Opening illustration: Whether we are reading the daily paper, listening to the radio, or watching TV, the news is filled with what one might call the fruits of discouragement and even despair. Life is like a continuous newsreel showing the futile actions of people trying to live without a biblical hope, one solidly fixed on God as their defense and refuge.
Without question, we live in a strife-ridden world, one torn by wars, by famine, by disease and sickness, by natural disasters of gigantic proportion, by injustices and corrupt governments run by self-seeking politicians who are like capricious children (Isaiah 3: 4). But what is even worse, they rule over a populace that by-in-large has become indifferent to the moral improprieties in its leaders. Ours is a world polluted by demonic powers and humanistic ideas where man is wise in his own eyes and clever in his own sight. Through this satanically-inspired, man-made wisdom, man perverts and distorts what is good and wholesome, and in the process, takes people further and further away from God. As it was in Isaiah’s day, evil is called good, and good evil, darkness is substituted for light and light for darkness, bitter is substituted for sweet and sweet for bitter (Isa. 5: 20). The root of the problem is that we have become wise in our own eyes and clever in our own sight (Isa. 5: 21) for we now live in a day where we have not only taken prayer out of the schools, but where it is against the law for a teacher or even a judge to have a copy of the Ten Commandments in their class or courtroom.
Daily events demonstrate two things in America today:
(1) The restless and yet futile activity of a world full of people who know not the comfort of God because they refuse to live under the shelter of the Most High so that they might enjoy the shadow (the comfort and protection) of the Almighty.
(2) The tragic results of man’s choice to ignore God’s shelter. The result is a society that, in its mad pursuit to find meaning and happiness without God, is bombarded by spiritual, social, and moral decay. Isaiah portrays this as the constant churning of a restless sea with its waves constantly buffeting the shore and casting up mire and mud. What a graphic picture of the moral pollution that covers society.
Isaiah 57:20-21 reads, “But the wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud. ‘There is no peace,’ says my God, ‘for the wicked.’”
Introduction: Isaiah 40 is a passage filled with princi¬ples which any believer may draw upon for comfort and strength in any age. It is a comfort and strength however which should lead us as individuals (and as churches) to experience the promise of Isaiah 40: 31 and Daniel 11: 32.
The people of God are reproved for their unbelief and distrust of God. Let them remember they took the names Jacob and Israel, from one who found God faithful to him in all his straits. And they bore these names as a people in covenant with Him. Many foolish frets, and foolish fears, would vanish before inquiry into the causes. It is bad to have evil thoughts rise in our minds, but worse to turn them into evil words. What they had known, and had heard, was sufficient to silence all these fears and distrusts. Where God had begun the work of grace, he will perfect it. He will help those who, in humble dependence on him, help themselves. As the day, so shall the strength be. In the strength of Divine grace their souls shall ascend above the world. They shall run the way of God’s commandments cheerfully. Let us watch against unbelief, pride, and self-confidence. If we go forth in our own strength, we shall faint, and utterly fall; but having our hearts and our hopes in heaven, we shall be carried above all difficulties, and be enabled to lay hold of the prize of our high calling in Christ Jesus.
How to find God’s Comfort?
1. Acknowledge Him as the Creator (vs. 25 – 26)
Note the methodology of this passage. Through a series of rhetorical questions it makes the reader focus on the greatness of our God rather than on the nature and size of our problems. Compared to God, our problems are nothing. This is not to minimize them, for problems are real, cause great pain, and are a personal concern to the Lord. But we must learn to see them against the backdrop of the incomparable majesty of God.
When I think about the greatness of God’s Word and how it points us to God I am reminded of the child’s description of an elevator: “I got into this little room and the upstairs came down.” God’s Word is the little room that brings the reality of God who sits in the heavens, down to the realities of my life.
These verses in Isaiah 40 which make up the majority of this chapter are designed to get us to see our problems no matter how large against the background of our incomparable God.
The problem is that we turn this around. We stand between God and our problems, with our back to God, and we focus on the problems. But by doing so we completely lose sight of God. This has the effect of making a mole hill out of God and a mountain out of our problems from the standpoint of our perspective.
The results are various forms of sinful attitudes and strategies by which we seek to handle our lives like depression, self-pity, complaining, bitterness, demandingness, the instability of wavering back and forth between two opinions (the oscillation blues, like an electric fan), and other forms of defense and escape mechanisms like withdrawal, revenge, overeating, blaming God, blaming others, blaming conditions like the weather, and you name it.
2. Knowing He remembers you (v. 27)
Note first how Isaiah describes the people—as Jacob and Israel—as the people of the covenants of promise whom God had redeemed and to whom God had revealed Himself and given special unconditional promises.
The idea of this question in this context is: Since God is not only the Creator but also the Preserver of all things, even the heavenly bodies, nations, and individual men, how can you, especially as God’s people, with such special unconditional promises and privileges, say that God has forsaken you?
The question asked of Jacob and Israel is designed to rebuke and expose, designed to get them to evaluate their thoughts and actions in the light of God’s person. Why? To help them see just how far off they have drifted from anchoring their hope in the Lord. The trials and pressures of life, no matter how severe, are never an indication God has forgotten us or is unconcerned.
What do these words, “My way is hidden from the LORD,” teach us about the hearts and thinking of the people of Judah and about our own hearts?
It could reveal either unbelief or ignorance or maybe both. Such a statement could reveal unbelief in God’s ability to know about all the details of one’s life, or it could reveal ignorance of God’s love and concern to know about one’s affairs and needs, i.e., He is just not interested enough in me to watch out for my needs, or He is too busy and concerned about other things to be bothered about me. But of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Compare the following Old Testament passages where God declares both His knowledge and love or care over Israel (Deut. 11:12; 2 Chron. 16:9; Ps. 34:15; 55:22; Prov. 5:21; 15:3; Amos 9:8).
With verses 27-28, Isaiah touches on one of the problems and consequences of a wrong focus. What does a wrong focus do? It keeps us from experiencing the comfort of the Lord be¬cause it blurs our focus and distorts our perspective about the Lord, His love, wisdom, and power. It also distorts our perspective about our problems, their purpose and value and sometimes their seriousness (we sometimes see them as more serious than they are). Furthermore, we lose sight of eternity: laying up eternal treasures and living as sojourners.
3. Knowing He never grows weary (v. 28)
“Do you not know? Have you not heard?” These questions suggest that not only was their knowledge inadequate and shallow, but it was inadequate because they had failed to truly listen to the Word either because of their absence or because religious externalism had led to closed and hardened hearts (cf. Isa. 29:13).
Note the following principles:
(a) Spending quality time hearing and studying the Word is just as important to promote careful application of the Scripture and facts about God that we know, as it is for learning new truth.
(b) But, obviously, quality time in the Word is not just a matter of being present at church or of having a daily time in the Word. We must have ears to hear. This means a conscious, determined commitment to apply and relate our lives to the Word (see Mark 6: 30-52 and note the closing verse).
How do we handle our frustration with the problems in life and this demanding spirit that so often attacks us? There can be no real comfort in the midst of a spirit that questions God’s justice and love. We must learn to wait on the Lord, but first, we must learn what waiting on the Lord means.
Isaiah now calls on us to “wait on the Lord.” Here we will learn several important lessons and what it means to wait on the Lord.
Asks questions concerning knowing and hearing the Word about their God. Like the first, it too is designed to expose but with greater emphasis on bringing about correction by pointing them (and us) to one of the main problems - failure to know God and relate our personal lives to God’s greatness through the Word by trust. ‘He fainteth not, neither is weary.’ ‘He giveth power to the faint.’ ‘Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fail,’ but waiting on God the curse removes, and faintness and weariness cease, and the humble man becomes in some measure participant of, and conformed to, that life which knows no exhausting, operates unspent, burns with an undying flame, works and never wearies. We may take to ourselves all the peace and strength that come from that transcendent hope, whilst we are still subject, as of course we must be, to the limitations imposed on spirits fettered, as well as housed, in body. Whilst toil leaves as its consequence fatigue, and as our days increase our strength wanes; whilst physical weariness remains unaffected, there may pour into our spirits the influx of divine power, by which they will remain fresh and strong through advancing years and heavy tasks and stiff battles. Is it not something to believe it possible that
‘In old age, when others fade,
We fruit still forth shall bring’
Is it not something to know it as a possibility that we may have that within us which has no tendency to decay, which neither perishes with the using nor is exhausted by exercise, which grows the more the longer we live, which has in it the pledge of immortality, because it has in it the impossibility of exhaustion?
Illustration: The vine clings to the oak during the fiercest of storms. Though the violence of nature may uproot the oak, twining tendrils still cling to it. If the vine is on the side of the tree opposite the wind, the great oak is its protection; if it is on the exposed side, the tempest only presses it closer to the trunk.
In some of the storms of life, God intervenes and shelters us. In others, He allows us to be exposed so that we will be pressed more closely to Him.
4. Knowing He gives you strength (vs. 29 – 30)
To his weak and feeble people. This is one of his attributes; and his people, therefore, should put their trust in him, and look to him for aid (compare 2 Corinthians 12: 9). The design of this verse is to give consolation to the afflicted and down-trodden people in Babylon, by recalling to their minds the truth that it was one of the characteristics of God that he ministered strength to those who were conscious of their own feebleness, and who looked to him for support. It is a truth, however, as applicable to us as to the truth inestimably precious to those who feel that they are weak and feeble, and who look to God for aid.
The most vigorous young men, those in whom we expect manly strength, and who are best suited to endure hardy toil. They become weary by labor. Their powers are soon exhausted. The design here is, to contrast the most vigorous of the human race with God, and to show that while all their powers fail, the power of God is unexhausted and inexhaustible.
The word used here denotes properly “those who are chosen or selected” and may be applied to those who were selected or chosen for any hazardous enterprise, or dangerous achievement in war; those who would be selected for vigor or activity. The meaning is, that the most chosen or select of the human family - the most vigorous and manly, must be worn down by fatigue, or paralyzed by sickness or death; but that the powers of God never grow weary, and that those who trust in him should never become faint.
Illustration: Americans spend more than $20 billion annually on various anti-aging products that claim to cure baldness, remove wrinkles, build muscle, and renew the powers of youth. Can those products deliver what they promise? Dr. Thomas Perls of Boston University School of Medicine says there is “absolutely no scientific proof that any commercially available product will stop or reverse aging.”
Do we really need to depend and draw our strength from these things or depend on the strength of the Lord for every aspect and purpose in life?
Results for Waiting ON God: (v. 31)
“Those who wait” is a participle of continual action. It refers to one who is characterized by waiting. “Wait” is the Hebrew qawah, which means “to trust, hope, or have confidence in.” Originally qawah meant “to twist, bind.” It was used of the twisting process employed in the making of a rope, which of course, produces an instrument or a tool that is strong and capable of holding a heavy weight.
Those who wait in true faith are renewed in strength so that they can continue to serve the Lord while looking for his saving work knowing that there will come a time when all that God has promised will be realized and fulfilled. In the meantime the believer who waits survives by counting on God’s goodness, love, and wisdom. Remember, we are instruments of God, earthly vessels that He uses to carry out His purposes. Focusing on our God and the many truths of the Word is like weaving and twisting threads into a rope; it develops courage, strength, and endurance. The result? We are formed into an instrument that can be used to the Glory of God for which we were created and redeemed.
So God calls us to live by faith in His Word, in His sovereign purposes, and in His majestic being. Though His ways and thoughts transcend ours, He calls us to comfort one another as we face the difficulties of life with the challenge, “behold your God, your God reigns!”
Is beholding God practical? Absolutely!
(1) It replaces our weakness with His strength and that is practical. Isaiah promises, “We will gain new strength.”
(2) It lifts us out of despair and allows us to soar above the pressures of life. Isaiah promises, “we will mount up with wings like eagles.” This means we can soar above the reproaches and pains of this life by hope.
(3) It gives endurance and turns us into endurance runners so Isaiah promises, “we will run and not get tired.”
