by Brian Allred
Broken cities, broken schools, broken laws, broken bodies, broken bones, broken vows, broken marriages, broken homes, broken dreams, broken spirits, broken hearts. To quote the title of a 1989 Bob Dylan song: everything is broken [1].
Does that capture how you feel sometimes? Even if you’re a bit more of an optimist and stop short of thinking everything is broken, it’s important to recognize that nothing in this fallen world works the way it was intended, and that much is broken or breaking down. Not to mention that one can make a pretty compelling case that things are worse today than when Dylan penned his sweeping appraisal of malfunction. There’s now a mass shooting somewhere nearly every week, civil discourse is vanishing, trustworthy news sources are as hard to find as snowstorms in the Sahara, there’s extreme media bias in reporting on both the left and the right, and basic differences between men and women are being questioned and even denied. How do we live in such times? And is there anything capable of fixing what’s broken?
I believe the ultimate remedy can be found in the ancient wisdom of the Bible where God routinely speaks into broken spaces and broken lives. Consider Isaiah 59—written to an Israel mired in national sin and widespread immorality as the people had turned away from God and rejected his word. This chapter is as relevant to the brokenness of today as it was to those in Isaiah’s time because the Bible is a living word that supplies us with God’s unchanging truth, enduring insight, and infallible direction.
In Isaiah 59, we’re given a vision for fixing what’s broken as we face our own societal challenges in an unraveling culture. We’ll consider three directives from the chapter, and identity a specific way for us to respond to each one.
First: Witness the Horrible Effects of Cultural Godlessness—and Grieve
The first half of the chapter provides us with a sketch of Israel’s national life. It’s ugly. We’re told in verse 3 and in verses 6-7 that there’s violence: “your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity … deeds of violence are in their hands. Their feet run to evil, and they are swift to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; desolation and destruction are in their highways.” Lies and corrupt speech are noted in verses 3-4 and verse 12: “your lips have spoken lies; your tongue mutters wickedness … they speak lies, they conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity … speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart lying words.” A lack of justice and a corresponding corrupt and perverted court system are revealed in verse 4, verses 8-9, and verse 14: “No one enters suit justly; no one goes to law honestly … The way of peace they do not know, and there is no justice in their paths; they have made their roads crooked; no one who treads on them knows peace … Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far away.” The people are given to evil according to verse 7: “Their feet run to evil, and they are swift to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity.” There is division fueled by the rejection of shared transcendent truths according to verse 14: “for truth has stumbled in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter,” while at the same time, verse 15 suggests that there are high costs for anyone who would dare resist the madness: “Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.” Groping for the wall like blind people in verse 10, the people are morally deranged and are utterly lost. Witness the horrible effects of cultural godlessness. Everything is broken.
Though written some 2700 years ago, it all has a familiar ring to it, doesn’t it? Violence: homicide is the second leading cause of death in the U.S. for people ages 15-24 [2]. People are getting gunned down in grocery stores [3], school classrooms [4], music festivals [5], and places of worship [6]. Injustice: we have court systems in which a Stanford student found guilty of sexual assault gets only six months in jail [7] while a black military veteran convicted of selling $30 of marijuana to a police officer is sentenced to life in prison [8]. Lawsuits: an Orlando man filed a lawsuit against a hair stylist for a haircut he claimed induced a panic attack and deprived him of his “right to enjoy life” [9]. Division: we are sharply divided with serious consequences for stumbling on the tripwires of political correctness. For example, Maya Forstater was fired from the Center of Global Development, an international think tank in the UK, for tweeting that people cannot alter their biological sex [10]. The violence, injustice, corruption, and division we are witnessing around us is the fruit of our own cultural godlessness—turning from God and his truth.
When you see the horrible effects of a godless culture, do you grieve the brokenness? Or do you react by criticizing and belittling those you label as cultural opponents? When you see God and his truth rejected, does it break your heart? It should. And if it doesn’t you won’t be moved to pray with desperation as Jesus taught us to pray: “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth it is in heaven.”
It’s easy to respond to this cultural godlessness by criticizing, denigrating, vilifying, or scoffing at those we hold responsible for the brokenness. Either that or distance ourselves from the mayhem by withdrawing into Christian bubbles. But one way of responding to the brokenness and the horrible effects of cultural godlessness around us that’s often lacking but vital is to grieve. Jesus said: “Blessed are those who mourn” [11]. He’s not talking so much about the kind of grief we experience when we endure heartbreaking personal losses in life – as real and valid as that grief is. He’s talking about mourning the reality of sin [12] – that the world is not how it’s supposed to be, that a good creation designed to reflect the goodness and glory of God has been polluted, defaced, and ravaged by sin.
When you see the horrible effects of a godless culture, do you grieve the brokenness? Or do you react by criticizing and belittling those you label as cultural opponents? When you see God and his truth rejected, does it break your heart? It should. And if it doesn’t you won’t be moved to pray with desperation as Jesus taught us to pray: “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth it is in heaven” [13]. Instead, your heart will grow hardened toward those you identify as the enemy, and you’ll be prone to respond in ways that are contrary to the kingdom: you’ll answer violence with violence, injustice with injustice, evil with evil, and hate with hate. That’s assuredly not the path for fixing what’s broken.
But let’s be clear. The effects of cultural godlessness are not just things we witness as spectators. They impact us negatively on a personal level. We cannot remain untouched or unaffected by the godlessness of the culture around us. That’s because there are no purely private sins. Consider that it wasn’t just Jonah who was endangered when he tried to flee from the Lord but every sailor on the ship he boarded [14]. It wasn’t just Achan but the whole nation who suffered at Ai when he disobeyed God’s instructions [15]. Godlessness strikes at the foundations of a culture and everyone in the house feels the collapse.
But before we start thinking we’re innocent victims, let’s remember that we’re not simply impacted by cultural godlessness – we contribute to it as well. There’s a second lesson to learn from Isaiah 59.
Second: Own the Humbling Reality of Personal Transgression—and Confess
We read in verses 11-12: “for our transgressions are multiplied before you, and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us, and we know our iniquities: transgressing, and denying the LORD, and turning back from following our God.” The words detailing the brokenness in Isaiah 59 do not exempt the covenant people from the culture’s condition. The reality of their own transgression is owned and confessed in agreement with God’s indictment.
The chapter begins with God calling out the people for their sin and iniquity [16]. God seems to be responding to an accusation against him that he is either too weak or too inattentive to maintain order [17]. The LORD counters this in verses 1-2 by explaining: “Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.” In other words, God says, “I’m not the problem. I haven’t made this mess – you have.” Have you noticed that almost always someone or something else is entirely to blame for our troubles? You never see people at protests holding up signs owning their part of the problem. We love blaming others for what’s wrong and broken [18]—even God. Indeed, it’s not uncommon to hear people deny the goodness or existence of God because of how messed up the world is [19]. This tendency is captured in Proverbs 19:3: “When a man’s folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the LORD.” But we’re the ones who have messed things up – not God. So own the humbling reality of personal transgression—and confess.
Truth be told, all of us have made our personal contributions to the brokenness with our angry responses, our domineering of others to get our own way, our selfishness, our lies and deceit, our judgmentalism, our self-righteousness, and our divisiveness.
No, it’s not just our unbelieving neighbors or our secular political leaders who have some fessing up to do. While it can be valid to make applications from Israel in the Old Testament to our specific national contexts since Israel was a nation – though we should often do so cautiously – remember that Israel consisted of the covenant people. So the more direct application of the chapter is to the church as the people of God.
Let’s be honest: the church hasn’t faithfully lived up to its calling in society. Many churches in many ways have simply abandoned biblical truth and follow the godless trends of the surrounding culture. As a result, the church often looks and acts a lot like the world. Not only do we fail to grieve the world’s sin and defiance of God – we fail to grieve our sins as the church. Consider some examples. While we’re busy denouncing same-sex relationships, we’re often guilty of ignoring the marital dysfunction and divorces in our own congregations. While we’re busy aggressively combating left-leaning policies, we can be utterly silent about the fact that according to one source 77% of Christian men between the ages of 18-30 report looking at pornography monthly [20]. And we need to acknowledge that the church has been historically and is presently complicit – whether actively or passively – with sins of sexual abuse and racial injustice.
Truth be told, all of us have made our personal contributions to the brokenness with our angry responses, our domineering of others to get our own way, our selfishness, our lies and deceit, our judgmentalism, our self-righteousness, and our divisiveness. We have not been poor in spirit, not mourned, not been meek, not hungered and thirsted for righteousness. We have failed to be salt and light.
The point here is not to heap guilt on those already struggling with sin. There is, to be sure, grace for the most hideous transgressions. The point is that as Christians, we need to own the humbling reality of personal transgression – and confess to the Lord with whom mercy and forgiveness can be found [21].
What this means is that if we want true fixing and healing to occur – individually and collectively – we have to reach the point of hopelessness in our own efforts. Our systems, our wisdom, and our power will never ultimately be capable of fixing what’s broken because we are broken. So yes, Lord: “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And let that start with the church. Let that start with me: Lord, your kingdom come to rule in my heart and your will be done in my life. Then let’s cast our eyes upward where hope can be found.
Third: Embrace the Hopeful Promise of Divine Rescue—and Trust
While we should grieve what’s broken and confess the ways we contribute, those things alone won’t actually fix what’s broken. Only God can do that. According to verse 16, there’s no human agency that can repair the damage: “[The LORD] saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no one to intercede.” God sees the violence, injustice, corruption, and division, and knows there’s no hope to be found horizontally. Divine intervention is the only hope. Thankfully, God does, in fact, determine to intervene with righteousness as verse 16 goes on to say: “then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him.”
We then get a picture of God getting dressed – specifically getting dressed for battle. He’s depicted as putting on armor in verse 17: “righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head; he put on garments of vengeance for clothing and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak.” God himself steps into the midst of the mess and fixes what’s broken. He stamps out the root of brokenness—sin and rebellion—and overthrows his adversaries and his enemies in verse 18: “According to their deeds, so will he repay, wrath to his adversaries, repayment to his enemies; to the coastlands he will render repayment.”
But while he comes to judge his enemies, he comes to redeem those who repent and trust in him. In verse 20 we hear this promise: “‘a Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression,’ declares the LORD.” In verses 16 through 20, Isaiah is anticipating the coming of Jesus: the one who enters into our world and intervenes, the one who deals with the brokenness around us and in us. Jesus: God in the flesh born into our mess, who armed himself for the battle to win the victory over sin by taking the brokenness into himself by voluntarily suffering violence and injustice, being condemned by a corrupt court, and enduring separation from the Father on the cross [22] so that our sins would no longer separate us from him. Jesus: the Redeemer who steps forward to intercede and interpose his precious blood. So add this to your grieving and confessing: turn from your transgression and turn to God, trusting him to rescue you by giving your heart and life to Jesus.
Because of his redemptive love, we can know reconciliation and spiritual peace with God. Because of his redemptive love, we live in an age of grace with much to be thankful for. Nothing in this fallen world works the way it’s supposed to, but things are certainly not as bad as they could be. But while we live in an age of grace, this isn’t yet the age of glory – things can and might get worse. That’s a very real possibility. The brokenness will remain around us and within us – sometimes a lot of it—until the return of the king.
We don’t just wait passively for the kingdom. We’ve been divinely equipped to push back against the darkness, tend to what’s broken, and resist the collapse.
But God is working right now in the midst of the brokenness. We are hardly the first Christians to live in a society that celebrates immorality and defiance of God. That doesn’t mean God has vacated his throne. Trust God to use such times for people to taste the bitter fruit of godlessness and know how much we need his rescue. Trust God to use such times to expose our powerlessness for fixing what’s broken so we’ll abandon our idols and look to him. Trust God to use such times to remind us that his kingdom is not tethered to the rise or fall of any one empire or nation in the world but is firmly anchored in the gracious promise and power of the risen Christ. Trust God to use such times to purify the church through hardship by prying our hearts from clinging to this broken world that we might fix our eyes on his kingdom as our treasure and to the return of Jesus as our only hope.
C. S. Lewis wrote: “The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world … our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns but will not encourage us to mistake them for home” [23]. We’re not home yet – we’re in a war zone. But be encouraged that the armor worn by God in Isaiah 59:17 is mentioned again in Ephesians 6 as armor that he has given to us. So we don’t just wait passively for the kingdom. We’ve been divinely equipped to push back against the darkness, tend to what’s broken, and resist the collapse. But we don’t use earthly weapons in our combat. Instead, we employ prayer and the word of God in our evangelistic witness to call others out of brokenness into wholeness as they embrace the hopeful promise of divine rescue by trusting in Jesus. And we endure suffering and persecution for righteousness’ sake while being merciful, pure in heart, and peacemakers knowing that, in the end, light is stronger than darkness, truth is stronger than falsehood, grace is stronger than sin, love is stronger than hate, and life is stronger than death through our Risen Savior.
Conclusion
Our world may be a sinful, broken mess, but the good news is that the cleanup is already underway. The kingdom has been inaugurated with the coming of Jesus. And he is coming again to establish the kingdom in full when he conquers all of his enemies and will finally and forever fix everything that’s broken and everything sad will become untrue [24]. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
notes
[1] Bob Dylan, “Everything Is Broken,” written by Bob Dylan, Columbia Records, track No. 3 on Oh Mercy, 1989.
[2] https://wisqars.cdc.gov/pdfs/leading-causes-of-death-by-age-group_2021_508.pdf
[4] https://www.cnn.com/us/school-shootings-fast-facts-dg/index.html
[6] https://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/12/sutherland-springs-texas-shooting-church-demolished/
[8] https://promiseofjustice.org/derek-harris
[9] Cited in Charles Sykes, A Nation of Victims (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 128.
[11] See Matthew 5:4.
[12] D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 1996), 53-62.
[13] See Mathew 6:10.
[14] See Jonah 1:4.
[15] See Joshua 7:1-21, especially v. 5.
[16] This follows on the heels of Isaiah 58 where the Lord indicts Israel for her hypocritical fasts, oppression of the afflicted, and Sabbath-breaking.
[17] The accusation may be that found in the preceding chapter, where the people complain to God in Isaiah 58:3: “Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?”
[18] Blaming others is one of the first manifestations of estrangement from God and one another after the fall. When God calls Adam and Eve to account for their disobedience by asking them, “Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” they respond by passing the buck. In Genesis 3:12-13, we find Adam pointing the finger at Eve (and subtly at God himself), explaining, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” When the Lord then confronts the woman, she responds by saying, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
[19] See https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3IczvroCOxU
[21] See 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
[22] See Matthew 27:46; cf. Psalm 22:1.
[23] C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York, NY: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1962), 115.
[24] The language of everything sad becoming untrue comes from a phrase in J. R. R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings series, and is quoted in Tim Keller, The Reason for God, (New York, NY: Riverhead Books, 2008), 33.
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