1. "One of the best barometers for your trust in God is your prayer life. When I do not pray much, it's because I am trusting myself too much."

2. "We, being righteous in Him, can roll into those gates, the gates of that strong city, the gates where the righteous dwell in perfect confidence, dressed in the righteous robes of Christ, as righteous as Jesus, because His is the only righteousness we have."

3. "No more will there be a divided heart that fights for both sin and righteousness in us. In that place, that fight will be over. You will have a heart perfectly united to fear the Lord. We shall know perfect peace in that city."

4. "The study of theology, the study of what God is like, is not for a bunch of theology nerds to talk about while they smoke pipes in some dark room. It's for you. It's for living. It's for people who are prone to anxiety."

5. "Struggling saint, though your subjective experience of the peace of God is sometimes fleeting, the objective peace of God that you have with Christ is sure and foundational for your life."

6. "All sin will be punished, whether at the cross on the Lord Jesus Christ as a substitute for sinners or in hell in His perfect justice visited on the wicked. And so, friend, you do not have to avenge yourself."

7. "Church, God loves you too much not to make you like Jesus. He values your Christ-likeness over your comfort."

8. "How is God using your afflictions to purify your affections?"

9. "In Christ we see graveyards turned into maternity wards. Where in Adam we were cursed to turn into the dust, in Christ we are granted to return from the dust."

10. "We can rest secure in Christ because the fury of God fell on him upon the cross and will not again fall on you. There is no sin that was left unpunished upon Jesus for the sake of his people."

Observation Questions

1. According to Isaiah 26:1-2, what does God set up as "walls and bulwarks" for the strong city, and who is permitted to enter through its gates?

2. In Isaiah 26:3-4, what does God promise to the one whose mind is "stayed on" Him, and what reason does the text give for why we should "trust in the Lord forever"?

3. What happens to "the inhabitants of the height, the lofty city" according to Isaiah 26:5-6, and who ends up trampling it?

4. In Isaiah 26:8-9, what do the people express as "the desire of our soul," and what do they say their soul does "in the night"?

5. According to Isaiah 26:16-18, what did God's people do when His discipline was upon them, and what frustrating outcome did they experience ("we have given birth to wind")?

6. What promise does God give in Isaiah 26:19, and what command does He give to "you who dwell in the dust"?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is God described as "an everlasting rock" in verse 4, and how does this characteristic of God serve as the foundation for the command to "trust in the Lord forever"?

2. The sermon contrasts the "city of man" (vv. 5-6) with the "city of God" (vv. 1-4). What distinguishes these two cities, and what does their different fates reveal about where true security is found?

3. In verses 8-9, God's people express longing for Him even "in the path of your judgments." How does the sermon explain the relationship between God's discipline and the purification of His people's affections and hopes?

4. Verses 16-18 describe the painful futility God's people experience under discipline, yet verse 19 immediately follows with a promise of resurrection. How does this dramatic shift help us understand God's ultimate purpose in allowing His people to suffer?

5. In verses 20-21, God's people are told to "hide yourselves for a little while until the fury has passed by." How does the sermon connect this instruction to the work of Christ, and why can believers rest secure when God comes out to judge the earth?

Application Questions

1. The sermon states that "one of the best barometers for your trust in God is your prayer life" and that "where there is prayerlessness, there is bound to be pride." What specific area of your life do you tend to handle on your own without bringing it to God in prayer, and what would it look like to entrust that area to Him this week?

2. Verse 3 promises "perfect peace" to those whose minds are "stayed on" God. What practical step could you take this week to stay your mind on God's trustworthiness when you feel anxious or fearful—such as meditating on a specific attribute of God or asking a fellow believer what they are learning about God?

3. The sermon encourages believers to "gossip encouragement" by recognizing God's work in others and praising Him for it. Who in your church or community has displayed faithfulness that you could encourage this week, and how will you specifically do so?

4. Verses 10-11 show that God's people can entrust vengeance to God, freeing them to love and forgive others. Is there a person or situation where you are holding onto bitterness or a desire for personal revenge? What would it look like to release that to God's righteous judgment and extend forgiveness?

5. The sermon acknowledges that some Christians struggle with depression, grief, difficult relationships, or persistent sin and may feel like they have "given birth to wind." If you or someone you know is in a season of painful waiting, how can you remind yourself or them of God's promise of ultimate deliverance while also asking God for endurance under His discipline?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Psalm 46:1-11 — This psalm celebrates God as a refuge and fortress for His people, reinforcing the theme that God alone is the rock we should trust amid turmoil.

2. Romans 8:18-30 — Paul describes the present sufferings and future glory of believers, connecting to the sermon's emphasis on patient waiting under discipline and eager hope for final deliverance.

3. Hebrews 12:3-11 — This passage explains the purpose of God's fatherly discipline, directly supporting the sermon's teaching that God uses hardship to form His people into Christlikeness.

4. 1 Peter 2:4-10 — Peter describes believers as a "holy nation" built on Christ the living stone, echoing Isaiah's vision of the righteous nation entering God's strong city.

5. Revelation 21:1-7 — John's vision of the new Jerusalem portrays the ultimate fulfillment of God's promises—no more death, mourning, or pain—completing the hope Isaiah 26 anticipates.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Christmas Anticipation Illustrates the Christian Life of Waiting for God's Promises

II. God Is the Rock We Should Trust (Isaiah 26:1-6)

III. God Is the Lord We Should Remember (Isaiah 26:7-15)

IV. God Is the Deliverer We Should Wait For (Isaiah 26:16-19)

V. God Is the Shelter We Should Hide In (Isaiah 26:20-21)

VI. We Can Rejoice and Rest in God While We Wait for His Salvation

---

Detailed Sermon Outline

I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news? Christmas is only six months away. The godly, of course, have already been listening to Christmas music and the rest of society will join them soon. Eggnog and all kinds of seasonal treats will be back on the shelves.

We'll be looking forward to getting out of school and getting out of work to celebrate Christmas parties and time with friends. We'll watch the Grinch and all other sorts of things that maybe you watched during the Christmas holidays. What's more, we'll celebrate with friends and family, maybe some that we haven't seen in over a year because of the pandemic that swept through. Oh, there's many good things to look forward to in Christmas, and it's only six months away. The bad news, Christmas is still six months away.

We have to wait a full six months for that good thing to come. There is no advent calendar you can buy that stretches six months out. You'll have to do it without your chocolate a day. No, friends, we'll have to wait for that good thing. And of course, when we wait for good things, sometimes the very goodness of the thing makes the waiting all the harder.

We're eager to enjoy it. We're eager to have it. We're eager to be there with our loved ones. And we're not there yet. But what's more, all of our plans for Christmas are prone to being frustrated.

What if a coronavirus variant ends up destroying your family's plans to get back together this year? What if things don't go as well as you had planned? All of a sudden, there's the hope that is frustrated, a waiting that turned out to be waiting in vain. In the Christian life, we are those who wait. God has given us glorious promises in his gospel, and we wait for their fulfillment when Christ returns to bring all of God's promises to pass.

We've been considering some of those promises in an occasional series we've been working through in the book of Isaiah. And we're in Isaiah chapter 26 this morning. In your pew Bibles, you can find that on page 586. Ben Lacy preached to us just a few weeks ago on Isaiah 24 and 25. There, Isaiah has taken us to the very end of time, to the great day of the Lord.

And in chapter 24, we saw that God would judge the whole world, that all sin would have a final answer in God's righteousness. We saw in chapter 25 that God would save His people and swallow up death forever. And what Isaiah 26 helps us to do is that in light of that glorious future, how do we wait? Well, we wait in hope in God. Let me read to us beginning in verse 1 of Isaiah chapter 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. Open the gates that the righteous nation that keeps faith may enter in. You keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.

Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock. 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. The foot tramples it, the feet of the poor, the steps of the needy.

The path of the righteous is level. You make level the way of the righteous. In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you. Your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul. 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. 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. 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. O Lord, you will ordain peace for us, for your have indeed done for us all our works. O Lord our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us, but your name alone we bring to remembrance. 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. 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. O Lord, in distress they sought you. They poured out a whispered prayer when your discipline was upon them. 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. 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. 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. Come, my people, enter your chambers and shut your doors behind you.

Hide yourselves for a little while until the fury has passed by. 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. This is God's word and thanks be to him for it. I think the big idea of Isaiah chapter 26 is this, and so this is going to be the most important sentence that I say all morning. If you're writing notes, this is what you want to write down.

Rejoice and rest in God as we wait for his salvation. Rejoice and rest in God as we wait for his salvation. I think Isaiah 26 gives us four great truths about the Lord that are to stay our hearts on him so that we can rejoice and rest in him as we wait for his salvation. And that first one we can see in that first stanza, verses 1 to 6, is that God is the rock we should trust. God is the rock we should trust.

Trusting the Lord is one of the dominant themes in Isaiah. In no small part, the people of Judah and of Israel were in great danger during that day. And as they were in danger, they were looking around them for things that they could trust. They thought that they could trust in the nations, as King Ahaz would in Isaiah chapter 10. And yet the Lord shows him, no, no, no, the Assyrians are not the ones who are going to deliver you.

In fact, the Assyrians are going to be the ones who punish you. And then the judgment narratives of really 12 through all the way through chapter 23, as the Lord judges the nations, he is showing his people, you cannot trust the nations. And buried inside the judgment of the nations is the judgment of Jerusalem, the valley of vision in chapter 22. Not even themselves could the people of Israel and the people of Judah trust. Who then could they trust?

Well, the Lord was showing them in all these things that he alone was to be trusted. He was the rock that could be a proper refuge for his people. And we can see there in verse 4, the very center of this stanza, we see the basic command there: Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock. Notice that trust, the people's trust upon the Lord, is predicated on who God is and how he has revealed himself to them. He is a rock, unchanging, firm, faithful, trustworthy.

The theologian Herman Bavinck describes God this way, this is why in Scripture God is so often called the Rock. We humans can rely on him. He does not change in his being, knowing or willing. He eternally remains who he is. He cannot change for better or worse, for he is the absolute, the complete, the true being.

Becoming is an attribute of creatures, a form of change in space and time. But God is who He is, eternally transcendent over space and time and far exalted above every creature. He rests within Himself and is for that very reason the ultimate goal and resting place of all creatures, the rock of their salvation, whose work is complete. This is the God who calls us to trust in Him. Being unchangingly good, He will not deceive us in His promises.

Being unstoppably strong, there will be no one who can thwart the purposes of the Lord. Being unimaginably wise, there is no better course that He could chart for us. Being one whose knowledge is unfathomable, there is nothing that will one day take the Lord by surprise. In every situation, we can trust in the Lord because He is an everlasting rock. And notice the relationship between how we should trust and who the Lord is.

We should trust in the Lord forever, trust in the Lord always, because the Lord is an everlasting rock. Because God is always who He is, because He is always trustworthy, we should always trust Him. It doesn't matter what situation you're in this morning, or what situation that you might find yourself this week, you can trust God. It doesn't matter what promises the Lord has given you, those promises are sure, because God is a rock. You can trust Him there.

You can trust him in every season of life, whether young or old, whether starting a career or ending a career. Regardless of where you are in your life, you can trust in the Lord because he is an everlasting rock. And this God demonstrates his trustworthiness in his dealings with two cities. We'll see these in the verses around verse 4. First, we see that the Lord humbles the city of man.

And you see that in verses 5 and 6. At this point in Isaiah, Isaiah is not unlike the rest of the Bible, picturing all of humanity in one of two cities, the city of man or the city of God. The city of man is sinful man organized together in opposition against the Lord. The way that Augustine would say it is that these two cities are constituted by their two loves. The city of God, a love of God, and even to a contempt of self, the city of man, a love of self, even to the contempt of God.

And we see that contemptuous way that the city is constituted in verses five and six here, this city of man. You see that the Lord for he the Lord has humbled the inhabitants of the height, the lofty city. This was a city that was secure by human measurements. A place that was up on a hill and high and far away, a military army couldn't come and batter down its walls. What they did not expect was that the Lord himself would come, and he would level the walls of this city.

This city that was lofty and believed itself to be impregnable would then in that day find themselves cast low, low to the ground, cast to the dust. Indeed, in verse 6, they are so low and humbled that even the feet of the poor and the steps of the needy trample upon the once proud city. We are all naturally citizens of the city of man. We are proud. We trust in our own ways, in our own accomplishments, in our own possessions.

And God here is graciously showing us that all those who trust in themselves are doomed to let themselves down. Has the Lord shown you that, even in your life today, ways in which you have let yourself down now, how much less trustworthy are you in the future when the stake is God's judgment and His ultimate eschatological, that is, end time, humiliation? One of the best barometers for your trust in God is your prayer life. The great theologian John Calvin would call prayer the chief exercise of faith. And so if you want to see where there is pride in your life, where there is a trusting in yourself and the things of the world, where there is prayerlessness, there is bound to be pride.

When I do not pray much, it's because I am trusting myself too much. What Mark did in the pastoral prayer, asking of God, asking for him to establish justice, asking for him to preserve us. In all these ways, we're glorifying the Lord because we're saying our only trust is in you. We can't do it by ourself. We can't establish ourselves.

We have to rely on the Lord. And indeed, all the proud will be humbled, but the humble who trust in God, they will find grace in their time of need. The Lord humbles the once proud city of man. But we also see that the Lord exalts the city of God. He exalts the city of God.

And you see that in verses 1 through 4. You see the city in the first verse as described as strong, and the strength of that city is described. It's not strong in worldly terms, not strong because of all the weapons that it has, not strong because of all the defensive mechanisms it has. It is strong because God is the one who defends it. He, that is God, sets up salvation as walls and bulwarks.

There will be no one to assail the city that God defends. God and God alone will defend this city and make it totally secure, make it strong. But not only do we see a city that is strong and safe from external threat, we see the inhabitants of the city in verse 2. The gates are commanded to open that the righteous nation that keeps faith may enter in. And when you read that word, or that phrase, righteous nation, it is not merely referring to the people of Israel, or the people of Judah.

No, this is a term that the Bible is going to use throughout to refer to all the people of God. So for instance, in 1 Peter 2, he refers to the church. Peter refers to the church as the holy nation. This is a similar usage here, that this is at the end when all nations, people from all different nations, are coming together and forming one new nation under God. Not in the American sense, but rather a perhaps who knows, but rather but rather a nation constituted by their trust in God and their righteousness before Him.

This nation that is righteous is a nation that is not righteous on its own merits. Well, we've seen this in the life of Israel. Isaiah is replete with calling out the Lord's people as not being righteous, as being those who have failed to keep the covenant, as those who have sinned before the Lord and have so merited judgment. Justin, as he led us in our prayer of confession, confessed that we all have sinned even this week. If we were to be judged by God's righteous standards, we would not be among the righteous nation.

And so this righteous nation is not righteous in itself, but it is righteous through their trust in God. As God will describe the sending of his Son, the Lord Jesus, in Isaiah 53, this servant of the Lord, He says in 53:11, Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied. By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. You see that the Lord Jesus would come and do what none of us could do in obeying the law perfectly. The law to that point had only condemned us.

Every sinful person fell short of God's law. No one could meet its standards. It simply declared sinful, guilty, deserving of death. But when the Lord Jesus, the eternal Son of God, took on human nature and lived perfectly under the law, all that the law could say was righteous and holy and worthy. And it is that obedience of Christ to the law which is accredited imputed, accounted to those who trust in Jesus through faith.

We, being righteous in Him, can roll into those gates, the gates of that strong city, the gates where the righteous dwell in perfect confidence, dressed in the righteous robes of Christ, as righteous as Jesus, because His is the only righteousness we have. Indeed, the keeping of faith or the faithfulness that also signifies the righteousness of this nation is necessary but derivative. It is to say that those who are united to Christ and so are accounted righteous in him live like Christ increasingly in their lives. You will not be let into heaven on the basis of your faithfulness to the covenant, but rather your faithfulness is the good fruit of the fact that you have been united to the righteous Jesus and so are being formed to His image. The righteous nation comes into this place.

And what is the life of the city like? Well, we see it there in verse 3. You keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Oh, we could dwell here for four or five sermons. Perfect peace.

What would it be to have perfect peace with God. No wrath to fear. No longer would we question God's providences. We would see them all rightly by faith. He friendly with us and we beloved by him.

We would have peace with our brothers and sisters in the church. No more would petty squabbles sour our fellowship here. No, in that perfect city we will know peace with our brothers and sisters. We will know peace without Friends, the gates of the city will be always open because no enemies will assail those gates. They will be open so that all the righteous will come in.

We will have no external threat. And what's more, we will know peace within. No more will there be a divided heart that fights for both sin and righteousness in us. You think of Romans chapter 7, the thing that I don't want to do is the very thing I keep on doing. That sin is not something natural for the Christian to do, but deeply unnatural.

It's something that we're fighting in our sinful nature. Well, in that place, that fight will be over. In the words of Charles Wesley, you will lay down your sword with your life. You will have a heart perfectly united to fear the Lord. We shall know perfect peace in that city.

But we can know a measure of that peace now as we trust in the Lord. Do you see how verse 3 works? To phrase it another way, God keeps us in peace by staying our minds on him, the object of our trust. So this one that we trust as our minds are stayed on him and see his trustworthiness, we are granted peace by the Lord. This reminds me of the CN Tower.

The CN Tower is in Toronto near where I grew up. The CN Tower famously has a glass floor, and that glass floor is is not at ground level, of course, it is 1122 feet up. Now in DC terms, that is two Washington monuments stacked on top of each other, and you would be looking down on them. So this glass floor way up on a beautiful day, you can see the Blue Jays play in the Rogers Center with a dome open. It's a wonderful experience, but understandably at 1122 feet up, a lot of people are scared to walk on that floor.

If I can see through it, it probably can't hold me up. And so they've got plaques and informational boards all around it to show you how trustworthy this thing is. It's two and a half inches of glass. It is five times stronger than most commercial flooring. And, in perhaps the most Canadian measure of all, it can hold 35 moose.

That's what they advertise. All of that, so that when you look at that glass floor and you say, Hey, I've got a few pounds to lose, but I'm no moose. I can get on there. They are staying your minds on the trustworthiness of the object of your trust. And what the Lord is saying here is that as we stay our minds on His trustworthiness, so we know peace now.

When our lives are entrusted to the Lord and we know how trustworthy He is, we will grow in our experience of that peace now. What a joy it would be to know a peace that surpasses all understanding. This is what Paul writes of in Philippians 4: Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Where should you go when you're faced with anxiety and worry and fear?

You go to the Lord. You go to the source of your trust, the one who will not let you go, who defends you. Jesus used the very same tactic in Matthew chapter 6 verses 26 to 30. He speaks to the anxious, Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to the span of his life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothed the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

So, friend, when you are faced with anxiety or when people in this church or in your life are faced with anxiety and fear, the best way that we serve ourselves and others is helping people stay our minds on God and His trustworthiness. We see here that the study of theology, the study of what God is like, is not for a bunch of theology nerds to talk about while they smoke pipes in some dark room. It's for you. It's for living. It's for people who are prone to anxiety.

That I need to be reminded of all the glorious perfections of God so that my sinful and anxious heart won't turn and won't sway and won't crumble under the pressure of this life. A really easy way to do this just in practice, whenever you're reading a passage of the Bible, always ask yourself, what is this passage teaching me about God? That's really the first question we want to ask about every passage because there's a certain primacy about God in his self-revelation. He has given you the book of the Bible so that you might know him and know his glorious perfections. And so, whatever passage you read, pull one good glorious thing about God out and use that to stay your mind the rest of the day.

And when you get to talk with other church members, other people that you meet with, tell them about the thing that you learned about this morning and then ask them, what's something that you are staying your mind on in God? That would be a wonderful conversation to have with people. And before we move on, we ought to note that some Christians may struggle with anxiety and fear their whole lives. Whether fallenness in mind, in body, or in soul, though the Christian might try to set their minds on the trustworthy God, their hearts remain gripped by worry and fear.

Struggling saint, though your subjective experience of the peace of God is sometimes fleeting, the objective peace of God that you have with Christ is sure and and foundational for your life. When you get to the city that God is preparing for you, you will enter into that peace which has so eluded you in this life. But be sure that while you might be anxious and struggle to trust the Lord now, that does not change the fact that the Lord is caring for you. Friend, your worry about having peace with God does not change the fact that Christ is a mediator who has made you at peace with God through faith. Your worry about tomorrow does not change the fact that God is a Father who sovereignly ordains all providences so that you would be well cared for and supplied for.

It does not change whatever that the Lord God sets up walls of salvation around the soul he delights to defend. And so, struggling saint, take great solace in this: that your God defends you. You, even when you don't keep a great grip on him. We should trust in God, the rock of our salvation. But secondly, we've seen another glorious thing here in this text, namely, that God is the Lord we should remember.

God is the Lord that we should remember. We see this in verses 7 through 15 when I say remember, and when remember is used in this text, It does, of course, speak of mental recollection, so we're thinking about who God is and what he has done. But not only that, remember is also this idea of praise, of honoring. So we are bringing things to mind about the Lord in order to praise him and to honor him. And I think we see four different things in this section 7 through 15.

Here's one of the reasons why God's people should remember him.

Well, in verses 7 to 9, the Lord guides his people. The Lord guides his people. You see it there? The path of the righteous is level. You make level the way of the righteous.

This is not to say that life is without hardships, that life is smooth sailing for the people of God. Rather, it is the eyes of faith looking at the way that God has prepared for us and saying, this is the way that the Father has told me to go. That this way will lead me to that great celestial city, the city of God. When he leads me down this path, he leads me down a sure path. I will not fall on this path.

This is what my Father has chosen for me. And we see that that path, though the eyes of faith see it as level, verses 8 to 9 notes the hardships in the midst of it. Verse 8, In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you. Your remembrance, your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul. 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. The judgments of the Lord here we could understand as God's discipline of his people. We hear the word discipline oftentimes, we're thinking of corrective discipline, that we make some kind of error, some kind of sin, and the Lord disciplines us for that sin. There's a direct relationship between the discipline and the sin.

But oftentimes what the Lord does is formative discipline. That in every providence, every judgment that he ordains in your life, he is using it to form you into a certain kind of person. He's ordaining every hardship, every suffering, every struggle, all to make you more like his Son, the Lord Jesus. And we see here, we'll think about the pain of discipline in a moment, but we see here the pleasurable fruits of discipline here in verses 8 and 9. What has as this produced in God's people a yearning for the Lord.

O Lord, we wait for your. Your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul. My soul yearns for you in the night. My spirit within me earnestly seeks you. Through the Lord's providential judgments, he has purified his people's hopes and affections so that they long for him, so that he is the very center of their desires.

They're beginning to sound more like Jesus. Do you remember him in John chapter 12 when he knows that his hour of crucifixion is at hand. He says in verse 27, Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour.

But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name. Then a voice came from heaven, I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again. As the Lord disciplines his people, he is making us more like Jesus. He is one to be remembered.

Kids, I hope that you see that when your parents discipline you, they are doing it for your good. And all the different rules that they give you and all the corrections that they give you, they are doing it because they want to form you into a certain kind of person. I think, speaking as a former kid, I look back on a lot of discipline that I did not enjoy. I thought its rules were arbitrary. I didn't know why they were telling me to do certain things.

But when I look back, I see how much my parents loved me. They made me who I am by their discipline. So, parents, I hope you can persevere in disciplining your kids faithfully. It's a hard work, but a necessary work. In so doing, you are showing them something about what what God is like and how he cares for his people.

Give them that beautiful picture of the Father as he guides his people through his judgments. The second thing that we see that should fuel our remembrance of the Lord is that the Lord avenges his people. The Lord avenges his people. We see this in verses 10 and 11, where the people of God have looked at the judgments of God and have learned righteousness. In verse 10, we see a different fate for the wicked, those who are not in Christ.

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. O Lord, your hand is lifted up, but they do not see it. Do you see here, so whether in the Lord's kindness in putting someone in a favorable position, or whether in the Lord's judgment and the threatening of judgment and the lifting of the hand, Our natural human hearts are so wicked that we do not see the majesty of the Lord. We do not see His kind providence.

We don't entrust ourselves to Him. The Lord has only and always been good, and yet we have repaid Him with wickedness. And those who are not given new life, they continue in this blindness. Christian, I hope you see here the amazing grace of God that gave you eyes to see your sin and better yet, eyes to see your Savior, that you were made to see the majesty of God. Why are you here this morning but because God drew you to Himself by His sweet grace?

I hope you also see here that spiritual blindness is no excuse before God in the judgment Our blindness is not God's fault, it's our fault. It speaks to how wicked our hearts are. And so, how does the Lord repay such wickedness, such evil? Well, the people of God in verse 11 plead for God to avenge them. Let them see your zeal for your people and be ashamed.

Let the fire of your adversaries consume them.

God's people have been wronged by the wicked, and they entrust themselves to the Lord. They call for the Lord to judge those sins that have been committed against them. Of course, there's always going to be a tension here. If you're someone like me who has a lot of family who aren't Christians, it's very difficult to yearn for the Lord to avenge and yet know that some upon whom God's wrath might fall are those who you love. And so it's really hard to work through a verse like this when I know people who will be under the judgment of God.

And yet the Lord, so clearly in His Word, shows us that our understanding and our knowledge of His ways are not yet full, not yet perfect. We say with Abraham in Genesis chapter 18, Shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just? There will come a day with glorified eyes that we will see sin for the wickedness that it is, and we will see the Lord for the glorious King that He is, and how wicked sin was to so lie about the Lord. And in that day we will rejoice in the Lord's judgments. But now we yearn for Him to judge, to defend, to avenge His people, and trusting ourselves to Him.

I hope you also see that the judgment of God frees us to love and forgive freely in this life. Each and every day we are subject to sins and injustices. I think there's a natural tendency, a righteous anger, in fact, to want to punish those sins, to punish those injustices. But because we can entrust ourselves to the God who judges justly, we no longer have to avenge ourselves. God will do it for us.

That means, friend, if you're holding on to some sin that someone has committed against you, the bitterness in your heart, a longing for vengeance, you need to allow your wrath to be satisfied in the righteous wrath of God. All sin will be punished, whether at the cross on the Lord Jesus Christ as a substitute for sinners or in hell in His perfect justice visited on the wicked. And so, friend, you do not have to avenge yourself. We instead love and forgive and so entrust ourselves to the Lord. He is the Lord that avenges his people.

Thirdly, he is also the Lord that frees his people. He's the Lord that frees his people. You see it there in verses 13 and 14, O Lord our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us, but your name alone we bring to remembrance. These other lords, certainly in the life of Israel, it would have been other human tyrants that ruled over the people of God. You think of Pharaoh in Egypt or the various Canaanite kings that ruled over them in the judges.

But behind all of that was the tyranny of sin. It was their sins that brought about this tyranny from other human beings. And as the 18th century Baptist, John Gill, rightly notes, every lust is a Lord. If you're a Christian today, you know what it is to have been ruled over by other lords. You were a slave to sin, one wholly given over to it.

The willing slavery that you offered was slavery nonetheless. And what does the Lord do for his people? He frees them from that slavery. In verse 14, it records the downfall of these lords and powers. They are dead, they shall 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. Oh, friend, you have been freed from sin if you're in Christ. You no longer have to serve those lords.

And there will come a day when you won't even remember those sins that plague you now. What freedom is known for those who are in Christ.

Fourthly, and lastly, here in this section, We see that the Lord establishes His people. He establishes His people. Verses 12 and 15, we're going to see the Lord do this wondrous work. In verse 12, O Lord, you will ordain peace for us, for you have indeed done for us all our works. What an amazing statement that all of the works of the people of God have ultimately, at the end of time, been accomplished by the Lord.

That is not to say that God's people do not do hard work, nor that we should not do hard work, but rather it is to say that in all of our working it is God who ultimately works. That whether in our willing or in our doing or in the effectiveness of our work, it all comes from the Lord. This is why Paul can say in Philippians chapter 2, Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. It's why Psalm 127 can say that unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. It's the whole Bible's teaching that all that we do is ultimately done by the Lord.

And thus, he is the one praised for it. We see in verse 15, But you have increased the nation, you have increased the nation, you are glorified. You have enlarged all the borders of the land. Because God does all the work, he gets all the glory. One way in which we should model this in our church is by being a church that encourages regularly, frequently, and freely.

We should recognize that every good thing that someone does here in this church is ultimately a work of the Lord, and the Lord deserves to be praised I can think of two sisters in our church who do this particularly well, Toika Embraek and Carly Wertham, who regularly write encouragement notes to people, thanking them for things that they've done. What a great way to celebrate the Lord's work. Friend, do not fear boosting up someone's pride. Fear not praising the Lord. We should praise the Lord by encouraging one another in the grace in other people's lives.

Be one who is committed to gossip encouragement. When you hear a good word about someone, go ahead and share that. In wisdom, but go ahead and share it. When I hear someone in an area of faithfulness, I want to say, look at how faithful that brother's doing. Because when I am encouraging and edifying him, I'm ultimately praising the Lord.

When we look around this church, how can we not say with Psalm 118:23, this is the Lord's doing and it is marvelous. In our eyes. We have been given this Lord to remember. Thirdly, in our third stanza, we see that God is the deliverer we should wait for. The deliverer we should wait for.

Isaiah 26 takes a sharp turn in verse 20---or in verse 16. We go from the heights of praise and glorifying the Lord to the depths of pain. And we see here that God is a deliverer that we should wait for. Firstly, in verses 16 and 17, we should patiently wait under the Lord's discipline. We should patiently wait under the Lord's discipline.

You see there in verse 16, O Lord, in distress they sought yout. They poured out a whispered prayer when your discipline was upon them. 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. 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.

The people of God, under the discipline of God, are experiencing the pain of futility. All of their efforts, all of their struggle, all of their pain, and no fruit to show for it.

To show for it. Certainly we live in an age of fulfillment that we have seen so many of the promises of God already brought to pass in the coming of Jesus Christ. And yet, living in a fallen world, we are still subject to futility. I think of those in our church who struggle with depression, who seek to rejoice in God but for whatever reason feel deep, dark clouds are permanently parked around their hearts? Think of those of our congregation who struggle with the death of a loved one even this past year, a disease that's working its way through the family.

Think of men and women in our church who long to provide for their families but are jobless and they don't know why or when the Lord will provide? Think of those in difficult marriages in our church, when one or both parties want to reconcile but for whatever reason, all of their efforts have proved futile. Think of the parents in our church who seek to lovingly lead and care for their kids and yet they find their kids with hard hearts towards them and hard hearts towards the Lord.

I think of those who struggle with sin. I think especially this month, we think of our brothers and sisters who struggle with same-sex attraction. For whatever reason, a broken heart, are longing for the wrong things, and they are fighting to faithfully follow the Lord. And yet in this month, the world celebrates sin and they don't know why the Lord hasn't freed them from those desires yet. We could multiply the futilities that the people of God bear here and now.

How do we work through these things, this heavy discipline of the Lord? I think we have a wonderful example in John Calvin. Calvin, the great reformer of Geneva, he saw much fruit in Geneva through his ministry, but also much pain in his personal life. His only son, Jacques, died shortly after he was given birth. And so Calvin, writing a few days later to his friend Pierre Viret, writes this: the Lord has certainly inflicted a severe and bitter wound in the death of our infant son, but he is himself a father and knows what is best for his children.

The people of God, amidst the pain of God's discipline, entrust themselves to God as their Father. God does not wound but to bind up. He does not hurt but to heal. And we hear a wonderful description of the Lord's discipline of us in Hebrews chapter 12, beginning at verse 5: and have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him.

For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

Beside this, we had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. Church, God loves you too much not to make you like Jesus. He values your Christ-likeness over your comfort.

This is exactly Paul's experience in 2 Corinthians 1. For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia, for we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us on him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.

Isn't this the good thing that the Lord has worked in his people even here in verse 16? In discipline, what do the people do? In distress, they sought you. They poured out a whispered prayer when your discipline was upon them. The Lord disciplines those he loves, that we might rely on him all the more, that we might be stripped of all of the lies that tell us that we are sufficient in ourselves, that we might rely on him who raises the dead.

Friend, it is a good thing thing to pray for the Lord to deliver us from circumstances that are difficult. It's also a good thing to pray that the Lord would sustain us and grant us endurance so that we might bear up under discipline and so be formed more into the image of Jesus. A couple of questions for you to consider, whether today or later: How might God be forming your hopes through your hardships? How is God forming your hopes through your hardships? To put it another way, how is God using your afflictions to purify your affections?

How is God using your afflictions to purify your affections? We patiently wait under the Lord's discipline, but we too eagerly wait for God's deliverance. We eagerly wait for God's deliverance It is the surprising answer of the Lord in verse 19, you, 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.

In light of the futility of God's people under the discipline of the Lord, the Lord sweetly promises them a coming deliverance, one to wait for and eagerly so.

It is this grand picture of the reversal of the curse of sin. You remember what the Lord promised Adam in the garden? The day that you eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall die. And die he did. And all humanity after him.

Sin always leads to death, and it becomes the drumbeat of the Old Testament. Whether the person was great or small, whether righteous or wicked, he died, and he died, and he died. Death reigned from Adam to Moses, and indeed from Moses all the way to Christ. Who would deliver us from this great shade cast over all nations? Enter Jesus the second Adam, who did not disobey where Adam had disobeyed, but rather fulfilled God's law perfectly.

And not only did that, but became a sacrifice for God's people bearing God's wrath against their sins in their place. But then on that third day was raised anew. He had overturned death itself because he had overcome sin that caused death in the first place. He is raised victorious and could declare in John chapter 11, I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in the Son and is united to him will be resurrected with him.

We will share in this new resurrected life. And indeed, those who have trusted in Christ in this life and have known a spiritual regeneration, a new birth so that we're truly alive in God, will one day know a bodily resurrection where this body will be raised gloriously and incorruptibly to be like Jesus and to live where Jesus lives. No wonder why Charles Wesley writes that great hymn, Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace, Hail the Son of Righteousness, Light and life to all He brings, Risen with healing in His wings, Mild He lays His glory by, Born that man no more may die, Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth, In Christ we see that light, graveyards turned into maternity wards, where in Adam we were cursed to turn into the dust, in Christ we are granted to return from the dust. Our deliverance in the resurrected Christ is sure. And so we can wait under his discipline for this glorious deliverance that will be shown to us on the last day.

Fourthly, God is the shelter we should hide in. God is the shelter we should hide in. Verses 20 to 21, look forward to the Lord's coming judgment. It says in verse 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. Seems like today whenever someone is appointed to some high public office or given some honor, it's just a question of when the Twitter Inquisition will find something embarrassing in their past.

What bad tweet did they forget to delete? Which video is going to come out with them saying some bad stuff that they shouldn't say? Well, on the last day, it would seem that all of the skeletons in our closets will come tumbling out.

And they will come tumbling out, not before a sinful inquisition made up of sinners like you and I, but rather before the holy God whose eyes are so pure he cannot even look upon sin. And so when the Lord rises to judge the earth, as Isaiah writes of in Isaiah chapter 2, the day that he will rise to terrify the earth, everyone will hide.

It is a question of where we will hide. Some will seek to hide from Christ, the returning judge. We read in Revelation 6:15-17, Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountain. Calling to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us and and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?

Friend, those who are not in Christ will failingly try to run from Christ and hide from him. If you are visiting with us and have not trusted in Christ, where will you hide on that day? Will you hide behind your religious performance? Will you hide behind your resume all the great things that you did at work? Will you hide in who your parents are or how you've raised your kids?

Will you hide in all the riches that you have? None of these things will hide you from God, the One who judges justly. You will find no security there. There are some that will hide from Christ. But oh, blessed are those who hide in Christ.

There are two pictures that are being worked out in verse 21. Pictures of security for God's people. We see that he calls the people to close the doors behind, rather in verse 20, close the doors behind them. Not unlike the Lord, shuts the door behind Noah in the ark so that he and his family could be born safely through the flood of God's wrath. So, too, it's a picture of the Exodus, that as the people of God are hiding in their chambers, it recalls the day when the Lord would pass through the Egyptians, this angel of death.

And the only way that the people could escape that judgment was to have the blood of a lamb painted on the lintels and the doorposts. Moses says in Exodus chapter 12, for the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you. Both are pictures of security in God's salvation amidst God's judgment. And both of those pictures are shadows and types that look forward to what Christ would do. And indeed, Isaiah speaks of him in Isaiah 53, verses 6 through 9, or rather 4 through 6.

He has borne our griefs, the Lord Jesus has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted, but he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Friends, we can rest secure in Christ because the fury of God fell on him upon the cross and will not again fall on you. There is no sin that was left unpunished upon Jesus for the sake of his people. He is a perfect and all sufficient sacrifice that allows us to dwell secure. Under the wrath of God that is to come. And so, friends, we see throughout Isaiah chapter 26 reasons why we can rejoice and rest in the Lord as we wait for him.

I've got some good news and some bad news. The bad news, we still have to wait a little while until Christ comes and brings all these promises to pass. Unless the conclusion of this service takes an unexpectedly great turn. And hey, if I keep preaching the way that I am, maybe, maybe the Lord comes back. That's one way to bring a conclusion.

We'll still have to wait. And during that waiting, we will go through hardships. We'll go through sufferings. We'll go through difficulties. But the good news?

We only have to wait wait a little while for the Lord to return and bring all of his promises to pass. And while we wait, having been equipped by God's Word to wait well, we wait in sure hope. Because as Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:9-10, God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with him. Indeed, we will, saints. Let me pray for us.

Father in heaven, we thank you that you are aboundingLy gracious to your people. Not only have you given us good promises,