Stop Sinning

Wash! Cleanse yourselves! Remove your sinful deeds from My sight. Stop sinning! – Isaiah 1:16 (NET)

Earlier in this chapter, we can read that “The sinful nation is as good as dead, the people weighed down by evil deeds” (1:4a). Furthermore, we learn that “They are offspring who do wrong, children who do wicked things” (1:4b). This is clearly not good. What’s more, “They have abandoned the Lord, and rejected the Holy One of Israel” (1:4c). The result of this is that “They are alienated from Him” (1:4d). Isaiah goes on to write about a dreadful and ghastly situation, in which it is said that God’s people “insist on being battered” (1:5a), while adding that it is as if their head has a massive wound (1:5b), and their whole body is weak (1:5c) with bruises and cuts and open wounds that have been left unattended (1:5d). Worse than that, the devastation and desolation that has been brought about by their evil deeds, wicked things, abandoning and rejecting and being alienated from the Lord, means that their land has been devastated and burned with fire, that their crops have been destroyed by foreigners” (1:7).

It is the midst of this that God, through His prophet, tells His people to “Wash! Cleanse yourselves! Remove your sinful deeds from My sight. Stop sinning!” (1:16) A few lines later, God gives His people comforting assurance, saying that “Though your sins have stained you like the color red, you can become white like snow; though they are as easy to see as the color scarlet, you can become like white wool” (1:18b). Furthermore, God extends His mercy, telling His people that if they will simply “Stop sinning,” and rather, “have a willing attitude and obey, they you will again eat the good crops of the land” (1:19). With such a will to obedience, God promises to reverse the curse on the land and the crops. Though God has said “When you spread out your hands in prayer, I look the other way; when you offer your many prayers, I do not listen” (1:15a), we can imagine His reversing promises to extend to this as well.

Here, we remember God’s promise to Solomon at the dedication of the Temple, in which God says, “if My people, who belong to Me, humble themselves, pray, seek to please Me, and repudiate their sinful practices, then I will respond from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14). We can find this neatly harmonized with what is being said here in this first chapter of Isaiah. Even though God has said that He will not hear His people’s prayers “because your hands are covered with blood” (1:15b), that He will wash away the stain to make them appear as white as wool. Conversely, in the midst of the merciful extension of His grace, God also warns His people, saying “But if you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword” (1:20a). To this is appended the ominous and punctuating statement of “Know for certain that the Lord has spoken” (1:20b).

Now we know that the judgment that is promised to fall upon God’s people, according to the book of Deuteronomy, comes first and foremost because of idolatry. Isaiah is clearly alluding to this here in this chapter. Along with failing to keep the Sabbaths and reverence the sanctuary, idolatry (the divine-image-bearer worshiping the creation and therefore giving over his rightful dominion) most clearly represents their abandoning of the Lord and their rejection of their God. However, here in Isaiah, there is more to be found. When God instructs His people to remove their sinful deeds and to stop sinning, calling them a sinful nation, saying that they are weighed down by evil deeds, doing wrong and wicked things, He goes on to give them and us an insight into what He had in mind. We might find ourselves a bit surprised to read, “Learn to do what is right! Promote justice! Give the oppressed reason to celebrate! Take up the cause of the orphan! Defend the rights of the widow!” (1:17)

Those are the words that follow the exhortation to stop their sinning. That is what precedes God’s speaking about their being stained red with their sins that are red as scarlet. It is the failure to do these things that covered their hands with blood, that made God refuse to hear their prayers, to hate their keeping of the feasts that He Himself had ordained and given to them, and to reject their sacrifices (1:11-15). It was the failure to do these things that caused God to compare His own people to Sodom and Gomorrah (1:10). His people were not doing what was right, in that they were defeating justice, causing the oppressed to mourn, turning away from the orphan, and casting off the widow. In stark contrast to those things that we generally want to classify as sins, it was these things that were their evil deeds. This was their sin. Ultimately, they were failing to be God’s light. They were failing to reflect His glory.