Perfect Peace

“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 gates 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 Yah, the Lord, 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. The path of the righteous is level; You clear a straight path for the righteous. Yes, Yahweh, we wait for You in the path of Your judgments. Our desire is 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 is 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. They will see Your zeal for Your people, and they will be put to shame. The fire for Your adversaries will consume them! Lord, You will establish peace for us, for You have also done all our work for us. Yahweh our God, Lords other than You have ruled over us, but we remember Your name alone. The dead do not live; departed spirits do not rise up. Indeed, You have visited and destroyed them; You have wiped out all memory of them. You have added to the nation, Lord. You have 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 on them. As a pregnant woman about to give birth writhes and cries out in her pains, 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. 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.” (Isaiah 26:1-21 HCSB)

Key verses: “You will keep the mind that is dependent on You in perfect peace, for it is trusting in You.” (Isaiah 26:3 HCSB)

“Lord, You will establish peace for us, for You have also done all our work for us.” (Isaiah 26:12 HCSB)

Peace and hope – the one thing (peace) we want more than anything else and the only thing (hope) that keeps us going when it isn’t realized in our lifetime. We’ve spent several weeks talking about “that day” when God will finally judge the world, bring justice and consummate His promises. In this chapter, we hear a song that Isaiah composed about that day and it promises peace and gives us hope to wait upon its fulfillment.

You might be surprised to hear me say that peace is the one thing we want more than anything else. But Biblical peace is not the absence of conflict, though we might really long for that in our world. Biblical peace (shalom) is wholeness, completeness or life as it was meant to be. We long for it but we’ve never really known it, never fully experienced it. We’ve tasted it and that taste lingers in our mouths and in our memories and makes us long for more of it, but it is only a hope and, sometimes, a distant hope.

This song is about the fulfillment of that hope. It’s about the completion of the promises of God and the presence of peace and not just our hope for it. In the previous chapters, God destroys the city of man but here Isaiah sees that the City of God, the strong city, has been established and our salvation are its walls and ramparts. That’s important to note: the very security of the City of God, and its inhabitants, is the salvation that God provides for His people in His Son. Our security, in this life and the next, is nothing less than the body and blood of our Savior given for us on Calvary’s cross. As that old hymn says, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness… on Christ the Solid Rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.”

The gates are thrown open so that the righteous nation can enter – those who remain faithful. This is not about a politically, nationally or ethnically identified people but a people identified as righteous, a people identified by their faithful dependence upon the One, true God who has promised and is able to save them. Far too often, we link our identity to the wrong thing, the wrong group, or the wrong action. Let me state this clearly, you may belong to many subgroups and have many affiliations but if you call Jesus LORD then you have only one identity – you are His.

When you are His then He keeps your mind in perfect peace. How? By staying dependent upon Him and fully trusting in Him (v. 3)! We live in a world filled with noise, chaos, change and uncertainty but our God is able to keep our minds in perfect peace despite these things. But this doesn’t happen without attention to these crucial details – dependence and trust. Living in that world is not easy and we can quickly become overwhelmed by it and consumed by fear, worry and anxiety. In fact, our modern culture is being consumed by these very things. With over 40 million adults (19.1%) in America diagnosed with some form of anxiety disorder and almost one third of all Americans reporting symptoms of anxiety over the past year, it is the single largest mental health issue we face. In addition, over 50% of young people between 18-24 report depressive disorder or feelings of anxiety.

So, how do we overcome anxiety? How do we experience the perfect peace of God? By placing our dependence upon Him and then trusting Him. Trust must be active and not just a platitude. When you trust God then you walk with Him wherever that takes you. The sheep learn to trust the Shepherd as He leads them, cares for them and even gives His life to save theirs. By contrast, the LORD humbles those who think they don’t need Him – the “lofty places” or inaccessible city. God brings it down, throws it to the dust and the feet of the humble trample it as they walk with Him.

Next, “Our desire is for Your name and renown.” We are called to honor God’s name exclusively. That doesn’t just mean we say the words and sing the songs. It means that we live out that trust we’ve placed in Him by being obedient to His Word: “The path of the righteous is level; You clear a straight path for the righteous. Yes, Yahweh, we wait for You in the path of Your judgments. Our desire is for Your name and renown.” While He makes us righteous through His salvation, we walk the path of righteousness through obedience to His commands. This is an important distinction, we are made righteous by what He has done, but we show our love, loyalty, dependence and trust by being obedient to Him. If God gives grace and provides righteousness through our salvation in Jesus, then He deserves our love, trust and obedience.

This means that we truly desire that God’s name “be hallowed”, as Jesus prayed in Matthew 6. I know that many of you probably think that is a given, but I need you to recognize that we often have a stronger desire for own name to be hallowed than we do for God’s. Isaiah illustrates this and explains: “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.” I think we can imagine wanting God to be more renowned than we are, but this ties obedience, justice and God’s judgment to that same desire. When God judges sin mankind learns the difference between frail, pitiful human morality and Godly righteousness. We think we’re good, but we’re not. More on that, in a few minutes…

Now we get to a really difficult issue in this passage, believing only God can give us what we really want and need in life. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot satisfy the emptiness that plagues us or the cravings that drive us each day. We work hard and play even harder trying to bring satisfaction and fulfillment to our lives, but without God life is vain and pointless. The reason we aren’t satisfied by pursuing our own glory and renown is because we were created for something greater and more holy. We were created by Him and for Him and we find our identity and purpose only in Him.

But many, perhaps most, do not see it: “if the wicked man is 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.” Oh church, part of the reason our neighbors do not see this is because we live out this principle so poorly. While we know that only God can save, we live as though we can save ourselves. Though we know that ALL we really need in life is found only in Him, we tend to chase after the same things our unbelieving neighbors chase. If we truly believe that God is ALL we need, we need to begin living our lives in the reality of that belief.

This must become our life motto and our confession: “Lord, You will establish peace for us, for You have also done all our work for us. Yahweh our God, Lords other than You have ruled over us, but we remember Your name alone.” (Isaiah 26:12-13 HCSB)

Now, we come to the hope of our resurrection. Isaiah draws a stark contrast between the unrighteous dead and the righteous dead. “The dead do not live; departed spirits do not rise up. Indeed, You have visited and destroyed them; You have wiped out all memory of them.” God is renowned and remembered, but the unrighteous dead are destroyed and all memory of them is wiped out.

But then, Isaiah notes that God has added to the “nation” and expanded the borders of the land. People went to Him in their distress; they poured out whispered prayers because His discipline fell on them. God is constantly in the process of drawing all men to Himself. As Isaiah points out, they are drawn to Him and whisper prayers to Him because they’ve experienced His discipline and turned to Him. Notice, all of the essential elements of saving faith are wrapped up in those words: they are drawn to God by His Spirit, they whisper prayers of confession, they turn in repentance and faith to Him and in response the find the Father running to them. (See Luke 15:11-32)

It is easy to miss Isaiah’s point in the next illustration, so pay attention. We are like a woman in labor, writhing and crying out in the pain of childbirth. But we writhed in pain and gave birth to “wind” or to nothing. What? What does that even mean? Stay with me. Isaiah goes on, “We have won no victories on earth, and the earth’s inhabitants have not fallen.” To understand this illustration, it needs to be considered in the context in which Isaiah uses it. He sandwiches this illustration between “the dead do not live, departed spirits do not rise up” and “Your dead will live; their bodies will rise.” Everything we attempt to do to change our fate, our date with death and our inability to change it is like a woman who writhes in false labor and gives birth to nothing. We are unable to save ourselves or change our fate. “We have won no victories” and “earth’s inhabitants have not fallen.”

But, “Your dead will live; their bodies will rise.” Our only hope in this life is the resurrection that God promises to His people. If you need, go back and read that passage in last week’s lesson about God destroying the burial shroud that covers everyone, every nation. This week, notice that we are to “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.” The city of man, the strong city in verses 1-6, will be thrown down into the dust and trampled. But if we desire for His name to be renowned, if we whisper our prayers of confession, if we turn in repentance to faith in Him and walk daily with Him in obedience then He will bring us out of the dust, we will be covered with the morning dew and resurrected from inevitable death.

Finally, we get hints of the Passover and the judgement of Cain as Isaiah tells us to “Go, my people, enter your rooms and close your doors behind you. Hide for a little while until the wrath has passed.” God is going to come and “the earth will reveal the blood shed on it and will no longer conceal her slain.” All of the sin and the blood that has been shed by the hands of man will be revealed. In the past, I’ve been asked if I believe God will condemn someone to eternal punishment in hell for the sin of telling a single white lie. In reality, nobody is guilty of just telling a single white lie. But we will not be condemned to Hell because of one lie or many lies. We will be condemned to Hell because we’ve rejected the authority of God and pursued life without Him.

Are we guilty of shedding innocent blood? Yes, we are. But even more, we are guilty of telling God “you’re not my boss, I’ll do what I want.” Like God confronting Cain, we cannot hide our sin from Him. He knows our actions, but He also knows our thoughts and intent. He knows when we are angry enough to kill and while we may restrain our hand out of fear, our thoughts and intentions are not restrained. We want them dead and may even kill them with words of hatred.

But these verses are not only a recognition of our personal sin, they are a recognition of God’s sacrifice and our salvation. They are a recognition of God’s judgment upon the sin of mankind. This is a desire for His glory to be on display, even in the midst of His judgment. Especially in the midst of His judgment. To desire anything less is to dishonor His name and deny the truth of sin. When we enter our rooms to hide under His blood while His wrath passes over is to glory in His grace, to desire His name and His renown. It is to declare His Word to be true and His judgments just. We should rightly feel grief in their judgment, but an even greater sense of trust in God’s righteous judgment.

We believe sin is more than just a loss of cultural morality. Sin is bigger than your actions and deeper than your thoughts and desires. Sin goes to the very heart of our rebellion against a holy God who deserves and demands our submission and obedience. Sin kills, steals and destroys all of the good things God created and desired for us to enjoy in fellowship with Him. He has every right to judge it and we do well when we agree with Him in that regard:

“You will keep the mind that is dependent on You in perfect peace, for it is trusting in You.” (Isaiah 26:3 HCSB)

Because our sin is the real enemy…