It has been an interesting week or so here weather wise. I remember last week when Susan was preaching she had us all turn around and see the snow coming down: Great big flakes. Thursday of this week when I first left the house I turned around and came back in to change my coat – I traded my snow coat for a raincoat but that seemed to be a pointless exercise as the weather changed so many times that day that it didn’t matter what I was wearing. Raining, snowing, sometimes so sunny that I needed my sunglasses to even see down the street.
Wednesday (or last night too!) was the big snow day – I think – Wednesday was the one where I had the most shoveling to do. After shoveling at home I headed to the corps here and shoveled around the corner. Justin showed up while I was hard at it and he was a really big help especially clearing the loading bay back there!
Wednesday was also the perfect sledding day. Heather and I headed out to the hill by Williamson Park sometime after school and sledded for an hour or so; it was a lot of fun.
It was interesting this week: the Island had a little taste of winter.
Weather is one area where I think our society is still willing to concede some dominion, power, and/or authority to God. Natural disasters are still called ‘acts of God’ in some insurance loopholes. However, in this post-modern era of the 21st century I think we have added an extra dose of vanity to the hubris of the so-called ‘Enlightenment’ era: thinking humanity can solve all of humanity’s problems.
Some of the error of this way of thinking in reflected in our text today , as it was in the text that we chatted about two weeks ago, when we were reminded that it is God exalts and humbles: Isaiah 5:15-16 records,
15 So people will be brought low
and everyone humbled,
the eyes of the arrogant humbled.
16 But the Lord Almighty will be exalted by his justice,
and the holy God will be proved holy by his righteous acts.
Isaiah 26:5-8 says this:
He humbles those who dwell on high,
He lays the lofty city low;
He levels it to the ground
and casts it down to the dust.
6 Feet trample it down—
the feet of the oppressed,
the footsteps of the poor.
7 The path of the righteous is level;
you, the Upright One, make the way of the righteous smooth.
8 Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws,
we wait for You;
Your name and renown
are the desire of our hearts.
God wants to gather us close to him like a parent picking up his children, or even a farmer picking up soil or seeds or anything else he can hold in the palm of his hand that he loves. Sometimes, as the Lord is picking us up we have a desire to reach heights quicker or greater than He is lifting us at the moment and as a result we try to lift ourselves up; we leap from the Lord’s hands. When we do this, of course, we wind up falling to the ground. We are humbled because we cannot possibly lift ourselves closer to the LORD than God Himself can lift us. If we try, we fall. But when we fall, when we are humbled, when we are fallen, the Lord reaches down again and offers to lift us up closer to Him.
We have all heard the expression, captured in Proverbs 16:18 that pride comes before a fall. It is true. This is some of what Isaiah is speaking about. We have all heard of the ‘unsinkable ship’? Which ship was it that was supposed to be unsinkable? The Titanic. When we exalt ourselves, engage in hubris, sometimes we fall. Sometimes we are just convinced we are right until God and others let us know otherwise. Susan, last week shared about my encounter with a hummingbird. We saw one sitting very still on a branch with his little friend or friends. Susan said, "that’s a hummingbird". I, thinking that it was way too still, said "that is not a hummingbird". Immediately the little bird took to flight and hovered in right front of my face, looking me in the eye almost for a minute straight. It was actually a little intimidating. God and this hummingbird showed me!
When we exalt ourselves, lift ourselves up, it is like leaping from the top of a ladder trying to get higher – inevitably we fall.
The Lord loves us; He will always lift us up when we turn to Him in our times of need. The Lord offers us comfort and strength in the midst of everything in this world. Even when everything is falling down all around us, the Lord has His hand outstretched to lift us up and hold us close to Him in His love.
Now this passage that we are looking at today starting from 26:1 is a song, a song that will be sung in Judah. It is almost certainly referenced in Revelation 21.[i] The song says that we have a strong city and God makes walls around it that are Salvation for the city and everyone in it. We are then told to open the gates in this Salvation so that the righteous from every nation may come in. The nation which comes in and keeps the faith, perseveres, trusts in the Lord, is steadfast in staying inside these walls of Salvation will have perfect peace.[ii]
No matter what is going on in the outside world, if we run to the Lord’s Salvation, we can have His peace.[iii] These past weeks we have had some real storms here – snow and wind and more. Some places even had the power out. I heard of at least one person who grabbed their kids, fled their cold, dark house and headed to the home of a friend who had a generator and a fire place – she said when she got there she had so much peace finally – after suffering all the chaos of the storm – she had so much peace that she just curled up and fell right asleep and slept for many hours straight. This is what Isaiah is speaking about in Chapter 26:2-3. We can race to the Lord’s shelter in times of trouble and for as long as we stay there, as we persevere, as we remain inside the walls of His Salvation, we will get through these storms. But if we run out of the house into the storm…
There are real storms in this life. There are very real challenges in life. If anyone tells you otherwise they are wrong or they are deceiving you. John 16:33, in this life there will be trouble. There will be trials. There will be tribulations. There will. So when they come, head inside the walls of God’s Salvation; and if you are already there, stay there!
God offers us perfect peace even and especially when the storms are whipping all around us. A friend of mine, Stephen Court, recently released a book he authored with worship leader Phil Laeger. It is entitled ‘STAYED (followed by, as Steve pointed out, the longest subtitle in a generation, the simple secret to discovering and enjoying animating spiritual contentment and profoundly Divine fulfillment throughout all your years and into eternity’). This book is a devotional book and its theme is taken Isaiah 26:3, “You keep us in perfect peace, because we trust you”. The title STAYED in their book stands for
S Spend
T Time
A Alone
Y With YHWH (the LORD)
E Every
D Day
It is a devotional book; that is the goal of the book - to encourage us to spend time with the LORD each day, rather than to expertly exegete a particular pericope. They do however spend quite a bit of time in this book examining Isaiah 26:3 both in Hebrew (thanks to Strong’s and other resources) and in various English translations of the Bible.
I liked some of the truth they shared about the word ‘peace’ from their research. The word for peace in this text is the typical one, ‘shalom’. What makes it interesting here is that it is one of a few times in the Old Testament where the word is actually written twice: one other time in Isaiah, once in the Psalms and twice in Jeremiah. So, instead of “you keep us in perfect peace” this passage literally says, “You keep us in peace peace.”
Repetition is actually a common Hebrew idiom used for emphasis. Thus many English translations read “You keep us in perfect peace” but apparently in this verse when it says the Lord keeps us in shalom shalom/peace peace, apparently there is a line between each of the words and the point is made that this means even more than perfect peace, it means God’s peace – peace you can only get from the Lord.[iv] This makes sense because that is the only way we can actually have peace in the midst of some of the storms in this life.
There really are some horrible storms out there: there is war, there is famine, there is poverty, there is homelessness, there is hatred, there is sadness, there is grief. There is real loss and real harm.
Some people in this room, in this congregation, and/or in our little Salvation Army family in Port Alberni have suffered through some devastating storms lately. Some of us still have the winds of despair, anguish, loneliness, anxiety, rage, or sadness being blown all around us by the circumstances today. Some of us, our loved ones, our natural family, our Salvation Army family, people we care about are going through some unimaginable things right now. They really are. If that is you, I want to offer you this. I can pray with you. I can continue to pray for you. We can continue to hold you up in prayer, bringing you before the Lord so that indeed you may enter, re-enter and/or stay behind His gates of Salvation today – where there is perfect peace.
Just like heading off to a friend’s house with a warm fire and a warmer reception to get the perfect sleep in a real blizzard, is our comfort when we head to the LORD in the real physical, emotional, and spiritual storms of our lives. With that in mind I invite us all to turn to LORD in our time of need and experience His shalom/shalom, His perfect peace even in the midst of all the storms of real life
Let us pray.
[i] Cf. Geoffrey W. Grogan, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Isaiah/Exposition of Isaiah/III. God and the Whole World (24:1-27:13)/C. Praise, Prayer, and Prophecy (26:1-21), Book Version: 4.0.2
[ii] Cf. Walter Brueggemann, WBC: Isaiah 1-19, (Louisville, Kentucky, USA: Westminster John Know Press, 1998), 202.
[iii] Cf. Edouard Kitoko Nsiku , 'Isaiah', Africa Bible Commentary, (Nairobi, Kenya: Word Alive Publishers, 2010), 853
[iv] Phil Laeger and Stephen Court, STAYED: the simple secret to discovering and enjoying animating spiritual contentment and profoundly Divine fulfillment throughout all your years and into eternity (The Salvation Army: Infinitum Certified Boundless Book, 2020), 33-34
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