2.7.21 Isaiah 40:27–31
27 Why do you speak, O Jacob? O Israel, why do you say, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and justice for me is ignored by my God”? 28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the eternal God. He is the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired, and he will not become weary. No one can find a limit to his understanding. 29 He is the one who gives strength to the weak, and he increases the strength of those who lack power. 30 Young men grow tired and become weary. Even strong men stumble and fall. 31 But those who wait for the LORD will receive new strength. They will lift up their wings and soar like eagles. They will run and not become weary. They will walk and not become tired.
Who would you say were the most tired people in the Bible off the top of your head? I think of Moses. Here the poor guy was 80 years old, married and settled faraway from his past problems in Egypt, 40 years gone. God then calls him from a seeming retired life of watching sheep and tells him that he has to move two million people from slavery and into a Promised Land. It ends up taking 40 years. The people whine and complain the entire way and accuse God of purposely leading them out into the desert to starve them to death. And what does Moses do? He said to them, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” He sounds angry, tired and worn out by them. Who wouldn’t be?
Think of Elijah. He’s just won a mighty battle against the prophets of Baal. God sends fire down from heaven. The prophets are put to death. The people are convinced! It is obvious that the LORD is the only true God. But the battle isn’t over! What does Queen Jezebel do? She vows to put Elijah to death! Elijah has to run for his life. So he runs from it all. What does He say when He gets to Beersheba in Judah? He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, LORD. Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” Here is a man who is tired and worn out. He’s done.
Read through the Psalms. It is the hymn book of the Old Testament. One of the continuing refrains is, “How long?” This is a true reflection of life. How long? Finish it already.
There are two words that are repeated three times in today’s text. “Tired” and “weary.” The Israelites were going to be sent into the Babylonian Captivity. They said, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and justice for me is ignored by my God.” So that’s why they were tired and weary.
You can see this weariness in our youth today who have their schools and sports closed to them. They miss their friends. They don’t have a routine. Some of them lived for their sports, and as a result have even committed suicide. I find it sad that they put so much importance on sports that they would kill themselves over a form of exercise, entertainment, and competition, especially when there is so much more to live for in this world. But it goes to show the effect this constant fear over a virus has caused on people, being kept in the confines of their homes. Now there are new variants of the virus awakening another wave of fear, and people are tired and weary.
Those two words could describe lots of us, even without the virus.
• Spouses grow tired and weary with each other over time. They grow tired of the same arguments. They grow weary of the same annoying habits.
• Parents grow tired of having to tell their children the same things over and over and over again, also of the complaining and whining. And children grow tired of their parents making them do homework and chores day after day.
• If you’ve ever had a nagging back ache or constant headaches, when you can’t sleep or you can’t move without pain, it makes you tired and weary.
• Imagine having to wake up day after day without your spouse by your side because of divorce or death. There is a tremendous loneliness and darkness to life that literally wears people out: a feeling of failure or a feeling of abandonment. What am I doing here?
• We also grow tired and weary as we witness our society grow worse and worse. What is going on in this world? How long?
I hate to linger on it. But it’s very real, especially in today’s world. You can try to divert through Netflix or entertainment. But after binge watching Cobra Kai you think to yourself, “What did I get accomplished in that 12 hours? What good did I accomplish? Absolutely nothing.” So we even get tired and weary from doing nothing: from having no purpose.
This is how the Israelites would feel in the Babylonian Captivity. It is how many of us feel in captivity as well, even with our entertainment. It is being entrapped by forces more powerful than you, whether it’s a Babylonian Captivity, a boring marriage, a job, Covid virus, school closing, no sports, or old age.
Isaiah has a rescue plan. It comes through a simple confession of faith. Any kindergartener can know it and confess it. It’s nothing profound in a doctrinal sense. He asks some simple questions with basic answers.
Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the eternal God. He is the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired, and he will not become weary. No one can find a limit to his understanding.
Remember who God is. Do you not know? Sure you do. Have you not heard? Yes, you have. “I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” But there’s a difference between knowing something, hearing something, and actually believing it and living it.
Imagine painting a wall white. Some might say white is boring and bland. But I could also look at it and say that white paint brightens up the room and makes it seem more cheery. Or maybe you put up a picture that makes you happy. But after a while, the picture becomes invisible to you because you’ve seen it so often. So it can happen with our view towards God, but so much more. If I don’t believe He IS that way, it will affect how I approach Him or don’t approach Him.
God is the ALMIGHTY Creator of EVERYTHING. He is also ETERNAL. There is no LIMIT to His understanding. What does this mean that there is no limit to His understanding? Alcoholics commiserate and help fellow alcoholics. They can UNDERSTAND what you’re going through and say things that might comfort them from their experience. If God has NO LIMIT to His understanding, it means that He UNDERSTANDS my darkness, when I feel alone, because He was left alone on the cross. He UNDERSTANDS divorce, because He’s gone through the divorce of being abandoned while on the cross. He knows what suffering, dying and death feels like, because He’s been through it too. There’s nothing He can’t understand.
We also value diversity, when people come from different perspectives and backgrounds, it’s supposed to broaden our outlook when we have more experience. When it comes to God, He has a broad PERSPECTIVE - because He’s been everywhere. He created everywhere. He knows how I am designed, because HE designed me and you with all of our differences. He knows my greatest fears and my greatest needs. This should affect the way I feel about Him and how often I GO to Him when I need Him.
He will not grow tired, and he will not become weary. What good does that do me when I’m the one who is tired? Well, what if that One can lift you up and pick you up? What if that One can re-energize you? I think of Robin Williams, who was full of life. Watch him on the television screen and he’s bursting with it. Just watching him go can fill you with joy and energy. But behind the scenes, he was depressed and sad. He seemed to be manic with ups and downs. He ended up committing suicide. God isn’t that way. He’s exploding with life. He doesn’t get weary or tired. What does this mean? Parents and spouses can grow tired of hearing their complaints and problems. Men claim that women nag. Women claim that men don’t listen. God listens, and it doesn’t wear Him out. You can pray to Him nonstop and He doesn’t get tired of listening to you. He only says, “more.” Bring it to me! I want it all! “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened!”
Think about this also when it comes to your life of confession when it comes to your sins. Think of Peter who wanted to put a number on forgiveness. “How many times do I have to?” It can be exhausting trying to help someone who is broken down. It takes all of your energy and strength to try and lift them up. It isn’t exhausting for God! So what does that mean? I can come to God at any time and and at any place with any problem and any guilt I have. He already knows what it is. Jesus already paid for it and suffered for it on the cross. So you can’t wear Him out with your confessions. The angels rejoice when you come to Him. They get excited about it!
Here’s another neat thing. God doesn’t just passively take care of you by giving you a place to vent or to rest. He is the one who gives strength to the weak, and he increases the strength of those who lack power. I think of Paul who was stoned, beaten, arrested, whipped, shipwrecked, and jailed. He had to deal with a terrible thorn in his side of some sort that just kept on nagging at him. Yet the man just kept going and going and going. Elijah, when he wanted to give up, was reinvigorated by God and went back to Israel to keep on prophesying. Peter, who had rejected Jesus and felt a tremendous burden of guilt, ended up going on mission journeys of his own and reaching out to the Jews. David, who was wasting away in his guilt over his murder and adultery, ended up continuing on as king even through all of the problems he went through with the death of several of his sons and the shame of his behavior. Many people would have given up on life. They didn’t. They kept on fighting, kept on serving, kept on doing what God called them to do.
Why? How? Paul pointed to God’s grace. God told Him that He loved him and forgave him. He would work through the weakness to make Paul’s faith stronger. That was enough. Elijah was given Elisha to help in his ministry. Peter was given forgiveness. He was reinstated in his call to “feed my sheep.” David was confronted over his sin, exposed of his guilt, and given forgiveness by Nathan. All of these were gifts of God given to them at crucial points in their lives which enabled them to keep on fighting and keep on going in difficult circumstances. God used different ways to strengthen His people with the same grace.
What does Isaiah say? Those who wait for the LORD will receive new strength. They will lift up their wings and soar like eagles. They will run and not become weary. They will walk and not become tired. You can see the answer in that one verb, “wait.” Waiting takes patience. Impatience comes in life when someone doesn’t do something the way you think they should do it or when they should do it.
Think of Saul. The Philistines were coming to battle, but Saul couldn’t fight until Samuel made an offering. He waited seven days, and Samuel still hadn’t shown up. The men started panicking, and so did Saul. He got tired of waiting, so he made the sacrifice himself, a sacrifice that he wasn’t authorized to make. He didn’t wait like he was supposed to. (1 Samuel 13)
Waiting takes faith. Some translate it as “hope.” The word literally means both things - to wait in eager expectation for God to do something about your problem or your issue. God knows the situation you’re in. He knows what to do. He knows when to do it. I don’t have to panic. I don’t have to give up. I don’t have to take matters into my own hands. I sometimes have to do what is most difficult, which is nothing. Don’t get divorced. Don’t quit. Don’t give up. Don’t kill yourself. Isaiah calls on us to just wait in hope that God will work it out in His own way at His own time.
If you’re only living life for the here and the now, you won’t have this hope. And that’s where so many people are in America today. They don’t have hope. They don’t see Jesus who died and rose from the dead for them. They don’t know grace and mercy and forgiveness. So when times go hard, they give up.
Joseph Hallinan wrote an article in Psychology Today about the power of hope. In the 1950s, Professor Kurt Richter of John Hopkins University conducted a gruesome experiment with domesticated and wild rats. He first took a dozen domesticated rats, put them into jars half-filled with water, and watched them drown. Three rats died quickly within two minutes. But the nine remaining rats swam for days before they eventually gave up and died. Now came the wild rats, renowned for their swimming ability. The ones Richter used had been recently trapped and were fierce and aggressive. One by one, he dropped them into the water. And one by one, they surprised him: Within minutes of entering the water, all 34 died. “What kills these rats?”
Richter then tweaked the experiment: He took other, similar rats and put them in the jar. Just before they were expected to die, however, he picked them up, held them a little while, and then put them back in the water. “In this way,” he wrote, “the rats quickly learn that the situation is not actually hopeless.” When the rats learned that they were not doomed, that the situation was not lost, that there might be a helping hand at the ready—in short, when they had a reason to keep swimming—they did. They did not give up, and they did not go under. Hallinan concluded, “There are obviously many differences between humans and rats. But one similarity stands out: We all need a reason to keep swimming.”
My friends, we have a reason to keep swimming, no matter how tired and weary we may be. We are not rats in an experimental tube. We are humans created, baptized, forgiven and loved in Jesus. We have a powerful God who knows how to deal with your specific situation and has the power to change things. He created you. He knows you. He hears your prayers. You are not hidden from His sight. Through faith in Jesus, you will be captured from this world when you die and the angels carry you home. That is a powerful thing. Just wait. Instead of living the hopeless life of a rat in the depths of despair, God says you can soar in power like an eagle on the wings of your powerful God. Jesus makes a difference in this world. Believe it, and don’t give up your hope in Christ. Amen.
