The Unshakeable Covenant Text: Isaiah 54:9-10
Introduction: The Stability of Grace
We live in an age of managed instability. Our political leaders, our cultural tastemakers, and our educational high priests are all dedicated to the task of keeping everything in a state of perpetual flux. They want to redefine marriage, gender, justice, and truth itself on a rotating, quarterly basis. The ground beneath our feet is deliberately made to feel like quicksand. The goal is to make ordinary people feel dizzy, disoriented, and therefore dependent on the managerial elite to tell them which way is up. When everything is shaking, the people who pretend to have a handle on the chaos can seize power.
Into this manufactured chaos, the Word of God speaks with a granite-like solidity. Our God is not a God of confusion, but of peace. He does not build His kingdom on shifting sands, but upon a rock. And the promises He makes are more stable than the very mountains that surround us. The Christian faith is not a leap into the dark; it is a firm step onto a foundation that cannot be moved. God does not offer us suggestions; He makes covenants. He does not give us probabilities; He swears oaths.
In our text today, the prophet Isaiah is speaking a profound word of comfort to a desolate and afflicted Zion. Israel had been unfaithful. She had played the harlot. She had been barren and ashamed. And God had, in His righteous judgment, disciplined her fiercely. He had hidden His face from her for a moment. But now, the discipline is past, and the word of restoration comes with the force of a divine oath. God reaches back into the history of the world, back to one of the most profound acts of judgment and salvation, in order to anchor His promise of future grace. He compares His new promise to His ancient oath, the one He made to Noah. He is telling His people, and by extension He is telling us, that His commitment to us in Christ is as certain as the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow and that the globe will not again be drowned by a flood.
This is a passage about the absolute, unshakeable, mountain-moving stability of God's covenant love for His people. It is a promise designed to silence our fears, rebuke our unbelief, and give us a place to stand when everything else gives way.
The Text
"For this is like the days of Noah to Me, When I swore that the waters of Noah Would not overflow the earth again; So I have sworn that I will not be furious with you Nor will I rebuke you. For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, But My lovingkindness will not be removed from you, And My covenant of peace will not be shaken," Says Yahweh who has compassion on you.
(Isaiah 54:9-10 LSB)
The Anchor of History (v. 9)
God begins by grounding His promise in a historical precedent, an oath He made once before.
"For this is like the days of Noah to Me, When I swore that the waters of Noah Would not overflow the earth again; So I have sworn that I will not be furious with you Nor will I rebuke you." (Isaiah 54:9)
God is a covenant-making God. This is how He relates to His creation. A covenant is not a flimsy agreement between two equal parties. A divine covenant is a sovereignly administered bond, sealed in blood and defined by oaths. God binds Himself to His people. Here, He points back to the Noahic covenant, established in Genesis 9. After the great flood, a cataclysmic judgment that baptized the entire world, God made an unconditional promise. He hung His war-bow in the clouds, the rainbow, as a sign of this promise: He would never again destroy all flesh with the waters of a flood.
Think about the certainty of this. Every time it rains, you do not run for the hills in terror of a global deluge. You might grab an umbrella, but you don't start building an ark. Why? Because God swore an oath. That oath has held for thousands of years, governing the very meteorological patterns of our world. It is an objective, historical, and physical reality. You stake your life on it without a second thought.
Now, God takes that level of certainty and applies it to His relationship with His redeemed people. "So I have sworn that I will not be furious with you Nor will I rebuke you." The parallel is direct and powerful. Just as the oath to Noah guarantees physical preservation for the world, this new oath guarantees relational preservation for the church. The word for "furious" here speaks of a covenantal wrath, a judicial anger that leads to utter destruction. The word "rebuke" refers to a definitive condemnation. God is swearing that His final, judicial wrath will never again fall upon His people.
Does this mean that God never disciplines His children? Of course not. The book of Hebrews is quite clear that the Lord disciplines those He loves (Heb. 12:6). But there is an infinite difference between a father's loving correction and a judge's wrathful condemnation. The discipline is for our good, to bring us to repentance. The fury is for the ungodly, to bring them to ruin. God is promising that for those under this covenant, the verdict of "condemned" has been forever lifted. The flood of wrath has already fallen, not on us, but on our substitute. The cross of Jesus Christ is our ark, and through His judgment, we have been brought safely to the other side.
The Unshakeable Foundation (v. 10a)
In verse 10, God intensifies the promise by comparing it to the most stable things we can imagine in the created order, and then declaring His promise to be even more stable.
"For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, But My lovingkindness will not be removed from you, And My covenant of peace will not be shaken..." (Isaiah 54:10a)
In the ancient world, mountains were the very symbol of permanence, of immovability. They were the oldest, strongest, most enduring features of the landscape. If you wanted to say something was forever, you would compare it to a mountain. But God says that even these symbols of stability are, in comparison to His covenant love, temporary and flimsy. On the last day, the mountains and hills will indeed be removed. The present heaven and earth will flee away (Rev. 20:11). The very elements will melt with fervent heat (2 Peter 3:10).
The point is this: God's promise is not rooted in the created order. The created order is rooted in His promise. His Word is more fundamental than the bedrock of the planet. When the entire physical universe is shaken to its core and dissolved, two things will remain: God's lovingkindness and His covenant of peace.
The word for "lovingkindness" is the great Hebrew covenant word, hesed. This is not a sentimental, flighty emotion. Hesed is steadfast love, loyal love, love that is bound by an oath. It is God's unrelenting, stubborn, covenant-keeping faithfulness to His people, even when they are unfaithful. It is the love that says, "I have made a promise, and I will not go back on it." This hesed will not be removed.
And what is this covenant? It is the "covenant of peace." Peace, shalom, is not merely the absence of conflict. It is wholeness, completeness, flourishing, and reconciliation. The covenant of peace is God's sworn commitment to bring His people into a state of total well-being through reconciliation with Himself. This is the New Covenant, established in the blood of Jesus Christ. He is our peace (Eph. 2:14). He made peace by the blood of His cross (Col. 1:20). This covenant cannot be shaken, because it was sealed by the death and resurrection of the Son of God. It is as unshakable as He is.
The Compassionate Author (v. 10b)
The verse concludes by identifying the one who makes this astonishing promise.
"...Says Yahweh who has compassion on you." (Isaiah 54:10b)
The signature at the bottom of the contract is everything. And this signature is that of Yahweh, the self-existent, covenant-keeping God of Israel. He is the great I AM. His very name is a statement of His eternal, unchanging nature. He is not a god who might change his mind or be overtaken by circumstances. He is the one who is, and who was, and who is to come.
And this immutable God is further described by His character: He is the one "who has compassion on you." The word for compassion here comes from the Hebrew root for "womb." It is a deep, tender, motherly love. It is the love of a creator for the work of his hands, the love of a father for a wayward child. This is not the cold, distant decree of a deistic clockmaker. This is the passionate, personal, and tender promise of a compassionate Father.
Our security does not rest in the strength of our grip on Him, but in the strength of His compassionate grip on us. Our assurance is not based on the stability of our feelings, but on the stability of His character. He swears by Himself, because there is no one greater to swear by. And He does so out of a heart of deep compassion for His afflicted, but beloved, people.
Conclusion: More Certain Than the Mountains
So what does this mean for us, here and now? It means that our standing with God is not a fragile, delicate thing that we must handle with kid gloves lest it break. Our standing with God is the most robust and durable reality in the universe. When you are tempted to doubt your salvation, when you feel the weight of your sin, when the circumstances of your life feel like a flood of judgment, you must not look inward to the shifting sands of your own heart. You must look outward to the oath of God and upward to the cross of Christ.
God has sworn, with an oath more certain than the existence of mountains, that His judicial fury is exhausted upon His Son. He has sworn that His hesed, His stubborn, loyal love, will never be taken from you. He has established a covenant of peace that cannot be shaken, because its foundations are in the finished work of Jesus Christ.
The world around us will continue to shake. Political orders will rise and fall. Cultural certainties will evaporate like the morning mist. Your own feelings will fluctuate like the stock market. But the lovingkindness of the Lord and His covenant of peace are forever. Therefore, we are not to be a people characterized by anxiety, but by a quiet and confident trust. We are to be a people who are as stable as the promises we stand on. For our God has sworn it, and He is the one who has compassion on us.