Doug McMasters: All right, let's go to Psalm Isaiah 26 with me.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah 26, isaiah 26.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: So obviously, the truth of how old that person was hadn't quite sunk in.
Doug McMasters: 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?
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: What would you say to yourself?
Doug McMasters: What would you say to yourself In 2012,?
Doug McMasters: Oprah Winfrey, at the time 58 years old wrote to her younger self.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: She was the youngest and the first black news anchor in that city.
Doug McMasters: She was still in college.
Doug McMasters: She was excited about and the first black news anchor in that city.
Doug McMasters: She was still in college.
Doug McMasters: She was excited about the new job, but she was most concerned about her relationship with her then boyfriend.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: And she talked about being proud about getting the job, about being concerned about juggling work and school and all of that.
Doug McMasters: But she said, your biggest concern is how you manage your life with your boyfriend Bubba.
Doug McMasters: Yes, you're dating someone named Bubba.
Doug McMasters: And she told herself on that day that you brought him to the station to see where you work, hoping he'd be proud.
Doug McMasters: He seemed less than impressed.
Doug McMasters: The truth is he's intimidated.
Doug McMasters: You don't know this because you can only see yourself through his eyes.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: The trajectory of your life changed the day you took that job.
Doug McMasters: Your response was ignited by the words of your then favorite Bible verse Philippians 3.14.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: From where I sit now, viewing your journey, there are few regrets.
Doug McMasters: Only months before this picture was taken, you wrote a poem about a woman becoming.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: Love you deeply, oprah.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: Well, we're in Isaiah, chapter 26, and Isaiah, chapter 26 does something like that for us.
Doug McMasters: It's one of a series of what I call prophecy songs that speaks about the future.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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,.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: For the Lord has spoken.
Doug McMasters: On that day it will be said look, this is our God, we have waited for him and he has saved us.
Doug McMasters: This is the Lord.
Doug McMasters: We have waited for him.
Doug McMasters: Let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: We'll be alive and death will be dead.
Doug McMasters: What a wonderful way to look at the future.
Doug McMasters: But Isaiah 26 does something different for us.
Doug McMasters: Yes, it speaks about what we'll do on that day.
Doug McMasters: So we, from this perspective, look forward and see what's ahead.
Doug McMasters: But at the same time, isaiah 26 turns it all around and then takes the words from the future and speaks into the present.
Doug McMasters: It helps us understand how to conduct our life in light of what's in front of us.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: It's a praise that affects our present.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: And sometimes, when we live life in this world, we can find ourselves discouraged, feeling fruitless, often despondent, just empty.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: But our life doesn't have to feel like that when we understand what the future holds and how the future affects our present.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: But I also want us to be able to feel that future now.
Doug McMasters: So it affects how we live today and tomorrow, and the next and the next and the next, and however many God gives us.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: Listen to these first six verses.
Doug McMasters: On that day, this song will be sung.
Doug McMasters: In the land of Judah we have a strong city.
Doug McMasters: Salvation is established as walls and ramparts Open the gate so a righteous nation can come in, one that remains faithful.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: He brings it down to the ground, he throws it to the dust.
Doug McMasters: Feet, trample it, the feet of the humble, the steps of the poor.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: That's how safe and secure it is, and this is particularly meaningful to the people of God at this time.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: That was their present circumstance.
Doug McMasters: 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?
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: The city had massive, high walls with 12 gates.
Doug McMasters: 12 angels were at the gates and the names of the 12 tribes of Israel's sons were inscribed on the gates.
Doug McMasters: And the city's walls had 12 foundations and 12 names of the 12 apostles of the Lamb were on the foundation.
Doug McMasters: Again, you feel the reverberation, the echoes, of this passage in Isaiah 26 here in Revelation 22.
Doug McMasters: The nations will walk by its light, the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.
Doug McMasters: Its gates will never close by day because there will never be night there.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: Now let's stop for just a second.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: You are here, your salvation is secured, you're delivered, you're in the city of God, where the glory of God is.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: This is that image.
Doug McMasters: What is the encouragement from that Trust in the Lord forever?
Doug McMasters: Verse four Because the Lord himself is an everlasting rock.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: Finally, at the end, god will truly humble the proud, but he will exalt the humble.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: Trust him.
Doug McMasters: Trust him Because all the benefits of God are actually yours and you will receive them.
Doug McMasters: Now notice how it describes that in verse 4.
Doug McMasters: Trust in the Lord forever, because in the Lord, the Lord himself is an everlasting rock.
Doug McMasters: Now take a look at verse three, because this is what that looks like.
Doug McMasters: He will keep the mind that is dependent on you.
Doug McMasters: You will keep the mind that is dependent on you in perfect peace.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: Well, that's peace.
Doug McMasters: Blooming in spring, and we go.
Doug McMasters: Well, that's peace.
Doug McMasters: That's not the imagery of peace that the Hebrews would have understood.
Doug McMasters: Shalom is a much, much, much, much bigger word than that.
Doug McMasters: Shalom embodies the idea of completeness, of absolute harmony with God's will.
Doug McMasters: When somebody's at peace, it means that they are in every way in integral and in integrity, in alliance with God.
Doug McMasters: That's peace.
Doug McMasters: Think about that for a second.
Doug McMasters: Total harmony with God, total harmony with other people, totally harmony with yourself Because of God's presence and God's gift to you.
Doug McMasters: Do you experience that today?
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: But that is going to be the full expression of your future.
Doug McMasters: You are going to be one day in shalom, you're going to be one day in peace.
Doug McMasters: But it's more than that, because look at verse three again.
Doug McMasters: Our translation says perfect peace, but the Hebrew says shalom, shalom, multiplied peace, peace squared.
Doug McMasters: So now let's take that again.
Doug McMasters: Harmony with God, harmony with others, harmony with self, total well-being, total prosperity, total tranquility, total harmony times two.
Doug McMasters: That's your future.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: Now let's move into the next section.
Doug McMasters: Not only can we trust, but we can also learn Verses 7 to 11.
Doug McMasters: Because the Lord's righteousness will prevail.
Doug McMasters: We can learn to live in and long for his righteousness to make all things right.
Doug McMasters: Verse 7 makes a statement which sounds very contradictory to our present, but it will be our future.
Doug McMasters: The path of the righteous is level.
Doug McMasters: You clear a straight path for the righteous.
Doug McMasters: Yes, lord, we wait for you in the path of your judgments, our desires for your name and renown.
Doug McMasters: I long for you in the night.
Doug McMasters: Yes, my spirit within me diligently seeks you, For when your judgments are in the land, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.
Doug McMasters: But if the wicked man has shown favor, he does not learn righteousness.
Doug McMasters: In a righteous land, he acts unjustly and does not see the majesty of the Lord.
Doug McMasters: Lord, your hand is lifted up to take action, but they do not see it.
Doug McMasters: Let them see your zeal for your people and to be put to shame.
Doug McMasters: Let fire consume your adversaries.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: One day, I won't have to pray that prayer anymore.
Doug McMasters: One day, life will be fully smooth and level and righteous completely.
Doug McMasters: The road right now, well, it's got a lot of ruts, a lot of bumps, a lot of potholes.
Doug McMasters: It's kind of uphill, it's challenging.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: That's what life feels like now Bumpy, uphill, jarring, difficult, but one day it won't be.
Doug McMasters: One day it won't be.
Doug McMasters: But one day it won't be.
Doug McMasters: One day it won't be.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: And this is in deep contrast to the wicked, who don't even acknowledge him when good happens to them.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 10.
Doug McMasters: When the wicked man is shown favor, he does not learn righteousness.
Doug McMasters: This is one of the distinguishing marks of a believer.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: Right now.
Doug McMasters: When good hits an unbeliever's heart, they think my, what a wonderful person I am.
Doug McMasters: Or how great the circumstances have come into my life.
Doug McMasters: Do you think maybe God did this for you?
Doug McMasters: Are you kidding me?
Doug McMasters: I'm smart, I'm clever, I'm a good businessman.
Doug McMasters: They don't learn righteousness even when favor comes and when trouble comes.
Doug McMasters: God, how could you have done this to me?
Doug McMasters: That is a huge demarcation between a heart that's regenerate and one that's not.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: This is why the writer of Hebrews tells us to endure.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: So, in the midst of circumstances that are not ideal but real, we confess that we wait on him.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: And so we join with Paul in his affirmations in Romans 8.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: Paul, how do you know that?
Doug McMasters: We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose?
Doug McMasters: What assurance that you have that that's true?
Doug McMasters: He did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all.
Doug McMasters: How shall he not also, with him, freely give us all things?
Doug McMasters: Would the Lord do such a thing as that for us?
Doug McMasters: Well, who can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus?
Doug McMasters: Can affliction or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger of sword?
Doug McMasters: No, no, and all these things were more than conquerors.
Doug McMasters: Through him, who loved us, let's continue to learn from the future, shall we?
Doug McMasters: We learn to trust, we learn to lean and learn and long for the righteousness that we'll one day have.
Doug McMasters: But in verses 12 to 16, we also learn to ascribe God glory for it all.
Doug McMasters: Let's read verses 12 to 16.
Doug McMasters: Lord, you will establish peace for us, for you've also done all our work for us.
Doug McMasters: Lord, our Lord.
Doug McMasters: Lords other than you have owned us, but we remember your name alone.
Doug McMasters: The dead do not live.
Doug McMasters: Departed spirits do not rise up.
Doug McMasters: Indeed, you have punished and destroyed them.
Doug McMasters: You have wiped out all memory of them.
Doug McMasters: You've added to the nation, lord.
Doug McMasters: You've added to the nation.
Doug McMasters: You are honored.
Doug McMasters: You have expanded all the borders of the land, lord.
Doug McMasters: They went to you in their distress.
Doug McMasters: They poured out whispered prayers because your discipline fell upon them.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: And so they thought, either by their sort of cowering or by their cooperating, that they were going to endure and be successful.
Doug McMasters: But here they acknowledge that actually it's God who will take care of them, god who will establish their peace.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: They will be brought to nothing.
Doug McMasters: The people that we feared, the people that we'd hoped upon, are actually no powers at all.
Doug McMasters: The only enduring power is the power of God.
Doug McMasters: The only enduring dominion is the dominion of God.
Doug McMasters: The only enduring dynasty is the dynasty of God.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: Let's go to the next section in verses 17 to 19.
Doug McMasters: So we learn to trust, because the future is secure.
Doug McMasters: We learn righteousness, because we'll be put in level places of righteousness.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: But we also will acknowledge our deep weaknesses.
Doug McMasters: Verse 17 to 19.
Doug McMasters: As a pregnant woman about to give birth rise and cries out in her pain.
Doug McMasters: So we were before you, lord.
Doug McMasters: We became pregnant, we writhed in pain, we gave birth to wind.
Doug McMasters: We have won no victories on earth and the earth's inhabitants have not fallen.
Doug McMasters: Your dead will live.
Doug McMasters: Their bodies will rise, awake and sing.
Doug McMasters: You who dwell in the dust for you will be covered with the morning dew and the earth will bring out the departed spirits.
Doug McMasters: Here is an acknowledgement, in light of the resurrection, that we could never bring that about.
Doug McMasters: And it uses the imagery of labor to a full term, full expectancy of life, and all that's given birth is emptiness.
Doug McMasters: And then it looks at the grave, where no life is expected.
Doug McMasters: But when the Spirit of God rests upon that place of death, it lives.
Doug McMasters: It lives.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: And the word picture in verse 18 gets explained We've become pregnant and writhed in pain.
Doug McMasters: We gave birth to the wind.
Doug McMasters: We have won no victories on earth and the earth's inhabitants have not fallen.
Doug McMasters: What is Israel confessing here?
Doug McMasters: Israel is confessing here that by their own efforts they were not able to fulfill the purpose for which God had called them out.
Doug McMasters: They were to be a light to the nations.
Doug McMasters: They were to be the one place where the nations would say those are the people of God, let us learn about him.
Doug McMasters: And here they are confessing we failed.
Doug McMasters: We utterly failed to do that.
Doug McMasters: We should have birthed people, but we birthed the wind.
Doug McMasters: We should have brought the nations into the glory of God, but we didn't even bring ourselves there.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: There's no room for pride, there's no room for taking the credit.
Doug McMasters: If anything good happens, it's because God is pleased to use us as an instrument.
Doug McMasters: This morning I was refreshed by a cup of coffee.
Doug McMasters: I loved it, especially after losing an hour of sleep.
Doug McMasters: But I would have been freaked out if that cup said you're welcome.
Doug McMasters: Never once is the vessel going to get the credit and that's all we are.
Doug McMasters: We're just vessels, because what God can accomplish, no man can accomplish.
Doug McMasters: He can bring life where nothing is, he can bring vigor where death reigns, and he can even put death to death.
Doug McMasters: So remember the resurrection, remember the glory of God and his ability.
Doug McMasters: When you are filled with the sense of your own inadequacies and your own failures, it's okay to admit them.
Doug McMasters: In fact you should, because you don't need to try harder and do better.
Doug McMasters: You need to rely more on the one who actually has the power.
Doug McMasters: Let's look at the last one, verses 20 to 21.
Doug McMasters: Go, my people, enter your rooms and close your doors behind you.
Doug McMasters: Hide for a little while until the wrath has passed.
Doug McMasters: For look, the Lord is coming from his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity.
Doug McMasters: The earth will reveal the blood shed on it and will no longer conceal her slain.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: We learn to ascribe glory because he's the one who's done it for us.
Doug McMasters: We learn to acknowledge our weaknesses in the light of God's power to resurrect the dead.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: And in these two verses we're told where to wait.
Doug McMasters: Go, my people, enter your rooms and close your doors behind you.
Doug McMasters: There's a designated place to wait.
Doug McMasters: That God will shake the earth with judgment, but he has a place of refuge for his people.
Doug McMasters: They will not be swept away by the wicked, provided they go where God tells them to go.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: Where is that place?
Doug McMasters: It's no wonder, then, that Jesus himself said I am the door, and those who enter in through me shall live.
Doug McMasters: The place that we remain is the place of eternal security in Christ and Christ alone.
Doug McMasters: We don't drag in our works.
Doug McMasters: We don't drag in our righteousness.
Doug McMasters: We don't drag in anything that we do.
Doug McMasters: We just simply go in our works.
Doug McMasters: We don't drag in our righteousness.
Doug McMasters: We don't drag in anything that we do.
Doug McMasters: We just simply go in and wait until God accomplishes his final purposes.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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?
Doug McMasters: 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?
Doug McMasters: Yes, you can.
Doug McMasters: Can you learn to align yourself with a God who's righteous?
Doug McMasters: Yes, you can.
Doug McMasters: Can you begin to ascribe to him praise for his power to do things?
Doug McMasters: Yes, you can.
Doug McMasters: Can you acknowledge your weaknesses now, when you realize then how fully it was all about him anyway?
Doug McMasters: Yes, you can.
Doug McMasters: And that means you can also wait, looking expectantly for the day when all that's wrong is going to be done away with.
Doug McMasters: This is Isaiah 26, a beautiful song, but also one that really we need to sing every day to ourselves.
Doug McMasters: As we continue for this day to become the day we sing.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray, father, we thank you for your glorious word.
Doug McMasters: We pray that it might have effect in all of our hearts deeply.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: And, lord, this passage says that you will act in their life, but it will not be for their good.
Doug McMasters: It will be a day in which you will rain down your judgments upon those who ignore or resist you.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: Lord, I pray you would work that work in their hearts, graciously to your glory, and we pray this in Christ's name, amen.