Wrestling Your Way To Peace in Isaiah 27

Self-help says the answer is inside you. Isaiah says the answer is above you and it starts with surrender. Pastor Carl digs into Isaiah 26 and 27 to show why “wrestling with God” is often God lovingly revealing our own heart back to us, pressing the question we’d rather avoid: do we want to keep living our way, or do we want the blessing of God and the peace that comes when we finally say, “not my will, but yours be done”?

From there, the teaching widens into big, hope-filled promises. Isaiah declares, “Your dead shall live,” and we talk about resurrection hope, the mystery of a new resurrected body, and the reality that God specializes in bringing life where sin and despair have made things feel beyond repair. We also walk through end times themes like the Day of the Lord, God’s judgment on iniquity, and why believers can trust the Judge who is also the Savior.

Isaiah 27 takes an unexpected turn with Leviathan, and Pastor Carl connects that image to spiritual warfare, Satan’s lies, and the way worldly thinking trains us toward pride, idolatry, and emptiness. The episode lands on a practical call to repent, release our idols willingly, and take hold of God’s strength so we can make peace with Him and bear real fruit.

Subscribe for more Bible teaching, share this with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review to help others find the show.

Come On Up is the radio ministry of The Mountain Cross in Waynesville North Carolina. To learn more about us please visit: TheMountainCross.com. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, and we shall walk in his paths.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome to Come On Up, the Radio Ministry of the Mountain Cross in Waynesville, North Carolina.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

When we wrestle with God, we're really wrestling with ourselves because God is revealing ourselves to us. Do you really want to live this way? Or do you want the blessing of God? If you want the blessing of God, you've got to fight yourself. You've got to deny yourself. You've got to say, not my will, but yours be done. And let the Lord pin you. Let the Lord bring you down, because that way you will make peace with him.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

The world today tells us we must focus on ourselves. This thought process creates selfishness, idolatry, and pride. When we turn within, we do things that might feel good in the moment, but leave us feeling empty afterward. The Lord shares something different. Instead of turning to yourself, he tells you to face outward and focus on him. What is that for you? Are you allowing the world to speak into your life or the Lord? In today's message, Pastor Carl instructs you to look to God and not yourself. And now, here's Pastor Carl.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

And in an aspect we are. However, it's not leading to life. It's not leading to righteousness. It's not leading to a service to the Lord. May the Lord give us wisdom. And again, may the Lord give us repentance in our nation that we would turn back to Him and find the real provision from Him and the real fruit that comes only from Him. Your dead shall live. We were talking about those that were seeking their own way, and destruction will come their own way. But now we're talking about those who have sought after the Lord and have died in the Lord. Even not the dead. I mean, poetically speaking, I'm a walking dead until I come to life in the Lord. I can fall back into my old man ways, the man who's dead. And I could be walking in the old man, in the old worldly wisdom again, because the flesh likes that. But he declares that your dead shall live. God is all about taking what's dead and making it alive. Both metaphorically in our lives, getting rid of sin, which is a daily battle, and allowing the Lord to bring life in our situation. But even after the fact that we physically died, if we've died in faith, the Lord promises that we're going to live again and live like we've never known life before. Together with my dead body, they shall arise. Isaiah knows I'm going to die. But I'm going to arise again. And this is really a mystery. They really didn't understand this in the Old Testament. And Paul kind of talks about the mystery and talks about how, you know, this is what it means. The dead in Christ will rise first. And those that are alive and remain will be brought together to the presence of the Lord. The Lord promises us a new resurrected body. There was an idea among the Christian leaders that, you know, once you're dead, you're dead. Once you're in the grave, you're in the grave. But Isaiah's looking beyond that and says, No, there's more to it. I'm going to be resurrected. I'm going to have a new life. Awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust, for your dew is like the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead. It's going to be a glorious day. The dead will come back to life and will ever be with the Lord. Come, my people, enter your chambers and shut your doors behind you. Hide yourself, as it were, for a little moment until the indignation is past. For the Lord comes out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity. The earth will also disclose her blood and will no more cover her slain. We're talking about the day of the Lord again, a time where Jesus sets up his kingdom, his millennial reign forever, but before that he pours out the wrath of God. And as Isaiah and many of the other prophets talk about it, there's kind of a mishmash of what part of the end times are we talking about? He was talking about the city of God, which was after the wrath is poured out, but now he's going back and saying, There are those who come to the Lord in the end. There are those who will fall asleep in faith in the Lord. There were those that will be there and remain. And there will be a time where God takes his people and brings them to a place of safety because the wrath of God was not appointed to those who have come and received the forgiveness of their sins. This points to Revelation chapter 4, when the voice from heaven tells John to come up here, come up hither. And a lot of commentators believe that is the rapture of the church, pulling out those righteous that trust in the Lord, that have applied the blood of the Lamb to their lives. They are brought out of the situation so that Jesus can go and pour out his wrath on an unbelieving world. And this is a picture of that. The Lord comes out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity. The earth will disclose her blood and will no more cover her slain. The wrath of God is something you don't want to get in the way of. But again, the same one that's the judge is the one that's the savior. And he's got it all figured out. Are we trusting him? Are we following him? Are we walking in his way? That brings us to chapter 27. In that day, the Lord, with his severe sword, great and strong, will punish Leviathan, the fleeing serpent, Leviathan, that twisted serpent, and he will slay the reptile that is in the sea. This is a very interesting verse, right? And it almost seems like it comes out of nowhere. We're talking about, you know, the people that trust the Lord. We're talking about the people who walk in their own ways and want to go in their own way, the city of God, the city of man, and all of a sudden we're talking about a sea serpent, Leviathan. Who is this Leviathan? Well, he's talked about in the book of Job and in Psalms, but he's also described as a fleeing serpent. The serpent, we remember a serpent in the very beginning, right? Who beguiled Eve, who lied and tricked Eve, and as a result of doing that, basically the keys to the world were given to him. And he's now the prince of this world, the prince and power of the air. He has dominion over this world. Now, how can you say that, Carl? Because there are other verses that say that the world and everything in it belongs to the Lord. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. God owns everything. Yes, that's true. But Satan usurped this power, this authority that God gave to man to rule over the earth by fooling Eve. And ever since we've been fighting these ideas, the spiritual battles that go on. The enemy has come to kill, steal, and destroy, and to lie. He's the liar, he's the father of lies. And so he makes us to think things that aren't true. And in our fallenness, it's easy to do. So the enemy has been the biggest part of the fall problem. And he's the one that needs to be destroyed. And so this Leviathan is another picture, another name of the devil himself, Satan. In the book of Revelation, we talk about a dragon that comes out of the sea, that empowers the Antichrist. This idea that it is the enemy, it is Satan at work in the world today that encourages this worldly thinking, that encourages our fallenness, our rejection of God, and promises us great power and prestige. And yet he's all about destroying. And so he will be destroyed. As simple as that. And on the cross, the power of the enemy has been destroyed. If we're walking in faith, if we're walking in trust, if we're believing God and obeying God, he has the victory in our lives. And that's all that he says about Leviathan, about Satan. And right away he turns back to Israel. Verse 2 in that day I sing to her, a vineyard of red wine. I the Lord keep it. I water it every moment, lest any hurt it. I keep it night and day. It is my heart to establish Israel. It is my heart to provide for Israel and nurture Israel. It's my heart to protect Israel. And I keep it, I hold it. I make Israel flourish. Fury is not in me. Who will set briars and thorns against me in battle? I would go through them and I would burn them all together. This is kind of alluding back to, I believe it was chapter 5 of Isaiah, where Israel was described as a vineyard that was all dried up and has to be all burned up. It's because Israel went their own way. They did not seek after God. And this is what happened when the northern kingdom was taken captive by Assyria and the southern kingdom was taken captive by Babylon. Israel dried up. But that's not the heart that God has for Israel. The ultimate purpose is to have a vineyard that's flourishing and fruitful. So he says, Let them take hold of my strength, that he may make peace with me, that he may make peace with me. Will Jacob make peace with me? Will Israel come and make peace with me? Will they go, will they seek me and find me, or will they go their own way? In the end, they will indeed come and know me. But it takes each of us independently, you know, to come and find peace. Will you take hold of his strength? Remember, Jacob wrestled with the angel of the Lord, with God, basically, and allowed him to have some victory, but the Lord put his hip out of place. But he wrestled with God and he found blessing. Are we wrestling with God? When we wrestle with God, we're really wrestling with ourselves because God is revealing ourselves to us. Do you really want to live this way? Or do you want the blessing of God? If you want the blessing of God, you've got to fight yourself, you've got to deny yourself, you've got to say, not my will, but yours be done. And let the Lord pin you. Let the Lord bring you down, because in that way you will make peace with him. You win, you're right, you're good. I surrender. Have your way with me. I'm yours, Lord. Have your own way. Verse 6 Those who come, he shall cause to take root in Jacob. Israel shall blossom and bud and fill the face of the world with fruit. I don't totally understand all this, but there's this idea that anyone who's not of the Jewish line, who comes to faith in Jesus Christ, is grafted in to Israel. It's not like some of the theology that is out there today that says that God is done with Israel and the church has replaced Israel. That's not accurate. The church is actually part of the spiritual Israel. We're grafted in to be part of this wonderful vineyard that will blossom and fill the whole face of the world with its fruit. Because we trust in him, because we allow him to do his work in us. He desires to bless and to prosper and to give us a glorious world if we seek and find him. Has he struck Israel as he has struck those who struck him? Even the beginning of Isaiah and in lots of the minor prophets, there is this idea that boy, God is using all our enemies, our enemies, the nations that blaspheme God to punish us. God, that's not fair. We're your chosen people. Why are you fighting us with the enemies? And it was shown there and even made clear here. The chastisement that God used the other nations to bring upon Israel was not as strong as the judgment that he poured out on those nations. I chastised you, I disciplined you because I'm a loving father and I wanted to teach you something. And those nations that have rejected me, that are your enemy nations, which I use to accomplish my purposes, they got the wrath poured out on them. You got nothing compared to what they got. And it also asks, or has he been slain according to the slaughter of those who were slain by him? The Lord poured out his wrath on the enemy nations, and many, many people were killed. People that have rejected God, didn't want anything to do with God, and he knew that there was no hope for them, so they were slain. But he lives. He lives. Except on the cross. Because there the enemy was rejoicing. He says, I've done it, I've killed God. Now there's no hope, and everything will be destroyed. But on the third day, Jesus rose again and destroyed all of those lofty thoughts of the enemy, right? So even in death, Jesus had victory. And he lives. And he has victory over the world. He has victory over the enemy, he has victory over sin. And so, in measure, by sending it away, you contended with it. He removes it by his rough wind in the day of the east wind. In other words, it's the going back and talking about the discipline of the Lord. How do we respond to the discipline of the Lord? He measures it out to us, he gives us a little here and a little there to get our attention. Do we respond to it? Do we say, Oh, I hear you, Lord? I feel you, Lord. Parents, when you spanked your kids when they were young, did they hear you? Or did they go their own way and toughen up? You know, did they listen? Did they respond? Did they grow as a result of it? Which is the heart of the Lord, right? This Israel that's in the end times, that is flourishing, that fills the whole world with its fruit, is made up of individuals who have felt and sensed the chastisement of God and have responded accordingly, who have repented and turned. Said, Lord, I recognize now that that was not good. I recognize, Lord, that we weren't trusting you in what we were doing what we wanted to do in our flesh and our worldly wisdom, and we went our own way. Lord, forgive us. Again, that needs to be our heart and our nation today. Do we recognize the chastisement of the Lord? Do we recognize that God is warning us? We need to turn to Him and not go in our own way. And when we do, you know, He removes the more we respond to the discipline, the less discipline we need. And we continue to follow Him. And our eyes become stayed on Him, our mind gets stayed on Him. We don't think about the things of the world anymore because the Lord has brought us out of it. And we can focus on Him as He does in verse 9. Therefore, by this the iniquity of Jacob will be covered. And this is all the fruit of taking away his sin. When he makes all the stones of the altar like chalk stones and are beaten to dust, wooden images and incense altars shall not stand. When we respond to the discipline of the Lord, he destroys the idols in our lives that we willingly give back to him. Say, Lord, we don't want these idols, these are wrong. Take them away. In those nations that did not come to faith in the Lord, that did not repent and turn from their ways, what happened to their idols? They were destroyed too, along with them. So the question is, do you want to turn over willingly your idols to the Lord? Or do you want Him to have them destroyed along with you in the future? So much better now to come with your sin and present it to the Lord. Come right now and say, Lord, your will be done, not mine. I've destroyed everything. And I didn't realize it, but now you've shown it to me. You've opened my eyes and I see it. And we, just like the whole nation of Israel, in that process of recognizing God's chastisement and turning it over to the Lord and repenting, then the blood of the cross, the blood of Jesus on the cross covers our sins and removes it, it takes it away. Because we recognize what He's done. We recognize the sin that we have. And it makes us sick and we don't want it. And it's a glorious thing. And the images that we created that we think are so great, we realize really have no power at all to save, no power at all to give us life. We fooled ourselves with these images that are dead anyway. In verse 10, it says, Yet the fortified city will be desolate. The fortified city, talking about the city of man again. Fortified, you know, protected and strong. At least they thought they were strong, they thought they were invincible. The habitation forsaken and left like a wilderness, where the calf will feed, and there it will lie down and consume its branches. When the bows are withered, they will be broken off. The women come and set them afire, for it is a people of no understanding. Therefore, he who made them will not have mercy on them, and he who formed them will show them no favor. In other words, this worldly attitude that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. I don't want any God telling me what to do. I know what's best for me. I'm going to live my life. And multiply that out by all the people having the same attitude. Everybody did what was right in their own eyes. We just destroy ourselves. And we do not find the mercy of God. We do not find any favor with God because we've rejected him and the sacrifice that he's made on our behalf. That's what happens to the attitude of the world. That's what happens to this haughty, pride-filled attitude, this city of man. Verse 12, and it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord will thresh from the channel of the river to the brook of Egypt, from the Euphrates all the way down to Israel, all this area that he promised to the land of Israel, that that will be their land. And you will be gathered one by one, you children of Israel. Threshing for is what was done in the harvest time with wheat. It's brought to the threshing for to separate the wheat from the chaff. The chaff is of no use. The wheat is what's beneficial. It brings life, what brings sustenance. And then there's all these comparisons about, you know, separating the goats from the sheep, the righteous from the unrighteous, the wheat from the chaff. In this time there will be a shaking up, a threshing, a separating out. Those that have time and time again rejected the Lord, ultimately they have committed the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, and they have no heart of repentance. No heart of seeking after the Lord. They do not believe, and they will be judged. And yet, in the midst, Israel is scattered throughout the world. In the midst, he will find those. In the book of Hebrews, we talk about spiritual Israel. Again, it's anyone who has been grafted in, anyone who has come to faith in Jesus Christ is a son and daughter of Abraham, and we're grafted into Israel. So all over, the Lord picks up his own and he gathers them. And so it shall be in that day, the great trumpet will be blown, and they will come who are about to perish in the land of Assyria. And they who are the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and they shall worship the Lord in the holy mount at Jerusalem. The wrath of God was going to be poured out on these unbelieving nations, and yet there will be believers in those nations. And the Lord will take them out. And he will gather us all into Jerusalem one day. And we will pour out our hearts of thanksgiving and praise to Him in a worship service like we've never experienced before. What a glorious day that will be. But that only comes to those who fully trusted in Him, who have gone not in the way of the world, but in the way of the Lord. Those, in verse 3 of the first chapter that we went through, verse 3 of chapter 26 again, you will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you. So trust in the Lord forever, for Yah, the Lord is everlasting strength. He is our hope. May we seek him. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 24:07

You're listening to Pastor Carl of the Mountain Cross as he teaches through the book of Isaiah on today's episode of Come On Up. Isaiah is an important book for us to read in the Old Testament because this is where we read many prophecies about the coming Messiah. While we now know Jesus as our one and true Messiah, the people who originally read Isaiah's prophecies did not know when the promised Savior would arrive. So while the book of Isaiah calls the nation of Israel to repentance, it also inspires its readers to have hope in the coming Messiah who will establish a new heavenly kingdom on earth. Well, if you would like to learn more about what it means to follow this Messiah we know as Jesus, we have some resources online to help get you started. Just visit us at themountaincross.com and head to our How to Know God tab. You can also find a link to our podcast feed in case you want to catch up on past teachings from Pastor Carl. If you'd like to get connected with us in person, we'd love to have you join us here at the Mountain Cross. We meet every Sunday at 10 a.m. at the Smoky Mountain Cinema in Waynesville, North Carolina. We also host a Faith Film Night on the first Monday of each month. To learn about our next film, visit us online or search for Faith Film Night on Facebook. Thanks for tuning in today. Well, that's all for today. Come on up to the mountain with us again next time as we seek to learn more from the Lord through His Word. Come On Up is sponsored by the Mountain Cross, a Calvary Chapel fellowship.