A Disgusting Culture (Part A)

A wicked society, incidentally, is never accidental. It's never a fluke. It's never like, huh, that just happened. Satan and his forces are systematic. They are patient. They have all the time in the world.

All they have to do is gain access and they get a lot of advantage goes to evil. And we're called to be wise as serpents, harmless as doves. We are called to be sheep thrown to the wolves in order to save souls. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Isaiah.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of Isaiah chapter 53 with today's edition of Cross-Reference Radio. Isaiah chapter 57, A Disgusting Culture is the title. And it sounds harsh, but you know, truth can be cold. The best thing to do is to try to be on the proper side of truth. Idolatry and its sidekick in morality is what shows up in this 57th chapter. And Isaiah is going to be hitting immorality through chapter 59. It was these particular habits that we're talking about because of idolatry in chapter 57 were imported to Israel and Judah primarily by the people of Israel and Judah.

They picked it up from the surrounding nations and they brought it home. Every nation has those who seem to be working to destroy their own country from within, always looking for a reason to disturb the good things. Never, it's always their country that's the bad guy. Now sometimes that is true, but of course many times that is not.

And this country happens to be particularly ahead of the others in my not so humble opinion about this matter. But Israel had their share of internal troublemakers and America has been infested with them for quite a while now. Those who want to destroy everything that has actually given them any degree of success. In Isaiah's day, the promised land and its cities were polluted with idols and not only in his day but particularly in his day. And it will be that way up until Jeremiah the prophet and Ezekiel Daniel. King Hezekiah and King Josiah were good kings and they led crusades to destroy the idolatry in the land and they had temporary success.

Of course after they passed, after they died, then their wicked children came to the throne and reversed the policies and went back to their evil ways. King Hezekiah, one of the best of the kings, his father Ahaz was one of the worst and his son Manasseh was probably the worst of them all. Manasseh gets saved at the end. He is the worst character in scripture to then get saved. Well, you know, we pray for wicked people that God would save them.

Well, there's an example but here's some background. He did irreversible damage. Second Chronicles 36, we're talking about Manasseh, the son of King Hezekiah. Yahweh God of their father sent warnings to them by his messengers rising up early and sending them because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. And so this is God reaching out to the people through the centuries, Manasseh being one of them, Ahaz being another. These kings, they were hearing the gospel but the people persisted in their ways, determined to be like the godless nations around them, both publicly and privately. They were so into idolatry. And again, wherever idolatry shows up and gets a foot hole, immorality is going to go with it.

The same with the occult, messing with the spiritual realm, which is tampering with the demons in the spiritual realm. And so this chapter 57 is yet another example of another Hebrew prophet, Isaiah, doing his duty, preaching, being the salt of the earth, being one of these men that I just read about from Chronicles that the Lord sent his prophets to his people. And we pick it up in Second Chronicles 36, 16, but they mocked the messengers of God, despised his words, and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of Yahweh arose against his people till there was no remedy. Now we'll get to Manasseh in a little bit.

I'll come back to that. But that's just the introduction to chapter 57, which will flow all the way through chapter 59. So now we look at verse 1. The righteous perishes and no man takes it to heart. Merciful men are taken away, while no one considers that the righteous is taken away from evil. Well, in this particular chapter, Isaiah throws at us several dual application verses, and this is one of them.

The word translated perishes in the Hebrew does not imply violence, but it implies premature death, early death, not necessarily, but that's a possibility, and as much as Isaiah played with words and thoughts, you know, every reason to suspect that he has got dual meanings going on here. One of them is the righteous disappear. They're taken from earth before their natural time, and in an abstract sense, they perish amidst the idolatry that's just going crazy in the culture, that's absorbing the culture, and the righteous are not being replaced. More righteous people are not coming to the Lord.

They're enjoying the idolatry. They are enjoying the immorality, and by that, reducing the righteous remnant, shrinking the righteous, and if Isaiah is writing this 57th chapter in the days of Manasseh, it makes perfect sense, because Manasseh persecuted the righteous, so you have attrition, and then you have persecution, thinning out the righteous from Israel, and no replacements coming in. We're kind of seeing that now in America, where people just aren't interested in scripture. You know, back in the early 80s, when I came to the Lord, there was a lot of people interested in scripture, but now, either I'm removed, too isolated, or it's not happening.

But there is still a lot of people, nonetheless, that are preaching the gospel and trying to save lost souls. Well, let's come back to Manasseh, Hezekiah's apostate son, and 2 Kings 21, now we'll talk about him a little bit. Also, he made his sons pass through the fire, practiced soothsaying, used witchcraft, and consulted spiritists and mediums. He did much evil in the sight of Yahweh to provoke him to anger. Then, 2 Kings 21, verse 16, Moreover, Manasseh shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to the other, besides his sin, by which he made Judah sin in doing evil in the sight of the Lord. So what I'm trying to establish here from this first verse is one of the meanings about the righteous being thinned out is persecution. If Isaiah is writing in the days of Manasseh, he did live in the early years of Manasseh. Hebrew history says that Manasseh had Isaiah stuffed into a log, and then they cut the log in two with him in it, a brutal death.

That's not a biblical teaching, but that's what is in history and could be alluded to in Hebrews when the writer of Hebrews, Paul, talks about some were sown in two. So, society, so bad that it was, the devout, the righteous, the upright, if they were going to find peace, it would be through death, which is what some of what this verse is saying. Observing all the evil around them, their souls were vexed. That was the case of Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah, but we have no record of Lot being directly persecuted in Sodom and Gomorrah until he tried to, you know, stand up and bring order amongst those who were sexually perverted. And then they said, who does this guy think he is? Since he's been here from the beginning, he's been a little troublemaker. But Peter says Lot's soul was vexed while he lived in Sodom and Gomorrah.

Well, it's happening here. When we see evil getting away with all of its perversities, it vexes our soul also, and we know that we're not alone. The scripture has already recorded these events with other righteous believers in ancient times, and we get our, many of our instructions, well, we get actually all of our instructions on how to deal with these things from the word of God. So here we are watching Isaiah deal with them, and he writes about them. The righteous could do nothing to turn back the evil in the days of Manasseh.

The only death gave them relief. Ezekiel, 120 some years after Isaiah, he writes about those righteous believers in Judah who their hearts were broken over the evil, and they couldn't do anything about it. And so in a vision, he sees the Lord send out a man with an ink horn to make a mark on the heads of the righteous ones, and we pick that up in Ezekiel 9. The Yahweh said to him, go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over all the abominations that are done within it. And so to again review the dual application that Isaiah may be using here is one, the righteous were dying out and there were no replacements.

The people just weren't interested. The second one is that the righteous were being killed and there were no replacements. In both cases, the only relief they would get was death. So he says here, while no one considers that the righteous is taken away from evil, how they make their escape, no spiritual discernment, out of sight, out of mind, good that they're gone. None of the wicked missed the righteous. They were delighted.

Their conscience could find relief. Well, we see that in Revelation 11. When the two witnesses are finally killed, the people are so happy to be rid of them and they're, you know, assaulting the earth that they start sending presents to each other.

They give gifts to each other. They're so happy to be done with those Christians. Revelation chapter 11 verse 10.

I'll read it because it's so insightful. And those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them, make merry and send gifts to one another because these two prophets tormented those who were on the earth. The same way Jesus tormented the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees, and Sadducees through righteousness.

They weren't any part of it. And so in evil times, death can be the only reward to escape the horrors of hell on earth. And I think that Isaiah has a lot of that in mind. Verse 2. He shall enter into peace.

They shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness. So far better to suffer for righteousness sake than to escape death and hardship by joining the evil team. Again, I refer to Revelation 14 verse 13 this time, speaking about the tribulation martyrs, those who are killed under the regime of Antichrist. We read, Then I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, Write, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors and their works follow them. So if Isaiah is writing in the days of Manasseh and he sees the righteous being murdered, he's saying, Man, you know, I sort of envy them.

They're gone. They don't have to see this nonsense is evil that is spreading through the land. And Manasseh was king for 55 years.

That's a lot of time to do a lot of evil. And my take on it is he's addressing these things. They rested upon the bed of their graves is the language he's using verse three. But come here, you sons of the sorceress, you offspring of the adulterer and the harlot. Well, this is the kind of language that probably got him killed. My take again on the prophets is what they wrote was the product of what they were preaching. They just weren't, you know, tucked away somewhere writing things. They were preaching to people. They had followers. You know, Ezekiel was a big one.

People would come to hear him. And we have no reason to doubt that this was not the case also with Isaiah. In Jeremiah's day, it certainly got prophets killed.

One of the prophets fled to Egypt and they hunted him down there and killed him. Well, and they would have killed Jeremiah had God not raised up protection. But here in verse three, this not limited to maternal sorcerers where he says but come you sons of sorcerers, you offspring of the adulterer and the harlot.

There's again a dual meaning. Because of the idolatry, immorality was just thriving. And there were sorcerers. There were people dipping and dabbing and practicing and devoted to the occult, which is referenced here in verse three. Now, the offspring of the adulterer, the dual meaning is, well, spiritually, they're becoming students of these sorcerers and their followers and listening as the right Isaiah was preaching righteous as well. These sorcerers were preaching their gibberish to and people were flocking to them. But on the other side, because of the immorality that comes from the idolatry, there were literally adulterers and offspring from those adulterers affairs.

And the the harlotry, especially the religious prostitution was well received by apostate Israel. And this is what Isaiah certainly, this is the kind of disgusting society that he was in. It gets worse. It gets far worse, as a matter of fact, and which will justify why the title is so appropriate, a disgusting culture.

This is just the tip of it. But the occult always spawns immorality. They have no accountability. They create their own spiritual world. And a god of righteousness, a god of the Ten Commandments is not there.

There's no salt of the earth from the occult. And if God had not intervened throughout history, humanity would wipe itself out. Idolatry is man-made ideas about God, about holiness, and about worship. Sinners creating holy rules. Part of the thing can't be greater than the thing.

They can't do it. You offspring of the adulterer and the harlot. Again, the dual application to its metaphor and the literal. The immorality producing illegitimate children and the beliefs and practices born out of this spiritual immoral union. In contrast to the born again.

So you have these that are the spawn of the occult. Then you have those who are children of God. First John chapter five, for whoever is born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. One of those verses that is worth memorizing.

We all wish we could memorize the entire Bible, but we have to go with the ones that the Spirit just lays on our hearts and heads. So the sin of the land, the land of Israel and its beginnings, beginnings of these sins with earlier generations and now in the days of Isaiah has matured to engulf the kingdom. By the time Jeremiah comes, it's irretrievable.

It's so bad. A wicked society incidentally is never accidental. It's never a fluke. It's never like, huh, that just happened. Satan and his forces are systematic. They are patient. They have all the time in the world.

All they have to do is gain access and they get a lot of it. The advantage goes to evil and we're called to be wise as serpents, harmless as doves. We are called to be sheep thrown to the wolves in order to save souls. Verse four, whom do you ridicule?

Against whom do you make a wide mouth and stick out the tongue? Are you not children of transgressors, offspring of falsehood? I think what we're getting here is some of the righteous indignation of Isaiah.

He's writing about, again, the times he's living in. He's saying, you're the wicked people and you're daring to insult the righteous? Who do you ridicule?

Who do you think you're getting away with this with? Who are you to ridicule anyone? And so again, verse four, whom do you ridicule?

Against whom do you make wide the mouth? Like you're so shocked that we're such the bad people. Oh, I can't believe you're so homophobic. Yeah, I am because I've seen what you people do to a culture.

Yeah, I am. Every bit of it. I am afraid of evil policies. I am afraid of policies made that are opposite God. I'm afraid of people who want to trample God's definitions of righteousness, the scripture's definitions of righteousness and sort of put in some substitute.

Yeah, you can say I am homophobic and I got good reason to be so, and if more people were, we wouldn't be in this mess that we're in now. Well, John chapter eight, before I quote that, Isaiah is saying, you people are the offspring of sin and lies. Re-read verse four, who do you ridicule?

Against whom do you make wide the mouth and stick out the tongue? Are you not children of transgressors, offspring of falsehood? You're born out of things that aren't even true, but you don't care. All you want to do is attack those who give you the truth. John eight, you are of your father, the devil and the desires of your father. You want to do.

See the big difference between the Christian who struggles not to sin but sins nonetheless versus the one that wants to sin, doesn't want to stop and doesn't care what anybody's understanding of God has to say about it. Again, we turn to Revelation chapter 17 this time, and on her forehead a name was written, mystery Babylon, the great, the mother of harlots and the abominations of the earth. Yeah, I think Alexander Hislop's book to Babylon's is totally accurate. I disagree with those who attack it.

They offer no proof. They just huff and puff and the people that I've heard attack the book, I don't find to have anything going on with them that's impressive at all, but the people who applaud the book, I side with them and I admire them actually. He documents from historical writings the impact ancient Babylon and its occultic practices have made on humanity, and so Revelation rings in on that. Revelation directly links ancient Babylon with spiritual harlotry and the abominations that flow from it, and on her forehead as opposed to those with the mark who sigh over the evil of the land, this brazen institution on her forehead a name written, mystery Babylon the great and the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth.

She influenced the planet. I will add concerning the mystery of lawlessness as Paul phrased it in his letter to Timothy, when you look at evil and you say this makes no sense, it's so dumb, who would do this? Well, you're looking at the mystery Babylon, that there are spiritual forces involved, and if you have not the protection of the Holy Spirit, you are very susceptible to the influences of hell on very large scales. Anyway, inflaming, verse five, inflaming yourselves with gods under every green tree, slaying the children in the valley under the clefts of the rocks. See, a disgusting culture.

There's no other name for this. Just a brief one, every green tree. Deities in that ancient world were regarded to or thought to, some of them reside in different trees, like the oaks or the cypress tree or a cedar, you know, it's just these meaningless, baseless ideas about deity. The inflamed, inflaming yourselves with gods under every green tree, they were passionate about their idolatry, they were engrossed in it, and the accompanying sexual immoralities that were granted by it. That's why they didn't like the God of Abraham, the God of Moses and Aaron.

Too many restrictions, he's too uptight. Well, then where are you getting these children from your holitries and your adulteries? How is it you're ruining the societies you live in? You're burning down the house on your own self.

As was the case with King Omri, one of the wicked kings of the north, he burned down the house on himself. What a picture of humanity shaking the puny fist against God. Out of control lusts which accommodate their sexual fertility rights of the Canaanite religion. In other words, this is good for humanity. We have to take part in these rights so that we get rain and so that the crops will grow. This is paganism.

Paganism essentially is the worship of created things. Well, we're seeing this with this, you know, climate control group. They're absolutely out of their minds, thinking that we're all going to be wiped out. God said, I'm not going to flood the world again, and I'm going to give you a rainbow as a promise. When I see the rainbow, you see the rainbow, and you should know we're on the same page. But they scoff at these things.

We don't. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross Reference Radio. This is the radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.

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