Sermon Transcript
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for leading us, worship team. It’s a lot easier to sing that song than it is to actually mean it, isn’t it? I will trust in you. I hope that that song encourages you today.
Thanks for being a part of worship with us today. We’re in an interesting part of the calendar. If you think about it, we’re sort of— we’re still technically in summer, but we’re kind of back in school, and those of us who are thinking about the fall, and before we know it, things will start to get a little bit cooler around here. And the leaves will start to turn, and we’ll start thinking more firmly about fall, right? Football season is almost starting for those of you that care about football, and if you follow the Giants, you’re probably really looking forward to the football season right now.
If you follow the A’s, you’re ready for the baseball season to continue on, but it’s a different season of life for many of us, right? You end one season, and you get ready for the next. I don’t just mean in terms of, like, season, like summer to fall. I’m talking about just lifetime seasons that we go through. If you’re a parent, many of you are parents here in the room, you know about these seasons of life that you go through.
Some of you are in a current season right now, and it’s going to be continuing for the foreseeable future. Some of you are in a current season, and the season’s about to change for you, maybe a different season of life for you. Our family’s going through this right now. Our family of 5 is about to look a little bit differently, and we’ve been experiencing that just a little bit in that our oldest son Tate is going to be, in a couple weeks, going to Yosemite, as many of you know, to do a year of mission work with a group called Youth With A Mission, YWAM. He’s going to be serving the Lord and doing some discipleship training, and then going overseas next spring, and we’re excited about that.
That’s going to make our house, and our home, and our family look a little bit different, different season of life. And then my daughter, Raya, is going to graduate next May from high school, Lord willing. And so we’re just, you know, We always enter into these seasons and go, Lord, we don’t know what you’re going to do here, but Lord willing, it’s going to turn out the way that we hope that it will and all the ways that we plan, right? And then family sometimes looks a little bit different at the end of it. But every time we come into a season of change or we move from one season to the next— and students, maybe you can relate to this— you get new teachers, you get new classes, you have a new schedule, a new locker probably, you have new things to think about.
We always enter into new seasons with something in the back of our mind, and it’s 2 words: what if? We think of the positive— what could be, right? What if things got better in my life? What if this was the best year, this one that we’re going into? What if this was the best year I’ve ever had?
Alternatively, what if things don’t work out?
What if this thing that I’m hoping for will change my life won’t go so well? What if things don’t improve? What if I get rejected? What if this person who I used to be a friend with is no longer my friend? What if I get sick or a loved one gets sick?
What if I lose a friend? What if this class that I’ve been studying for and I need in order to do well on my college transcript, what if that doesn’t work out so well? What if this new job, this new experience that I have, what if it doesn’t work out so well? And I’m not trying to be pessimistic about it, but the reality is any of these things could happen, couldn’t they? There are no guarantees in this life other than the fact that sometimes things happen that are unpredictable to us, and we don’t know how to process that other than working harder so that we can try to control our circumstances, right?
We work harder and we, and we try to plan so that we can minimize risk and have as much certainty about the uncertainty of our future as possible. But no matter how hard you work and no matter how much we want things to look better, we can’t guarantee that. Something can change in a moment. And so when we’re faced with uncertainty and we’re faced with moving from one season to the next, it makes us ask questions. And for some of us, we start asking questions— if you’re a Christ follower— like in the back of our mind wondering, God, will you be enough for me in this next season if things don’t turn out the way that I want them to?
Will you be big enough? Are you big enough? Do you care enough? Are you able? Are you strong enough, God, that even in the midst of that, if things don’t turn out the way that I hope or plan, if things get worse, will you be enough?
And we ask those questions sometimes mentally. We don’t vocalize those things, but sometimes that’s in the back of our minds.
What-ifs have a just an amazing way of just taking our focus doing crazy things with them, right? We lose sleep when we’re dealing with uncertainty. When we have things that are on our mind that just totally get our focus, sometimes it’s hard to rest. We get restless. We get anxious.
Maybe we get impatient with somebody. Maybe we start getting testy, and we just start to lose our focus, and it can make us— it can consume us. And what-ifs have a way of doing that. Some of the what-ifs we face are just minor things that are just inconveniences, and if they don’t work out, oh well. But some of the what-ifs we face are some really, really big things, and sometimes, right now, some of you are going through it, a pretty significant what-if, maybe several what-ifs.
Is it possible to have peace in the midst of that uncertainty?
Is it possible to face a what-if and say, Even if it doesn’t work out okay, God will be enough. Is that possible? And if so, how do we experience that? That’s what I want to focus on this week and next. We concluded our study in 1 Peter last week, and we’re going to be starting a new series here in a few weeks.
And so this gives us an opportunity in between seasons to just focus on a word of encouragement. And I wanted to just bring to you something that’s very, very personal to me. It’s just 2 brief verses. That are in your bulletin. You may— if you want to open up your Bible, you can turn there.
The book of Isaiah, chapter 26. It’s 2 brief verses that I don’t want to just gloss over in any way or just pull out of context in any way, but these verses have been transformational for me. They have been for the last couple decades since I first memorized them. They’ve changed my life and they’ve changed my perspective in the face of uncertainty. And I come back to them again and again and again and again.
Chris Abashan came up to me earlier and told me, these are, Sarah, your favorite verses too. I’ve talked to several people that afterwards told me how meaningful these verses have been to them. Praise God for that. Sometimes God reminds us of things that we need to hear, or sometimes He shows us something new in a fresh way. And I just trust that God has you here today for a reason, to be encouraged by the message of these 2 verses in Isaiah chapter 26.
We’re going to focus on this week the idea of how do we deal with the what-ifs in our life. So we think about this book of Isaiah. It’s a daunting book. It’s an amazing book. So to just pull 2 verses out of it, it’s hard to understand what the context is.
But let me tell you, Isaiah was a prophet of God. He was a spokesperson for God. And all around Isaiah, as a young man, was a nation that was on the move. It was moving forward. There was prosperity.
It was— the nation of Israel was becoming this economic and military world power. But instead of turning to God and giving thanks to God for the prosperity that Israel and Judah had, they turned away from God and they turned to idols. And so the book of Isaiah, much of it, especially the first half of it, more or less, is about God’s judgment against those who turn away from God. And it’s— God is speaking through Isaiah, asking the people to come back, pleading with the people to come back and to return to God. And so when we come to chapter 26, this is really a song.
If you’ll look at verse 1 there, chapter 26, it says this is a song that was meant to be sung. I don’t know the tune of it. It’d be fun if we could sing it, but this is a song that was meant to be sung in repentance and a return to God. Because the people were trusting in other things, and God was calling them back to trust Him. Don’t trust these foreign nations.
Don’t trust your idols. Don’t trust your circumstances. In the face of this what-if, this nation of Assyria, the kingdom of Assyria that was coming in and looming over the nation, and the people were wondering, what if, what if, what if? And God was trying to get their attention and calling them back to Him, calling them back to Him. In the midst of uncertainty.
And He says this in verses 3 through 4 through the prophet Isaiah. It says, You— and it’s speaking to God— You, God, will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in You. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord Himself, is the Rock Eternal. Let me just read through these again because I just want to leave this up here on the screen. I want you to Soak in this and immerse yourself in this.
God, you, in the face of uncertainty, in the face of what-ifs, you will keep— you, God, keep in perfect peace the one, those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord himself, is the rock eternal. What we have here is we have a promise of something that I think all of us would love to be able to experience, and that’s perfect peace. I want to focus on this idea here for a moment of perfect peace. I don’t know if any of us would be honest to say that right now I could use some perfect peace.
Maybe that’s something you can relate to. I’d love to have some perfect peace right now. Just— not just peace, but perfect peace. And the word here in the Hebrew that Isaiah uses here is the word shalom, and maybe that’s a familiar word to you. Because it’s a word of greeting that people, Jewish individuals, will speak to one another, a word of blessing, a word of prosperity.
And it means peace, but it means so much more than peace. It means no conflict or working through differences like we would think peace is, but it’s so much more than that. What shalom really means is completeness, wholeness, prosperity. Health. It’s the taking of things that are separate and fusing them together.
If you think— I’ve heard it described this way— of having separate threads that are woven together into this beautiful cloth. By themselves, they’re separate, and they’re not the way they were intended to be until they are woven together in this whole complete fabric. And it’s a picture of what, what happens, for instance, like with our health. When a person’s body is not reacting the way that we expect it to. Things are not the way they’re supposed to be.
You’re sick, you’re dealing with some sort of injury because one part of your body is fighting against another. You’re not whole, you’re not complete. There’s not shalom, physically speaking, in your body. Shalom can also be used to describe when there’s conflict and discord in relationships. A group is not working together.
There’s not wholeness and completeness. These separate pieces are staying separate rather than being a unified whole. Well, that’s the idea here that Isaiah is getting to with God speaking through him, saying, you will, God, keep in perfect peace. You will provide shalom to us in the midst of uncertainty, this perfect peace.
And this is important for us to realize, this promise coming when it did in this dark season of Israel’s history, some of the darkest days of Israel’s history, and they’ve had some dark days.
Because it’s a reminder that in the beginning, Scripture tells us, there was perfect peace. There was shalom. Adam and Eve walked with God in the garden. Everything was as it was supposed to be. Everything was functioning perfectly.
They had a great relationship with each other, and more than that, they had an intimate relationship with God and with all that he had created. And yet mankind turned away from God, just as you and I each have done. The Bible says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, God’s perfect standard. We’ve gone our own way, just like Adam and Eve did, and that shalom was broken. But now God, in the midst of this dark, uncertain season, is saying you can have perfect peace.
Well, in what way is this shalom, this peace, perfect? It’s important for us to contemplate this for a little bit. This piece is perfect in quality, meaning there’s no other piece like this. That’s why he uses the word perfect there, or the English translators use the word perfect there. It’s to say, it’s to say this piece is unlike any other kind of piece that you can have.
There’s no defect in this piece. There’s no flaw. This is a one-of-a-kind piece that God is making available to you. This perfect peace that is perfect in quality. When Jesus was with his followers in the upper room the night that he was arrested and then later crucified, he was telling his followers that he was going to be leaving them, and this caused them to have a lot of uncertainty.
And so he promised them peace. And in John chapter 14, he says, my peace I give to you, my peace I leave with you, not as the world gives. I give to you not as the world gives. Well, how does the world give peace? It’s far from perfect, isn’t it?
It’s an imperfect peace. It’s circumstantial. It’s something that can change like this. And yet, God here is promising something that is perfect in quality, unlike anything you or I could ever imagine. On top of that, it’s perfect in quantity.
It’s perfect, meaning, in the amount or the sufficiency of this peace. This peace will be enough for you. And to get this, you have to get back to the original language that this was written in. Our English translators use the term perfect peace, but the word perfect in English is not actually in the Hebrew language. And so instead of peace, they use the word shalom, but instead of the word perfect, they also use shalom.
So it’s shalom, shalom. It’s more than one shalom. It’s double peace. And when something is repeated more than once in Scripture, it’s God trying to get our attention. So the amount of this peace that God is providing for you is not just qualitatively better, it’s quantitatively better.
The amount of it. It is more than enough for what you need. God will keep in perfect peace. Shalom, shalom. Wholeness, completeness.
Qualitatively different, quantitatively different, but also perfect in dependability. You can depend upon this type of peace. It’s constant, it’s perpetual, it’s eternal. Why? Because you don’t keep yourself in this perfect peace.
It’s God who keeps you in this perfect peace. God, you keep in perfect peace. You do for me what I cannot do for myself. I don’t have perfect peace. I need you to do this.
And so God is reliable and he’s dependable. This peace is something that I would love to experience. I’d love for all of us to be able to experience when you’re faced with the what-ifs and the uncertainty of life. So with this idea of perfect peace that’s perfect in quality and in quantity and in dependability, who Who gets to experience this perfect peace? Because the people of Israel were not experiencing it, and you may be going through a season right now where you’re not experiencing it.
Well, who gets to experience this? Who receives it? Verse 3 and verse 4 tell us. One condition is who receives perfect peace is the one whose mind is steadfast. The one whose mind is steadfast.
It’s right there for us. Well, what does it mean to have a steadfast mind? Some translations say to have a mind that is stayed on God. That means to have a mind that is firm, it’s immovable. When our mind is prone to think about a problem, doesn’t our problem seem to get bigger?
Focusing on a problem only makes it worse. And so you can tell yourself, I shouldn’t focus on the problem, I should only focus on the positive, I shouldn’t focus on the problem. Well, good luck with that unless you replace that with something else. To have a steadfast mind means to Have a single-mindedness that is focused on God. The Scriptures would use the term meditation, meditating on who God is and meditating on Scriptures, perhaps even a Scripture like Isaiah 26:3-4, that will keep you fixed and firm and steadfast and immovable.
It’s the opposite of what I saw this summer when I went to the Santa Cruz beach with many of you for the beach service that we had there. And I love watching the ocean and watching the waves come in and out. And I kept seeing these kids playing in the surf, and they would step towards the water as the water would recede, and then the water would start coming in, and they would run in the other direction. Or perhaps you saw what I saw if you were at the beach, and these little yappy dogs that would bark at the beach as the waves would go, and the dogs would chase the waves, and inevitably the dogs keep running away because they’re scared. Maybe that describes you in the face of this what-if, this uncertain circumstance.
And it’s the opposite of steadfastness. It’s the opposite of being firmly planted and rooted and established and having both feet firmly on solid ground. Perfect peace comes to the one whose mind is steadfast. So what we see here is I can, by choosing to fix my thoughts on God, experience perfect peace. But on top of that, it says that God is the one who keeps me in perfect peace.
And in fact, the translation of this in the original language is in a passive voice, which means that somebody else has to be the one to keep us in perfect peace. You don’t keep your mind in perfect peace. God is the one who does that. Isn’t that amazing? God keeps us in perfect peace.
God is the one upon whom we can lean. God is the one that we can fully place our support on. And so, when you wake up in the morning in the face of uncertainty, maybe even this week you would do this, is to look at your uncertainty and say, God, would you fix my thoughts on you?
When I’m prone to think of other things, when I’m prone to wander, when my mind is prone to focus on chaos, Would You bring me back again and again and again, back to the truth of what You’re telling me here, God, that You keep me in perfect peace? Maybe you just need to memorize that verse itself. God, You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast. Keep my mind steadfast. Help me to trust You and to stay there.
I’m getting rid of any other crutches. I’m getting rid of anything else in which I would place my mind right now. Fix my mind on you. Let me fix my mind on the truth of who you are. And as you do that, you will experience God’s presence and his power and his provision for you in a way that will just blow your mind because of the truth of God’s Word.
You will see that God is true. His Word is true every time. Who receives perfect peace? The one whose mind is steadfast. Secondly, it’s the one who who puts confidence in God alone.
It says the one who trusts God. What it really means is the one who puts confidence in God. It’s a word that means to rely upon, to cling to, like a child clinging to their parents’ leg when they’re in the mall or when they’re in a crowd of people so that they don’t let go. It is us holding on to God, and really him holding on to us. That’s what it means to trust here.
God, you keep in perfect peace the one whose mind is steadfast, firmly fixed And the one who trusts in you and puts confidence in you alone. The people of Israel stubbornly refused to trust God even though Isaiah was calling them back, calling them back. They trusted their idols, they trusted their human leaders, they trusted other nations like Egypt and others in the face of chaos and uncertainty. And yet God is saying once again that he allows uncertainty into our life to show us how much we need to depend upon him and how much we need to put our confidence in him alone. In this season of change, if you’re going through one right now, in whom are you placing your trust?
Whom could it be said that you’re placing your confidence in right now? In what are you placing your confidence right now? We have a number of choices out there, but the scripture says that God keeps in perfect peace the one who puts their trust in God.
Alone. And that’s hard to do in this culture, in this world. We’re surrounded by technology, we’re surrounded by things, science and things that tempt us to live by sight alone and to live by what we can control and to live based on what I see and what makes sense to me and what I can rationalize, what I can empirically prove. And yet, we’re not called to live by that. We’re called to live by faith, not by sight.
And sometimes what God is calling you to do in a season of chaos may sound completely counterintuitive. It may go against the grain of everything that your left brain is telling you to do. Your analytical, logical brain may be telling you one thing, and yet God may be saying something different. And that’s why it’s important to put confidence in God alone, not live by what you see, not live by what you feel, but live by what you know to be true. Alba Collegian, our children’s director here at the church, was sharing with me an activity she did with our children in Sunday school this summer that really encouraged her and encouraged me.
She shared a folder with me of sheets that the children, after the end of one of the lessons, were writing out things that they were told that they know to be true about God. Not that they wish were true about God, but that they know to be true about God based on who God reveals himself to be in the Bible. And the answers these children give were priceless. How I know that God is true because God loves me no matter what. I know that God is true because he is Creator.
I know that God loves me because he is with me no matter what. And these wonderful truths that even the children themselves were being reminded of. Not wishful thinking, things that we can trust and know to be true. And maybe you need to do that. Psalm 103 says, bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of His benefits.
And the psalmist there lists the benefits of trusting God and how God comes through for us. Maybe you need to do that in this season of uncertainties, to just remind yourself of who God is. Because here’s what I know to be true. Is the key to trusting God is knowing God. Let me repeat that.
The key to trusting God is knowing who God is. Not who you wish God to be, but who He really is. The key to trusting God is coming to know Him through personal relationship. And the way that He primarily speaks to us is through the Bible, through God’s Word. And so if you’re depending upon anything other than the truth of who God is in His Word, you’re going to continue to feel anxiety.
You’re going to continue to have your heart pulled in different directions rather than being firmly, steadfastly experiencing the peace and the presence of God that he wants to give you and me. So here’s what, to me, the offer is of perfect peace. It’s, first of all, that I’m going to cling to God’s promises in this season of doubt, the season of uncertainty. Some of you need to make that declaration to God. Help me to claim and to cling to your promises and Not just pulling verses out at random and saying that it applies to you, but looking at what Scripture truly says about what God has in store for you, and then meditating on that, clinging to it throughout the course of the day, writing it on notes and maybe putting it up in your cubicle or putting it on your smartphone or whatever it’s going to do to remind you of the truth of who God is.
That’s what it means to trust God, is keep clinging to that, keep holding on to that, and never letting those things go. But fully trusting God also means obedience. Trust is not passive. Trust acts. It’s putting feet to our trust.
And so, there may be some obedience that God is calling you to, and you’re not experiencing perfect peace because perhaps you’re being disobedient in an area. Perhaps God is showing you something that you need to start doing, or stop doing, or keep doing, and there’s this voice that comes from God Himself. You might call it your conscience, but it’s the Spirit of God speaking to you, And it’s a reminder that there may be a next step for you to take, and you need to determine from God what that looks like for you. But in the midst of that, that is the complete trust and confidence that God wants us to have. We’re leaning on his promises and we’re leaning on who God is.
We’re gonna spend more time next week focusing on putting trust in who God is and what that specifically looks like in another part of the Bible that I’m excited to share with you.
But for you today, it may just be that you need to come back to focus on who God is and to remind yourself of the truth of the character of God, that He’s unchanging. Because what we see here in verse 4 of Isaiah 26 is an immovable God, an eternal God. It says God is the Rock Eternal. That’s why we can place our trust in Him. That’s why we can put our confidence in Him.
That’s why we can have our minds steadfast, because God is an eternal rock. He’s firm. You can plant your feet on Him, and He doesn’t move. He doesn’t change. He doesn’t shift like everything else in our world does.
He offers perfect peace, not imperfect peace. You can plant your life on Him. You can find shelter in Him. You build your life on Him, and it’s solid ground.
As I think about perfect peace, and I had a conversation with some of our family ministry staff a couple weeks ago as I was thinking about this passage, and I was reminded that perfect peace is not a thing. It’s not a circumstance. You may have, when you think about perfect peace, a location, a place that makes you think about perfect peace. Ah, the beach, the mountains, wherever that is. Perfect peace is a person.
And you and I have the opportunity to have a relationship with perfect peace and to experience that in our lives every single day, where you can cast your cares on God because He cares about you, where you can boldly come before God’s throne of grace and receive mercy in your time of need because you have this great High Priest who has gone before us, the book of Hebrews tells us. We have a God that we can come to with prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, Philippians 4 tells us. And we can not be anxious for anything, but coming to God with our requests, and he gives us a peace that passes all comprehension. That God helps us and he keeps us by setting our mind on that which is true and noble and right and pure and good.
God will keep you in perfect peace, but you come to him, say, God, keep me here. So that I can experience this. Help me to have the relationship with you that you want me to have. It’s a wonderful invitation, and I hope that you all will take God up on it to experience this perfect peace. Let’s pray.
With your head bowed and your eyes closed, I’d love to just pray for anyone here today who would say that they would love to have some perfect peace right now in their circumstances. And it can mean anything right now, no matter what you’re going through. I’d love to pray with you. If you would say today, with your eyes closed and your head bowed, that you would love to experience God’s perfect peace right now in a season that you’re going through, would you raise your hand? I’d love to just pray with you.
Just keep your hand raised. God, I just pray for these who’ve raised their hands before you, and perhaps others who may not have raised their hands, but they’re just simply in their hearts saying that, yes, they need perfect peace. I pray that perfect peace over them, and I pray that the Spirit of God would come into the, the lives of these individuals in a fresh way, filling them, encouraging them, reminding them of the truth of who you are. Thank you that we don’t have to hold on to this chaos, this uncertainty, this what-if, that we can give it to you with prayer and with thanksgiving. And Lord, that you keep us in peace, perfect peace.
And I pray that experience of perfect peace this week. God, I pray that for all of us here this week, that no matter what we’re going through, that, Lord, we would look for you, that our eyes would be opened, because you yourself are our perfect peace and you hold us steadfast. And I pray that when we’re prone to wander and fix our eyes on something else, something that is less than perfect, that, Lord, I pray you would return us to that which is perfect. And I pray that we would grow in in leaps and bounds in our trust and confidence in who you are. Put these words from this message in our minds, in our hearts this week, God, that we may live for you.
For we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
