Isaiah 59:2-4 But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. 3 For your hands are stained with blood, your fingers with guilt. Your lips have spoken falsely, and your tongue mutters wicked things. 4 No one calls for justice; no one pleads a case with integrity. They rely on empty arguments, they utter lies; they conceive trouble and give birth to evil.
I, mine, we, us, our, you, yours, he, she, it, they, them, theirs. These small words get scattered around in our speech and writing. They point to people or objects in a compact shorthand. They allow us to be more efficient. If we had to spell out the name of the person or object every time it was referred to in a conversation, the conversation would become very slow and cumbersome. Let me illustrate.
Our text uses four different pronouns: your, you, his, he. So can you imagine having to substitute exactly who the your, you, his, he are every time they appear. So who is the you in our text? The ‘you’ were the readers and hearers of Isaiah’s writing. So get out the census and start reading every name. Or you could say, but iniquities of the people affected by the exile have separated the people affected by the exile from God of the people affected by the exile.
Now start doing that will all the pronouns. No one would end up reading or speaking. Language just wouldn’t work very well. Every language has pronouns. These little, often overlooked words, make language happen.
In this chapter in Isaiah there are distinct shifts in the pronoun of the person at the center of the text. Verses one through the first half of verse four focus on ‘you’ and ‘your’. In the middle of verse four the pronoun shifts to ‘they’. This continues through verse eight. Then it shifts to ‘we’ and ‘our’ and this runs through verse thirteen. Then it shifts once again to ‘he’ which continues through verse twenty.
So why does this matter? I want to encourage you to go back and read this chapter. Underline all the pronouns. See if you can tell who the pronouns point to. Every verse does not apply to or speak about the same people or person.
Take for instance the first four verses. They focus on ‘you’ and ‘your’. In these verses we hear the writer/speaker point their finger toward us, don’t we. Originally he was pointing his finger at the Israelites who were sent into exile, admonishing them to take responsibility for their actions. They had rebelled against the LORD and they needed to turn around in humility and repentance.
But the same truth, that our iniquities have separated us from God, is true about all of us. To state it another way, sin’s nature is to separate people. When there is sin present we don’t have a proper object of worship. We become idolaters and our practices end up staining us with the remnants of our false worship. We lie and fabricate a narrative that puts us in a better light than we deserve. And in the process we ignore the injustice around us and overlook the fudging of the truth. We don’t stand up and stand with those on the receiving end of the injustice.
To put it simply, when we allow sin to creep into our lives, our lives take a very different course than the one we are designed to take. Like driving a car with flat tires is much less efficient than driving with inflated tires, so our lives function in a degraded capacity when we allow sin to be present. Sin can’t be isolated and caged off. It will pop up unexpectedly.
And I think that is why it is important to pay attention to pronouns. Then you can notice who takes charge starting in the second half of verse fifteen. The LORD takes center stage, where He is supposed to be. He intervenes where others sat on their hands. He brings justice where injustice ruled.
He is the Redeemer of those sold into sin.
That is us!
The Arnold Journey 