D. Scott Meadows
The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken [or, gathered, Motyer1] away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness.
Isaiah lived in troubled times. Israel suffered national apostasy with its social disorder and manifold injustices, including state-sponsored persecution of true prophets. True believers needed a word from the Lord to put things in perspective, both for their spiritual consolation and sustenance.
The jarring dissonance2 between reality with its miseries and righteousness with its blessings sorely tried their souls. How could God, being both infinitely good and powerful, let these atrocities continue? Is faith just wishful thinking? If the Lord loves the righteous so well, why does He allow powerful forces in the world to decimate3 them as they do? How can we possibly believe that Providence planned and accomplishes all this?
In Isaiah 57.1-2, the Lord provides a partial answer. Those who embrace it are greatly encouraged to keep trusting Him in this present age which is so desperately in need of full redemption.
A SAD REALITY
Feeling the dissonance, the founder of “Christian Science,” Mary Baker Eddy, denied the existential reality of suffering and death, preferring to explain it as an illusion to those with insufficient faith. Is it any wonder that adherents still form only a relatively small cult?
The realism of Scripture plainly exposes her lie. “The righteous [man] perisheth . . . merciful [or, devout, ESV] men are taken away.” The poetically parallel structure suggests we should understand each expression in terms of the other. The “righteous” man and “merciful men” refer to the same kind of person/people. “Perishing” and being “taken away” are the same experience. When evil men rule, the godly are so often killed, not only in spite of their virtue, but because of it. A general apostasy usually leads to the violent persecution of believers, and even this is ordained by God.
Human wisdom balks at this. Skeptics scoff and weak believers stumble. Only fools deny the reality; only the Lord makes sense of it.
A SALUTARY4 REFLECTION
Again, parallelism clearly conveys the sense. “No man layeth it to heart…none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come,” or, “calamity” (ESV). This is a divine lament over needless suffering that stems from a failure to consider the relevant truth well enough. This is not to suggest that the right perspective removes all pain, but rather, that there is genuine comfort in believing the Lord’s promises to the faithful.
When the godly are killed, they are spared any more suffering they would have endured with longevity. The sins of an apostate nation mount up to heaven and call for cataclysmic revenge when the Almighty’s patience finally expires. The Lord told Abraham, “The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full” (Gen 15.16); they had not yet exhausted divine longsuffering. But no one should, from the delay, doubt God’s certain and eventual justice (cf. 2 Pet 3.3-10, especially vv. 9-10).
But here is the point. When God ordains the early death of the righteous, He takes them away before His undiluted wrath cascades upon the obstinate sinners left behind. Hezekiah found some comfort in knowing he would die before the announced doom came (Isa 39.8). I would count myself blessed if I die before America’s total demise.
A SACRED REST
The righteous not only escape God’s wrath but enter into His rest. There is life after death and for all believers, it is indescribably wonderful. “He [the righteous man] enters into peace; they [the devout men] rest in their beds, who walk in their uprightness” (ESV). The context powerfully suggests this is a description of the moment of death, and the usual physical experience represents the spiritual for the righteous. It is typical for dying people to take to their “death bed,” and there, to breathe their last. Often at the moment they die, the struggle to live yields to the physical appearance of being at rest, of serenity at last. For the godly, this common phenomena has a true and spiritual counterpart, even if their dying experience is horrific. At death, the persecuted are instantly freed from their murderers who can hurt them no more (Luke 12.4), and their afterlife (heaven) is a state of “peace” (Heb. shalom: perfect well-being). They have passed the great spiritual and moral test of this life with flying colors, and they have begun, as God’s favorites, to enjoy the rewards of the next. Their very trials gave them opportunity to glorify God as champions, super-conquerors by His grace (cf. Rom 8.35-37).
Behind the experience which the world (and often the sufferer) fails to understand, the instructed eye sees a different purpose and another outcome. The righteous is not ‘perishing’ but entering peace; the ‘gathering’ is not purposeless but is a mercy extended to such as would find the burden of coming trouble more than they could bear, and consequently they are mercifully removed before it strikes.5
O dear friends, let us lay these things to heart, considering them well, that we may understand and be comforted in our own troubled times. Amen.
Notes:
1. So J. Alec Motyer translates.
2. Lack of agreement between things, discordance (SOED).
3. Cause heavy losses or fatalities (SOED).
4. Beneficial or saving (SOED).
5. Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary (IVP 1993), pp. 470-471.
Published in Herald of Grace on 02/21/2014. All rights reserved.