When the Deal is Off: The Anatomy of a Covenant-Breaking Culture Text: Isaiah 33:7-9
Introduction: The Great Unraveling
We live in an age of extraordinary fragility, though it is masked by a great deal of technological bravado. Our leaders make pronouncements, our talking heads offer confident analyses, and our screens glow with the illusion of control. But underneath it all, there is a pervasive sense that the whole enterprise is coming apart at the seams. The highways of our public discourse are desolate, the ordinary traveler of common sense has ceased, and the covenants that once held our civilization together have been systematically broken. Men have no regard for man because they have first had no regard for God.
We see this unraveling and we are tempted to think it is a new phenomenon, a uniquely modern crisis brought on by this or that political party, or this or that bad philosophy. But the prophet Isaiah would diagnose our condition in a heartbeat. He has seen this all before. Our sickness is an ancient one. It is the sickness of covenant-breaking. When a people makes a deal with God, and then decides to renege on that deal, the consequences are not merely spiritual. They are tangible. They are visible in the streets, on the highways, and across the very face of the land.
The passage before us this morning is a stark portrait of a society in full-blown collapse. It is a picture of what happens when the terms of reality, established by the Creator, are violated. The messengers of peace weep, the economy grinds to a halt, and the natural world itself begins to wither in sympathy with the spiritual bankruptcy of its inhabitants. This is not just poetry; it is covenantal cause and effect. What Isaiah describes here is the inevitable result of a nation that has told God, "We will not have you to rule over us." And God, in His terrible justice, often gives such a people exactly what they ask for. He removes His restraining hand and allows the internal logic of their rebellion to play itself out to its bitter and desolate end.
But for the people of God, this is not a counsel of despair. It is a call to understanding. We must be able to read the signs of the times. We must understand why the brave men are crying in the streets so that we know where to place our trust. Our trust cannot be in the brave men, or the messengers of peace, or the highways of commerce. Our trust must be in the God who judges the covenant-breaker, and who, in the midst of that judgment, remains the only hope for restoration.
The Text
"Behold, their brave men cry in the streets; The messengers of peace weep bitterly. The highways are desolate, the traveler has ceased; He has broken the covenant, he has rejected the cities; He has no regard for man. The land mourns and languishes, Lebanon is humiliated and withers; Sharon is like a desert plain, And Bashan and Carmel lose their foliage."
(Isaiah 33:7-9 LSB)
The Failure of Human Strength (v. 7)
We begin with the public display of masculine despair.
"Behold, their brave men cry in the streets; The messengers of peace weep bitterly." (Isaiah 33:7)
The first casualty of national apostasy is confidence. The "brave men," the heroes, the mighty warriors, are reduced to public weeping. This is not the quiet grief of personal loss; this is a cry in the streets. It is a public admission of utter helplessness. The men who were supposed to be the pillars of strength, the defenders of the city, have come to the end of their rope. Their courage, their strategy, their brute force, has failed them. When a nation puts its trust in its own military might, in its own "brave men," that trust will eventually be humiliated.
Alongside them, the "messengers of peace," the diplomats, are weeping bitterly. This is the failure of the political class. These are the men who make the deals, who negotiate the treaties, who believe that human reason and compromise can solve any problem. They have just returned from the negotiating table with the Assyrians, and their efforts have come to nothing. The enemy is treacherous. He will not be reasoned with. He will not abide by the terms of the treaty. And so, the smooth-talking envoys, who thought they could manage the crisis through clever words, are undone. Their peace plans are in tatters, and all they can do is weep over the futility of their efforts.
This is a picture of the failure of both the Hawks and the Doves. The tough guys and the diplomats are equally impotent. When God decides to judge a nation, the arm of flesh will fail you, whether it is wielding a sword or a pen. The strength of men and the wisdom of men are broken reeds. This is the first thing we must see. The institutions and individuals we are tempted to rely on are shown to be utterly bankrupt in the day of trouble.
The Collapse of Society (v. 8)
From the failure of leadership, the rot spreads to the whole of society.
"The highways are desolate, the traveler has ceased; He has broken the covenant, he has rejected the cities; He has no regard for man." (Isaiah 33:8 LSB)
The desolation of the highways signifies the breakdown of commerce and community. When the roads are not safe, everything stops. Trade ceases. Communication is cut off. The traveler, the ordinary person going about their business, stays home out of fear. This is a picture of a society paralyzed by lawlessness and threat. The basic trust required for a functioning economy and a free society has evaporated.
And Isaiah gives us the root cause in the second half of the verse. "He has broken the covenant." The "he" here is the enemy, the Assyrian, who has violated the treaty. But in the larger context of Isaiah, the ultimate covenant-breaker is Judah itself. When God's people break their covenant with Him, He hands them over to faithless men. Treachery is the punishment for treachery. A nation that will not keep its word to God will find itself surrounded by enemies who will not keep their word to them.
This covenant-breaking spirit results in a contempt for civilization itself. "He has rejected the cities." The cities were meant to be centers of culture, worship, and order. But the enemy despises them. And why? Because the covenant-breaker "has no regard for man." This is the endpoint of all godlessness. If you remove God from the equation, you eventually lose any basis for valuing human beings. If man is not made in the image of God, then he is just a collection of molecules, a talking animal, and there is no reason not to treat him as such. All the atrocities of history are downstream from this fundamental error. When the vertical covenant with God is broken, the horizontal relationships between men inevitably disintegrate into violence and contempt.
The Groaning of Creation (v. 9)
The final stage of this collapse is the participation of the natural world in the misery of man.
"The land mourns and languishes, Lebanon is humiliated and withers; Sharon is like a desert plain, And Bashan and Carmel lose their foliage." (Isaiah 33:9 LSB)
The land itself is personified. It mourns. It languishes. This is not simply a poetic flourish. The Scripture teaches that creation is bound up with the spiritual state of mankind. When Adam sinned, the ground was cursed for his sake (Genesis 3:17). The Apostle Paul tells us that the whole creation groans, waiting for the redemption of the sons of God (Romans 8:22). There is a federal relationship between man and the earth he was given to steward.
Isaiah names four of the most famously beautiful and fertile regions of the land. Lebanon was known for its magnificent cedar forests. Sharon was a lush coastal plain, famous for its flowers. Bashan and Carmel were renowned for their rich pastures and dense forests. These were the postcard locations of Israel, symbols of God's blessing and the goodness of His creation. And now, they are all undone.
Lebanon is "humiliated." Its glory is stripped away. Sharon becomes a desert. Bashan and Carmel, once symbols of strength and fruitfulness, are shedding their leaves like a dying tree. The point is this: when man rebels against God, the rebellion does not stop with man. The curse seeps into the very soil. The land itself reflects the spiritual state of the people. A nation that breaks covenant with God will find that the creation itself begins to break covenant with them. The rains will not come, the crops will fail, and the land will become as barren as their own hearts.
The Only Way Out
This is a grim picture. It is a portrait of a world where all human supports have failed. The warriors are crying, the politicians are weeping, the economy has collapsed, and the very earth is dying. If this were the end of the story, it would be a counsel of blackest despair. But it is not the end. The very next verse provides the pivot: "Now I will arise," says the LORD (Isaiah 33:10).
The total collapse of human systems is the necessary prelude to divine intervention. God allows everything to be shaken so that we will learn to trust only in that which cannot be shaken (Hebrews 12:27). The weeping of the brave men is a good thing if it leads them to cry out to God. The failure of the diplomats is a blessing if it causes the nation to seek a mediator who cannot fail.
This passage is a diagnosis of our own time, but it is also a pointer to the only cure. Our society has broken the covenant. We have rejected God's law and have, as a consequence, lost all regard for man. Our highways are becoming desolate with fear and division. Our culture is withering, losing its foliage, becoming a spiritual desert. We see the brave men in our own day wringing their hands, and the messengers of peace making things worse with every new initiative.
The answer is not a new political party or a better economic plan. The answer is the God who arises. The answer is the one who is the ultimate messenger of a peace that cannot be broken, a peace made by the blood of His cross (Colossians 1:20). The answer is the one who kept the covenant perfectly on our behalf. Jesus Christ is the true Israel who did not break faith. He is the brave man who did not cry in the streets in despair, but who set His face like flint toward Jerusalem to conquer our ultimate enemy.
When the land languishes because of our sin, we must look to the one who wore a crown of thorns, taking the curse of the ground upon His own head. When our world is shaken, we must flee to the kingdom that cannot be shaken. The covenant-breaking of man reveals the glorious, covenant-keeping character of God. Our utter helplessness is the canvas upon which He paints the masterpiece of His salvation. Therefore, let us see the desolation of our age for what it is: a call to repentance, and a summons to trust not in the failing strength of men, but in the God who alone can make the desert bloom again.