When God Steps In

What happens when everything is broken and no one steps in to fix it?

In this message from Isaiah 59:15–20, Pastor Jason Barnett explores a world where truth has collapsed, justice has failed, and humanity is unable to repair what’s gone wrong. But instead of leaving things as they are, God does something unexpected—He steps in Himself.

This sermon connects ancient Scripture to real life today, addressing the brokenness we see in the world, in our relationships, and within our own hearts. It also points clearly to Jesus as the Redeemer who enters into our mess and brings lasting hope.

Linkoln shares his story on why he started coming to Ravenna Church of the Nazarene and shares why you should consider doing the same.

Ravenna Church of the Nazarene
530 Main Street, Ravenna, KY 40472

Transcript

Pastor Jason 0:00

What happens when everything is broken and no one steps in to fix it? When truth disappears, when justice fails, and even the people who can help don't, what is gotta do then? I'm after Jason Byron, and this is the best podcast. This is one of those messages that feels especially relevant for right now. Because if we're honest, it doesn't take much to look around and feel like something isn't right. Truth feels harder to find, justice feels harder to trust, and sometimes it feels like everyone is just kind of waiting on someone else to step in and fix it. It's not just out there, it's in our families, our workplaces, and even in our own hearts. So the question becomes what do you do when what's broken isn't something you can fix? That's exactly where Isaiah 59 takes us. And what we're going to see is not just what's wrong with the world, but what God does about it. Let's jump in. I don't know if you know this or not, but last week marked the 114th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Did you know that? 114 years. And most of us, we know the story, right? About the Titanic, the unsinkable ship. We know about the iceberg, we know about the panic. We know about the lack of lifeboats, and we know now that the Titanic is sitting at the bottom of the Atlantic. But to me, that's not what that's not necessarily the most haunting part of the story. The part of the story that kind of sticks with me is how long they waited. Right? They hit that iceberg and no one really knew how serious the situation was. They did, but they didn't want to admit that's how serious the situation was. When it first became clear that the ship was in trouble, people hesitated. I mean, they could have taken steps in that moment that maybe it they wouldn't have saved everybody, but they may have been able to save a few more than they did. They might have been able to get more people in the lifeboats than they got in the lifeboats. But then again, people just didn't believe the seriousness of the situation. Many thought that there was more time. In a moment where every second mattered, things just didn't happen the way they should have. I think there's something about that that we get, right? That we kind of react to a little bit. Because deep down, we all know that feeling. We know when when something is wrong, when something is off, and we just keep waiting for somebody else to step in. Sometimes we're at work, right? We we know something something is wrong, right? Like maybe somebody's being a little dishonest. But rather than say something or do something about it, we used to keep quiet. But we assume someone else will deal with it, someone else will step into that. Maybe there's something happening in our family, and something in our family is deeply broken. But no one says anything. We just kind of dance around it, pretend it doesn't exist. We walk on the eggshells because we don't want to be the one that cracks the egg on that and has everything come spilling out. Right? We'd rather just keep the peace. So we keep quiet. In a world, we live in a world where things are clearly not right. We all just look around thinking, surely someone is gonna do something. But then no one does. I mean all we have to do is look never mind, I won't go there. Well, this passage we're gonna look at in Isaiah 59 this morning is a passage that's kind of like that. It's looking at a world where everything is broken, but then someone sees it, and someone does step in. And it's that's what we're gonna look at today in Isaiah chapter 59. I'm gonna be reading verses 15 through 20. This is what it says. It says, truth is missing. Anyone turning from evil is plundered. The Lord looked and was upset at the absence of justice. Seeing that there was no one and astonished that no one would intervene, God's arm brought victory, upheld by righteousness. Putting on righteousness as armor and a helmet of salvation on his head, putting on garments of vengeance and wrapping himself in a cloak of zeal. God will repay according to their actions, wrath to his foes, retribution to his enemies, retribution to the coastlands. So those in the west will fear the Lord's name, and those in the east will fear God's glory. It will come like a rushing river that the Lord's wind drives on. A redeemer will come to Zion, and to those in Jacob who stop rebelling, says the Lord. This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Alright, so the prophet Isaiah here, he's talking about a moment where God is really pointing out to his people what's wrong. And it's not a world where his people are just depressed. It's not where they're, you know, they just need a slight adjustment and things will go back to normal the way they should be. No, something is terribly broken. Something is deeply broken. The world Isaiah 59 is describing as one where truth is gone, justice is broken, and people are living however they want. The book of Judges would describe this as everybody was doing what was right in their own eyes. And Isaiah is describing this problem, not he's not describing it to say that God can't save the situation. What he's trying to point out is God is God's people, people in general, they failed. Their education didn't save them, their systems didn't save them, their king couldn't save them. It was broken. But in these verses, as God, as Isaiah points out, the the broke is as God is exposing the wrong that's here, God also talks about a turning point in the situation. And that's that and that turning point is what changes everything. So let's kind of dig into this. Verse 15 says, truth is missing. If truth had a face, its face would be on a milk garden. Because you couldn't find it. It's gone, it doesn't exist. Now it's not talking about truth in the sense of um, you know, like us now when we get on TikTok, we have to determine whether the video is AI or not AI, right? Although there was an easy one this week that said that said two great white sharks were headed to Indiana, and I thought that's probably wrong. This isn't just about the facts, this is about faithfulness, right? God made a covenant with his people, promised that I will be there for you. I will be your God, and you will be my people. But you have to live by my commands. You have to honor me, and they weren't doing that. So they were they were living in a lifestyle that was counter to what God called them to. It continues on in verse 15, and it says, it says, um, anyone turning from evil is plundered. So basically, what Isaiah is pointing out here is evil was was such a part of the culture, such a part of the lifestyle that if anybody tried to step out of line, if they tried to break that pattern, they were punished by society for it. Doing right made you a target. And if any if people learn one thing, is if you if you make them a target long enough, they'll stop doing what's right. They may not participate in the evil, but they'll stop standing up and trying to do the right thing because they don't want to be bowed down. That's what's happening here in verse 15. In verse 15, also Isaiah goes on to say, the Lord looked and was upset at the absence of justice. So remember, they had a court system, they had they had a system that was supposed to protect people, they had laws in place that were supposed to protect people. But evil is the lifestyle, evil is the way of living. And that included the courts. What can you do? What do you do if you go to court and you know you're in the right, but that the court doesn't care about the truth? What if the court only cared about who had what or who influenced who? What if it was about what side was in power, what side wasn't in power? That was the world that God's people were living in. Here's the thing. When when truth is gone, justice goes with it. When truth collapses, justice collapsed too. The two go hand in hand. There's not one without the other. And that's what was going wrong in God's people right here. Truth was collapsing, so justice went away with it. So God is surveying the situation, right? God's looking at it, and God even says in verse 16, the Lord looks, and He there was no one. There was no one doing anything. There was nobody to intervene. Verse 15 tells us God looked and was upset. God saw everything that was taking place. He was he was seeing it with his own eyes. He was looking down, watching good be trampled and suppressed and silenced. He was watching all the justice systems crumble and fall apart. And it upset him. God is not neutral to the situation. And again, what verse 16 points out, God sees it. And not just sees it, he's shocked. God is shocked. Sometimes they should say, God's astonished, God's astonished, because there's nobody that can intervene and do anything about it. Again, these people, they had a king. They had princes, they had governors, they had courts, they had priests, they had godsword, they had it all. They had no truth and they had no justice. No one can fix it. Again, this is more than a system failure. This is human failure. Complete failure. Complete crumpling. See, we can sit and debate about government systems all we want. But no matter what system of government you use, whether it's a king, president, democracy, you name them, the issue isn't the system of government. It's people. And that's what God is describing here to his people. People have failed. And it's not just that that they failed and that they need to fix themselves. God is pointing out that this is so broken, this is so messed up that they said he's pointing out that there is no one to intervene, that there's no one who can fix it because they can't. It is so broken that it's broke, unrepairable. It's like the Titanic, it's not gonna float again. God sees it, and God's not neutral. And only that, if you continue reading this, God isn't, he's not neutral to the point where God is not passive either. Humanity made a mess that couldn't be fixed, and God doesn't leave him stuck in the mess. Verse 16 continues that we go into 17 and it says, God's arm brought victory upheld by righteousness. Putting on a righteousness, putting on righteousness as an armor and a helmet of salvation on his head. This is saying God sees it, God looks down, God's upset, God's disturbed by it, he sees that no one can intervene, that no one can do anything. So what does God do? God says, I'm gonna suit up and I'm gonna step in. Man, if you're wondering, if you were in Ephesians this morning in Sunday school class, if you go into Ephesians chapter 6, Paul talks about putting on the full armor of God. Paul is echoing this. What does God do? God suits up and steps in himself. This is divine warrior imagery that's being used. God is stepping into the mess personally. God doesn't send help, God is help. He's the help. Verses 18 and 19 they describe God responding to the evil. And I personally I love that the end of verse 19 because it describes God's glory like a rushing river. Right? A rushing river that the Lord's divine wind is pushing forward. Yeah, I remember Isaiah and the people of God, they were living in a dry culture. They were living in a desert. I don't know if you've ever been in Arizona or somewhere like that when the rain comes, right? It's it's usually a very dry climate, but when the rain comes, it comes in buckets. And it rains so hard, so fast, and the ground's not ready for it. So they have a lot of flash flooding that happens because of the rain, because of the intensity. God's people in Isaiah, that when he's using this as an image, that's what they're thinking about. He's describing an unstoppable force. And the unstoppable force is the unstoppable God actively coming to the rescue of his people. Because they've broke this, the situation is so broken, they've broken it so much that nobody can fix it. Not because no one is willing, but because no one can. The solution God offers, it's not Him repairing a program. God doesn't say, you know what, we're gonna fix this by setting up a 12-week program that you're all gonna walk through to get educated properly so it fixes everything. It's not that. God doesn't offer that. And God is not saying we're just gonna ignore this problem and hope it goes away. He doesn't say that either. What does God do? The solution God offers is a person. And verse 20 says, the solution comes to those who stop rebelling. Those who turn. Alright, is everybody thoroughly confused yet? No? Alright. At least Needle admits it, right? Don't worry, I started off that way too. Right? I take my so let's know. I take my I do my devotions, right? I'll God will give me like, hey, that preaches, you know, and so I'll write it down in my little notebook. I'll write down the verse, the title, potentially, and a thought. When I got to this, I was like, do what now? What was I talking about? What was I thinking? But stick with me, all right? Because this passage flows to one truth, and it's an important one. That truth is when no one can fix what was broken, God stepped in himself. Again, the prophet here, he showed us the human world that's broken beyond repair. There is nothing anyone can do to fix it. There are things that they can do to suppress it, there are things that they can do to try and minimize it, but ultimately there is nothing humanity could do to fix what was broken. Because they are the ones that broke it because they are broken. On relationships, right? Just seems counterproductive. If you're not, if you're if your buddy's not a mechanic and you're has something wrong with your car, you're not gonna go talk to your buddy to get advice on how to fix the car. You can't fix it because you don't know how. That's why I'm gonna stuff brakes around here. I call Patrick and Tracy because I don't know how to fix it. I call David, right? Sometimes. And David's like, well, how have you talked to Tracy and Patrick? And this is that situation, though. The world was so broken, so messed up. Again, truth was missing, right? They're looking for missing person posters posted all over the area because truth is gone. It can't be found. If you do the right thing, you get beat up and silenced. That's the world that they were living in. And then it was they were living in it because they made it that way. And God says, you know what? You broke it, you messed it up, and he doesn't say, I'm done with you. He doesn't wipe his hands clean. He says, Guess what? I'm suiting up, I'm stepping in, we're gonna fix it. God intervenes not simply because people won't, but because people can't. Again, we know this feeling, right? We turn our news, the news on. Boy, I hate turning the news on anymore. It's always something depressing. Again, we turn the news on, it feels like everything's made up and the points don't matter. No, that's a that's a quote that's a quoted whose lines anyway, right? The show where they do improv. They get points for their skits, but the points don't matter. That's like our news right now. It's they say it's a truth, but still it's truth in there somewhere. The stories I used to write in middle school, right? One of the stories I wrote was called the Civil War story stretched slightly. And it was stretched by a lot because I said the real reason for the Civil War was because the country couldn't decide between the Xbox and the PlayStation. That's what was happening in my friend group at the time. That's what our news is like. And then it seems like every time you turn around, everybody's got something to say about what's happening, right? It doesn't matter their name, their title, what their political affiliation is. They stand up and say, you know what? I know what the problem is. And they talk about it. Then they even offer somewhat of a solution, but then they get there and nobody does a thing. I said I wasn't gonna say that, but I said it anyway. Everybody's talking, but nobody is listening, and no one has actually offered any solutions or tried to solve anything. There are things that are broken in our families, right? We all know it. We know where the problems are, we know what's broken. And we know we get together for the holidays, we're gonna have Memorial Day, we're gonna gather for a cookout, we're all gonna know what the elephant in the room is, but we put a lampshade on it, just pretend it's not there. We just hope, well, maybe it'll go away if we wait long enough. Have you ever had to live in your life trying to walk on eggshells and not accept somebody? There's no way to live. You go to work or you just go to school every day and something is just not right. You know, people are mistreated. You know, I pray for our kids, kids in school. They're dealing with bullying. Bullying's bad in our school district. I pray for it every day. And as someone that was bullied regularly, as a kid, I know how frustrating it is because they all tell us the same thing. Well, go tell the teacher and they'll do something. You go and you tell the teacher, and guess what happens? They don't do anything. And if you retaliate, and I've been teaching our kids this and kids do it, but second person's always the one that caught, it's never the first person. I'm not bad mouthing our teachers or anything. I'm not bad mouthing the school district. I'm a parent, I get it. My kids do the same thing to me. Play the same games. I just punish everybody. The dog, too. Didn't even do anything. But sometimes you know, even in the marketplaces, right, it might seem like this honesty is the best policy. Right? If you're gonna tell the truth, great, but that's gonna cost you something. And you keep we keep thinking things like, well, surely someone's gonna do something, but then no one does. Just broken. Then we can get to the stuff that's in our own hearts that we've been carrying. Habits we've tried to break. Attitudes that we know that aren't right that we carry with us. Patterns we keep falling back into, and we keep telling ourselves, I will fix it this time. This time we'll be different. You said that a hundred tries ago. See here's the thing. In all those situations, we try to fix it. We try to correct it, we try to do it ourselves. We try to manage it like it's something that can be minimized or managed or kept safe. If it's like hurting cats and we ignore it, hope it goes away. But here's the truth. Some things are broken and they can't be fixed. And that's hard for me to say because I'm someone that likes to fix things. Maybe not physical things like Tracy and Patrick, but if there's something broken between you and I, I want to fix it. If there's something broken in your life, I want to fix it. I was with somebody the other day who had just lost a loved one, and I just I told him I was like, man, I wish I wish I could do more than pray. I wish I could fix it. Never really honest, honest. We're really untruthful with ourselves, and this is the part that hurts, this is the part that stings. We are we aren't just living in brokenness. We're not just a part of brokenness, we're not just dealing with brokenness. Sometimes we contribute to it. See, it's really easy when we can look at the other side and say, oh yeah, you know, they're definitely in the wrong. They des they're definitely the ones that broke and caused the system to fall apart. But somewhere along the line, we look in the mirror, we realize we were part of that same system too. And really what it boils down to, remember in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3, where the first sin happens, and what is the first thing humanity does? Well, the first thing is they realize that they're naked. That's the great discovery of sin. But the first thing they start doing when God shows up and says, Adam's like, it's that woman you gave me, it's her fault. If she had just stayed in the kitchen, the woman's like, well, if it wasn't for that stupid snake talking to me, and why she listened to a talking snake, I'll never know. Why Adam and Stephen say, stop listening to that stupid thing, I don't know. But they instead of being honest and being straightforward and saying, we broke this, we messed it up, instead, they start pointing the fingers every other which way, because if they point the fingers and they take the fall, I look better and they look like the problem. But sometimes we have to admit to ourselves we have contributed to the brokenness, and that is a hard thing to do. But as hard as that is to hear, this is why it matters. Because it matters because God did not wait for us to fix it, He didn't wait for the world to get right, He didn't wait for the systems to be perfect. God didn't give us a better set of instructions. He gave us, he gave us His law, His perfect and holy law the first time. It was and it was really ten laws. You know what we did with those ten laws? We made 600 more. As if the ten weren't good enough. And we couldn't even we couldn't even keep the ten, let alone the 600 we got into it. God doesn't give us more instruction. You know what God did? God came himself. God stood it up and came himself. And here's the thing, Isaiah, this is before Jesus, right? If you look in your Bible, Isaiah is a prophet, it comes before the gospels. That's before the life of Jesus, it comes before the New Testament letters, which are the apostles who traveled with Jesus, or at least saw him on our road at some point. This happens before all that, and Isaiah saw it. All Isaiah saw it before anybody else. Maybe some of the other prophets too, but Isaiah saw the picture. But guess what? We don't just have a picture, we've got a name, and that name is Jesus. So the question is not, can you fix what's broken in the sense of can I fix what's broken, or can Beetle fix what's broken, or can God fix what's broken? The question is, what do we do when we can't fix what is broken? What do we do? Now, remember in the beginning we talked about the Titanic, right? They hit an iceberg, down goes the boat. And all they had all this time to try and figure things out, but they kind of wasted it when every second mattered. But you may not notice, but while the titanic was going down, there's another boat. And this boat's, we do talk about it some, but not to the extent I think it deserves. There's another boat called the Carpathia. We all know the Carpathia is gonna be the boat that shows up and picks people up. But the part of the story of the Carpathian is amazing. Because here's the thing that you may not know. The Carpathia was 58 miles away. 58 miles from that wreck site. As soon as they received the distress call, they turned that boat around and headed that way. They heard the unsinkable ship is going down, they got that distress call. They didn't say, What is this is wrong? They didn't question it, they just immediately said, We gotta go. And when I say they gotta go, that captain, I can't remember his name, it's in my notes, but I'm not gonna stop and look at it. The captain, though, he's like, he orders those furnaces to be lit as hot as they could possibly go. And that boat was only designed to go at 14 knots. That was what the engines could handle. They pumped that engine until it was going 17. It was going so hard and so fast at one point that the the engineers took their hats off and covered the gauges because they knew if we look at it, we're gonna stop what we're doing. But if we stop what we're doing, we're not gonna make it. That's just what the the the the captain and the crew were doing. Meanwhile, the passengers they get word of what's going on. They start grabbing every blanket they can find, every scarp they can find, every coat that they can find, and getting into the deck. They pull up as many mattresses as they can find to get ready. They start taking their belongings and throwing off the side of the ship because you know what? We gotta make room for people. We gotta do something. So they finally get there and they see all these people in the water. They get there and then they can't they can't change what's happened. The people that were dead were still dead. And they stepped in. They stepped in and they rescued those people who were left. And Isaiah here he says, God looked at a world like that. God looked at a world like that. God looked at a world where truth was gone. It had a missing poster, it had a case file with a missing persons bureau. It was God looked at a world where justice had ceased to exist, where it was broken beyond repaired. God looked at a world where people were hurting and where nobody was stepping in, and God didn't stand back and say, Oh, how about yours? What does God do? He didn't wait for somebody to fix it. What does God do? He stepped in himself, and when he stepped in himself, his name was Jesus. Jesus stepped into our mess, into our brokenness that we could not fix ourselves. And sometimes we don't want to fix for ourselves, but he stepped into it anyway. So this morning, let me ask you this are you still trying to fix what you were never meant to fix? So many times you think before I come to church and I give my life to Jesus, I gotta have it all figured out. I gotta I gotta get my life clean. You can't do it. Why? Because you're part of the problem. I'm not saying that to be mean. I'm I don't I'm part I'm my biggest problem. I talk to your church problem all the time. The biggest problem you have is this church is me. You can't fix it. You weren't meant to. God's not asking you to. God's saying, let me I'm here, I've stepped in. I can fix what you can't fix. Are you still carrying what you can't carry? Are you still trying to manage what's broken inside? If you're doing those things, stop. Stop trying to do it because you can't. Instead, trust the one who stepped into the mess. Trust him. We need to take this on a bigger scale. Again, I know there's so much broken in our world right now. Again, I'm not saying we should stick our hands in the sand and pray about it and hope that beams of love flow down, right? And things are magically better. That's not what I'm saying here. Sometimes God's gonna call us to step out and do things, but we're not doing what he calls us to step out. He's it's not us stepping out, it's God stepping into the mess. We are going with him and his power, not on our own. Again, if education could fix it, education would have solved it a long time ago. If systems could fix it, systems would have fixed it a long time ago. The issue isn't the systems, it isn't the education, the issue is us. And the only way to fix it is if you and I start by putting our trust in Jesus and allow him to work in us. And as he works in me, as he works in Nina, as he works in you, he'll begin to work in the world that we live in. God doesn't come to us as some distant being, he's not off waiting, he's it's personal. And notice this too, what Isaiah says here at the end of the end of verse 20. He says, the redeemer comes to those who stop rebelling. Stop rebelling. Us trying to do it ourselves is us rebelling. Stop. Stop trusting in yourself to fix it. Stop waiting for systems and progress to work it out. Trust God. Because when no one can fix what was broken, God stepped in himself. And he wants to step into whatever it is you're dealing with right now. Are you still trying to fix something you were never meant to fix? Maybe it's something in your life, something in your past, something in your heart. You've tried, you've managed, you've ignored it, but it's still there. The good news is you're not waiting on God to step in. He already has. And his name is Jesus. Stop carrying what you can't carry. Stop trying to fix what you can't fix. Turn to Jesus and trust him. Let's pray. Lord, we've tried to fix things we couldn't fix. We've tried to carry things we were never meant to carry. Thank you for stepping in. Thank you for coming to us. Thank you for being our redeemer. Help us to stop trusting ourselves and start trusting you in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, this message encouraged you. Share it with someone who needs to hear it. And as always, you can find more devotional content from me throughout the week. The easiest place to find me is on TikTok. It's their pathpaster on there. I do daily devotional videos. Feel free to check those out. Um and if you're looking for a way to make a real difference, a way to support this show, I'm actually not looking to monetize this show. I believe I got my I'm called to help find one more person to share Jesus with through this podcast. Uh but if you want if you feel led to support this show somehow, you can do that by supporting the Nazarene Compassionate Ministries. They serve people in real tangible ways around the world. So there's a link somewhere attached to the show. Uh, if you want to support, click that, and you'll be supporting the Nazarene Compassionate Ministries, specifically their emergency relief fund, helping take Jesus and hope into dark places with people in dark moments. So I appreciate your help with that. Well, until next time, grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus.