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Welcome back for day 5 of week 3 of our look through the book of Isaiah, our
last day this week. We're going to look at Isaiah chapter 26 today as we
continue to look about God's vision for change in your life in this first half
of Isaiah. Isaiah 26 is a chapter about light living.

Jesus said, "My yoke is easy, my burden light. " Those who live in the light
should live light. Our burden should be light.

This is a picture of a great responsibility and task and yet a sense of ease and
freedom in the midst of it all. My burden is light. Light living.

We live in a day of light everything, light salad dressings and light pizza and
light frozen dinners and light beer and light everything. These verses, this
chapter is about light living, about less stress, more joy in your life. God's
been talking to me about this.

I hope he'll have something to say to you about this as we go through these
verses. Every day might be full to the brim for you but it doesn't have to be
overflowing with stress. You can be busy without being burdened.

Jesus promised. Jesus promised that he wants to give to us a yoke that's easy, a
burden that is light. Isaiah talks about less stressful, more joyful living in
this chapter and in so doing he uses some pictures from his day.

He talks about a strong city, a smooth path and a good king. First a strong
city. That certainly made life easier in Isaiah's day.

It meant you had protection from attacking armies. You could sleep at night. You
didn't have to stay awake all night wondering who might attack your home because
you had walls around you.

You had security for your family. You could sleep lighter, you could live
lighter. Verses one to four.

"In that day 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 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.

" This strong city is the truth that Augustine brought out in his famous work
"The City of God. " The city of man is a crumbling city. The city of God is a
strong and eternal city.

And Isaiah here is not talking about a physical city, about Israel's physical
enemies. He's talking about their spiritual enemies here. He says you built this
strong city but the walls are salvation.

The salvation that we've been given in Jesus Christ gives us the protection that
we need. He talks about open gates. Welcome is extended to everybody.

It doesn't matter how strong the city is if you're on the outside looking in. So
he's saying here God wants to let you into this strong city and it's the
salvation of Jesus Christ. And then he talks about how to live lighter, how to
live with a lighter heart.

In this verse, this famous verse, you will keep in perfect peace those whose
minds are steadfast, those whose minds are set on you. What does it mean to have
a steadfast mind? It has to do with where your mind stays.

Where does your mind stay? Where does your mind live? It has to do with where
your mind focuses, where your mind rests.

When your mind stays on, focuses on, rests in the salvation that you have in
Jesus Christ, you will live lighter, a strong city, but there's also a smooth
path. That's part of living lighter, this picture that Isaiah gives. Verses
seven to nine.

The path of the righteous is level. You the upright one make the way of the
righteous smooth. Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for you.

Your name and renown are the desire of our hearts. 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. This level smooth path, it's much easier to walk than a rocky
hilly climb. Now I know in our day we like the challenge of climbing a mountain,
but remember they walked everywhere, every single day.

So when you had to walk back and forth, back and forth to the same place, if you
could have a level smooth path, it made everything so much easier. Smooth paths,
Isaiah tells us here, are created by righteous hearts. In these verses, there's
this beautiful description of what it means to have a righteous heart before
God.

It has to do with how you walk, how you wait, and what you want. How you walk,
walking in the way of your laws. A righteous heart is saying, "God, what's your
direction for my life?

" And when you walk in that direction, your path is going to be smoother and
your life is going to be less burdened. It also has to do with how you wait.
Lord, we wait for you.

Are you waiting for your answer to the problem, or are you waiting for God to do
what you demanded that he do, or are you waiting for God to do what he wants to
do? When you make your waiting more personal, I'm not just waiting on something
to happen, I'm waiting on God to act. He's worth waiting for, obviously.

When you make your waiting more personal in that way, the burden of your life
lessens. Many times we have burdens because we have to wait. You're not waiting
without God.

You're waiting with God. We wait for you. It has to do with how you walk, how
you wait, but righteousness here also has to do with what you want.

Your name and your renown are the desire of our hearts. My soul yearns for you
in the night. My spirit longs for you in the morning.

What do you most want in life? When you look at what you most want, you get a
real sense of whether you're going to live with a burdened heart. When you most
want something that God doesn't most want for you, when you most want something
other than God in your life, of course your heart's going to be more and more
burdened because you're trying to make that thing that you want the thing that
satisfies you, and it cannot.

It cannot. It doesn't mean that God doesn't want that for you, by the way. He
may want that for you.

He may not. But the truth is, if it's the thing that you most want, it cannot
satisfy you, so your heart's going to become more and more burdened. How do you
walk?

How do you wait? How do you want? That righteousness of heart causes us to have
a smoother path, and so we have less burden.

So it's this strong city. It's this smooth path. Less burden in our lives also
has to do with the picture in this chapter of a good king.

Let's look together at verses 12 to 15. "Lord, you established peace for us. All
that we have accomplished, you have done for us.

Lord our God, other lords beside you have ruled over us, but your name alone do
we honor. They are now dead. They live no more.

Their spirits do not rise. You punished them and brought them to ruin. You wiped
out all memory of them.

You have enlarged the nation, Lord. You have enlarged the nation. You have
gained glory for yourself.

You have extended all the borders of the land. " Oh, in that day, life was so
much easier with the right ruler because the king had ultimate power. He wasn't
a democracy in that day.

Whatever the king said is what happened. So if you had an evil king, you had
great burden. But here is a good king, a king who establishes peace.

Here is a good king, a king who enables accomplishment. Here is a good king, a
king who enlarges the borders. So these pictures from Isaiah 26, 12 to 15, Jesus
is a good king.

He wants to do these three things in your life. Establish peace, enable
accomplishment, enlarge the borders. He wants to establish peace in your life.

Peace I give to you. He wants to give you peace in a daily way, in your spirit.
That lessens the burden in your life.

He wants to enable you to accomplish God's will in your life. When you feel like
you're not getting anything done, when you feel like your life is not headed
anywhere, of course you feel more and more burdened. But when Jesus enables you
to begin to accomplish God's will in your life, there is a lessening of burden
in your life.

And he wants to enlarge the borders of God's vision for your life. When you feel
trapped or stuck or caught, then you have burden. When you feel that God's
opened the doors of vision for your life, then there's a lessening of burden.

So strong city, smooth path, good king. Those are pictures of God lessening the
burden, of giving us this lightness of living. You depend on him, strong city.

You follow his leadership, smooth path. You enjoy his blessings, good king.
That's the way to the light living that Jesus talks about in Matthew 11, verses
28 to 30.

Let me read those verses before we pray. Come to me, all you who are weary and
burdened, and I will give you rest, Jesus says. Take my yoke upon you and learn
from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your
souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Jesus, we come to you, we bring our
hearts to you. That's where we want to live.

You see the burden that we live with each day because of our schedules, the
burden that we live with because of our circumstances, and you understand that
you have compassion. You will love us in the burdens that we have, but you also
want to lift those burdens. So I pray that you'd help us to learn day by day to
trust in you.

You are our strong city. You are our smooth path. You are the good king that we
need to trust in you.

So instead of taking the burden of trying to make it better by ourselves, we
release the burden to you right now. In Jesus' name, we release it. Amen.

Well, join us next week. We're going to continue to look through Isaiah together
at what he has to teach us about how to live with a different kind of vision,
God's vision for change in your life. See you next week.