For those who may wish to ‘study’ this chapter, the following simple resources are provided for you. Each passage has a four-Part approach to help you take in and think further about what you have read.

Passage: Isaiah 57:1-4

1 The righteous perish,
    and no one takes it to heart;
the devout are taken away,
    and no one understands
that the righteous are taken away
    to be spared from evil.
2 Those who walk uprightly
    enter into peace;
    they find rest as they lie in death. 3 ‘But you – come here, you children of a sorceress,
    you offspring of adulterers and prostitutes!
4 Who are you mocking?
    At whom do you sneer
    and stick out your tongue?
Are you not a brood of rebels,
    the offspring of liars?

A. Find Out:    

1. Who perish and are taken away? v.1
2. Why are they taken? v.1c
3. Who enter what? v.2
4. Then who does he address? v.3
5. What had they been doing? v.4a
6. How does he describe them? v.4b

B. Think:

1. What surprising thing should they have wondered about?
2. What was the truth of that?
3. How were the unrighteous expressing their pride and arrogance?

C. Comment:

The Lord has just spoken about the lazy watchmen who are not warning the people about their state or about possible enemies coming. They are missing what is happening. So verses 1 & 2 continue in this vein. You are missing what is happening under your noses and no one wonders what is going on. In the midst of all this unrighteousness, why are the righteous dying? Surely it ought to be the unrighteous!

The Lord gives a profound answer – they are being taken away so that they will not have to experience the evil that is coming, the judgement that is coming upon the nation. Moreover they are being given peace when their hearts are in distress over the present unrighteousness. They are going to heaven to receive their reward.

Then comes the next wave of condemnation. The Lord calls the ungodly people to account – “Come here!” It’s a time of accounting! You who are idolaters, who have gone into other religions like religious prostitutes and religious adulterers, it’s time for an accounting! I can see you (inferred), says the Lord. You sneer at me and my faithful ones, you stick out your tongues like rude children as you express your rebellion and disobedience. You are rebels and liars! You can’t be any more clear than that! Is any one feeling uncomfortable yet? You should be, for I’m calling you to account, is really what is behind this.

D. Application:

1. Sometimes the Lord takes the righteous through death to avoid worse things that would come on earth for them.
2. Thank the Lord that your years are in His hands, and only His!

Passage: Isaiah 57:5-8 

5 You burn with lust among the oaks
    and under every spreading tree;
you sacrifice your children in the ravines
    and under the overhanging crags.
6 The idols among the smooth stones of the ravines are your portion;
    indeed, they are your lot.
Yes, to them you have poured out drink offerings
    and offered grain offerings.
    In view of all this, should I relent?
7 You have made your bed on a high and lofty hill;
    there you went up to offer your sacrifices.
8 Behind your doors and your doorposts
    you have put your pagan symbols.
Forsaking me, you uncovered your bed,
    you climbed into it and opened it wide;
you made a pact with those whose beds you love,
    and you looked with lust on their naked bodies.

A. Find Out:

1. What does the Lord say they have been doing? v.5
2. How does He expand on that? v.6
3. What does He ask at the end of that verse? v.6
4. Where also had they gone to do this? v.7
5. What also had they done? v.8a
6. How does He further describe what they have done? v.8b,c

B. Think:

1. What do these verses condemn?
2. Why was that so bad, do you think?
3. How do these verses expand on verse 3?

C. Comment:

The mixture or variety of these chapters is amazing. There is blessing and assurance, but there is also terrible condemnation and judgement. These verses fall into the latter category.

In verse three the Lord had described the people as adulterers and prostitutes. The meaning is clearly spiritual and today’s verses expound that verse. In verse 5 the Lord reveals their heart attitudes: they desire other ‘gods’, they desire other spiritual experiences (like the New Age?), and they even go so far in their pagan idolatry as to sacrifice their children to these gods. They set up these idols in the seclusion of ravines (v.6) but also on open hillsides (v.7). They pour out drink offerings and food offerings to these lifeless pieces of wood as if they were living replicas of the Living God. At home, they have these things as well (v.8), they are everywhere! It is like they climbed into the bed of intimacy with foreign gods, who are in reality, no gods. But this is the folly of the people.

But today, do we place reliance on things, organisation or whatever that are lifeless and cannot bring life to us? In a world with so many material goods, it’s so easy to turn goods into gods. The leap from these idolaters is not so big as we might think! The awfulness was that they had received such a revelation of the Living God and turned to lifeless replicas of gods that actually don’t exist and set their hearts on them and not God. Was it because subconsciously they could control the gods?

D. Application:

1. A god can become anything that replaces God.
2. May the Lord be our only spiritual heart desire.

Passage: Isaiah 57:9-13   

9 You went to Molek with olive oil
    and increased your perfumes.
You sent your ambassadors far away;
    you descended to the very realm of the dead!
10 You wearied yourself by such going about,
    but you would not say, “It is hopeless.”
You found renewal of your strength,
    and so you did not faint.

11 ‘Whom have you so dreaded and feared
    that you have not been true to me,
and have neither remembered me
    nor taken this to heart?
Is it not because I have long been silent
    that you do not fear me?
12 I will expose your righteousness and your works,
    and they will not benefit you.
13 When you cry out for help,
    let your collection of idols save you!
The wind will carry all of them off,
    a mere breath will blow them away.
But whoever takes refuge in me
    will inherit the land
    and possess my holy mountain.’

A. Find Out:

1. To which false god had they been? v.9
2. What had happened to them? v.10
3. What does He then ask of them? v.11a,b
4. What answer does He suggest Himself? v.11c
5. What does He say He will do? v.12
6. To whom does He say they should go for refuge? v.13a
7. But who will be blessed, and how? v.13b

B. Think:

1. How had idol worship not answered their needs? (v.10)
2. What was so surprising about all this? (v.11)
3. Why was it all so futile? (v.12,13)

C. Comment:

Molech (v.9) was one of the false gods of the surrounding nations who they had apparently followed with offerings of oil and incense. Such idolatry is spiritual death! Yet this false worship had done nothing for them. The burdens of life had got greater and greater and the false god had not helped. Yet they had rallied their strength and persisted in their stupidity!

Why, the Lord asks, didn’t the fear of the Lord draw you to me? What was the fear you had that was greater than the fear of the Lord, that drew you to idols? Did you assume I wasn’t there because I have been silent. (When the Lord is silent, it is a time of testing for us, a time when we should be calling all the more for Him!)

The Lord then threatened to expose them, even their goodness, for what is was. Their righteousness will be seen to be shallow and false. When the time of crisis comes they will only have their worthless idols to turn to, and suddenly they will realise that they are nothing but mere wood and unable to help. Oh no, says the Lord, the only ones who will receive help will be those who take refuge in me! These, and these alone, will be the ones who will remain in the land and will remain in fellowship with me in the land.

The futility of their idol worship is exposed and condemned for what it is, pretence, relying on something that isn’t there, relying on outward appearance but no reality. This indeed is folly.

D. Application:

1. The Lord is our refuge. May we have no substitutes.
2. Anything else is deception and will be proved worthless.

Passage: Isaiah 57:14-16

14 And it will be said: ‘Build up, build up, prepare the road!
    Remove the obstacles out of the way of my people.’
15 For this is what the high and exalted One says –
    he who lives for ever, whose name is holy:
‘I live in a high and holy place,
    but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly
    and to revive the heart of the contrite.
16 I will not accuse them for ever,
    nor will I always be angry,
for then they would faint away because of me –
    the very people I have created.

A. Find Out:

1. What is then said? v.14a
2. Why? v.14b
3. How is the Lord described? v.15a
4. Where and with whom does He live? v.15b
5. What will he revive? v.15c
6. What will He not do and why? v.16

B. Think:

1. Why is the Lord instructing ‘road building’?
2. Summarise verse 15.
3. What is the objective of verse 16?

C. Comment:

The Lord has just been speaking devastating words of condemnation of the folly of idolatry in the land. He IS going to deal with them! But now comes a word of hope. There is coming a time when it will be said, ‘Make a clear path for the people of God to come back to Him.’ Why will that be? The Lord explains.

Yes, He says, I am the One who is above all others, Holy and distinct and separate and out of reach, but I do come and dwell with those who will bind their hearts to me (56:6) and who will also be holy. These people will be a contrite people. Contrite hear is the same as ‘crushed of 53:5, meaning one who has been crushed down to size by the weight of the burdens of life, who has come to see their folly and their need. They are ‘lowly of spirit’, meaning humble. Their pride has been dealt with and they see themselves realistically as they are. These are the people the Lord comes to and (by implication) expects to respond to His dealings with Israel.

These people the Lord will come to, for He doesn’t want to leave them in their low state, but He wants to revive them. He won’t keep on at them for that would simply wear them down. His intention is not to wear them out with His chastising words, but to restore them to Himself and to lift them up. This is the Lord’s hope, that His actions will have these results in the lives of some of His people at least. There IS hope for them! It is the hope of restoration AFTER repentance. Repentance is their side, restoration, God’s.

D. Application:

1. Failure is not the end. With God there is always hope.
2. Repentance will always receive a good response from the Lord.

Passage: Isaiah 57:17-21

17 I was enraged by their sinful greed;
    I punished them, and hid my face in anger,
    yet they kept on in their wilful ways.
18 I have seen their ways, but I will heal them;
    I will guide them and restore comfort to Israel’s mourners,
19     creating praise on their lips.
Peace, peace, to those far and near,’
    says the Lord. ‘And I will heal them.’
20 But the wicked are like the tossing sea,
    which cannot rest,
    whose waves cast up mire and mud.
21 ‘There is no peace,’ says my God, ‘for the wicked.’

A. Find Out:

1. How was God upset, but what happened? v.17
2. Yet what did the Lord say He would do? v.18
3. What will that result in? v.19a
4. What does the Lord speak? v.19b
5. How does He describe the wicked? v.20
6. So what does He say about them? v.21

B. Think:

1. How do these verses appear to speak to the whole of mankind?
2. What is their state, but what will God do?
3. Yet what is He unable to do?

C. Comment:

In the previous verses it was unclear whether this applied to Israel or to mankind in general, but now these verses seem to clarify that it is to sinful mankind that the Lord is speaking. There was sin which the Lord punished yet mankind kept on in their sinful ways. There seemed no hope for man.

Then God declared His heart: He would heal, guide, restore and comfort man so that praise would come from those who would become the people of God. The Lord speaks peace to all who would respond, wherever they are, there in Israel or in far off places in the world. He will come and bring healing to them. There IS hope.

But then comes what almost appears a contradiction: a description of the wicked for whom there is no hope. They are like the heaving sea, says the Lord, and in the same way that that cannot be at rest, so those who are continually wicked cannot have peace, it’s simply not possible. Peace is the opposite to what they feel. This is an amazingly revealing picture. It’s not that the Lord doesn’t want to bring peace to them, it’s that while they maintain their heaving minds, those minds cannot be at peace.

The passage clarifies the state of mankind and God’s purposes for it. Mankind is sinful but the Lord wants to bring peace to us. Yet it is impossible to be at peace when there is tumult at the same time – they are mutually exclusive, so if there is to be peace, wickedness must be abandoned and the Lord’s way of righteousness received. Then, and only then can there be peace.

D. Application:

1. Don’t ask for peace when you are living in sin. It can’t be.
2. God’s grace is there for the sinner, but repentance must come.