Isaiah 26:8
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Good evening, church. It's good to be with you this evening. Turn with me, if you would, to Isaiah 26. Isaiah 26. It's also, the verse is just printed right on the front of your bulletin. That's not fair. I am a dad of four kids, ages eight to two. As you can imagine, this is a phrase I hear in my house all the time. that's not fair. He took my toy, you know, he took my train, whatever. That's not fair.
And what I find interesting, we've all seen this in kids, haven't we? What I find interesting about kids complaining about things being fair is that there's something within them, isn't there? There's some natural propensity to justice within little kids. At the same time, they're quick to correct wrongs being done to them, aren't they? He did this to me. That's not fair. But then my kids, like many of us have been and as we've seen, they also say that things aren't fair when they've actually done something wrong.
So, you know, I want this and I want this. well, you can't have that. That's not fair, you know? So we're quick often, you know, kids are quick to want justice for themselves when things are done to them, but maybe they're slower to want justice for themselves, judgment for themselves. I think that we are like little toddlers in this way. We want right judgment to fall on those who have sinned against us. But what do we do when we're the ones deserving of judgment? We want to see sin punished in others, and yet we're slow to point out sin in our own life. Well, what I hope we see from our short devo tonight in this short passage, is that the desire for right judgment from us, that's a good thing. That's a
good desire. God's judgments are good. But what I also hope we see is that God's judgments in some ways should concern us because we have every right to be judged. So playing my cards right here at the beginning, I hope to kind of bathe us in the gospel to see that God is a good judge, but that should concern us. So what do we do with that? So let's read our passage, Isaiah 26, chapter, Isaiah chapter 26, verse 8. In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you.
Your name and your remembrance are the desire of our soul. So I hope the main kind of point of our passage this evening, the main point of our devotion is just very simply this. God's judgments are good, so trust in him. God's judgments are good, so trust in him. And that'll be the two points. God's judgments are good, point number one, so trust in him, point number two. I'm simple.
So, point number one. God's judgments are good. So, just very brief background. We're jumping into the middle of Isaiah. You're probably very familiar with the book of Isaiah, but just a quick kind of reminder, right? Isaiah is one of the prophets of the people of God. He's speaking to the people of God at a time of great tumult and wars and all these things. He's speaking hundreds of years before the coming of Christ. And a big theme in the book of Isaiah is that God's people have been just screwing everything up. God's people have been living like the pagan nations around them. And so Isaiah comes with words from God about the judgment that God will have towards his people, and that he'll even use those pagan nations around them to judge the people. But then, another big theme in the book of Isaiah is that despite the sin of God's people,
God promises to save them. He promises to restore them, and he promises to judge the pagan nations who have persecuted his own people. So I think both of those themes, those big themes of kind of the sin of the people of God and also God's judgment toward the world are in our passage this evening, right? In the path of your judgments, oh Lord, we wait for you.
When I got this passage assigned to me, I don't know why it was assigned, Maybe just because you were the desire of our soul and John Piper desiring God, maybe. But when I saw in the path of your judgments, my immediate thought was judgment, God's judgments are not something that we think a lot about as Christians. At least I don't. I don't kind of sit in my devos normally and think, God, you're such a judging God. I'm so glad that you judge. But I think if we think about it for a second, we actually are really thankful, and we have every reason to be rejoicing in God's good judgments. So when Isaiah uses the term judgment here, right, he's talking about God's verdicts, like his pronouncements, the way he sees things, and the way he declares things to be, right, sentencing right and wrong. So unlike my toddlers who struggle to understand what kind of correct
justice is, what correct judgment is, God invented justice. God is justice itself. He is perfectly right in all of his judgments. They're good. So in Isaiah's day, one of the things that Isaiah wanted God's people to rejoice in is the fact that the nations around them that were kind of terrifying them, well, God wouldn't let their sin go unpunished.
He wouldn't let the sin against his people go unpunished. He would rightly judge. I think that has a lot of application for us today in the fallen world that we live in. I think it should be really encouraging for us as Christians living in a really hard fallen world to kind of fall back on the fact that God's judgments are good. So, right, you watch the news for two seconds and it's so terrifying and discouraging.
Think about our brothers and sisters. A lot of people are at CrossCon and thinking about missions. Think about all of our brothers and sisters in the faith in other countries who are physically abused and persecuted for their Christian faith. Think about just general news and threats and wars and rumors of wars. Think about everything that's just been going on the past couple of weeks. injustices in the world, the sin that we see in the world is grievous. How do we deal with that?
God won't let those sins go unpunished. The judgments of the Lord are good. When we as Christians see these kinds of things around us, we should think about Isaiah 26, in the path of your judgments, Lord, we wait for you. Think about those words from the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 12. What should our attitude be as Christians when bad things happen? Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written, it is mine to avenge. I will repay, says the Lord. So rest in the fact that God's judgments are good.
But I alluded to this earlier, if God's judgments are good, then before we kind of jump to that point number two, so easily so we can trust him, what do we do with that? What do we do with the fact that if God's judgments are good, then we actually are in trouble initially. If God won't let sin go unpunished, if that's true, then we have a huge problem. As Pastor John said this morning one of the biggest problems that that we have in our culture today is just the the glibness which with with which we see sin our sin is serious and our sin before god is serious so what do we do what's the what's the solution i love that it's actually here in in isaiah chapter
26. If you have your Bible, just look at the previous verse. Just look at Isaiah 26, verse 7. The path of the righteous is level. You make level the way of the righteous. So how do we get from point A to point B? How do we get from the judgments of the Lord are good to then he can be the desire of our soul. How do we get there? He puts us there.
It's exactly what we were thinking about this morning. It's by God making us right with him. It's by God making us righteous. It's by taking our sin from us and giving us the perfect righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ. It's true that sin cannot go unpunished and that we should see the severity of our sin. Where do we see the severity of sin the most acutely?
It's in the cross. The cross shows us how serious our plight is. Brothers and sisters, what a glorious thing that then that display is given to us. on the cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied. That's what God does for his people.
He takes away their sin. I think this actually is really cool when you think about that word judgments as Isaiah is using it here. Because judgments means the verdicts of God, the pronouncements of God. Brothers and sisters, when you put your faith in Christ, God pronounces you righteous in the Lord. He pronounces you good and right in Christ.
So what's another way we can rejoice and trust in the judgments of the Lord? Well, if you're in Christ, you love the judgments of the Lord because he has judged you right in Christ. Praise the Lord for that. Not because of anything we have done, but because of Christ's life on our behalf and death in our place. So how do we get to desiring God, to delighting in God if he's just? It's because his good judgment is what made you righteous in the first place.
Praise the Lord for that. If you're here this evening and you haven't trusted in Christ, friend, you have every reason to be fearful of God's judgments. That rejoicing of, wow, that's so great. I'm so thankful. You don't have that. You just don't. But you can put your faith in Christ. He puts his arms out open to you and says, come to me.
It's as simple as that. And for those of us here this evening who are Christians, just don't let these wonderful truths of the gospel, that our sin is big, but God's grace is bigger, don't let that be dry in your life. Rejoice and dwell in the fact that God's judgments are right and that because of Christ, we can trust his judgments. Because the sinless Savior died, our sinful soul is counted free.
For God, the just, is satisfied to look on him and pardon me. Let's pray. Lord, we praise you for the gospel. We praise you that your judgments are good. And that despite our sin, you sent Christ to die on our behalf. And that when we put our faith in him, you see us with his righteousness. Lord, we praise you for that.
In Christ's name, amen.