Sermon Transcript
Open your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 40. And as you’re finding your place there, I want to remind you that you are a part of a church-planting church, and one more announcement that you need to be aware of is: this afternoon at 5:00 we are going to be planting a church in Elkhart! If you applauded, but are not going to Elkhart, you’re a hypocrite! I’m serious! We are sending people from this church to plant a church in Elkhart. There’s a core group meeting happening this evening; details are there in your bulletin. And some of you need to stop coming to church here. (When do you ever hear a pastor say that?—unless you’re a part of a church-planting church). Some of you need to go to church to plant the church in Elkhart.
Some of you are thinking, “Yeah, once you get it planted, I’ll go!” That’s not the way it works. You have to go, you have to be sent, you have to strap some weight to your shoulders and take responsibility for it. So, be there if you can, if you live in that area. Some of you need to get on the phone this afternoon, invite your friends: “Come and be a part of this new church we’re planting there in Elkhart.”
Did you know that today is the fourth birthday of a church we planted in Pittsburgh? Pastor Jeremiah is there, and Micah is there with him this morning celebrating their fourth birthday. All of that is because Jeremiah said, “I don’t want to just be content sitting here, enjoying what’s going on here. I want to go duplicate it somewhere else.” And so, we’re celebrating with him today!
You’ve got your Bibles open to Isaiah chapter 40, and this morning, I want to remind you that we have started a new series, and what is the theme of the entire year at Harvest? Say it with me: “Lift up your eyes!” And that is so appropriate to where we’re at. We’ve been learning from Psalm 121 that our help comes from the Lord, and God designed my life to be an ever-ascending journey; not to be stagnant, not to be plateaued, always up and onward!
If you are stagnant and plateaued—or if you are descending—lift up your eyes! There is more work to do; there’s a better place for you to get to. And the only way you’re going to get there is if you lift up your eyes. The direction of your eyes will determine the destination of your life. If you’re only looking at yourself, if you’re only looking at your problems, if you’re only looking right here, you’ll never see the mission that God wants you on.
The first two words of Isaiah chapter 40 have given me my marching orders as your pastor this week. I’ve been rocked by these two words. Let’s look at them in verse 1 of Isaiah chapter 40 [ESV]. They are: “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.” I believe that’s what God had said to me earlier through this week, and so my job assignment—my job description for you this morning—is, my job is to comfort you this morning.
He goes on in verse 2, says: “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry [for] her that her warfare is ended…” Do you see the word “warfare” there in verse 2? My Bible has a footnote. Apparently, that’s a hard Hebrew word to translate, and so alternate words would be “hardship,” “difficulty, “calamity,” “disaster.” The title of the message today is When Disaster Strikes! When disaster strikes, God’s people need a word of comfort.
Now, let me just tell you a little bit about a preacher’s job, okay? A preacher’s job, basically, is two-fold. On some days a preacher’s job is to comfort the afflicted. That is my job here today. Can I just tell you, that’s not my best thing? My best thing is actually the other part of the preacher’s job, and that is to afflict the comfortable. You say, “Yeah, I’ve been coming to this church long enough to know that’s your best thing! And I don’t even know why I keep coming back. You just keep punching in my face….and thank you—may I have another?” So, okay, so this is a day that’s not going to happen, but let me just kind of step away a little bit. Some of you do not need to be comforted, because you are way too comfortable already! Okay? You need to be afflicted! Come back next week; we’ll get after that.
But, listen, if you are like casually just kind of enjoying your relationship with Jesus…you just kind of see your relationship with God as kind of like crawling up in Grandpa’s lap, and him like stroking you and telling you you’re so awesome!—and handing out spiritual candy bars, listen! You don’t need to be comforted. I am not here to congratulate you on that at all! You need to be afflicted with conviction and the urgency of pursuing God with all your heart, and always finding a response to the gospel that is repentance and belief!
So I’m not gonna do that today. My job for you today is to comfort you, and in order to do that, we just need to sit on the porch for a while, okay? So, just, “C’mon, pull up a rocking chair for a minute. It’s gonna be okay.” So, let me tell you a little bit about what’s been happening over the last two weeks in America. Have you noticed? Have you noticed the news headlines? So, a couple of weeks ago we found out, “Hey, there’s this hurricane forming.” Hurricane Harvey is there in the Gulf of Mexico, and Hurricane Harvey starts moving, and it’s moving toward the fourth largest city in America—Houston. And it wasn’t so much the wind – it was the flooding, and the rainfall. Record rainfall there in Hurricane Harvey. And, of course, we saw the news headlines, just devastation and people who lost everything. It was enough to break your heart. How many of you had someone that you love affected by Hurricane Harvey there in Houston?
Then, the very next week, we find out there’s Hurricane Irma off in the Atlantic, and it’s coming, it’s coming. Where’s it going to make landfall? And, of course, it hit the Florida Keys, went north along the western coast of Florida and actually just enveloped all of Florida. And people lost their lives, people lost their power, people lost their livelihoods. People still today—life is not going to be back to normal for a long time.
Even the most vulnerable there. Did you see the nursing home, and they lost power, and those eight precious elderly folks lost their lives in this? And so, as a result, it’s, it’s just painful to watch that. And, how many of you had somebody affected by the hurricane there in Florida? And some of you may have actually even relocated. Welcome to Northern Indiana! It’s the only time in history that anybody would ever relocate from Florida to Northern Indiana. So, welcome! Did anybody tell you we have hurricanes here, too? We call it “February!” It’s coming.
So, no matter where you’re at, it’s just like, it’s like, “Man, it’s just bad!” And with all the news headlines about Harvey and Irma, what got lost in all of that was what, is what was happening on the other side of the world in Nepal, Bangladesh and India: massive flooding there. And because they don’t have the infrastructure—they don’t have FEMA, they don’t have churches that race into the devastation and the disaster to alleviate the suffering—thousands of people lost their lives. Thousands of people, no insurance.
And so, and while all that’s happening, the biggest earthquake to hit Mexico in a century took place. What is happening? What is going on? If you are a thinking person, you should be asking some questions. If you believe God exists, you should be asking some questions about the nature of God: “Where is God in all of this? Why is He allowing these things to happen? How should I respond? What would I do if the disaster struck close to home?”—in all of these things.
Let me just say, it is not wrong to ask God, “Why?”—if you do it with a teachable heart. It is wrong to ask God the question, “Why?” accusatively—as if you were accusing Him of doing something wrong. But it is not wrong to ask God the question, “Why?”—inquisitively—with a learner’s heart. “God, I want to know Your will. I want to know Your ways. God, what are you trying to teach me through all of this?”—with a trusting, inquisitive heart. But, if you’ve got your first balled up in the face of God, and you’re accusing Him of not being good. If somehow you think, “God, if You’re all-powerful, then You must not be good! If You had the power to divert the storm—and You didn’t!—You must not be very loving!” Or, “God You’re loving, I know You’re loving, but You must not have the power—or this wouldn’t have happened!” And so, it causes us to ask questions. So, what do you do when disaster strikes?
And some of you are not going through a hurricane, but you’re going through your own personal disaster. It could be a divorce, it could be an addiction, could be financial, could be a health diagnosis. All of us are going to be affected at some point with disaster. And God wants to use the disaster to get you to lift up your eyes! To see He is the Comforter in the middle of that disaster.
The place that I’ve asked you to open your Bible is the book of Isaiah. It’s one of the largest books in the Bible. It’s a prophetic book. Let me tell you about how it’s laid out. It has two sections. The first thirty-nine sections of Isaiah are a prophetic warning that disaster is coming—because people have forsaken the Lord, become idolatrous and immoral.
Because they have allowed their families to crumble, and because they’ve gotten their eyes off of the Lord, God is warning, “Disaster is imminent! Divert, divert, divert. Repent, repent, repent!” And because they didn’t, they actually experienced the disaster of being invaded by a foreign country and taken into captivity. Imagine North Korea sending nuclear missiles, somehow invading, and carrying us off into captivity! So God, through a divine judgment, put His people in “time out” for seventy years. That took place between the end of chapter 39 and the beginning of chapter 40.
Chapter 40 opens up a new section. There’s a completely different message, a completely different tone. The tone is now speaking into people that were experiencing the disaster of God’s judgment. And the tone is comfort. The Bible should have ended in Isaiah chapter 39, and yet—because of God’s grace and His mercy, we have chapter 40 that says, “I want to comfort you! I have words that are tender to you.” And He invites them back into covenant relationship with Him, reminding them they’re still His people. He calls them by name: “Jerusalem.”
And then He says, “That her iniquity [has been] pardoned.” Incredible! God’s mercy, God’s grace. “…That she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all [of] her sins.” Our reaction to that, initially, would say, “Yeah, double judgment, double disaster!” That’s not what He’s talking about. What is the word “double’ modifying there in verse 2? It’s modifying “pardoned.” God has double-pardoned them…given them so much grace, their sin has been paid for. Not only does He not treat them as they deserve, He treats them better than they deserve—double pardon.
And so, in the midst of disaster, God has a comforting word. Now, the only way to be comforted in the middle of disaster is if you have a proper perspective on these four things we’re going to look at. The first is hardship. We saw it there in the word “warfare.” Do you see at the beginning of—in the middle—of verse 2? It says, “That her warfare is ended…” Apparently that’s a hard word to translate, and so the footnote there is “hardship.”
- A proper view of hardship (v. 1-5)
So, we all go through levels of hardship in our lives. Inevitably, preachers—and theologian-types—when there’s a natural disaster, many times they make the mistake of coming out and saying, “See right there, God was judging those particular people. And if they didn’t repent from sin, then obviously there’s more disaster coming!”
Hey, listen—you know what the proper perspective on hardship is? We are all living in the unfolding disaster that is planet Earth. God didn’t design it this way. As a matter of fact, no one here today has ever lived in the world that God designed you to live in. God designed you to live in a world without disaster, without pain, without death, without dying, without crying. And yet, none of us have ever live in that kind of a world.
The world is broken because man has decided he wants to play God. And the first man stepped over God’s boundaries and took something that he thought would be an upgrade (over the world that God designed him to live in) and as a result, the whole thing came crashing down—and we’re all living in the disaster that is planet Earth, because of our own sin. Be careful where you point the finger of blame when you experience hardship.
The truth is, I am the cause of my disaster. I am ultimately the cause of the pain and the heartache and the brokenness in this world. And so are you, if you are a descendant of Adam (which I’m assuming you all are). So, a proper view of hardship says, “Hey! It is not God’s fault that we’re in the situation that we’re in. We have to accept personal responsibility.”
Look how he describes the world, beginning in verse 3: “A voice cries: ‘in the wilderness…’” First of all, notice He calls the world “a wilderness.” Does that sound like a fun place to live? No. It’s a wilderness; it’s hard. And he says, “’In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord…’” Now this is a verse that is probably pretty familiar to you if you are a student of the Bible.
Over in the New Testament, this passage is quoted. It’s actually adopted by the John the Baptist, as the forerunner of Jesus—his cousin—that he was to be the one to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord. But when the people of God read it, receiving it from Isaiah, the interpretation was “You know what? God’s not finished! He’s coming again to fix it. And when he fixes it, notice what He does.” He will, “’. . .make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’”
Notice, He calls the world a “desert,” with crooked roads and hills and valleys—all kinds of difficulty getting to where we want to go—and yet, “preparing the way” means that you make straight roads for the Lord. Verse 4 describes the world as a valley, “Valley[s] shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill [will] be made low…” So, there’s not going to be these deep crevices. He’s going to raise those up. There’s not going to be these huge mountains that are obstacles to where you want to go (He’s going to bring those down, so that it’s flat—like Indiana). You can travel a lot easier when He comes. And, “…the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places…plain.’” If you’ve ever felt like this was a rough place, you’re experiencing what the Bible said this place was. It’s a rough place!
And here, ultimately, here in verse 5, is what it’s going to look like when God fixes all of it. He’s going to restore it and renew it. And look at what it says in verse 5: “And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed…all flesh shall see it together [and] the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” One day, we will get to live in the world as God designed it, experiencing the manifest presence of the glory of God as it was originally in the Garden of Eden with man, before man broke it. That’s what’s coming. Lift up your eyes! No matter what you’re going through, there’s a better day coming. God is going to restore and renew because His mercy has pardoned those who repent and believe.
Every American has trouble having room for a God that would allow them to experience hardship. Americans have little room in their theology for a God that would allow them to suffer at all – because we have electricity, and padding on our chairs, and air conditioning, and toilets that flush, and hot and cold running water, and automobiles and Starbucks. And some of us couldn’t even imagine getting through a day without any of those. And if just one of those was taken away, we would feel like, “God’s mad at me! ‘Cause I’m awesome, and…He must not have noticed today!”
Because we’re Americans, and we’ve been so conditioned to think that the good things that God gives makes God good. That’s a wrong theology! God, who is good, gives good things. But the question is this: “Will you worship God if He removes anything good?” Do you only worship the good God gives, or do you worship a good God? The only way that you can answer that question is if God tests it by taking something good away.
And when disaster strikes and you experience trial or heartache or death or pain or hardship, or even a natural disaster—as a hurricane or a flood—will you worship God anyway? Or do you ball up your fist in the face of God and accuse God of not being good? It’s hard for us that have lived with prosperous ease, in Western American culture, to experience anything that’s difficult. And so, we have to embrace a right view of hardship.
Listen, every time you experience hardship, understand: that is an opportunity for me to lift my eyes to the God who is willing to comfort me. Will you continue to prepare the way in the midst of the hardship?
- A proper view of man’s frailty (v. 6-8)
Secondly, if you want to be comforted this morning, you have to have a proper view of man’s frailty. Look here in verse 6: “A voice says, ‘Cry!’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’ All flesh is grass…” Flesh, what is flesh? Everybody, everybody point to flesh. Did you bring some flesh with you this morning? Did you bring some flesh? Everybody brought some flesh. It’s hard to get rid of the flesh, right? You’re in the flesh.
Now, over in the New Testament, we understand the flesh is more of an appetite for sin. But in this context, it’s just talking about the stuff that you’re body’s wrapped in. Okay? It’s the container that you’re wrapped in. It’s flesh. And God says, your flesh is grass. Anybody mow the grass this week? It’s not a compliment. Your flesh is like grass.
Look at the next part: “…and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.” Now some flesh is prettier than others—and some of you are flowers this morning—you have flowering flesh. February’s coming for you! Okay? It says in verse 7, “The grass withers…” How many of you have some withering flesh? It’s just wrinkled up and just kind of falling apart. And it’s falling off at times. And it’s just, it just withers? The grass withers, “…the flower[s] fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it…”
Did you know that sometimes, God creates some turbulence for your flesh? “Whoooosh. It’s cold, it made my flesh cold!” Or it’s too hot, it’s too windy. He says, “Surely…” in case you’ve missed the metaphor “…the people are grass.” On your best day, you are green grass. On your worst day, you’re withering grass. On your last day, you will be dead grass, okay? But, verse 8, “The grass withers, the flower fades…the word of God will stand forever.” So, your flesh better be listening to what the Word of God says about your flesh, about your frailty—the fact that you aren’t infinite.
You are fragile! You’re mortal! I don’t care if you wore a Captain America shirt in here—you are mortal! You are not gonna live forever! Everybody here has an expiration date stamped on your container. You can’t see it, but it could be today; it could be next week. You say, “Not me! Not me!” Listen, natural disasters…I’m sure people down there in Florida and Houston…I’m sure they thought they were going to make it out alive; that’s why they stayed. Natural disasters have a way of waking us up to our mortality, and it doesn’t matter if you are carted out on a stretcher to the hospital—in a tragedy, in a disaster—or if you are gently and peacefully wheeled into a nursing home for your last days. Everybody here, at some point, will be carried to the funeral home. You are terminal; you have a terminal condition! You have the S-I-N virus, and it’s going to kill you.
Everybody here is going to stand before God in judgment. The reality is this: yes, everything that is hard—in some sense indirectly—is an evidence of God’s judgment on sin. But we will all stand before God, and only two types of people will be there: those that will experience the final and full disastrous judgment of God, or those that have believed that God’s disastrous judgment was poured out on Jesus. He experienced the hurricane of God’s wrath on sin so that I wouldn’t have to. And only those that are trusting Jesus are those that have that hurricane diverted to Jesus. Jesus survived it. You’re not going to!
And so, do you understand your frailty as a human being? If you don’t, you’ve got to understand what God says in the rest of this passage! Understand: “I am my own disaster! I create my own calamity. I am my worst problem! And the only way to get out of this alive is to bow to God’s sovereignty.”
Here’s the third thing you have to see. You have to have:
- A proper view of God’s sufficiency (v. 9-26)
The rest of this chapter unfolds as a test. It’s kind of like God plays Twenty Questions with His people. He just asks them a series of questions: “Oh, you think you’re going to get out alive, do you? You think you know better than God, do you? You really think you want to accuse Me of not knowing what I’m doing? You don’t think I’m good? You don’t think I’m in control? Well, let Me just ask you a few questions, before you ask your ‘why?’ questions.”
Look down at verse 12. God asks His first question: “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand…” Do you know what the hollow of your hand is? Everybody make a hollow in your hand. You ever been thirsty…you been by a stream or something and you bend down, and you lift it up like you’re trying to make it a cup? First of all, have you ever noticed your hand leaks? You can never keep the water in there? You would think more would stay in there, but it just doesn’t. Do you know what God says? He says, “I have measured the water in the hollow of my hand,” and somehow He keeps it all in there.
I don’t know what you were doing this week; I was preparing for this message, and I wanted to know: How much water is in the world? Now, back in the day, you would have to do some serious research on that. Now, you just…“Hey, Siri, how much water is there in the world?” And she would tell you, “There is exactly three-hundred-and-forty-quintillion gallons of water in the world.” If the world was perfectly flat—no hills and valleys—that’s enough water to cover the entire world two miles deep everywhere!
God says, “I got it all. Not losing any of it! I measure the water in the hollow of My hand.” Oh, God, I didn’t know You were that big! Yeah, not only that; He says, “[Who] marked off the heavens with a span…” Do you see it there in verse 12? “[Who] marked off the heavens [in] a span…” What’s a span? Everybody take your right hand and hold it up like that. Spread it as far as it can go, as far as your thumb to your pinky—as far as it can go. That is a span. Okay? God says, “I measure the universe in a span!”
How big is the universe? God says, “That big! Right there.” I mean, “It’s just right there. And, while all that’s stuff going on over there, I’m like, ‘That’s not a thing!’ I’ve got other stuff going on you don’t even know about!” Right there. He measures the heavens in a span. So, how big is that? I, I—God measures in a span. The closest thing that scientists have come to measure the universe with is a light year. Do you know what a light year is? It’s the distance that light travels in a year.
Now, think about this: light travels at 186,000 miles per second. On the count of three, I want everybody to snap your fingers. One, two, three. Light travels so fast, from the time that sound started to the time that it ended, light traveled around the world eight times. That’s pretty fast! Now, the sun is ninety-three-million miles away from where we are right now. If you were to travel to the sun, it would take you—if you traveled at the speed of light—eight-and-a-half minutes—to get to the sun!
Do you know what that means? The sun could have blown up eight minutes ago. We wouldn’t even know it yet cause it would take eight minutes for that light to appear! If you would travel at the speed of light, you would get to the end of our solar system in less than a day; you would get to the next closest star in forty years; you would get to the end of the Milky Way in a hundred-million years! (You’re not gonna make it!) You would get to the end of the known universe in one-hundred-billion years! If you were traveling at the speed of light. How big is the universe? [God:] “Eh, it’s about that big.” So before you come and, like, file your complaint with God. . .I don’t know what’s going on in your universe; it’s pretty small to God, okay? To think about the speck of dust that you are in the middle of all that might put some pause on your questioning of God. So He says, “Yeah, I measure the heavens in a span.”
Then He tells us He’s not only the God of the macro—He’s God of the micro. The next thing He says is, “[Who] enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure…” [v. 12]. Dust. Now, dust would have been like the smallest particle they could think of back in those days, to describe something small. There’s a dust molecule. Because we have microscopes now, we know what dust looks like under a microscope. Then, about 150 years ago somebody discovered the atom. The atom! They would be like, “Well, surely that’s the smallest particle. An atom is what everything else is made up of.”
And then they split the atom, and they realized, “Oh, now we have protons, electrons and neutrons. Those are the smallest things!” But then, in just the last couple years, they realized, “No, there’s, there’s three quarks that make up a proton!” So, you are the sum total—the universe is a sum total—of quarks! Which explains a lot of your quirky personality, doesn’t it? Quarks. A
And then they found these things…I mean, they, they found all these things. They found these things called “leptons.” God put it all together. He holds it all together! The only thing it would take for things to start disintegrating and falling apart is just for God to stop holding it all together.
The end of the verse says, “[Who] weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?” So how much does the world weigh? I asked Siri; she said, “5.972 septillion metric tons, and it’s actually gaining weight!” Probably because of all of us who are gaining weight! It’s growing!
Look at verse 13: “Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord…” So scientists have tried to measure the universe, and the speed of light, and the small things—but here’s one thing you will never be able to measure: the Spirit of the Lord! “[Who’s] measured the Spirit of the Lord or what man shows him his counsel?” God never shows up for counseling from you. Okay? In verse 14, “Whom did he consult…” He never needed a consultant. “Who made him understand? Who taught him the path[s] of justice…” God’s never had a teacher “…and showed him the way of understanding? [v. 15] Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket…”
Imagine a bucket filled with water. Stick your hand in there, this afternoon, pull it out, look in the bucket. The hole that’s left are the significance of the nation of America. God’s got it under control! God is sufficient. God needs no one’s counsel; God needs the power of no other nation. So, no matter what’s happening in your world, get your eyes off of it! Lift up your eyes to see the sufficiency of God!
Look down here to verse 22: “It is he who sits above the circle of the earth…” Isn’t it cool that God gives His perspective on earth? And that He told us in a book that’s three-thousand years old that the earth is a globe; it’s not flat. We didn’t figure that out until Christopher Columbus didn’t fall off the edge, right? All we had to do was read our Bibles! The Bible’s not a science book, but where it speaks to science, it’s accurate.
Look down here at verse 23—well, actually—the end of verse, back up in 22: “He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers…” You said, “I thought we were grass.” Or a grasshopper. Either way, it is not a compliment, okay? You’re a small part of what God is doing in the world.
And so, it says, “[He]…stretches out the heavens like a curtain…[he] spreads them like a tent to dwell in; who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows on them…they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.”
What’s another word for “tempest?” Storm. Hurricane. Whirlwind. “’To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him?’ says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see…” Open your eyes to the Creator, “Who created these? He who brings out their host by number…” Now He’s speaking of the stars – “…calling them all by name; by the greatness of his [power] and because he is strong in power, not one is missing.”
Years ago, a scientist published a very scholarly paper that he had discovered the exact number of stars in the sky. He counted 595. His paper was refuted by someone, later, that counted 598. A couple years later, somebody found a thousand. Then somebody invented a telescope. And they discovered that what they thought they were looking at was not stars, but galaxies—with a hundred billion stars! And then they discovered, there’s a hundred billion galaxies—with their own hundred billion stars! And God says, “I’ve named every one!”
You ever hear, around Christmas, those ads come on for like, a creative Christmas gift? Name…the global star registry or something, and you can like name a star after your girlfriend or something. Listen! At best, that would be a nickname. God’s already named them all, okay? And He’s not going to, like, change it because you registered with the global star registry, okay? God has it all under control! Lift up your eyes!
One of the best spiritual things you could do is go home tonight. At midnight, take your family out in the driveway and just look up—and try to count the starts—and to understand who created all of them. A proper view of God’s sovereignty, a proper view of God’s sufficiency, will help you survive the disaster.
And then, finally, when disaster strikes, you have to have:
- A proper view of my opportunity (v. 27-31)
How do you respond to all this? Verse 27, God asks a question. God asks the question, “Why?”—“Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, ‘My way is hidden from the Lord…’” Do you know what they were accusing God of? That God had forgotten them! That God was ignoring them. “God, don’t You see what I’m going through down here?” God says, “I see it all. Your way is not hidden from me.”
He goes on and says, “…and my right is disregarded by God”? Rights? You think you have rights? You don’t have rights! You have responsibility to the Creator. He created you to serve Him. He does not exist to serve you. You don’t have any rights! Why are you saying that?
“Have you not known? Have you not heard?” You see, for some people, it is a knowledge problem. They just haven’t known these things; they haven’t learned them yet. But now that you’ve read Isaiah 40, now you know! He is the Creator. The problem is not that you don’t know; the problem for some of you is that you aren’t listening! You haven’t heard! What God has said in His Word is true of your frailty and His sufficiency.
So, He asks the question: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God…” He never had a start date, He’ll never have an end date. He has always been, He will always be. He is the “everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint [nor] grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, [the] young men shall fall exhausted…”
It’s amazing. It’s hard for twenty-year-olds to believe what we’re saying right now – the whole thing about grass and withering and stuff. It’s not until like thirty that you kind of crest that hill of good-looking—and it all goes downhill from there! And so it may be hard. But, even the young men will fall exhausted. And then, verse 31: “But they who wait…” Underline that word, “wait.” Wait! Wait for it, wait for it…
“They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.”
Do you see the word “renew” there? It’s not the idea that, somehow, you’re going to get back strength you once had. It’s going to be that you get strength you’ve never had, but you were designed to have from the beginning, without sin! You’re going to get a strength that is unmarred by sin; a strength to do things, to worship God, to obey God, in a way that you’ve never known. But it is only for those who wait.
I’m looking around the room right now. I’m not seeing a whole lot of people that got like A-pluses on the “wait” test in school. How many of you are awesome at waiting? Just wake up in the morning, and it’s like, “I’m just looking forward to waiting in lines! Just looking forward to waiting on my homework assignment. I’m just, just looking for…” Andrea and I went to Oklahoma a couple of weeks ago—I told you about this—and we were on a highway (they actually have highways in Oklahoma!) and we were driving down the highway. But, what they haven’t yet discovered is the wonder of the E-Z Pass, on the toll roads, right?—where you can just zoom through. You never have to slow down and it just kind of zaps your debit card or whatever, as you go through. You don’t have to stop and pay the toll. (Some of you still haven’t discovered this either! You should go online and figure it out; it’s a wonderful time-saver in your day!) But in Oklahoma, they don’t even give you the option.
So, we’re on this highway, and we look off in the distance and like, “Is that a toll booth? Really? Oh, come on! We’re going to have to wait; have to slow down!” And, sure enough, there’s like four cars in front of us. And in Oklahoma, they haven’t even figured out…they still think we carry coins in our pockets to like throw in the toll booth. And so, you know, Andrea starts frantically searching around in her purse; you know, fortunately she had a few coins in her purse!
And, she’s like looking…it’s sixty-five cents! Not fifty cents, so you could throw two quarters in. Not seventy-five cents, so you could throw three quarters in. But you got to find like two quarters, a nickel and a dime! And, of course, the four cars in front of us can’t find it either. And they’re like stopping traffic…we’re there for like twenty minutes at the toll booth.
And so, Andrea, she can’t find the nickel. But she does find five pennies, so she puts it in my hand, I throw it in there. Oklahoma doesn’t take pennies! So now, it’s like, she finds another quarter. I’m like, “Why didn’t you just give me three quarters at the beginning?” “I am not paying them a tip for this! This is ridiculous!” I’m like, “I hate waiting!—for anything!” And you don’t like waiting either!
We’re awful at waiting. But understand this: the wait is not passive. When he says, “Wait for the Lord,” what He’s saying is, “Engage and do what you know to be doing from the start. Don’t stop obeying!” Don’t say, “I’ve been doing this so long; God still hasn’t changed my situation. I’m leaving, I’m getting out of here, I’m trying a new plan. I’m giving up on this God—I’m going to go find another god; I’m going to create a different god so I can go do what I want to do.” No! “Wait” means “keep obeying.”
And “wait” means also, “to relax.” God is still good. God is still in control. He’s not lost an ounce of His power. Just relax. Trust. The disaster has been averted. Jesus has taken the wrath of God’s judgment. Just relax; it’s going to be okay. There’s no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
And “wait” means “expect.” That’s why the chapter starts at the beginning and says, “Prepare the way for the Lord.” Jesus came initially to begin the process of lifting those valleys, straightening those highways and bringing down the mountains, the obstacles between us and God—so that we have access to God. Now we’re waiting with expectation that He’s going to finally make it right! He’s going to renew our strength—to make it the way it was supposed to be from the beginning. That’s what we’re waiting for—if you lift up your eyes!—and to have a proper perspective on disaster.
He ends this chapter with some of the most powerful metaphors in the Bible. Look at the end of verse 31: “They shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” Do you see it? “Soar, run, walk.” Now, if you and I were writing it, we would have reversed the sequence, wouldn’t we? We would have said, “Well, I’m not very good at this, but I might be able to take a step. I might be able to take another step. And so, I got to start walking first—and then maybe I can start jogging, I could start to run. And if I run really fast, maybe I’ll just take flight—and I could learn to fly!”
That’s not the way he does it. He says, “You’re going to mount up with wings first; then you’re going to run, then you’re going to walk.” What’s He saying? He’s letting us know that all three of these are impossible unless you lift up your eyes! All three of these—spiritually—you’re never going to soar, you’re never going to walk, you’re not even going to be able to take your first step without the strength of the Lord! You’re admitting—“I am frail; I don’t have what it takes to walk through a disaster, run through a disaster or fly over one. God, You’re going to have to do it all! It is physically impossible!”
Now, it’s a metaphor, okay? You can wait the rest of your life—you’re never going to sprout wings and fly, okay? But what He’s saying in a spiritual sense is this: you’re going to have eagle-eyes, to be able to see over the disaster that’s going on below you—the unfolding disaster that is this world—God wants you to rise above it. In Bible times, they couldn’t have even imagined what an eagle could have seen—until somebody said, “Hey, let’s strap a go-pro camera to an eagle and find out what it looks like!” Do you understand what you’re seeing? This is the kind of life, spiritually, that you can live if you will wait for the Lord to renew your strength. Then you will mount up with wings like eagles, then you will run and not be weary, then you will walk and not faint.
Would you stand with me right now? Bow your heads, close your eyes. Nobody looking around right now. This is your opportunity to tell God about your disaster. He already knows. He’s waiting on you to lift your eyes and say, “I need help! I’m looking to You for comfort. God, I admit my frailty; I repent of accusing You of not being good, not being in control. I trust Your sovereignty; I trust Your sufficiency. I want to go on record: I am waiting. I want to keep obeying. I’ll relax.”
Some of you just need to repent of anxiety and worry—it’s a sign that we’re not fully trusting the strength of the Lord. And, with expectation, I want you to thank the Lord right now for sending Jesus—in the flesh. God allowed His flesh to wither; Jesus absorbed the hurricane of God’s judgment so that we could have eternal life; we could be pardoned—doubly pardoned—by His grace.
Lord, thank You that You are a God of comfort. Thank you that even in the midst of the curse that we live under—the judgment—that, God, You are in the process of redeeming and restoring and renewing the strength of those that love you, worship You. Pray that we would never be guilty of worshipping the good that You give. We simply want to worship You, God, Who are good. And God, many of us are weary; we’re exhausted; we’re tired. Would you renew our strength by Your grace? Give us faith to believe that You are sufficient. We pray in Jesus’ Name, Amen.