Text:

3 You keep him in perfect peace
    whose mind is stayed on you,
    because he trusts in you.
⁴ Trust in the Lord forever,
    for the Lord God is an everlasting rock. (Isaiah 26:3-4, ESV)

Context, Context, Context:

Isaiah was God’s prophet during the ascent of Assyria and the decline of Judah in the 700s B.C. His message was plain: the holiness and glory of God and his righteous hatred of idolatry and religiosity devoid of the truth.

Always when truth is proclaimed, when righteousness is called for, a winnowing occurs. What’s down in the well of people comes up in the bucket, so to speak. Pressure reveals what we are like as people. Some will reveal resentment and seek to destroy; others will cling to the Lord and seek to encourage the saints.

That’s where these lines from Isaiah are so germane and helpful. Isaiah writes that “the Lord will keep him in perfect peace” whose mind is fixed upon the Lord. Why? Because the man or woman of God trusts the Lord, the everlasting rock.

Yesterday at church, we sang “From Everlasting [Psalm 90]” by Sovereign Grace. And typical of the music of Sovereign Grace, it is rooted in Scripture. Psalm 90:2 reads as follows:

Before the mountains were brought forth,
    or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
    from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

Unlike sinners, God is steadfast, constant, and unchanging. And the man or woman of God who longs for biblical shalom will trust God rather than man. That’s what Christ taught, too, of course: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27).

Encouragement: There are many metaphors used in Scripture to describe the Lord–water, light, bread, Good Shepherd, on and on. But the one Isaiah uses here is that the Lord is an “everlasting rock.” He’s the Rock of Ages–steadfast, constant, and trustworthy. For God’s people, we are given the peace/shalom of God, and our lives will bear that out.