The Promise Series

How many of you have had the experience of praying to God and it seems like God is not listening or not answering your prayer? All of us, I would suspect. Sadly, I’ve seen that take people out of the faith. God didn’t answer their prayers so they either turned their back on God or concluded that there was no God at all. Their disappointment and anger are understandable at a basic level. Their prayers may be asking God to change some unbearable situation or is a plea for help or to be cured of some disease. Their unanswered prayers may have been for someone else, someone they loved very dearly.

Ted Turner, the founder of CNN and TBN, was very religious growing up and wanted to be a missionary when he got old enough. When Ted was fifteen, his 12-year-old sister, Mary Jane, became very ill with systemic lupus erythematosus, a disease in which the immune system attacks the body’s tissue. She was racked with pain and constantly vomiting, and her screams filled the house. Ted regularly came home after school and held her hand, trying to comfort her. He prayed fervently for her recovery; she prayed to die. She finally died after years of misery. Ted lost his faith. “I was taught that God was love and God was powerful,” he says, “and I couldn’t understand how someone so innocent should be made or allowed to suffer so” (www.exminister.org/ted-turner.html).

Imagine being born into servitude and deprivation. You work for your harsh masters and overlords from sun-up to sun down until you literally drop dead of exhaustion, poor health, old age … or a combination of all three. You pray to God your whole life and … nothing. This was the plight for 10 generations of Hebrew slaves in the land of Egypt … whole generations crying out to God to deliver them … and when He does, He sends an 80-year-old fugitive with a speech impediment. Safe to say, it probably wasn’t the way that they expected God to answer their prayers, amen?

God answered His people prayers then and He answered their prayers during one of the darkest periods of their history … again, a time of terrible tragedy, a time of exile and servitude to the Babylonians. Unlike their time in Egypt, which lasted for 400 years, their captivity only lasted for 70 years. Those who had been led off into captivity would never return to Israel. Those who were born in captivity would return to what was left of their once great nation. The Babylonians had reduced Jerusalem to a pile of rubble and that is basically what the Jewish survivors of the diaspora or exile found when they got home. There were no city walls … no Temple … no central or organized government … no obvious leadership … no justice. Violence and poverty were rampant. And it is in this moment of deep, dark despair … where the people’s faith is being tested and challenged and they are right at the point of either clinging to God or abandoning God … that the Prophet Isaiah choose to speak of hope.

Please take your “Owner’s Manual” and turn to chapter 59 in the Book of Isaiah. The entire chapter is broken into four sections. The first section begins by addressing the charge that God is either ignoring their prayers or is incapable of answer them. “See, the LORD’s hand is not too short to save, nor His ear too dull to hear” (Isaiah 59:1). In verses 2 through 8, Isaiah shifts the blame from God to the people themselves. “Rather, YOUR iniquities” …. not God’s shortcomings … “have been barriers between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, you tongue mutters wickedness. No one brings suit justly, no one goes to law honestly” (Isaiah 50:2-4). Remember, Jerusalem had been reduced to rubble and the land had become a violent and lawless place.

When Israel confesses its sins … when they admit their transgressions before God in verses 9 through 15 … God makes them a promise. He puts on the “Armor of God” … the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation. He wraps Himself in garments of vengeance and fury … and comes to Zion “like a pent-up stream that the wind of the LORD drives on” (Isaiah 59:19) to redeem and restore them … and He keeps His word.

We’re no different today, are we? When life isn’t working … when we’re disappointed or suffering in some way … when our comfort and ease are interrupted … who do we tend to blame for our situation? We blame God. We bring Him into court and we make Him stand before the bench and we question His faithfulness, we question His goodness, we question His wisdom, we question His love. “Where are You, God? Aren’t You supposed to be listening for my prayers? I’ve been praying and praying … nothing. What gives, God? Are You so far away that You can’t hear my prayers or are You just ignoring them?”