Isaiah 26 - Bringing it all Together
 9 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. 10 Though grace is shown to the wicked,
      they do not learn righteousness;
      even in a land of uprightness they go on doing evil
      and regard not the majesty of the LORD.
Isaiah 26:9-10 brings it all together for me. This chapter speaks to me of Jesus’ coming at the end of the Tribulation, to establish His new kingdom on Earth. However, before He can do that, He has to clean house.
The thing to notice is that His judgement will be just, and that is why Isaiah can say that in that judgement the world will learn righteousness. This contains so much meaning in it, beyond the words I have to express, that I do not do it “justice” myself, but let me try.
As a reminder of why I am doing this word study (versus the creation studies I’ve been doing here the last 3 years), I see a need to explain why Biblical times are so different than today. I don’t mean why do we have telephones and they had soothsayers, but why is it that the world’s morality used to see God’s followers going to war and realize what a mighty God we serve, but today see His followers as war-mongering hypocrites who must be peaceful in all things, letting the world fight the wars and govern the nations, leaving religious faith and demonstration out of government and defense-of-country altogether. It’s an incredibly monumental shift that I believe makes for a Godless nation, yet in the name of the very justice that can only come from the God they exclude.
The challenge then for the Christian is to appear as righteous to the world… and we have a choice in doing so. We can either simply choose righteousness from the perspective of pushing government and defense and society at large toward more Godly principles, and do so at the ire of those whom we must try and save from eternal damnation, or we look at what the world believes is a good Christian, and we let that influence what we do so as to woo them into God’s fold through our faithfulness and righteousness. But, frankly I’m not sure what kind of choice that really is, and that is what brought me to studying righteousness… I believe that righteousness is the answer to this whole thing, that it explains why the world’s perspective on the Godly is so different, and why Godly conduct in the eyes of the world (in many cases, even the eyes of the church!) seems such a polar opposite to what it once was. But then we come to Isaiah 26, and specifically verses 9 and 10, which sums it up for me quite nicely.
My soul yearns for you in the night;
Can people tell that our soul yearns for God? In the past, it was the nation that fought for God that obviously yearned for God. These days, the world sees the peaceful Christian as someone who yearns for God. It is the only biblical argument for peace over war that I have found for a country to follow. The New Testament speaks of peace in your personal life, but leaves the Old Testament’s testimony untouched for how a nation overall is to do it… yet the world sees Christians supporting war and they lump is in with the those who hate God, as if we yearned only for power, and not God. That is a true a shift, and is the only reason I would make a decision to leave warring to the nations, and bow out of it. The problem however is that this is not justice, and where we must come to the defense of the powerless, as a nation, true justice can only come through war when life and survival of the weak and innocent are at stake.
God’s judgement teaches the world righteousness
In other words, righteousness is learned (in part) through justice. Righteous also requires believing God; are we to believe God’s definition, or man’s? And it requires obedience; are we to obey man and stay out of wars, or obey God and defend the helpless? This should be a no-brainer.
Notice that killing evil people teaches you righteousness.
Protecting the innocent teaches you righteousness.
Pacifism accomplishes no justice. Pacifism cannot teach righteousness. You can argue that Jesus taught us to be peaceful, but a kingdom divided cannot stand.  Why would God stop working out His justice through His followers? That simply makes no sense. Righteousness is the key.
Grace will not teach righteousness to the wicked
“Even in a land of uprightness they go on doing evil and regard not the majesty of the LORD.”
 11 O LORD, your hand is lifted high,
      but they do not see it.
      Let them see your zeal for your people and be put to shame;
      let the fire reserved for your enemies consume them. 12 LORD, you establish peace for us;
      all that we have accomplished you have done for us.
Verse 12 is the key. What kind of American soldier would revere verse 12? The one who believes the United States is one nation under God, and worth defending as such. A soldier who believes he is fighting God’s causes. A soldier fighting in religious obedience to His God, to defend the poor and the innocent, and to be a cog in God’s engines of justice in this world. But, the United States, and to some extent the Church, has in infection, where we no longer believe that God accomplishes His justice through us. We seem to believe that true justice will only be accomplished through Jesus Christ. Well, that is partially true. His justice will be final, and only Jesus will accomplish it with purely unsinful motives. We on the other hand have only the righteousness God credits us with when we humbly believe and obey God’s word, when we take actions that carry out God’s justice, to whatever capacity that might be… whether it be serving on a jury of one’s peers, acting as a peace officer, serving our country as a soldier, or even serving the American people as their Commander in Chief. Whatever our lot in life, righteousness is our call, and without Christians answering the call for justice, even righteousness in this world will be lost… until Jesus returns.