Wait Upon The Lord

Wait Upon the Lord

Isaiah 40:27-31

I’ve entitled our message this morning, “Wait Upon the Lord,” but I could have easily justified calling it “Fly, Run and Walk,” and you’ll see why as we continue along. But since much of the message is focused on flying, I want to open with an illustration that pertains to WWII military aviation:

“John Gillespie Magee, Jr. was an American born of missionary parents in Shanghai in 1922. His father was an American; his mother originally a British citizen. Magee returned to the States and earned a scholarship at Yale. With England’s very existence [being] threatened by the air power of the Third Reich, Magee, instead of entering Yale, joined hundreds of other American men in crossing over into Canada to join the Canadian Royal Air Force. He entered flight training when he was only 18, and by the next year he was flying combat missions over France and defensive missions against the German Luftwaffe over Britain. On September 3, 1941, Magee tested a new model of the Spitfire V, taking it to an altitude of 30,000 feet. This experience inspired [the poem] ‘High Flight’ . . . which Magee composed on the back of an envelope,”(1) and here’s what he wrote:

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth,

Of sun-split clouds, and done a hundred things.

[I’ve] dreamed of, wheeled and soared and swung,

High in the sunlit silence, hovering there;

I’ve chased the shouting wind along and flung,

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious burning blue,

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,

Where never lark, or even eagle flew;

And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod,

The high un-trespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.(2)

That journey to 30,000 feet was obviously a high point in Gillespie’s career – pun intended. You see, aviation can serve as a metaphor for life. Life is full of many highs and lows; from passing your private pilot checkride, to not having a plane to fly afterwards; from getting that dream job, to finding out that it’s not all you expected; from having your fairy-tale wedding, to undergoing a brutal divorce; from the mountain top to the valley – and God’s people, Israel, were definitely in a low spot.

Our primary passage today is addressed to those who lived in the southern part of Israel, known as Judah. Their plight extends through two foreign take-overs; the first being at the hands of the Assyrians in 721 B.C. Isaiah chapters 1-39 address the sins leading up to the Assyrian invasion. In Isaiah 36:1, we read this: “Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them.” Judah was allowed to be taken by Assyria, because the people had rejected the Lord by worshipping foreign gods and idols; and also, because King Hezekiah had put his trust in the power of Egypt (Isaiah 30:1-2).

But God had promised that He would wait for the petitions of His people; meaning that He would not walk off and abandon them. He would listen for their prayers of repentance and their cries for deliverance. We read in Isaiah 30:18-19, “Therefore the LORD will wait, that He may be gracious to you; and therefore He will be exalted, that He may have mercy on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for Him. For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will be very gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when He hears it, He will answer you.” In these verses, the Lord said that He would wait for His people. But they needed to do what? They needed to wait for Him. To “wait on the Lord” (Isaiah 40:31) would be the key to their deliverance. It’s also the key to ours!

So, in Isaiah chapters 1-39 we learn about the sins leading up to the Assyrian invasion; but Isaiah chapters 40-66 speak about the Babylonian captivity of 587 B.C. – and God allowed the captivity to happen because the people of Judah kept repeating the same sins. But the promise of Isaiah 30:18-19, about being delivered by waiting on the Lord, was still relevant during the Babylonian captivity.

When we come to our main passage in Isaiah chapter 40, the world leader is Cyrus, king of Persia – and God was preparing to deliver His people from captivity! In 541 B.C. Cyrus “issued the decree that permitted the Jews to return to their land to rebuild the city and the temple (Ezra 1:1-4).”(3) In our primary passage, we find words of encouragement that were meant to lift the people out of the depths of despair to soar on new heights – words that tie back to the original promise found in Isaiah 30:18-19. So, let’s all stand at this time in honor of God’s Word, as we read Isaiah 40:27-31.