Isaiah 26 - A Victory Song

All right, let's go to Psalm Isaiah 26 with me.

Isaiah 26, isaiah 26.

So for those of you who've lived the greater part of your life and I know some of you are in denial about having done that we had for a time a group called New Image, and I was talking to someone who was in their 70s and they said they were excited about spending some time with the older people.

So obviously, the truth of how old that person was hadn't quite sunk in.

But for those of you who have spent more than half of your life expectancy, what would you say to your younger self, given what you know now?

As you reflect back on your younger self, you would probably go to those moments of decision where perhaps you've made some mistakes and you would encourage yourself to go a different direction.

Or perhaps you would look to your younger self and realize that you were filled with anxieties and cares about things that actually never materialized to your harm, and you might tell yourself not to worry so much or not to fret or not to be in a state of confusion or just inanimate, but actually to step forward.

What would you say to yourself?

What would you say to yourself In 2012,?

Oprah Winfrey, at the time 58 years old wrote to her younger self.

She wrote to a 19-year-old self who had just gotten a job as a news anchor at a TV station in Nashville, tennessee.

She was the youngest and the first black news anchor in that city.

She was still in college.

She was excited about and the first black news anchor in that city.

She was still in college.

She was excited about the new job, but she was most concerned about her relationship with her then boyfriend.

And so she decided to write as a 58-year-old to her 19-year-old self and she talked about being proud about getting the job self.

And she talked about being proud about getting the job, about being concerned about juggling work and school and all of that.

But she said, your biggest concern is how you manage your life with your boyfriend Bubba.

Yes, you're dating someone named Bubba.

And she told herself on that day that you brought him to the station to see where you work, hoping he'd be proud.

He seemed less than impressed.

The truth is he's intimidated.

You don't know this because you can only see yourself through his eyes.

A lesson you'll have to learn again and again is to see yourself with your own eyes, to love yourself from your own heart.

You spent too many days trying to please others and to be what they wanted you to be, and you'll have to learn that the wounds of your past the rape, the molestation, the whippings for stepping out of place, not being allowed to show anger or even cry afterwards have damaged you.

Yet through it all, you held to a belief in God and God's belief in you, and that will be your single greatest gift knowing that there's a power greater than yourself and trusting him to guide you.

The trajectory of your life changed the day you took that job.

Your response was ignited by the words of your then favorite Bible verse Philippians 3.14.

I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, and knowing that there is a higher calling is what will sustain and fulfill you.

From where I sit now, viewing your journey, there are few regrets.

Only months before this picture was taken, you wrote a poem about a woman becoming.

Even then, you understood that success was a process and that moving with the flow of life and not against it will be your greatest achievement.

Love you deeply, oprah.

What a gift that might have been to a 19-year-old self if she was able to receive it, to be able to know what lies ahead and how to maneuver through that life with the knowledge of the future.

Well, we're in Isaiah, chapter 26, and Isaiah, chapter 26 does something like that for us.

Isaiah 26 · chapter mention Isaiah 26 · chapter mention

It's one of a series of what I call prophecy songs that speaks about the future.

You'll see, in chapters 24, 25, and 26, and even 27, a statement in that day or on that day said quite often, and it's talking about that day of completion of God's final mighty acts of bringing everything under his will and purposes.

Last week we looked at chapter 25, and Johnny opened up that passage and there's that indication of God's triumphal future Isaiah 25,.

When he has swallowed up death once and for all, the Lord, god, will wipe away the tears from every face and remove his people's disgrace from the whole earth.

For the Lord has spoken.

On that day it will be said look, this is our God, we have waited for him and he has saved us.

This is the Lord.

We have waited for him.

Let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.

So here, from this perspective, we can look through the tunnel of time and see something happening on that day, and it will be us in a position of absolute freedom from sin and its clutches.

We'll be alive and death will be dead.

What a wonderful way to look at the future.

But Isaiah 26 does something different for us.

Yes, it speaks about what we'll do on that day.

So we, from this perspective, look forward and see what's ahead.

But at the same time, isaiah 26 turns it all around and then takes the words from the future and speaks into the present.

It helps us understand how to conduct our life in light of what's in front of us.

So when we go through this chapter, I want you to see that, because this praise here is not just something we will do later.

It's a praise that affects our present.

Today we live in a world that's still filled with disobedience and sin, where wickedness abounds, where the consequences of the fall still affect us all, where the consequences of the fall still affect us all, where none of us live up to the fulfillment of what we were created for, where death will be our destiny.

And sometimes, when we live life in this world, we can find ourselves discouraged, feeling fruitless, often despondent, just empty.

We feel sometimes, like the imagery we'll look at in just a moment, a few verses down, like a woman who's been expecting a baby for nine months, only to give birth to nothing.

But our life doesn't have to feel like that when we understand what the future holds and how the future affects our present.

So when we look at this section of scripture, I want you to be encouraged by the praises we'll sing in the day to come, to delight in the wonder of God's complete victory over everything.

But I also want us to be able to feel that future now.

So it affects how we live today and tomorrow, and the next and the next and the next, and however many God gives us.

So let's look at the particulars here and listen to the praises and also to the prompts to live in the light of them.

In verses one to six, we're told about the security of our salvation, and because our salvation is secure, we can trust the Lord, who will bring us into perfect harmony with himself.

Listen to these first six verses.

On that day, this song will be sung.

In the land of Judah we have a strong city.

Salvation is established as walls and ramparts Open the gate so a righteous nation can come in, one that remains faithful.

You will keep the mind that is dependent on you in perfect peace, for it is trusting in you, trust in the Lord forever, because in the Lord, the Lord himself is an everlasting rock, for he has humbled those who live in lofty places, an inaccessible city, he brings it down.

He brings it down to the ground, he throws it to the dust.

Feet, trample it, the feet of the humble, the steps of the poor.

Isaiah here speaks about a better day that's coming, a day in which God's people will be so safe and so secure that the imagery of a citadel, a strong fortress, a castle with walls is there.

Secure, not battered down, unbeaten, one in which, when the gates open, that only the righteous can come and go from it, that no enemy will penetrate the defenses.

That's how safe and secure it is, and this is particularly meaningful to the people of God at this time.

In a few chapters we'll read about the Assyrian Empire again and of their encroaching power against the people of Jerusalem, particularly under a new king, this time Hezekiah.

When we read the chapters that we'll be looking at, at that time, assyria had literally conquered every fortified town and village in the land of Judah, every single one except Jerusalem, and they had surrounded Jerusalem and were about to crush Jerusalem when God intervened in a mighty way.

But imagine that being the last remaining city and the enemy has not been in any way harmed by the force of warfare, and they are literally on the other side of the wall and taunting you to give up.

That was their present circumstance.

But here Isaiah takes the imagery of that city, that city with walls, that city that's fortified, that city that's safe, that city that's secure, that city that's keeping the enemies out, and says that that is salvation is like that, that the deliverance of God is that secure?

Now I want you to notice how that imagery sort of unpacks itself with a lot of statements we have in this passage of scripture statements about a city, statements about walls, statements about gates, statements about the nation and statements about the faithful.

Now, if you put all of those together city, walls, gates, nation, faithful there's another passage of scripture that decides to use all of the same words and it comes at the end of the book of Revelation.

And in the book of Revelation, there John writes about one of the final visions that he receives, and it says there that an angel came to him to show him the bride, the wife of the lamb, and carried him away to a holy city to a holy city, jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, arrayed with God's glory.

The city had massive, high walls with 12 gates.

12 angels were at the gates and the names of the 12 tribes of Israel's sons were inscribed on the gates.

And the city's walls had 12 foundations and 12 names of the 12 apostles of the Lamb were on the foundation.

Again, you feel the reverberation, the echoes, of this passage in Isaiah 26 here in Revelation 22.

The nations will walk by its light, the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.

Its gates will never close by day because there will never be night there.

Nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life.

John in Revelation, chapter 21 takes up the imagery of Isaiah, chapter 26, and describes the security and the glory of salvation that's found in Christ.

Revelation 21 · chapter mention Isaiah 26 · chapter mention

Now let's stop for just a second.

Imagine tomorrow when the postal worker brings a letter and drops it off in your mailbox and you go out and you grab the mail and you pick it up and you're leafing through all the stuff that just doesn't need to be and you throw it away and there's a letter and it's addressed from you to you, from 777 New Creation Avenue, new Jerusalem, and you open it up.

And you open it up and there you are, speaking to yourself, and the first thing that you say to yourself is you're here.

You are here, your salvation is secured, you're delivered, you're in the city of God, where the glory of God is.

You're in the place of ultimate beauty and ultimate harmony and ultimate unity with him who made you and all of those who are his.

This is that image.

What is the encouragement from that Trust in the Lord forever?

Verse four Because the Lord himself is an everlasting rock.

Your security in God is an everlasting security and it lies in deep contrast to the self-reliance of the wicked, who have built their own city but is one day going to fall, as the verses five and six talk about.

He's humbled those who live in lofty places, in places of their own self-actualized security, in the places where they think they could be free from trouble, they will find that trouble will hit them.

Finally, at the end, god will truly humble the proud, but he will exalt the humble.

And so here we're told, amidst all of this, amidst a present that's filled with the exaltation of the wicked and the humbling of the righteous in a place that's filled with dangers.

Right outside the gates and over the wall, there is a future that speaks so securely to you that you can now trust the one who will bring you into that victory.

Trust him.

Trust him Because all the benefits of God are actually yours and you will receive them.

Now notice how it describes that in verse 4.

Trust in the Lord forever, because in the Lord, the Lord himself is an everlasting rock.

Now take a look at verse three, because this is what that looks like.

He will keep the mind that is dependent on you.

You will keep the mind that is dependent on you in perfect peace.

In our culture, when we think of peace, we often conjure up in our head some pastoral scene maybe a verdant field full of green, maybe a little bit of light fog lifting off of it, with some sheep smattered about, and possibly a tree blooming in spring and we go.

Well, that's peace.

Blooming in spring, and we go.

Well, that's peace.

That's not the imagery of peace that the Hebrews would have understood.

Shalom is a much, much, much, much bigger word than that.

Shalom embodies the idea of completeness, of absolute harmony with God's will.

When somebody's at peace, it means that they are in every way in integral and in integrity, in alliance with God.

That's peace.

Think about that for a second.

Total harmony with God, total harmony with other people, totally harmony with yourself Because of God's presence and God's gift to you.

Do you experience that today?

That's the kind of peace God is bringing you into and that's the kind of peace you can experience as you spend time relating to God in prayer.

But that is going to be the full expression of your future.

You are going to be one day in shalom, you're going to be one day in peace.

But it's more than that, because look at verse three again.

Our translation says perfect peace, but the Hebrew says shalom, shalom, multiplied peace, peace squared.

So now let's take that again.

Harmony with God, harmony with others, harmony with self, total well-being, total prosperity, total tranquility, total harmony times two.

That's your future.

And if this is what God is going to do to grant you that total completeness, that total harmony, that total well-being that leads to total tranquility forever, trust him, because all that he's doing and all that you're experiencing are not going to stop you from being there.

Now let's move into the next section.

Not only can we trust, but we can also learn Verses 7 to 11.

Because the Lord's righteousness will prevail.

We can learn to live in and long for his righteousness to make all things right.

Verse 7 makes a statement which sounds very contradictory to our present, but it will be our future.

The path of the righteous is level.

You clear a straight path for the righteous.

Yes, lord, we wait for you in the path of your judgments, our desires for your name and renown.

I long for you in the night.

Yes, my spirit within me diligently seeks you, For when your judgments are in the land, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.

But if the wicked man has shown favor, he does not learn righteousness.

In a righteous land, he acts unjustly and does not see the majesty of the Lord.

Lord, your hand is lifted up to take action, but they do not see it.

Let them see your zeal for your people and to be put to shame.

Let fire consume your adversaries.

So, once again, the future speaks to us about a level path of righteousness, of smooth, free, unfettered, unencumbered, no barriers, no obstacles, no hardships at all, about living the right kind of life.

Wow, I don't know about you, but at the end of every day, the one thing I pray is to thank God about all of his goodness and mercy to me.

Pray is to thank God about all of his goodness and mercy to me, but also to remember with regret the many ways I didn't walk in a way with him that fully exemplified my Savior.

One day, I won't have to pray that prayer anymore.

One day, life will be fully smooth and level and righteous completely.

The road right now, well, it's got a lot of ruts, a lot of bumps, a lot of potholes.

It's kind of uphill, it's challenging.

When Micah and I and Chad and one of his teammates went up into the Caucus Mountains, we were in a 15-passenger van that seemed like it needed shocks five years ago on a road that needed some real serious work, and our driver thought the best way to make it easier was to go faster, and so we popped from pothole to pothole to pothole and I was just checking every now and again to make sure my teeth were still in my head.

That's what life feels like now Bumpy, uphill, jarring, difficult, but one day it won't be.

One day it won't be.

But one day it won't be.

One day it won't be.

And so here we're taught not only to trust the Lord, but to learn to align ourselves with the future that we're going to be in, to put ourselves in the path of righteousness and wait for him To learn to be righteous and to long for the day when we'll be fully there with him.

So much so that we're willing to take on board even the judgments of God in the land Verse 9, for when your judgments are in the land, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.

You see, we're so confident of that future day that when trouble comes and challenges are facing this world and hardship endures, when it seems like God's judgment even has come to this world, we find ourselves being shaped by the hardship in humility and submission to our God.

And this is in deep contrast to the wicked, who don't even acknowledge him when good happens to them.

Take a look at verse 10.

When the wicked man is shown favor, he does not learn righteousness.

This is one of the distinguishing marks of a believer.

When a believer is filled with trouble, yes, it's hard, yes, we cry, yes, we may buck, but eventually we yield and we say yes, lord, I understand that this trouble's for my good, even though it's not something I like, and it's not something I'm comfortable in.

I find in it the grace to receive whatever you have for me, so it may shape and mold me to be something I'm not.

Right now.

When good hits an unbeliever's heart, they think my, what a wonderful person I am.

Or how great the circumstances have come into my life.

Do you think maybe God did this for you?

Are you kidding me?

I'm smart, I'm clever, I'm a good businessman.

They don't learn righteousness even when favor comes and when trouble comes.

God, how could you have done this to me?

That is a huge demarcation between a heart that's regenerate and one that's not.

When God disciplines his children, we know it's, but for a season, a season that will eventually end and will open up into an everlasting era of glory and peace and righteousness.

This is why the writer of Hebrews tells us to endure.

To endure suffering is discipline, to know that it yields the peaceable fruits of righteousness after it exercises us, that God blesses and guides us in the troubles to put us on a straight, direct and level path.

So, in the midst of circumstances that are not ideal but real, we confess that we wait on him.

We recognize that he's the key to the future and our only hope for an established, transformed life is to wait and long and to learn from him.

And so we join with Paul in his affirmations in Romans 8.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that will be revealed within us.

Paul, how do you know that?

We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose?

What assurance that you have that that's true?

He did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all.

How shall he not also, with him, freely give us all things?

Would the Lord do such a thing as that for us?

Well, who can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus?

Can affliction or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger of sword?

No, no, and all these things were more than conquerors.

Through him, who loved us, let's continue to learn from the future, shall we?

We learn to trust, we learn to lean and learn and long for the righteousness that we'll one day have.

But in verses 12 to 16, we also learn to ascribe God glory for it all.

Let's read verses 12 to 16.

Lord, you will establish peace for us, for you've also done all our work for us.

Lord, our Lord.

Lords other than you have owned us, but we remember your name alone.

The dead do not live.

Departed spirits do not rise up.

Indeed, you have punished and destroyed them.

You have wiped out all memory of them.

You've added to the nation, lord.

You've added to the nation.

You are honored.

You have expanded all the borders of the land, lord.

They went to you in their distress.

They poured out whispered prayers because your discipline fell upon them.

They poured out whispered prayers because your discipline fell upon them.

Here, isaiah is showing us the future in which we'll acknowledge that God did it all and we'll ascribe to him the glory for it.

Isaiah is speaking to a people that needed to learn this lesson Because, as a small nation among mighty empires, fixed within the middle of two significant powers of Assyria and Egypt, there was the tendency for them to either fearfully retreat and just hope that everything passed over them, or to try to make an alliance with the powers and get on the winning side, hopefully.

And so they thought, either by their sort of cowering or by their cooperating, that they were going to endure and be successful.

But here they acknowledge that actually it's God who will take care of them, god who will establish their peace.

And they admit that they are not the ones to look for for the success, because other lords than our Lord have lorded over us.

And here Isaiah speaks about their temporary dominion, that they'll go to the dust, just like every single person will, and they will not exert power there.

They will be brought to nothing.

The people that we feared, the people that we'd hoped upon, are actually no powers at all.

The only enduring power is the power of God.

The only enduring dominion is the dominion of God.

The only enduring dynasty is the dynasty of God.

And here the prophecy gives praise Because we don't need to fear the oppressor and we don't need to rely heavily upon the promiser.

We need to rest in our Lord and the day will come when he will put us in that place or establish the time of shalom, of perfect harmony, and he will defeat all those things that disrupt that.

Let's go to the next section in verses 17 to 19.

Let's go to the next section in verses 17 to 19.

So we learn to trust, because the future is secure.

We learn righteousness, because we'll be put in level places of righteousness.

We learn to ascribe glory, because at the end of the day we'll recognize that he was the only one we should have relied upon anyway.

But we also will acknowledge our deep weaknesses.

Verse 17 to 19.

As a pregnant woman about to give birth rise and cries out in her pain.

So we were before you, lord.

We became pregnant, we writhed in pain, we gave birth to wind.

We have won no victories on earth and the earth's inhabitants have not fallen.

Your dead will live.

Their bodies will rise, awake and sing.

You who dwell in the dust for you will be covered with the morning dew and the earth will bring out the departed spirits.

Here is an acknowledgement, in light of the resurrection, that we could never bring that about.

And it uses the imagery of labor to a full term, full expectancy of life, and all that's given birth is emptiness.

And then it looks at the grave, where no life is expected.

But when the Spirit of God rests upon that place of death, it lives.

It lives.

And here we acknowledge the great contrast between God's abilities to bring life out of death and our feeble efforts bringing nothing where life should have been expected, humbling, confessing that we can do nothing but give birth to wind.

And the word picture in verse 18 gets explained We've become pregnant and writhed in pain.

We gave birth to the wind.

We have won no victories on earth and the earth's inhabitants have not fallen.

What is Israel confessing here?

Israel is confessing here that by their own efforts they were not able to fulfill the purpose for which God had called them out.

They were to be a light to the nations.

They were to be the one place where the nations would say those are the people of God, let us learn about him.

And here they are confessing we failed.

We utterly failed to do that.

We should have birthed people, but we birthed the wind.

We should have brought the nations into the glory of God, but we didn't even bring ourselves there.

On that day, there will be no self-exaltation On the day of revealing, there'll be no patting ourselves on the back because we did it.

This is why the apostle Paul talked about the gospel ministry that he was engaged in and he said that he spoke the gospel to blind and deaf, spiritually blind and deaf people, and he knew that he couldn't bring sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf.

But God, who made light shine out of darkness has shone the light to the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and he says we have that treasure in earthen vessels so that the excellency might be of God and not of ourselves.

There's no room for pride, there's no room for taking the credit.

If anything good happens, it's because God is pleased to use us as an instrument.

This morning I was refreshed by a cup of coffee.

I loved it, especially after losing an hour of sleep.

But I would have been freaked out if that cup said you're welcome.

Never once is the vessel going to get the credit and that's all we are.

We're just vessels, because what God can accomplish, no man can accomplish.

He can bring life where nothing is, he can bring vigor where death reigns, and he can even put death to death.

So remember the resurrection, remember the glory of God and his ability.

When you are filled with the sense of your own inadequacies and your own failures, it's okay to admit them.

In fact you should, because you don't need to try harder and do better.

You need to rely more on the one who actually has the power.

You need to rely more on the one who actually has the power.

Let's look at the last one, verses 20 to 21.

Go, my people, enter your rooms and close your doors behind you.

Hide for a little while until the wrath has passed.

For look, the Lord is coming from his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity.

The earth will reveal the blood shed on it and will no longer conceal her slain.

So by looking into the future, we've come to trust a God who brings us into such a secure salvation that no wickedness will ever enter the gates of that glorious place.

We've learned to long for and to live in the pathway of righteousness, because we'll be brought into it completely on a level plane.

We learn to ascribe glory because he's the one who's done it for us.

We learn to acknowledge our weaknesses in the light of God's power to resurrect the dead.

But we also learn to wait until the completion of God's final judgment, when all things will be put right and all wrongs will be put down.

And in these two verses we're told where to wait.

Go, my people, enter your rooms and close your doors behind you.

There's a designated place to wait.

That God will shake the earth with judgment, but he has a place of refuge for his people.

They will not be swept away by the wicked, provided they go where God tells them to go.

And here this invitation should bring echoes from earlier judgments and provisions of safety Noah and his family, in which God shut them in the ark and closed the door.

Or the people of Israel on the day of the Passover, in which God passed over the people inside the house that had the blood of the lamb over the doorpost and lentils.

And here inside the door, with the door shut to this place of safety is a secure place to wait for that ultimate day in which God's judgments will bring all wrongs right and all rights to the rightful place.

Where is that place?

It's no wonder, then, that Jesus himself said I am the door, and those who enter in through me shall live.

The place that we remain is the place of eternal security in Christ and Christ alone.

We don't drag in our works.

We don't drag in our righteousness.

We don't drag in anything that we do.

We just simply go in our works.

We don't drag in our righteousness.

We don't drag in anything that we do.

We just simply go in and wait until God accomplishes his final purposes.

Here's a song, a song to look at and say isn't it going to be wonderful when we sing about deliverance, we sing about righteousness and we sing about God's ability to do all things and we ascribe praise to him.

Isn't it wonderful that we're going to sing about the realization that he did it all and we couldn't, and we sing about the freedom from the judgment that we were able to face?

Yeah, it's there, it's right here, but the song spins around on us and it sings to us now and says can you trust the God who's bringing you there?

Yes, you can.

Can you learn to align yourself with a God who's righteous?

Yes, you can.

Can you begin to ascribe to him praise for his power to do things?

Yes, you can.

Can you acknowledge your weaknesses now, when you realize then how fully it was all about him anyway?

Yes, you can.

And that means you can also wait, looking expectantly for the day when all that's wrong is going to be done away with.

This is Isaiah 26, a beautiful song, but also one that really we need to sing every day to ourselves.

As we continue for this day to become the day we sing.

Let's pray, father, we thank you for your glorious word.

We pray that it might have effect in all of our hearts deeply.

And, lord, I want to pray particularly for those who might be among us, who are trusting their own works of righteousness for salvation, who are perhaps even indifferent about the day of judgment that's coming, who don't have a concern for their soul.

And, lord, this passage says that you will act in their life, but it will not be for their good.

It will be a day in which you will rain down your judgments upon those who ignore or resist you.

And, father, I pray that this song, which speaks such comfort and encouragement and hope into our hearts, will alarm them and cause them to see the desperate state that they're in outside of you.

And, lord, may they hear that final invitation come into the door, come in and shut that door and wait and escape the judgment to come, and may they find that that only secure place of safety is not to rely upon themselves but upon Jesus Christ, who is our righteousness, who is our wisdom, who is our deliverance.

Lord, I pray you would work that work in their hearts, graciously to your glory, and we pray this in Christ's name, amen.