Is 40:12-31 NEVER, EVER FORGOTTEN 10/7/12 Introduction: A. The pastor preached: God is your comfort. God will meet you in the wilderness of your life. His word gives you life. The Lord is your good shepherd. But then something happened that s not supposed to happen when a preacher is preaching. A man in the congregation stood up, agitated and angry, as if he couldn t take it anymore. It doesn t work, he said bluntly. Nothing happens. Nothing changes. My life is a mess. I m not sure I can go on, and I don t see any evidence that God even knows. And if he knows, he must not care, because nothing changes. You could ve heard a pin drop. The fact was, if people weren t so shocked, not a few would have said Amen. B. Last Sunday I preached that sermon. And downloaded it from Isaiah. It s a 2700 year old sermon. Turn to Is 40. You can see Isaiah s sermon of comfort there in the first 11 verses. I have a pastor friend who would prepare his sermons three weeks in advance (crazy, I know!). Well, Isaiah prepared this sermon over 100 years in advance. It was a sermon for Israel s great-grandchildren, when they returned from the exile brought on by the sins of their great-grandparents. It wasn t just that Isaiah spoke into the future; he also seemed to listen into the future to hear what God s beleaguered people would be thinking. He heard them thinking that God them back to their overgrown fields and broken-down towns, and then left them to fend for themselves. Every two-bit country around them was a threat. They were helpless in a playground of bullies. But evidently they were in God s blind spot because he did nothing to change things; apparently their cause, once so dear to the LORD, had been pushed to the bottom of his do list. C. Have you ever felt that way? I wouldn t be so surprised if someone stood up and talked back during a sermon like 1
the man I made up in my story. God has a way of leading us and then leaving us hanging sometimes. C. S. Lewis wrote about his experience after his wife s death in A Grief Observed. Go to God when you re happy, and you feel like you re welcomed with opened arms, said Lewis. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. D. In Is 40 it is as if he just got to the sweetest part of the sermon v.11 when he heard the muttering, saw the skeptical looks, heard the thumping on God s door. I. WHEN WE RE TEMPTED TO THINK THAT GOD EITHER DOESN T SEE OR CARE IT IS TIME TO ANSWER SOME QUESTIONS (40:12-27) A. V.12 Who?! The LORD our God. Do you realize how immense our Creator is? The reach of his hand? How little the weightiest things we know weigh on his scales? B. V.13-14 Who did he consult? Who?! No one, of course. Do you realize what it means when we say God is omniscient all-knowing? It doesn t just mean he knows what you ll have for lunch. It means he has figured everything out; that there are no loose ends; that our cause dovetails with his cause. He lacks no information. He has no decisions pending till he can get more feedback. C. V.15-17 Do you forget that the threats of nations are nothing to him? No nation on earth could buy his attention even if they turned all their forests to altar fires and all their animals to sacrifices. The nations with their maneuvering armies and economic manipulations are like dust mites on his scales. D. So, what other god are you going to turn to when the Lord is silent? Who is the LORD s competition? Vv.18-20... I wonder if the people would think, God, if you won t come to our aid right now, we ll find another god who will. And 2
God says, Good luck with that! Be sure you nail his feet to the mantelpiece or he ll fall off. God doesn t take well to our back-up security plans. E. Let s review what you learned long ago. Vv.21-24 Compared to our immense Creator we are all small, and we all live under the tent of the sky he has spread over us, a canopy he could pull away any time he wants. And do not be fooled by the status of the powerful. God s breath(!) withers them and they swirl away from him like chaff in a whirlwind. Vv.25-26 Remember what it said in v.11, and it seemed that was where the unspoken objection rose that God wasn t doing all that good a job. This is shepherding language again. God summons the stars like a shepherd his sheep. He names each of those glimmering worlds, and he shepherds them in their orbits and galaxies purely by his great power and mighty strength. F. So let s get everything out in the open here: v.27, Why do you complain, Jacob? Why do you say, Israel, My way is hidden from the LORD; my cause is disregarded by my God? If you look at the mess we re in, in the struggle we face, and we re supposed to be God s people, then he evidently doesn t see what is going on, or if he sees, he doesn t care. Because we re living like doormats. Illus.: The couple who came by me after the service one Sunday so many years ago had buried their only daughter, their only child a lovely, lively newlywed. Like Isaiah, I preached that day on the comfort of God, but when they stood in front of me that mother just looked me right in the eye and said, low and angry, It doesn t work! I think there are times when grace waits silently and that may have been one of those times. But when God spoke to his demoralized people through Isaiah he reoriented their thinking to something we all easily forget. 3
II. WEAK AND WEARY BELIEVERS CAN T FORGET WHAT WE KNOW TO BE TRUE (40:28-31) Vv.28-31 These are wall motto words, familiar and dear, so we need to be sure we actually realize what they say. A. V.28 Rest assured: God the God of the Bible, the God who makes promises and keeps them, the God who sent his one and only Son Jesus Christ to save us, never gets too tired to help us, and nothing we face is ever beyond the borders of his wise rule. Nothing ever baffles our God. His understanding no one can fathom. When, like Job, you cry out to God, Why?! and you get no answer, never conclude that it is because God doesn t know. Nor that God doesn t care. Both in Job and here God implies, Go ahead and ask your questions but they answers are beyond your understanding right now. You must trust me! But he does assure suffering believers with the words of Rom 8:28, And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. B. God reminds us again and again of his strength. The Bible is full of the muscle-bound stories of God s might. Just here in this chapter v.26 said of the stars, because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing. Then, in v.28, He will not grow tired or weary. And that might of God is what stands behind his promise in v.29 Our tireless God imparts his strength to his weary and weak people. When we stand helpless, God doesn t give us a pep talk. He doesn t tell us to dig deep within ourselves, to try harder. I had a boss once who would always say when things got crazy, You can always do 20% more than you think you can do. Well, maybe, but God doesn t say that. God gives his strength and power to the weary and weak. It is a gift. Grace with muscles. However, to be fair, strength isn t exactly what we were hoping for. Israel just wanted God to make them 4
prosperous and strong again. We want God to show his muscles to solve our problems. To make us well. To come to our defense. To work a miracle or two. And sometimes he does just that. But what God promises is that he will give us strength. Strength enough to get well? Strength enough to beat back the people who are out to get me? Strength enough to solve my problems? No, not necessarily, though all those are possible. In fact, there is often a lot of dying to be done in us. What God promises us is the strength we need to be faithful to him; the strength to obey, to love, to persevere. Till the world is made right, God promises to make us strong. C. Vv.30-31 Illus.: Right now, they re running the Chicago Marathon in the city. And having started some hours ago, some of those runners are dragging! The long road ahead of us, the marathon we re running as believers, would bring the strongest among us to our knees, gasping and spent. The secret to strength for the long haul is to constantly hope in the LORD. Hope, for all other people, is merely a motivator. I kept hoping I d finish so I hung on. Like that. But hope in the LORD isn t like that. To hope in the LORD is to lay hold of God s specific promises, to obey God s specific commands, to store up treasures in heaven. It is to believe that God is, right now, even in this mess, working in all things for the good of those who love him. When we put our hope in the Lord, we don t just feel better; we re not just more motivated. No, God actually infuses us with his strength in response to our faith. So then, when you hope in the Lord do you feel yourself spiritually bulking up, like the Incredible Hulk buttons popping, veins standing out? Not usually! In fact, you may not feel any stronger at all. But somehow when you walk through your trial the way God wants you to, you will be able to do what you never thought you could. 5
When Christians soar on wings like eagles, when they run without growing weary, when they walk and not faint, they don t look like Olympians. They look like Jesus. Our compassion and kindness are rejuvenated, our determination to do what is right is refreshed. The vicegrip of sin is broken, and we find the strength to let go of our white-knuckled grip on empty hopes. We find the Christlike strength to be humble and to serve, the strength to carry his cross. Our weakness becomes the billboard for God s strength. God says to us, as he did to Paul in 2 Cor 12:9, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. So Paul leads us to think, Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. Conclusion Twice in this passage God asks, Do you not know? Have you not heard? Is this all news to you who know Christ? Of course not! We just forget sometimes when the pressure is on. That s why we put these verses on plaques and screen-savers and post-it notes. I think I ve mentioned to you that one of my favorite lines in the book I wrote, Pastoral Graces, is, This side of the cloud of witnesses, pastors have the best seat in the house for seeing God work among His people. A few paragraphs later I wrote another part that moved me: From my place in the front row I see quiet and astonishing generosity, dogged daily service, and love blanketing a multitude of sins. I watch through the dark shadows as brothers and sisters wrestle with the Lord till they limp into the light. I ve watched saints straighten their shoulders and go out to face death. Again and again, I have seen God s people trust Him and I ve only rarely seen people turn away. Didn t you ever 6
get angry with God? I asked a friend who had suffered a crushing loss. No, I never did, he said, I grieved but I knew God was good. [p.137] Those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. 7