Unwavering Trust in Eternal Realities (Isaiah 25:1-26:21)
The sermon outline can be found in the ministry guide.
I was inspired by a recent half century birthday to do some reading on the challenges of midlife. I would not consider myself to be in a midlife crisis as I began to read about midlife. I started to have one. I picked up a book by Arthur Brooks and the premise of the book is that people don't tend to realize that their professional decline begins earlier than they think. His research shows that our creative abilities begin to decline about 20 years into whatever career that we are doing.
How easy it is for us as human beings to charge through life without a clear vision of the end. We would think that it is silly to start traveling somewhere in Singapore without an address that we are going to. But in life, that is just what we so often do. We set our sights on some intermediate destination, success and score, career, achievement of certain skills or experience, accumulation of some amount of financial resources. We have family goals, perhaps. And we do not realise that when we take these intermediate destinations, we turn them in our minds and hearts into ultimate destinations. Whether we achieve them or not, we find that they cannot hold the weight that we've put on them. They are not ultimate and cannot really give us a compass for our lives. They leave us empty, purposeless, or worse, we discover that as we attach our hearts to them, they become idols that lure us away from faithfulness.
In our study of the book of Isaiah, we are in what is called often the apocalypse of Isaiah in chapters 24 to 27. We've seen how the prophet has zoomed out from Israel and Judah to the nations all around, and then even further to take in all of the earth. In this section he takes in all of history and helps us to see from the vantage point of the end.
We are going to look at Isaiah 25 and 26 this morning. What I want to say to you through these chapters is that it is essential that we learn to live life backwards. It is an essential thing for you and I to learn what it means to begin with the end in mind. We've got to place eternal things squarely in our vision.
So our big idea this morning is this: We need an unwavering trust in eternal realities.
Eternal realities (Isa 25)
Let’s read Isaiah 25:1-5.
This is a song of praise by Isaiah. Notice the intensely personal way he begins — “Oh Lord, you are my God” (Isa 25:1). It is worth remembering always that Christianity is about a personal relationship with God. It is not a code of ethics, but a set of beliefs and a relationship with the God who is there, founded on forgiveness, lived by faith. In this relationship, exalting God and praising His name is the essential activity. It is what you and I should be about. It is one of the most basic things our lives should be focusing on.
That is one of the reasons why a mature church, a healthy church, is defined by their weekly Sunday gathering. The value that a congregation places on beginning their week by orienting our gaze on God. When we design services here, what we are hoping in between the call to worship and the benediction, is that we will, together, focus our gaze on God.
Practically, consider the ways that you could better orient your week around this gathering. Reading the passage we are going to be studying in advance is useful. I'm so encouraged that more and more people are coming early just to pray, just to read the Scriptures. Beloved, our hearts should be oriented around saying, “Oh Lord, you are my God. And I praise you”.
Now Isaiah here elaborates as to why he praises God. He says because He has done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and true (Isa 25:1b). This God is different from the idols out there in Isaiah's day and ours. Idols make no plans. People make plans. They often come to nothing. But here is a God whose plans are formed of old. And they always come to pass. They are faithful and sure.
He is the only being like that. So what are these plans? The balance of the chapter unfolds three different aspects of God's plans formed of old — eternal realities.
The first eternal reality is that God's justice will be vindicated (Isa 25:2-5). The prophet says the city has been made a heap, the fortified city, a ruin. In this section, we are no longer getting a specific country or a specific city — he does no't mention Assyria nor Babylon — and things are generalised. We get the impression that Isaiah has zoomed out on all of human history and taken in all human cities. Cities in the Bible often stand for human power and pride. He also mentions here foreigners, palaces and strong peoples who have crushed the righteous throughout time. These are nonbelievers who have not honoured or obeyed God. They have done the opposite of loving their neighbor as themselves.
In Isaiah 25:3, the results of God coming to judge them is that these oppressors themselves give glory to God. Can you see that? They fear Him. They acknowledge that they are wrong. I think it's the same idea that we see in Philippians two where Paul writes that every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Phil 2:10-11).
In Isaiah 25:4, God will be vindicated as the stronghold of the poor and needy. The idea here is that God must judge sinful humanity because of the godless way they have lived. They have taken power, used it for personal ends, which oppresses the poor, persecutes the people of God. When He comes to set things right, His justice will receive the universal praise that it deserves.
Do you view God's justice as a good and right thing? We should delight to attribute justice to God. These are sweet verses to the persecuted church around the world. Christians in many parts of the world today make God their stronghold and wait for the vindication of their faith. And here we are told it will come.
This is the first eternal reality. God's justice will be vindicated. Let's keep reading in Isaiah 25:6-9 and see a second — the feast of heaven. This is a surprising transition here from speaking about the foreign nations being judged. Isaiah's vision switches without warning to a gathering of all peoples for a feast. This is so surprising that many liberal commentators say that somebody other than Isaiah must be inserting this in. They say that because they cannot handle the idea that Isaiah is not the primary author here, but it is God Himself who is the author of all Scripture. He inspires Isaiah to look forward in time and see that the result of Jesus coming and the gospel going to all nations is that the nations will no longer simply be opposed to Him. Rather, there will be believers from all peoples in the eternal kingdom.
This gathering right here is a reflection of this very truth. But what we have pictured is heaven itself. We often want to know what heaven will be like. Sometimes as a pastor, I have people come up to me and they want to know, can I play golf in heaven? I do not have a ton of biblical data to answer your specific questions about heaven. But I want us to notice here we see three very clear things about heaven.
First, it will be pleasurable (Isa 25:6). It will be like a wonderful feast. What kind of food? Rich food. What kind of drink? Well-aged wine. In case you missed it, he repeats it with elaboration. Did you notice that? Rich food full of marrow, aged wine, well-refined. Our pleasure-mad culture experiences the receding horizon of pleasure because they insist on having it their way right now. When we give our lives back to God, we don't regret it. In the long run, we experience pleasure as He intended it, and it's overflowing pleasure.
Second, notice it's permanent (Isa 25:7). When it speaks here of the covering that is cast over all peoples and the veil that is spread over all nations. It's referring to death. We see that in the next phrase — “He will swallow up death forever”. Death is an intruder on God's good creation. In the end, it is the last enemy that will be destroyed. So heaven is permanent.
Third, notice it's personal. Notice it says the Lord of hosts will make the feast (Isa 25:6). It is He who swallows up death, and then in a very intimate picture, it is almost like a mother wiping off a tear from her child's cheek. The Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces (Isa 25:8). What is man that God should be mindful of him? Yet God personally cares for each one.
What do we do with this picture of heaven? We are given rich application here as well. In Isaiah 25:9 we are told to behold this God. He is just the kind of God who would spread out a feast and then wait on each one. He is good like that.
There is waiting to be done. The feast is not today. The feast is coming and we can wait with confidence as the Lord has spoken (Isa 25:8). He is as good as His word and He will bring it to pass. So this is the second eternal reality for us, the feast of heaven.
There's a third eternal reality to see in this chapter — the destruction of the proud (Isa 25:10-12).
In the oracles against the nations in Isaiah 13 to 23, Moab was singled out for its pride. In Isaiah 16:8, we have heard of the pride of Moab, how proud he is of his arrogance, his pride and his insolence in his idol boasting. In Isaiah 25, Moab is singled out as an example of the only way the nations will miss out on the heavenly feast. Pride is the only thing that will keep you from the heavenly feast. In Isaiah 25:11, we see that the Lord will lay low his pompous pride together with the skill of his hands. The idea seems to be that Moab's pride is linked with his skill in work. Perhaps as a nation they had cracked the ancient meritocratic code and produced a generation of skillful engineers that created their high fortifications.
Beloved, pride is a killer. The gospel comes along with its offer of righteousness for the repentant, for anyone who knows that they have nothing to bring to God. It is a free offer. Believe in Christ and you will be saved. But the atheist says, “I do not think he's really out there.” And the free thinker says, “I do not really want to commit to any religion.” The worshiper of ancestors says, “This is just what was passed down to me and I do not want to go against my family.” The moralist says, “I’m better than most people anyway. God should accept me.” This is foolishness born of human pride. It is the only thing that keeps someone from the feast.
The picture that we are given in Isaiah 25:10-11 is meant to shock us and disgust us. Did you notice the image? Moab is trampled down as straw in a dung hill and Moab spreads out his hands and starts swimming in dung. Friends, let your own pride become a disgusting thing to you. We are already disgusted by other people's pride. Let us become disgusted by own pride.
You and I should be the humblest of people. Why? We are the people who have acknowledged that we are so bad that our salvation required the death of the sinless Son of God. We should be humble people.
Practice delighting when other people are acknowledged and you are not. Has that ever happened to you? Someone gets acknowledged and praised for something at work and you did three times as much work on the thing they are getting praised for. In that moment, you should smile and thank God for the opportunity to remember that you do not have anything that you did not receive anyway. You should cultivate that kind of humility. Try to be in this community as person who is incapable of being offended.
We should be humble people. When you see your own pride, treat it like the dung you might step in out on the street somewhere, and desire to clean it off quickly.
What is it that we should do with these eternal realities as we seek to live life backwards? That is in the next chapter.
Unwavering trust (Isa 26)
Isaiah 26:1-6 marks a new chapter and a new song. While Isaiah 25 was a song of God's wonderful acts and His plans formed of old, what we called “eternal realities”, Isaiah 26 is a song of faith. Isaiah loves to keep a metaphor going so we get more city imagery here. There is the strong city of salvation with salvation as the walls, the bulwarks (Isa 26:1).
In Isaiah 26:2, the gates are wide open. The nation who is righteous by faith or the righteous nation that keeps faith, will enter in the wonderful picture of salvation. There is no entrance fee, no need to scale the wall or connive your way in. Faith is all you need. Real faith, the kind that leads to a changed life. Faith or trust in God is the thread that runs through the whole chapter before us.
We can see it as the main exhortation there in Isaiah 26:4, “Trust in the Lord forever for the Lord God is an everlasting rock”. The theme then runs throughout the chapter and helps us think about how to grow our trust in the Lord. Faith can grow! On one level, you either have faith or you don't. But having faith, it can be strengthened. It can grow stronger. Just like how you go to the gym and get yourself a personal trainer to help you build stronger muscles, faith muscles can grow. Here are five ways we can grow our faith from this chapter.
Firstly, stay your mind on God (Isa 26:3). Think for a minute about what happens in your mind when you are anxious about something. Could be about a test upcoming. Could be a musical performance, a project at work. Maybe it's a performance review. Whatever it is, what does your mind do? It fixates on that thing, starts turning it over and over in your mind, right? It stays on that thing. While you're thinking about it, you're also thinking about yourself, thinking about how that thing might affect you, how you might do in that thing that's coming up. So you go from the thing to yourself to the thing to yourself. It's a cycle and what happens? You get more and more anxious.
What's the alternative? The verse describes someone who has stayed their mind on God. They're thinking on Him. They're fixating on Him. Why does the person do that? Because he trusts in Him. In the face of something anxious, you move your mind from the thing back to God and you think about Him. You're moving from the thing to God, the thing to God, not the thing to yourself, the thing to yourself.
What's the result? The promise is God will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Him. Friends, you are not anxious because of that thing, whatever it is. You're anxious because you have not stayed your mind on God. It's the first thing that can help grow our faith. Stay your mind on God.
The second way to grow faith is to seek God (Isa 26:7-9). Isaiah describes here the path of the believer as walking a level path. This is a frequent metaphor in the Old Testament. We might think of Proverbs three where we trust in the Lord with all of our heart and we not on our own understanding and all our ways acknowledge Him and he will do will make straight our paths (Prov 3:5-6). We do not follow devious paths. We do not try to take shortcuts in life. We are faithful in our callings and we experience the level path.
Isaiah 26:8 continues the imagery by saying that in the path of God's judgments, we wait for Him. Am I walking a path or am I just standing in the path? Well, yes, you're doing both. As we walk the level path, we are waiting for and trusting in the providence of God. Notice that the trust that is being described is not a passive thing, as if the believer is just supposed to resign themselves to whatever is happening. Just the opposite. What does it say here?
First, God's name and remembrance are the desire of his soul. God's name refers to His character, what He is like. Remembrance refers to calling to mind what He has done in the past. The desire of the believer is to know God more, who He is, what He has done. This channels then into an active seeking. As Isaiah 26:9 says, “My soul yearns for you in the night. My spirit within me earnestly seeks you”. Think about laying down on your bed at the end of the day. The light is out and you bring with you the cares and concerns of life. It is a wonderful moment to seek God. You might be too tired to have a long time of prayer, but just to communicate thanksgiving to the Lord for the blessings of the day and trust to Him the anxieties that are on your heart. Then, lay down trusting that you will wake again in the morning seeking God.
Beloved, this is one place where technology is not your friend. Revenge bedtime procrastination is a plague in all developing, developed nations. Singapore is at the top of the list of sleep-deprived nations. Research shows that having your phone with you as you lay down in bed is not going to help you in any way, shape, or form. One of the most strategic things you might do is put that charging station out in another room and think about laying down in your bed to seek God before you sleep. The question for us to ask ourselves is, are we seeking Him earnestly? Would your life be described as seeking to know God more?
The third way is in Isaiah 26:10-15, which is to wait patiently on God. In these verses, the prophet is now meditating on a problem that the believer runs into, what theologians call “the already and not yet”. From the standpoint of eternity, God has already judged sinners and saved His people. In Isaiah 26:14, He can speak of the adversaries of God's people being dead, destroyed, wiped out, and Isaiah 26:15, God's people are restored to God's place, the promised land to the glory of God.
But from the standpoint of the believer, this is not yet our lived experience, is it? So he looks out and sees wicked people prospering. And he observes that the delay in judgment only emboldens people in their sin. We read there that they experience favour. They don't learn righteousness. They deal corruptly. Isaiah longs for God to come and bless His people and give freedom so that the nations will see His zeal for His people. But the reality, as Isaiah 26:13 describes, is that other lords are now ruling over them. I think one of the biggest challenges to faith is the delay of God, to live between promise and fulfillment.
You might be in a situation right now where people around you are prospering precisely because of their unethical behaviour. They lie. They cut corners. Maybe you find yourself wondering if all of this will be worth it in the end. What does Isaiah do here? He says, “other lords beside you have ruled over us, but your name alone we bring to remembrance” (Isa 26:13). He stays his mind on God, as we talked about earlier. He meditates on the good that will surely come, that all will be well in the end. This process gives him patience to wait on God.
Our faith is so much like resistance training here. Hypothetically, if I went to the gym, somebody would tell me that if I try to lift more weight than I can comfortably do, and I do that over and over again, I will grow stronger. When it comes to faith, that is always going on in our lives, if we will submit to it below. That difficult thing that you're going through right now, if you, even without being able to answer why it is happening and exactly what the Lord is doing, if you will entrust yourself to God and continue to walk forward in faith, you will find your faith is growing stronger.
A fourth way to grow our faith is found in Isaiah 26:16-19 — endure discipline from God. Some of the things in these verses are hard for us to figure out here. It's clear that there's some discipline that is on Israel that Isaiah is referring to. It could really be a description of their entire history. They were supposed to walk with God and be a light for the nations. Too often they behave just like the nations and God would discipline them for it. The image that is given is childbirth, and Isaiah 26:17-18 describe the agony of a woman in labour. The only thing that carries her through the pain is the hope of holding a child in her arm, but here,, the crushing result is that they gave birth to the wind.
Now what does he mean? Israel was supposed to accomplish deliverance in the earth. God's design was to create one people who the other peoples could look at and be drawn to and come into a relationship with Him. They could be born again spiritually, but that could not happen when they did not obey Him and follow Him. Israel's failure meant that new spiritual life has not come to the nations.
Spiritual failure is a part of our lives, isn't it? It is something that you and I experience on our best day. Our obedience to the Lord is only partial, and many days are not our best day. You and I live with the sinful nature still within. Even as the spirit grows, our faith and our character is being changed more and more into His likeness. We fail. We have to undergo discipline. God disciplines His children because He loves them. A parent who observes an erring child and does not discipline them is not loving them in that moment. God often does this by allowing us to experience the consequences of our actions. We lack in spiritual disciplines. We are not praying daily. We are not seeking God with eagerness. We should not be surprised then, that we feel spiritually listless and dry. We fill our minds with godless entertainment. We should not wonder then why it is hard for us to set our minds on things above. What we need to do is see God's discipline as a loving thing coming from a Father who cares about us.
On a larger level here, there is a question raised by the failure of God's people. Does it thwart God's plans? Does an unfaithful church who spoils the witness of the gospel in a place mean spiritual death for all who are meant to see it? If I individually don't respond faithfully, does it mean that God's plans are thwarted?
No, the prophet in Isaiah 26:19 asks us to trust afresh in the sovereignty of God in salvation — “Your dead shall live, their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust awake and sing for joy.” This is one of the clearest statements of the resurrection of the dead in all the Old Testament. The believer dies and is buried, but the return of Christ will rise again to eternal life. He will not lose one of all that are His sheep. And so, while we are disciplined by God for our failures, beloved, do not fall into thinking that God's plans are thwarted by your failure. Endure the discipline. Keep trusting God. Grow your faith.
There's a fifth and final way that our faith grows that we see here in this chapter, that is by hiding ourselves in God (Isa 26:20-21).
The closing scene here of our chapter comes back to the simplest and most important reality that faith has to deal with: the coming judgement of God. The image here is striking. He speaks of needing to go inside and shut the doors and hide while fury passes by, because the Lord is coming to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity. He will do so to satisfy His justice. That phrase there at the end — the earth disclosing blood shed and not covering the slain — points to the injustice that has rained from the fall of man till now, as sinners do not love their fellow man, and they do not love God.
The killers and the killed are brought to life to face judgement or vindication. Faith in God at its very root has to do with this ight here. Do you believe that God is there and that He is the judge? Do you believe that He will indeed judge? Do you believe that His standard is Himself, His own holiness, and that you do not measure up to that standard, not even close? I trust that if you believe all of that, then you know you must find a place of refuge.
This moves religion from the area of psychology or self-help, as something that just helps you get through life. That is not what we are talking about. It moves religion from cultural background, what my parents or my grandparents thought or believed. We are not talking here about abstract things. We are talking about where the fire escape and lifeboat are. We are talking about the Israelites painting the blood over their door and huddling in their homes. The angel of the Lord sweeps through Egypt. We recall Noah and his family getting on that boat, and the Lord shutting the door before the rain starts to fall. We are talking about the one name under heaven whereby we might be saved.
Jesus is the only place to take refuge, beloved. He died on the cross to save sinners by faith. Trust in who He is and what He has done to pay for sin. You will, according to His word, be saved. Hide yourself from the only refuge that God has provided this morning.
You and I need unwavering faith in eternal realities. We need to live life backwards.
I was counselling a woman a number of years back. She had been given a really terrible medical diagnosis, a terminal disease, one that had rendered all of her hopes and dreams moot. She was not a believer, but she wanted to know if I had any help from the Bible that could help her how to know what to do, how to live with her disease. What I said to her was that before I could talk to her about how to live, I had to talk to her about what would happen after she died. As soon as I said that sentence, she got visibly angry with me. Through clenched teeth, she said, “I don't want to know how to die. I want to know how to live.” She did not understand what we are talking about here.
Eternal realities shape earthly living. What about you? Do you hear the call of the Lord to come and join the feast at the end of time? Are you able to set aside your pride? Trust in the Lord forever, for He is an everlasting rock.
Let us pray together.