descendants nor from the mouth of your descendants' descendants, says the Lord, from this time and forevermore."

In this passage, I get the picture there that Jesus looked and said, "This is not good." And we know that from the foundation of the world, He had a plan to crush Satan's heel, and He took action. And what it looks to me like here is He's suiting up for battle. It says He puts on His breastplate of righteousness, and He puts His helmet of salvation on, and He puts on garments of vengeance for clothing, and He's ready to act.

And it says that when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord is going to raise up a standard against him. So there we have it. The standard is that battle flag, and there our captain is out ahead of us, and it's none other than Jesus Himself. "The Redeemer will come to Zion, and to those who turn from transgression in Jacob," says the Lord.

"When the enemy comes in like a flood..." There's controversy about the period, I mean, the comma in this verse. Of course, in the original, there was no punctuation. So many people think that the comma should actually be after when the enemy comes in. "When the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him." And I guess I can be happy today to read it both ways because sometimes I feel like the enemy comes in like a flood. I mean, like a flooding river that just comes and sweeps you away. But I also like the idea that when the enemy comes like a flood, the Spirit of God is there to raise up a standard.

So I like to read it both ways. "When the enemy comes like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him. When the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him."

How do we participate in this redemption? He says in verse 20 that it's those who turn from transgression, those who repent, through repentance. I'd like to read a few passages in the New Testament.

We read in Revelation this morning that Jesus is worthy to open that scroll. He's our redemption. He's our Redeemer. Ephesians 1:3-8.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace, which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence."

We have redemption through His blood, and we can experience forgiveness of that terrible sin that separates and spreads and spoils.

Titus chapter 2.

Verses 11 to 14.

"For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared unto all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works." That's the whole heart of God, is He wants to redeem us as a peculiar people, as a special people.

In conclusion, I guess I just would like us to think seriously about the seriousness of sin. Do we see sin for the horrible thing it is? Or have we fallen prey to the modern mindset that sort of views sin very lightly? Sin separates, sin spreads, sin spoils, and it ends in death spiritually.

And oftentimes we kind of tend to put it out there. We look around in our society, and we can say, "Yes, society is in a bad shape." And I'd just like us to notice the pronouns a little bit in this chapter.

In the first section that I read, He talks about they. "They conceive evil and bring forth iniquity. They hatch viper's eggs. Their webs will become will not become garments. Their works, their thoughts." But then He gets a little closer, and He says, "We. We grope. We stumble. We growl."

And I would like for us to do that this morning too when we think about sin. Like David, I want us all to really evaluate our life and say, "Where are we at? Search Me, O God, and know My heart. Try Me and know My anxieties, and see if there's any wicked way in Me, and lead Me in the way everlasting."

That's what we're called to do this morning. And the first verse of chapter 60 in Isaiah, "Arise, shine, for Your light has come." We don't have to grope in darkness like a person that doesn't have any eyes. "And the glory of the Lord has risen upon you." Hallelujah. What a Savior we have today.