All Saints Day
November 7, 2004
Isaiah 26

^26:1In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah: We have a strong city; God makes salvation its walls and ramparts. ²Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps faith. ³You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. ⁴Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal. ⁵He 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. ⁶Feet trample it down--the feet of the oppressed, the footsteps of the poor. ⁷The path of the righteous is level; O upright One, you make the way of the righteous smooth. ⁸Yes, LORD, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for you; your name and renown are the desire of our hearts. ⁹My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you. When your judgments come upon the earth, the people of the world learn righteousness. ¹⁰Though grace is shown to the wicked, they do not learn righteousness; even in a land of uprightness they go on doing evil and regard not the majesty of the LORD. ¹¹O LORD, your hand is lifted high, but they do not see it. Let them see your zeal for your people and be put to shame; let the fire reserved for your enemies consume them. ¹²LORD, you establish peace for us; all that we have accomplished you have done for us. ¹³O LORD, our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us, but your name alone do we honor. ¹⁴They are now dead, they live no more; those departed spirits do not rise. You punished them and brought them to ruin; you wiped out all memory of them. ¹⁵You have enlarged the nation, O LORD; you have enlarged the nation. You have gained glory for yourself; you have extended all the borders of the land. ¹⁶LORD, they came to you in their distress; when you disciplined them, they could barely whisper a prayer. ¹⁷As a woman with child and about to give birth writhes and cries out in her pain, so were we in your presence, O LORD. ¹⁸We were with child, we writhed in pain, but we gave birth to wind. We have not brought salvation to the earth; we have not given birth to people of the world. ¹⁹But your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead. ²⁰Go, my people, enter your rooms and shut the doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until his wrath has passed by. ²¹See, the LORD is coming out of his dwelling to punish the people of the earth for their sins. The earth will disclose the blood shed upon her; she will conceal her slain no longer. (NIV).

Perfect Peace

  Life isn't always fair and easy. Of course you don't need me to tell you that! Sometimes we ourselves do dumb things that cause us trouble and sometimes bad things just happen over which we have no control. When we face trouble and discouragement, we seek a way out. Sometimes people turn to violent, vengeful behaviour to solve their problems; sometimes they seek to escape discouragement through alcohol or drugs or an illicit relationship. But those things only bring more trouble.

  God has a better solution to trouble and discouragement, namely the Day of the Lord. That is the time of Christ's return to judge the living and the dead. It is the time when God will execute perfect justice. It is the time when we will shed once for all the troubles of this life. The Holy Spirit speaks to us and calls us to reflect on the Day of the Lord and to put our trust in God. For, in the words of Isaiah, You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you.

  How did your week go? Would you say that it was an encouraging week or a discouraging one? Did the mail bring you some good news from family or friends, or a fist full of bills to pay? Did your employer or teacher pat you on the back and praise you, or scold you for poor performance? Were you healthy or did you suffer with a cold? Well, I suppose I could ask a hundred such questions. But I don't need to. The point is that we often face many disappointments and setbacks in life. Maybe it wasn't this past week, but I am sure that you wouldn't have to think too long or too far back to remember a very discouraging moment. There is no such thing as a trouble-free, care-free life. We have troubles and we get discouraged. And we seek relief!

  Isaiah spoke to Israel at a time when they had already experienced many troubles and were about to experience the worst trouble they had ever seen: captivity in Babylon. We today are horrified by the memory of events such as the holocaust in Germany or the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia. The ancient Israelites knew all about that stuff. Their dreams of restoring the glory days of David and Solomon were just that, dreams. They were an insignificant people on the world scene of the time, much like an African country today. They felt that God had let them down all the while knowing that they had failed in the mission that God had given them. Isaiah captures their mood in these words. LORD, they came to you in their distress; when you disciplined them, they could barely whisper a prayer. As a woman with child and about to give birth writhes and cries out in her pain, so were we in your presence, O LORD. We were with child, we writhed in pain, but we gave birth to wind. We have not brought salvation to the earth; we have not given birth to people of the world. (Vv. 16-18).

  Now maybe hearing of Israel's misery makes you feel better. Quite often, when we are feeling sorry for ourselves, seeing someone in a worse situation makes us feel better. It's a rather perverse thing that another's misery should cheer us up! But the Lord isn't trying to encourage us by Israel's misery. Instead, the good news that Isaiah spoke to them is the same good news that God speaks to us today. That good news is the Day of the Lord, Judgement Day. Judgment Day is good news? Yes! For just before our reading Isaiah says that the Day of the Lord is the day in which God will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth. (Isaiah 25:8).

  Then follows today's reading: In that day, says Isaiah, this song will be sung in the land of Judah: We have a strong city; God makes salvation its walls and ramparts. Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps faith. You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal. 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. Feet trample it down-- the feet of the oppressed, the footsteps of the poor. (Vv. 1-6).

  In the Day of the Lord, God will do two very good things that will bring all our troubles to an end. First of all, God will punish and destroy all evildoers.

  Has anyone insulted you, mocked you or cheated you lately? Have you had to bite your tongue and endure some injustice? Do you ever long for revenge, for God to punish all who have sinned against you? Or what about some of the recent events in our province? Does it make you mad that this teenage boy was not arrested and so stole a car and crashed it into another killing Theresa McIvoy? How do you feel about the 12 year old boy who beat the 11 year old boy unconscious on the bus in Yarmouth? Personally, it raises my blood pressure and makes me think of encouraging people to take the law into their own hands. It makes me cry out inside to God for vengeance. Isaiah's words could well be my own. My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you. When your judgments come upon the earth, the people of the world learn righteousness. Though grace is shown to the wicked, they do not learn righteousness; even in a land of uprightness they go on doing evil and regard not the majesty of the LORD. O LORD, your hand is lifted high, but they do not see it. Let them see your zeal for your people and be put to shame; let the fire reserved for your enemies consume them.

  The fact is that we will never be perfectly happy until God has removed all evil from the world. We need God to take vengeance and destroy the devil and all evildoers. There can be no heaven with evil, and heaven is what we want. The Scriptures are full of this yearning of God's people for justice. The Psalms especially record the pleas of the righteous for God to judge their enemies. Let me not be put to shame, O LORD, for I have cried out to you; but let the wicked be put to shame and lie silent in the grave. Let their lying lips be silenced, for with pride and contempt they speak arrogantly against the righteous. (Psalm 31:17-18).

  The good news is that God has promised to execute justice once for all in the world. And we know that he will because of what he has already done. In his day Isaiah could say, LORD, you establish peace for us; all that we have accomplished you have done for us. O LORD, our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us, but your name alone do we honour. They are now dead, they live no more; those departed spirits do not rise. You punished them and brought them to ruin; you wiped out all memory of them. You have enlarged the nation, O LORD; you have enlarged the nation. You have gained glory for yourself; you have extended all the borders of the land. (Vv. 12-15).

  But we know of an even greater act of the Lord. Not only has God punished arrogant world leaders of the past, but he gave his son to die for sin and destroy the work of the devil. Here is the foundation for the Day of the Lord to come. Christ will return in power and glory to destroy all that remains of evil only because he first died and rose from the dead. There, in that act, he did what we could never do. He suffered God's vengeance on evil for us so that we would be spared. God's perfect justice demands that all evil be destroyed including our own. Had Jesus not gone to the grave in our place, we would have to be judged and condemned ourselves. Truth is, part of the judgment has already taken place. Jesus died and we were spared. God has already been at work to save us from evil and vindicate us from our enemies. We have been made righteous and have the assurance that we have already passed from death to life and will not be condemned with the world.

  Trusting that Jesus has freed us from judgment and condemnation, we are confident that he will return to set things right in the whole world. I can forgive and forget the troubles of this past week, because they have been or will be resolved by the Day of the Lord. I can relax and let go of the anger I feel toward the teen who killed Theresa McIvoy and the system that failed to deal with him. I can let go of the anger if feel toward that 12 year old boy who beat the other kid on the bus and the family that abandoned him because I know that on the Day of the Lord, Christ will make everything right. I joyfully confess the words of our Creed, that Christ will return to judge the living and the dead. And I am encouraged by God's word spoken through the prophet Isaiah. Go, my people, enter your rooms and shut the doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until his wrath has passed by. See, the LORD is coming out of his dwelling to punish the people of the earth for their sins. The earth will disclose the blood shed upon her; she will conceal her slain no longer. (Vv. 20-21).

  Isaiah speaks of a second, maybe greater reason why the Day of the Lord is good news. It is the day we enter the glory of heaven! But your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead. (V. 19). The Day of the Lord, the return of Christ, is the day of resurrection! Even if we had perfect justice right now in the whole world, if all people were perfectly good and there were no wars in Iraq and Palestine and Chechnya, death would still put a damper on our joy. It would be the one injustice left. So Christ will take care of that too. He will raise us from the dead, transform our weak mortal bodies into glorious heavenly bodies and give us eternal life. We will eat from the tree of life from which Adam and Eve were barred.

  With new power and glory, the way God meant for us to be, we will enter again into God's presence. We will enter the city of God where God himself lives. There, in his presence, there will be no evil, suffering or death. There will be only life and perfection, righteousness and blessedness. Our longing for justice, for life and for God himself will be perfectly fulfilled.

  You and I have waited many years for the Day of the Lord, for Jesus' return. That day may yet be some time off in the future. Perhaps we will wait many more years and then join all the saints who waited before us. There, in partial glory, we will wait for the end. But whether we wait here or there, the Word of God is our strength. He will execute perfect justice and he will raise the dead. That Word of God is our power against discouragement. You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal.