Nepaug Bible Church - http://www.nepaugchurch.org - Pastor's Adult Sunday School Notes - http://www.nepaugchurch.org/bb/bb20031102.htm

ISAIAH: GOD'S DIRECTIVES TO THOSE TROUBLED AT GOVERNMENTAL APOSTASY
Part XVII: God's Salvation From His People's Inability ADEQUATELY To Trust Him
(Isaiah 26:1-21)
  1. Introduction
    1. Though we may be able to tell other BELIEVERS they must trust in Christ for blessing in their lives, and even though we ourselves KNOW we must live by faith in God for blessing, actually DOING so is difficult when everything goes smoothly in our lives. The "good life" tends to spoil real faith in God!
    2. Isaiah foresaw the salvation God would provide from his nation's inability to TRUST Him, a salvation offered in the fiery trials of the coming Great Tribulation that also speaks to our era as follows:
  2. God's Salvation From His People's Inability ADEQUATELY To Trust Him, Isaiah 26:1-21:
    1. In the Millennial reign of Christ, saints who came out of the seven-year Great Tribulation will look back on their trials and sing the song given in Isaiah 26:1b-21, cf. Isa. 26:1a; Bib. Know. Com., O.T., p. 1074.
    2. That song reveals the way God saves His people from their failure to trust Him fully as they ought:
      1. Saints who will come out of the Great Tribulation will glorify God in the Millennium for saving them:
        1. These saints will rejoice in the new city of God's protection and deliverance for them, Isa. 26:1b-2.
        2. They will rejoice in the great inner peace God has given unto them for trusting in Him, Isaiah 26:3.
        3. They will admonish others to trust in God as He is a great reward for such a trust, Isaiah 26:4-6.
      2. These saints will reveal in this song the great lengths to which God had to go to get them to trust in Him, and that through God's use of the fiery trials of the Great Tribulation, Isaiah 26:7-19:
        1. The saints who will have come through the Great Tribulation will relate how God blesses those who trust His Word, but that He does not bless those who fail to do so, but who disobey Him, Isa. 26:7-9.
        2. They will note the ungodly do not see their need to trust God in grace, but how they need fiery trials to force them to that point of trusting God because there is no other route to take, Isaiah 26:10-11!
        3. As a RESULT of the Great Tribulation, these saints will testify how God used that era's trials to reveal their own need fully to trust God for help, Isa. 26:12-19: (a) These saints will recognize it was God who will supply them peace and blessings in the Millennium, Isa. 26:12. (b) This trust will be based on their recalling how helpless they had been under godless dictators in the Great Tribulation, but how marvelously God had turned the tables on these evil rulers, Isa. 26:13-14. (c) They will testify how God has widened Israel's borders [to fulfill the Abrahamic Covenant], Isa. 26:15. (d) They will testify how their own efforts to gain relief in the Great Tribulation were futile, and how God had instead helped them when they in duress could barely whisper a prayer of faith for His help, Isa. 26:16-18. (e) They will recall how God had to raise their martyred dead, Isa. 26:19.
    3. For his own generation that had not yet experienced the coming Great Tribulation, Isaiah gave some parting words of suggestion based upon this future song of post-Great Tribulation saints, Isaiah 26:20-21:
      1. Isaiah urged his people to hide themselves until God's Tribulation Period wrath was passed, Isa. 26:20.
      2. Indeed, Isaiah revealed God in great wrath would expose all of the earth's wrongs and punish them at this Great Tribulation time, Isaiah 26:21.
Lesson: The saints who come through the Great Tribulation will TESTIFY in the Millennial Kingdom that they had NEEDED God's wrathful, fiery trials of that former Tribulation era to make them TRUST in GOD! Thus, Isaiah called his OWN generation to respect and heed God NOW for blessing!

Application: As Jesus urged the Laodiceans in Revelation 3:18 to "buy" from Him gold tried in the fire, ADEQUATE FAITH in God OFTEN comes from realizing our own HELPLESSNESS apart from God, and that ONLY under GREAT TRIALS! (1) If we thus FACE trials of such magnitude that all we can do is WHISPER a prayer of faith for God's help, may we WHISPER it! (2) If we have NOT faced such trials and know we do not trust God for ALL of our welfare, may we heed Isaiah's call for HIS generation to RESPECT God's discipline and apply our lives to righteous living! (3) If we can not RESPECT God since we rely on false crutches of this life, may we heed Revelation 3:18 and ASK God for "gold tried in the fire" to see Him remove all idols so we will trust in Him ALONE! (4) If we HAVE "bought" such gold, may we SHARE its testimony for the good of others as will the Tribulation saints!