Isaiah 26

In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah: “We have a strong city; he sets up salvation as walls and bulwarks. 2 Open the gates, that the righteous nation that keeps faith may enter in. 3 You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. 4 Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock. 5 For he has humbled the inhabitants of the height, the lofty city. He lays it low, lays it low to the ground, casts it to the dust. 6 The foot tramples it, the feet of the poor, the steps of the needy.” 7 The path of the righteous is level; you make level the way of the righteous. 8 In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you; your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul. 9 My soul yearns for you in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. 10 If favor is shown to the wicked, he does not learn righteousness; in the land of uprightness he deals corruptly and does not see the majesty of the Lord. 11 O Lord, your hand is lifted up, but they do not see it. Let them see your zeal for your people, and be ashamed. Let the fire for your adversaries consume them. 12 O Lord, you will ordain peace for us, for you have indeed done for us all our works. 13 O Lord our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us, but your name alone we bring to remembrance. 14 They are dead, they will not live; they are shades, they will not arise; to that end you have visited them with destruction and wiped out all remembrance of them. 15 But you have increased the nation, O Lord, you have increased the nation; you are glorified; you have enlarged all the borders of the land. 16 O Lord, in distress they sought you; they poured out a whispered prayer when your discipline was upon them. 17 Like a pregnant woman who writhes and cries out in her pangs when she is near to giving birth, so were we because of you, O Lord; 18 we were pregnant, we writhed, but we have given birth to wind. We have accomplished no deliverance in the earth, and the inhabitants of the world have not fallen. 19 Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead. 20 Come, my people, enter your chambers, and shut your doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until the fury has passed by. 21 For behold, the Lord is coming out from his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity, and the earth will disclose the blood shed on it, and will no more cover its slain.

Target Date: Sunday, 28 July 2024

Word Study/ Translation Notes:

2 – nation - גֹּי gôy, go’-ee; appar. from the same root as 1465 (in the sense of massing); a foreign nation; hence, a Gentile; also (fig.) a troop of animals, or a flight of locusts:— Gentile, heathen, nation, people.

Used more than 680 times in the OT. Generally used in the context of nations FOREIGN to Judah and Israel.

This nation (singular) of the righteous will be welcomed into God’s kingdom, the strong city of the song.

It should be noted that HALOT offers this definition: 1. people (Rost 147: whole population of a territory; עַם rather stresses the blood relationship, often hardly different) a) nation

So what are we to make of the singular people of the shared blood? I would suggest that this is the very definition of the church – a single people who have in common a single blood – the blood of Jesus Christ.

Thoughts on the Passage:

1 – In that day – What day is this?

The Parousia?

The advent of the church?

All the descriptions that follow seem to begin in the church age, the age of the advent of Jesus Christ.

True, they will be completed in the Parousia, but the work will begin with Christ.

We, the church, are the people of heaven NOW.

We have already begun to live our heavenly life.

Old Testament saints and prophets, like Isaiah, lived with the promise made but unrealized – we live our lives in the day of the Lord.

1 – The land of Judah – as in most of the promises of Isaiah, this set of people, when spoken of in the future, represents the Remnant, the people of God who are called together on the basis of the work God completed in Judah – the exaltation of the Messiah of God.

Notice that the song will be sung in the land of Judah; this does not lock this song solely to the kingdom of Judah in Isaiah’s day.

It could be understood to say, and I think it does, that the song will be sung EVEN there – even in the land that has endured the humiliating judgment of God for their betrayal of His covenant.

2 – that the righteous nation… - This singular nation gives more evidence that this is the church from her inception in Christ by His Spirit. It is a single tribe made from every tribe and tongue into a single people.

Admission is not by physical descent, but by faith (v. 3)

Nothing in this song indicates a perfecting of this nation in this world; only the calling and gathering of it.

5-6 – for He has humbled… - We might read this and go straight for the wrong application of this verse.

The wrong application of this would be to rejoice because God HAS done all these great acts of judgment. That is not, I think, Isaiah’s intent at all. That is not the way it really reads. It is not dancing upon the graves of the wicked.

Rather, this is praise to God because He CAN do these things – we are rejoicing in His great power over all things.

Nations in all their military might or technological advancement cannot oppose Him.

Wealth cannot buy Him.

Nothing this world offers can tempt Him.

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9 And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” – Matthew 4:8-9

6 – the feet of the poor… - From the Beatitudes to the prologue to 1 Corinthians, we find God using the most powerless things to confound the most powerful.

He does not need our power. He does not need our strength.

He doesn’t need our permission to do His work – it is He who made us, and not we ourselves.

7 – path…level – there is only one way to make a lasting level path – it must be, with great labor, built up and lifted up to level it.

To dig out the land to level the path lasts only until the next rain washes in the debris and destroys the path; then the work is undone.

This is the reason we have “high-ways”.

8 – we who are in Christ (this is a song of the church, after all) stand in the very path of God’s judgment unafraid.

We are not unafraid because we are brave or courageous.

We are unafraid because we are adopted children, beloved of the Father.

Thomas Watson - An unbeliever may call God judge, but not father. Faith is the affiliating grace; it confers upon us the title of sonship, and gives us right to inherit.

That God should adopt us when he had a Son of his own. Men adopt because they want children, and desire to have some to bear their name; but that God should adopt us when he had a Son of his own, the Lord Jesus, is a wonder of love. … Now, since God had a Son of his own, and such a Son how wonderful God’s love in adopting us! We needed a Father, but he did not need sons.

That God should be at so great expense in adopting us. When men adopt, they have only some deed sealed, and the thing is effected; but when God adopts, it puts him to a far greater expense; it sets his wisdom to work to find out a way to adopt us. It was no easy thing to make heirs of wrath, heirs of the promise. When God had found out a way to adopt, it was no easy way. Our adoption was purchased at a dear rate; for when God was about to make us sons and heirs, he could not seal the deed but by the blood of his own Son. Here is the wonder of God’s love in adopting us, that he should be at all this expense to accomplish it.

It is for the vindication of His holiness that He judges, but this also works for the vindication of our trust in Him.

9-10 – The common grace of God INCLUDES the tragedies of life.

Even in our darkest days, even in the fiercest storms, we do not, on this earth, live in the hell our rebellion deserves.

Tragedy and sorrow bring us to Christ’s righteousness and comfort.

God’s kindness and mercy bring us to repentance.

12 – You have indeed done for us all our works – All our good works are the works of His Spirit first.

All our noblest feelings and deeds, if they are truly good, proceed from His Spirit working in us.

Otherwise, if they proceed from us alone, they are corrupt, vile, deformed, and ruined shadows of the memory of God’s image within us.

13-15 – Any other leaders will fall and die. Only God is eternal in His rule and benefits.

16-19 – With all our efforts and striving against the great curse our sin has brought, we have only birthed wind. Our best intentions are vapor. Our greatest works are the blink of an eye.

This is not solely a comparison of this world with eternity – that is a part of it.

This is a comparison of the goodness and worthiness of our works.

We do not make a single improvement for anyone with all our efforts and good thoughts; only the work of Christ in us accomplishes good results.

20-21 – This picture (intentionally?) resembles the night of Passover, but with one thing missing – the blood of the lamb.

It is missing from this song because it has already been applied to God’s people by His Holy Spirit – the blood of Jesus Christ applied to the hearts of His people.

That is the very thing that makes them “My people”.

Sermon Text:

As we open our Bibles this morning again to the 26th chapter of Isaiah, I would like to begin with a suggestion.

On the back page of your worship folder, there is the link address to the Sermon Notes on the Logos sermons website.

I don’t know if I have pointed this out in the past, but I wanted to mention it today for one simple reason: the amount of things I will touch on in the sermon today comprise maybe a tenth of the wealth that is in this single chapter.

Many of those things are outlined in the notes I prepare before the sermon is written, and I simply do not include them because they don’t fit with the narrow theme I choose to preach on from the text.

It is a constant tension as I prepare each week:

On the one hand, I want to be thorough and accurate to what is found in the passage we study.

On the other, I don’t want to spend the next two decades preaching through Isaiah, although I easily could.

And so I suggest you to go and read the notes for the sermon, those clips I chose not to include, because I feel, to some extent, guilty to skip over any great truth in God’s word.

I am comforted a little in the fact that when we shall have all eternity to learn these great truths, we likely will use our everlasting days simply to apprehend what God has already revealed in His word to us.

Perhaps in your review of the notes or the sermon text as presented there, you will find some things of help that may have been unsaid in our time together considering this passage.

The first thing we see in verse 1 is that this chapter is a song.

In most modern versions of the Bible, we see the verses broken out like stanzas of a poem almost all the way through Isaiah, so we might miss that point.

But this is a song with a very specific meaning and context.

The meaning is clear throughout the poetic language:

It is the proclamation of God’s faithfulness to His people.

It contains reasons His people will trust Him.

Not why they SHOULD trust Him, but why they WILL trust Him.

Because the word “trust” is the same thing as “believe” and “faith”.

The message of this chapter is very similar to another, more familiar, passage in the book of Romans:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” - Romans 1:16-17

And as we go through this song, we will see the same themes and pictures from the pen of Isaiah.

Hardly surprising since the Holy Spirit of God inspired both books.

In this song, we will see the power of God.

The salvation of God.

Faith in God.

The righteousness of God.

And the gospel of God displayed in His mercy for those who struggle.

But before we dive into the specifics of how Isaiah sheds light on these things, we do need to answer one question: when is this happening?

You may remember that chapter 25 points us to the hope in our eternal, glorified state after the Parousia of Jesus Christ, His return.

It is in that day that death will be swallowed up and every tear shall be wiped away.

Those things, I think we can all agree, have not happened yet.

So it is easy to look at this great song and assume it is talking about the same time period – our eternal state.

That Isaiah got so carried away with the hope of the future that he wrote this inspired song that the saints of God will sing in heaven.

That is easy to understand.

How many toes tap and hearts lift to the strains of “I’ll Fly Away” or “Victory in Jesus”?

Or in the final verse of many of our great hymns:

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight; the clouds be rolled back as a scroll; the trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend; It is well with my soul!

Yes, it would be easy to understand his impatience for that day, but then we see that not everything in this song fits with that day:

In verse 8, the people proclaim “we wait for You.”

On the day of His appearing, there will be no more waiting by the people of God.

Likewise in verse 9, we see the saint of God “yearning for Him in the night”.

Then again in verse 9, we see people “learning righteousness” from God’s judgments.

On the day of his appearing, there will be no more learning for the wicked – no more opportunity for repentance and change - only judgment and eternal punishment.

There are several other places, but you get the point: Isaiah is not talking about the “Sweet By-and-By” – he is talking about some other time when he declares “In that day”.

In that day this song will be sung…

The day he is talking about in this song is the day Peter describes in his first epistle:

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, 11 inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. 12 It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. – 1 Peter 1:10-12

He is, of course, talking about the time when Christ will come the first time.

This is not the first time he has looked forward to the advent of Jesus Christ, and it will not be the last in this book of prophecy.

So then we must ask: WHO is singing the song?

And the answer can be none other than the church – those who have been saved.

Verse 1: “We have a strong city; he sets up salvation as walls and bulwarks.

We lose so much truth when we try to literalize the poetry and prophecy of Scripture.

I feel pity, I feel sorry for people who read this first verse and can only see the exaltation of the city of Jerusalem or the land of Israel.

Who cannot see the “strong city” here in its metaphorical, poetic fullness.

We have seen Isaiah talking about refuges and sanctuaries all the way through the book, and I don’t know of any commentators who try to place those as physical places.

None I read declare, for instance, that the vineyard of chapter 5 is on a definitive hill outside Jericho.

So why, when we have the words “Judah” and “city” in the same verse do people begin to create great theories that force this “strong city” to be Jerusalem?

The strong city here is not even a city made with hands – it is a city He [God] sets up with “walls of salvation”.

What is a city but a place of refuge and safety?

And what is the thing we have seen for the entirety of this book that people need safety from?

They – we – need safety from the judgment of God.

And what Isaiah is telling us here is that GOD is the one providing the salvation we so desperately need.

And not only do we need it, we receive it.

God’s salvation, standing like unbreakable walls around us, holding His people in complete security, does something remarkable for us: It makes us righteous.

The salvation of God is not just God nodding at us, writing off our sin as a bad debt.

It is not Him closing his eyes to the evil and rebellion that dwells in our hearts even now.

His forgiveness, His salvation, MAKES us righteous.

Verse 2: that the righteous nation that keeps faith may enter in.

This description, the righteous nation, fits only one body of people – the church.

But there are so many errors possible with trying to make this righteous nation into anything else:

1. Some say he is talking about the salvation of Israel.

But since in the way it is used, the promise is not made to Israel or Judah but to the “righteous nation”.

And this word “nation” is the same word often translated “Gentile”.

In almost every place where this word DOES apply to Israel, it is modified in that way: the “nation of Israel”.

2. Some might try to twist the meaning to be a promise to a generic “nation”: if you keep faith, you will enter in.

We are seeing quite a lot of this kind of thinking – a belief that an earthly nation CAN be righteous.

That by passing the right laws and applying the right power of the sword, we can cause our “nation” to be blessed by God.

Perhaps even, in this case, saved.

But there is no legitimate way this passage can be made to mean that.

The very next verse returns to the One who is accomplishing this: You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in You.

We have to be careful of any thoughts of salvation where we have any positive influence on it.

Where we think we can make ourselves better or even contribute anything to our salvation.

This only leads to one place: self-righteousness.

Verse 12 puts it clearly here: O Lord, you will ordain peace for us, for you have indeed done for us all our works.

It doesn’t sound like we might want to write it: “Lord, You will ordain peace for us because of our works.”

Can you believe that even here, in the Old Testament, before the full revelation of the gospel of Jesus Christ,

Before the book of Romans, and Galatians, and Ephesians:

We see the declaration that all our salvation is the work of God and not ours?

Justification, sanctification, perseverance, and glorification – all works of the mercy and grace of God in Jesus Christ through faith.

And even in sanctification, where we feel like we have a starring role, we are, in fact, the work of the Spirit of God even then.

Yes, we strive to do good works, the good works that God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them,

But they WERE prepared for us to walk in.

They were given to us to follow.

Isaiah describes the sum total of the best of our efforts apart from the Spirit of God in this way:

Verse 18: we were pregnant, we writhed, but we have given birth to wind. We have accomplished no deliverance in the earth…

All those lone efforts, all those pains, amount to wind – nothing.

No one coming to Christ because of our great arguments or our stunning preaching.

No one comes unless the Spirit draws them.

It is like if sanctification is a great painting, like a grand landscape.

God Himself is the painter.

And you are the canvas.

Not the assistant; not even the paint.

You are the one being formed and shaped by His will.

You, if He is creating His work on you, are the one who will be something beautiful.

The canvas is there, loving the artist, allowing him to put the strokes anywhere He desires.

Some will be light tones, great joys and abiding gratitude in your heart toward the painter.

Some will be dark, shadows, creating depth at the expense of some of the vibrant colors you might prefer.

But in the end, you are a masterpiece, made by God to be unique and beautiful and beloved to Him.

Church of our holy Lord Jesus Christ, let this drive us all to humility.

To give up our pride, our self-righteousness, and cling to His righteousness.

We are that righteous nation by faith, and we have come through the open gate in verse 2 that leads to the safety of God’s salvation.

John 10:9 – [Jesus said] I am the gate. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture.

This song of Isaiah 26 is OUR song – the song of those who have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

We are people of this great city, the heavenly city.

We are people of heaven RIGHT NOW – not just later in the by-and-by.

If you have been saved by the grace of God through Jesus Christ, your heavenly life has already begun.

God’s salvation surrounds you if you are His like giant walls that nothing can knock down.

And so we sing – not of the works of our hands, but of the surpassing greatness of our God, who loves us and saves us.