Isaiah 25 & 26 What God Wants To Do

My commentary says these verses are talking about tribulation saints and Israel’s deliverance through the Tribulation.  I’ve always maintained that the Bible is holographic, in that seen from one vantage point, it says something to one person based on his circumstances, yet to another person in a different set of circumstances, it can say something completely different yet equally valuable.

In 26:8-9, God says about us:  “Our souls want to remember you and Your name.  My soul wants to be with You at night, and my spirit wants to be with You at the dawn of every day.”  God is telling us that He created us to have a hunger for Him.  But there’s a disconnect between our souls and spirits and our physical bodies due to sin.  What God prefers for us is stated in verse 7:  “The path of life is level for those who are right with God.  Lord, You make the way of life smooth for those people.” 

At some point in the past I’d written a note in my Bible about that verse.  Every time I see the word “level” in the Bible, God seems to show me a picture of a graph.  Here, that graph would be charting time from left to right, and the distance between my will and God’s up and down.  Those who are right with God should have zero distance between their will and His always, and the graph would be a level, flat line.

Verse 12 tells how we achieve that:  “Lord, all our success is because of what You have done, so give us PEACE.”  Struggling against God causes differences between our will and His.  Verse 3 tells us more about that:  “You, Lord, give true peace to those who depend on You, because they trust You.”  We have to start by trusting Him to provide that peace. 

Verses 13 & 14 tell how the graph used to look:  “Lord, our God, other masters besides You have ruled us, but we honor only You.  Those masters are now dead [or should be];  their ghosts will not rise from death.  You punished and destroyed them and erased any memory of them.”  God wants to kill off that old life and not let the ghosts of it haunt us.  He wants to wipe out the memories of it, but in our sin we sometimes won’t let Him do that.  We want to wallow in those memories.

Back in 25:1, we see what is possible if we will conform our will to God’s and let him have His way in our lives:

“Lord, you are my God.  I honor you and praise You, because You have done AMAZING things.  You have always done what You said You would do;  You have done what You planned long ago.”

Father, I agree with all of this, and I want this for my life.  You still have changes You want to make in my life, and I’ve got to let You be God to make them happen.  Please give me more of Your true peace and help me to only depend on You and not on myself.  Finish doing the amazing things I need You to do in my life that You planned long ago.  Keep the path of my life level with Yours.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford