How To Survive a Wicked and Perverse Generation - Isaiah 57

We’ve come to chapter 57 of Isaiah this week.  I would like you to turn there with me and if you have a pencil, I’d encourage you to make a few notations in this passage for the sake of clarity.  Just draw a little line or place a little dot or mark of some kind at four points in this passage. 

Put a mark at the beginning of verse 1, another at verse 3, and at the last phrase or sentence in verse 13.  Then put a mark at verse 20.  Verses 1 & 2 mention the peace of the righteous in death.  Verses 3 through most of 13 speak of the wicked who mock the righteous and who mock God.  The last part of verse 13 through 19 speak of the sure hope of the repentant.  Verses 20 and 21 speak of the hopelessness of the wicked.  That is how we will move through this chapter and how I will try to unpack it for you.  Let’s read it together.

I.  The peace of the righteous in death

1 The righteous man perishes, and no one lays it to heart;

devout men are taken away, while no one understands.

For the righteous man is taken away from calamity;

2 he enters into peace; they rest in their beds who walk in their uprightness.

II.  The wicked who mock the righteous and God

3 But you, draw near, sons of the sorceress, offspring of the adulterer and the loose woman.

4 Whom are you mocking?

Against whom do you open your mouth wide and stick out your tongue?

Are you not children of transgression, the offspring of deceit,

5 you who burn with lust among the oaks, under every green tree,

who slaughter your children in the valleys, under the clefts of the rocks?

6 Among the smooth stones of the valley is your portion;

they, they, are your lot; to them you have poured out a drink offering, you have brought a grain offering.  Shall I relent for these things?

7 On a high and lofty mountain you have set your bed, and there you went up to offer sacrifice.

8 Behind the door and the doorpost you have set up your memorial;

for, deserting me, you have uncovered your bed, you have gone up to it,

you have made it wide; and you have made a covenant for yourself with them,

you have loved their bed, you have looked on nakedness.

9 You journeyed to the king with oil and multiplied your perfumes;

you sent your envoys far off, and sent down even to Sheol.

10 You were wearied with the length of your way, but you did not say, “It is hopeless”;

you found new life for your strength, and so you were not faint.

11 Whom did you dread and fear, so that you lied, and did not remember me, did not lay it to heart?

Have I not held my peace, even for a long time, and you do not fear me?

12 I will declare your righteousness and your deeds, but they will not profit you.

13 When you cry out, let your collection of idols deliver you!

The wind will carry them off, a breath will take them away.

III.  The sure hope of the repentant

But he who takes refuge in me shall possess the land and shall inherit my holy mountain.

14 And it shall be said,

“Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction from my people's way.”

15 For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:

“I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,

to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.

16 For I will not contend forever, nor will I always be angry;

for the spirit would grow faint before me, and the breath of life that I made.

17 Because of the iniquity of his unjust gain I was angry, I struck him; I hid my face and was angry,

but he went on backsliding in the way of his own heart.

18 I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him and his mourners,

19 creating the fruit of the lips.  Peace, peace, to the far and to the near,” says the Lord, “and I will heal him.

IV.  The hopelessness of the wicked

20 But the wicked are like the tossing sea; for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up mire and dirt.

21 There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.”

This chapter begins and ends on the same note.  It is a commentary on the lives of the righteous and the wicked people of Judah.  The first two verses tell us the righteous die in peace.  The last two verses tell us the wicked have no peace.  It is about the reward of the righteous as they lie in their bed in death, and the curse upon the wicked as they lie in their beds and worship idols.  It is about the blessing of God upon the repentant, humble, and contrite heart.  And it is about God’s abandonment of those who abandon Him in hot pursuit of spiritual adultery.

I.  Verses 1 & 2 - The peace of the righteous in death  1 The righteous man perishes, and no one lays it to heart; devout men are taken away, while no one understands.  For the righteous man is taken away from calamity; 2 he enters into peace; they rest in their beds who walk in their uprightness.

In an apostate culture, who cares if the righteous die?  In fact, when holy people are taken away from the midst of an unholy people, no one is concerned.  In the previous chapter, we saw that the shepherds of Israel were incompetent drunkards.  So it is little wonder that no one gives it a thought when God takes away a righteous man or woman.  But that is exactly what was happening in Judah.  The righteous were being removed by God as an act of mercy prior to the destruction of Jerusalem and the slaughter of the Jews by the Babylonians.

For the righteous who live godly lives in the midst of a godless society, death is a blessing.  In the book of Job, we read, There [in the grave] the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest.  (Job 3:17 ESV).  It is a mercy from God when He removes His people from the strife of a depraved culture and lays them to rest.  They leave this life and enter into peace and rest until the day when they awake from the dead and enter into glory.

However, I don’t want to minimize death.  Death is terrible.  It is the direct result of sin.  It is the inevitable consequence of the curse of Adam.  It is inescapable.  It is an entrance into the unknown.  And because of that, it is often frightening to contemplate leaving all that is familiar for the totally mysterious.  We’ve not experienced death.  None of us have ever been to the other side of the Jordan.   And getting there can be difficult, painful, frightening, and prolonged.

But these verses tell us the righteous have something to look forward to in death: peace and rest.  Peace from the sinfulness and debauchery of a wicked world.  Rest from the battle within our own flesh, where we struggle constantly against our own fallen nature.  

So our time here in this life is bittersweet.  Although there is much to love in this world, still it is no friend to God’s people.  And notice these verses say the righteous (speaking specifically of the righteous in Judah and Jerusalem) are delivered from future calamity.  Death for the believer is a step into joy.

Verses 1 and 2 have the effect of comforting the godly in the midst of paganism.  But I don’t think that is the primary purpose for Isaiah writing verses 1 & 2.  The main point is that a godless culture feels no loss when the righteous are gone.  In this particular case where it seems Isaiah is referring to an unusually frequent loss of righteous men so that they become more and more scarce, the wicked are oblivious to it.  Leaving the wicked while removing the godly is a sign: Calamity is on the horizon.  “It is a sign that God intends war when he calls home his ambassadors.” 1

II.  Verses 3 - 13b  The wicked who mock the righteous and God

Then verse 3 turns our attention from God’s merciful dealings with the righteous to His indignation toward the wicked.  The verse begins with “But you”, and continues for 10 verses with a scathing report of God’s knowledge of their horrible sinfulness:  

3 But YOU, draw near, sons of the sorceress, offspring of the adulterer and the loose (2) woman.

4 Whom are you mocking?  Against whom do you open your mouth wide and stick out your tongue?

Are you not children of transgression, the offspring of deceit,

5 you who burn with lust among the oaks, under every green tree,

who slaughter your children in the valleys, under the clefts of the rocks?

Here is the spiritual condition of the people of Judah: They mock the righteous.  They make a mockery of all that is holy and good.  Sharon recently heard someone say that the negative attitude of older people towards homosexuality is just a “generational thing”.  Apparently, once all the old and intolerant people are dead, then the younger generation can get on with being enlightened and progressive and tolerant of everything God hates.

That was precisely the condition of Judah in Isaiah’s day.  And it was most certainly a blessing for God to remove the righteous from among the wicked before the calamity of Babylon struck.  The culture of that day is described here as the children of sorceresses, adulterers, and loose women.  Today we are dealing with the children and grandchildren of the morally loose men and women of the 60s and 70s.  

While the culture mocked the righteous, God calls them out and reminds them of who they are: children born out of adultery, out of wedlock, born to prostitutes, born from promiscuous sexual acts of worship to false gods.

In Isaiah’s day, marriage was quaint, sex was free, worship was erotic, lust was rampant, and children were sacrificed to rocks because life was cheap.  All of that is the inevitable product of a culture that rejects and mocks God, His word, and His people.   

Just this week, MTV debuted their latest attempt to further the destruction of American culture with the program Skins.  One commentator said they should rename it Sins.  The program is so bad that some are calling it child pornography since many of the first-time actors are under-aged teens.  Where are the parents of these children?  Or is there so much money to be made that they simply don’t care? 3

Also, this week, I read a report of an abortion doctor in Philadelphia who is being charged with numerous counts of murder.  One woman died, and he killed at least seven late-term infants who were born alive by inducing labor.  Then the “doctor” severed their spinal chords.  His clinic had not been inspected by any government agency since 1992.  These are the people who are looking out for the welfare of poor, young, unwed girls with unexpected pregnancies. 4

This is the world in which we live.  In many ways, it is an instant replay of ancient Judah.  And the common denominator is the wholesale abandonment of all the things holy.  

“We don’t want God, we don’t want the Bible, we don’t want His prophets, we don’t want His restrictive and oppressive laws and rules and regulations.  We don’t want those old, antiquated, patriarchal, Puritanistic, Victorian, straight-laced, prudish, fundamentalistic, legalistic, self-righteous, intolerant, bigoted, Bible-thumping, fear-mongering ways.  We love the world and the things of the world.  So leave us alone and take your stupid Gospel with you.”

And sometimes God eventually says, “Okay.  If you insist, I’ll leave you alone.  Do it your way.”  And Paul tells us, “God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.  God gave them up to dishonorable passions.  God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.” (Romans 1:24, 26, & 28, ESV)

“And when the Babylonians get here, you can ask your rocks to deliver you.”  Look at verse 6:

6 Among the smooth stones of the valley is your portion; they, they, are your lot; to them you have poured out a drink offering, you have brought a grain offering.  Shall I relent for these things?

They worshipped rocks!  And God says to them, “You want me to hold back my judgments against you when you’ve traded Me for the worship of rocks?“  My good friend John Gill explains:

“Whenever they could pick up smooth stones, and such as were fit for their purpose, whether in the stream of a brook, or in a valley (as the word also signifies), they polished and formed them into an image, and made gods of them; and these were their portion and inheritance, and which they left to their children.”

So the children, . . . who were the product of sexual relations that were part of the worship of idols made from rocks, . . . inherited those idols from their promiscuous parents, . . . in order that the next generation might carry on their pagan tradition.  Beloved.  They worshipped rocks.  And so God says to them in verse 13,

When you cry out, let your collection of idols deliver you!  The wind will carry them off, a breath will take them away.

You prefer rocks to the Creator?  Let them deliver you from the calamity to come.  Then you will see what they are worth.  They will be no more valuable to you in that day of destruction than dust blown by the wind.  

Isaiah goes on to describe the paganism of God’s people in great detail.  This at least serves to inform them that God sees and knows of their sin and rebellion.  He understands their spiritual harlotry and adultery.  And instead of worshipping the God who is high and lifted up, the One who lives in the high and holy place, they worship themselves and their worthless gods on the high mountaintops, under the oaks, under every green tree, in their beds, in the valleys, in the courts of foreign kings, everywhere. 

When the world at large is godless, and those who are supposed to be God’s people in an ungodly world become indiscernible from the godless world around them, what are those who constitute the tiny, truly righteous remnant of God’s real people supposed to think?  The entire Gentile world was godless and idolatrous, which would be a contradictory statement in their ears.  “What do you mean, we’re godless?  We have gods all over the place!”  No, you have idols everywhere, but you have no God.  And the surviving, lone tribe of Judah had become one with them, joining the ranks of the Gentile nations who were without the living God.  

That being the case, how were the few that were left, that minuscule, nearly extinct group of faithful believers walking in the very narrow way; how were they supposed to live while the vast majority all around them gleefully marched along their gay and merry and adulterous and idolatrous debauched way along the broad road to their own destruction as they mocked God and His people to scorn?  What hope do the repentant have in the midst of a totally wicked and perverse generation?  Let’s read the verses again:

III.  The sure hope of the repentant

But he who takes refuge in me shall possess the land and shall inherit my holy mountain.

14 And it shall be said,

“Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction from my people's way.”

15 For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:

“I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,

to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.

16 For I will not contend forever, nor will I always be angry;

for the spirit would grow faint before me, and the breath of life that I made.

17 Because of the iniquity of his unjust gain I was angry, I struck him; I hid my face and was angry,

but he went on backsliding in the way of his own heart.

18 I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him and his mourners,

19 creating the fruit of the lips.  Peace, peace, to the far and to the near,” says the Lord, “and I will heal him.

First of all, the repentant repent because God brings it about.  The last phrase in verse 13 begins to address the righteous by saying, But he who takes refuge in Me . . . etc., etc.  Well how did that happen?  How is it that there was anyone in such a wicked nation as Judah was that took refuge in God?  How is it that there are any who are contrite and lowly in spirit?  How do they escape the wrath which God brings against the ungodly?

In verse 14, we see God giving the command to “Remove every obstruction from MY people’s way.”  God clears the way for His own people to come to Him, but they come with a lowly spirit and a contrite heart.  They come to Him broken.  The Hebrew word “contrite” is translated in various ways, but it carries with it the general idea of having been crushed, even into dust.  A total and pervasive humbling of the sinner must take place in order for God to accept them.  And it is God who does the humbling. 

God is the one who contends with His people in order to be able to dwell, not only in the high and holy place, but also with men of lowly heart whose sinful pride and arrogance have been ground into dust by His crushing them and humbling them.  It is impossible to be proud AND acceptable to God.  But all men are proud.  All people are self-sufficient.  Thankfully, God does for His people whatever is necessary to make them acceptable to Himself.  And in doing so, He grants them peace:

Peace, peace, to the far and to the near,” says the Lord, “and I will heal him.

So even within apostate Judah, there were some, very few, whom God had set apart as His own, for whom He removed every stumbling block and every hindrance that would keep them from enjoying the peace He gives to those who love Him.  But it does not mean that living among the wicked is somehow easy and effortless.  Turn with me quickly to 2 Peter 2.  There, Peter in effect, re-writes Isaiah 57 into the context of his own day, and in ours.  What happened to the righteous in the doomed city of Jerusalem is what happens to God’s people as they live amidst the ungodly in all ages:

[2:1] But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. [2] And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. [3] And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. 

It was the false religion of the false teachers of idolatry that brought destruction upon the people of Judah and Jerusalem, the very people He had redeemed out of Egypt and out of the hand of their enemies time and time again.  But God brought upon them “swift destruction” because they denied their Redeemer who had set them apart for Himself.  But Peter is saying that the believers of his day would soon experience some of the very same things, and the false teachers of their day would also be destroyed by God.  But what would happen to the faithful?

[4] For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; [5] if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; [6] if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; 

[7] and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked [8] (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard); [9] then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, [10] and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.  Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones, . . . (2 Peter 2:1-10 ESV)

Beloved, in Isaiah’s day, the Jewish culture was apostate.  God fixed it.  He sent the Babylonians to destroy them.  But even in the midst of that destruction, He had mercy upon His own.  Some, He took home through death, and granted them peace from the torment of living a righteous life among the lawless.  Others He took through the trouble and preserved them in it.  Just as God preserved Noah and rescued Lot, the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials.   

I don’t know how you feel about that, but every day, I feel like my country takes another step closer to Sodom.  More and more, I feel like I belong to an unwanted minority.  Day after day, the culture I’m a part of becomes more hostile toward the things I hold dear.  It seems we need to begin developing some kind of escape plan so we’re not caught in the middle of this wicked generation when the Lord finally says, “Enough is enough.”  

But if you and I are among those who are greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked, like Lot was;  

If we are among those whom God has humbled and crushed and granted a contrite heart;  

If we are among those relatively few righteous people who take refuge in God when the storm of His fury comes;  

THEN we will also be the recipients of His peace and deliverance, whether He takes us home before the calamity comes, or whether He takes us through the fire.  God is faithful.  The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials.

IV.  Then finally, notice the last two verses of Isaiah 57, The hopelessness of the wicked:

20 But the wicked are like the tossing sea; for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up mire and dirt.

21 There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.”

The waves at the shore are never silent.  It cannot be still.  The sea is in constant motion.  And that is how it is with the wicked.  They constantly and unceasingly toss up mire and dirt and sin.  Consequently, regardless of what they may say or how they may feel about themselves, or how they may perceive and mock the godly, . . .  the wicked have no peace.  And they never will.  Not in this life, not in the next life.  When they die, they most certainly do not go to a better place.  There is no rest, there is no peace, there is no consolation, there is no hope for this wicked and perverse generation that surrounds us, no more than there was hope for the world of Noah’s day, or for unrepentant Sodom and Gomorrah in Lot’s day . . . 

. . .unless God in His mercy, moves upon the hearts of the proud to crush them and give them a humble and contrite spirit.  That is the only hope our nation has.  That is what He had to do to us, because we were, to a greater or lesser degree, just like them.  May the Lord see fit to have mercy upon this generation.  And may we as His redeemed people continue to humbly trust Him, walk with Him, serve Him, obey His word, and if need be, suffer for His name’s sake, come what may.  Because The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials.

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