Isaiah 26-28: Now and Then

Overall, we are still in the context of Isaiah trying to convince Judah and her kings to trust God and not foreign alliances to keep them safe. We are also still in the context of ch 24-25, the end of the present age, after the “day of the Lord”. These chapters are posed as a series of “now...but then...” statements (sometimes the “now...” is implied), to make us consider how we live and what we value.

I. Now you have war and unrest (ch7); then you will have total knowledge of peace. (ch26)

• confidence in the right place (1-6)
• desire in the right place (7-11)
• salvation from the right place (12-21)
  

II. Now you are an unruly vineyard (ch5); then you will be fruitful again. (ch27)

• has to do with their destiny and role in God's great story
• has to do with the impact that they have
• has to do with their discipline being purposeful and the nation being regathered
  
• We are wild branches, grafted in (see Rom 11), and so have some part in the fruitfulness (see John 15), the discipline (see Heb 12), and the regathering (se
  

III.Now you value kings and cities (28:1-4); then you will value Me and My people. (28:5-6)

• what do we think of as “cool”?
• who do we think of as having it together?
  

IV.Now you are led by crooked, worldly, immature priests who teach only rules (28:7-15); then you will be led by the Jesus, the Cornerstone. (28:16-29)

• they act like jerks and are offended when Isaiah calls them out
• they have rejected God's rest and so God's Word sounds like childish rules
• God will send the True Cornerstone.
• See: Psalm 118:19-24; Acts 4:11; Rom. 9:30-33, 10:11; 1 Pet. 2:4-11 (so powerful)
  
• Also interesting: Isa. 8:14-15, Dan 2:34-35, Zech. 12:1-5
• God will do a new thing in saving the gentiles (v21-29)
  

“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee; because he trusts Thee.” (26:3)

This verse, especially the King Jimmy, is the key to the whole passage for me. God can give us peace inside when the whole of our inside is “stayed on Him” - when it “stops with Him and rests on Him.” Charles Spurgeon gives the illustration of the body being at rest on a bed when every part of the body is resting on it. So the same with our souls (Heb. “yetser” meaning mind, thoughts, plans, imagination, our internal “form” or how God has made us tick). Every part must be at rest in God: our security, our desires, our salvation, our destiny, our fruitfulness, our ideas of what is “cool”, our righteousness - everything. That is God's challenge to me today.

Links:

• Spurgeon on perfect peace - this is a long read, but insightful
• Interesting insight into Jewish views of the sea and Leviathan - from Ray Van der Laan