Isaiah 40:27-31 - Soaring Strength

Let's take our Bible and go to the book of Isaiah, chapter 40, isaiah, chapter 40.

Isaiah 40 · chapter mention Isaiah 40 · chapter mention

You're just visiting with us and I just want to mark out a couple special visitors.

Over 20 years ago, when I was young and didn't have all this gray stuff hanging off of my chin, adele Rose would call this young whippersnapper named Doug McMaster's pastor.

So she and a number of other folks would look at me and say you know, I've got children younger than you, and some of them even said I have grandchildren younger than you.

But we had a delightful time together in Northern California and Adele is here with us along with her daughter, natalie, enjoying some time in New York City with family, and wanted to come and spend this time with us in worship together.

So, welcome, glad to have you here.

But we're just going through the book of Isaiah and we're here now in chapter 40 together.

It's a beautiful passage and we're going to be looking at verses 27 through 31 together.

William Cooper, a man who's known today for writing some of the grandest hymns and poems that have ever been marked in the English language, found his heart captured by despair and darkness and depression at a very young age.

In 1752, at the age of 21,.

He sank into one of four major episodes of depression in his life, and he described that first one like this I was struck down with such a dejection of spirit as none but they who have felt the same can have the least conception of Day and night.

I was upon the rack lying in horror, only to rise up in despair.

I presently lost all relish for those studies to which before had been my close attachment.

The classics no longer had any charm for me.

I had need of something more salutary, but I had not one to direct me where to find it.

He was lost in gloom with no hope.

Later he wrote a letter to a friend and he said this.

He said, loaded as my life is with despair, I have no such comfort as would result from a supposed probability of better things to come once my life ended.

You tell me that this cold gloom will be succeeded by a cheerful spring, and you endeavor to encourage me to hope for a spiritual change resembling it.

And you endeavor to encourage me to hope for a spiritual change resembling it, but all that will be a lost labor.

Nature may revive itself again, but a soul once dead lives no more.

Have you ever felt like that you ever felt, like God has forgotten you, like your prayers really just don't rise any higher than the ceiling that you are sort of like.

Cooper said, a soul once slain never lives again.

This is exactly what the people in Israel or the Israelites, I should say felt like here in Isaiah, chapter 40.

Isaiah 40 · chapter mention

And they weren't just tired, they were spiritually disillusioned.

They were God's chosen people, but here they were captives in Babylon.

Their temple was destroyed, their land was ripped out from underneath them, they were shackled in chains by a foreign nation far more powerful than they were, and their hope was gone.

And two temptations crept deeply into their heart To think that the gods of Babylon were true, more real, stronger than Yahweh, or a temptation simply just to give up and just comply with everything that was in front of them, to embrace the values and the culture of Babylon and let go of any identity of being an Israelite.

And their questions and their questions hardened into accusation.

My way is hidden from the Lord, my claim is ignored by my God, and maybe you've been there, maybe you're there now, perhaps you're going through this time right at the moment, where those things are what you would speak, and maybe you're like Cooper, there I don't feel like I have anyone to direct me to anything better, but I want to tell you this morning there is a better place, there is someone you can go to.

There is hope in the middle of that kind of despair, and Isaiah wonderfully unfolds it.

And as we go through this passage I pray that it'll bring great comfort to all our hearts, maybe bringing salve over past times of discouragement, maybe meeting you right in the moment where you're at, or perhaps preparing you for a day that's coming when all of these things might grip your heart.

The first thing I want us to look at is the complaint of the weary in verse 27.

Take a look at what it says there.

Jacob, why do you say?

And Israel, why do you assert?

My way is hidden from the Lord and my claim is ignored by my God?

This cry reveals more than just fatigue.

It reveals a soul disoriented by sin and suffering.

They were spiritually unraveling in this moment.

They felt unseen, unheard, unloved, and their theology is not just being questioned, it's collapsing.

It's collapsing under the weight of decades of neglect and disobedience that had led them into this exile.

Here they are now facing the consequences of their iniquity and they're presuming that all that they're going to hear from heaven is the sound of silence.

This isn't just sadness.

This is an ache of abandonment perceived abandonment, but abandonment nonetheless.

Perceived abandonment, but abandonment nonetheless.

And their pain is drowning out the voice of their theology.

They echo the same statement in Isaiah 49 and verse 14.

The Lord has forsaken me.

My Lord has forgotten me.

And, as we'll find out, they're not forsaken or forgotten.

In fact, they are still God's people.

Yes, their temple is rubble.

Yes, their homeland's a memory.

Yes, their hope is hanging by a thread.

But they're going to hear something different from God here in a moment, but for them right now, it just felt like a fraying thread that was about to break and plunge them into the abyss of darkness.

And let's not be too quick to dismiss them or their questions, because I think all of us have felt very similar words creeping into the depth of our hearts God, where are you?

Why aren't you answering?

Do you still see me?

And this isn't just a unique grief.

You can read the scriptures in Psalm 13.

And David the warrior poet oh Lord, will you forget me forever?

Or Job, shattered and bewildered, in Job 13.

Why do you hide your face and consider me as your enemy, or even Jesus in the deepest moment of despair, on the cross.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Several years ago we lived in central London and close to our house was a place called Wimbledon well, wimbledon Common, but Wandsworth Common and we would walk our Labrador Retriever night over to Wandsworth Common and, wonderfully, it was kind of confined and you could let him go.

Everybody there had their dogs off leash, which was a lot different than here.

Over there they had a little place where the kids could be and this whole big space where the dogs could be, and over here they have a big space where the kids could be in a little place where the dogs could be.

So we would let Knight go and he was one of the most sociable dogs I had ever met and he would just flit from person to person and wag his tail and go say hello, and then he'd run off to somebody else and go say hello and run off to somebody else and go say hello and after a little while he'd realize that maybe he had an owner and he would turn around and he'd look and sometimes we'd see each other's eyes and he'd be happy, and other times he couldn't see us and all of a sudden panic would rise up into him and he would just dart from one place to the next looking for us, frantic that maybe he was just left alone there.

And one day someone came up to us and they said I think your dog is looking for you.

That's what despair does to us.

It makes us feel like the distance is absence, that our inability to see means there's nothing to see.

But what night didn't know was that we were watching him, that we had our eye on him, we knew where he was.

And, as we'll learn in a moment, god's silence is not God's absence.

His quiet is an invitation to lean in and to learn more about who he is, to come into a deeper account, encounter with the holy God.

And you know, you don't even need a desperate situation to get there.

Even sometimes the ordinary work and labor of life can bring us into that kind of moment.

It's a slower degrade, but it still brings us to the same place.

Martha, when Jesus spoke to her in Luke 10, said Martha, martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things.

She was encumbered by life.

Wonderfully, the Lord Jesus didn't dismiss her, he didn't scold her, he redirected her and he reminded her, and he reminds us of something better that our weariness is not failure.

In fact, our weariness and our hollowness of life and darkness is really just a call within our soul for a redeemer, our rescuer, to come.

We live in a fallen world and we too are fallen people, and our longings aren't proof of god's absence.

What they are echoes of the dependent life that we were meant to live.

We were designed to live in dependence upon god, and when we get caught up, just grinding away with our own abilities and strength, we lose sight of the one who's meant to give us the supply for all things, and so he brings us down a pathway that makes us, at a time, to remember that we must look to the one who restores all things, restores all things.

And this ache that's in our hearts, it's not just personal, it's cosmic.

The scriptures tell us the creation itself eagerly waits for the anticipation of God's sons to be revealed, and the whole creation has been groaning, together with labor pains, until now, together with labor pains until now.

And we groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

This whole universe is longing to be released from what's happening now to be brought into something better.

Creation groans and we groan, but the Bible tells us we don't have to groan in despair.

We don't groan without hope.

We groan in hope and we groan not just for relief, but redemption, a restoration of all things to be reclaimed to better than the best day that we've ever had.

To that time when it says, eye has not seen, nor his ear even heard the things that God has prepared for those who love him.

This is what we're longing for and this is what the aching cries of our heart are actually communicating.

How does God address these folks?

They deserve to be where they're at They've.

Does he grind them into the dust?

Does he tell them look, you deserve everything you're getting.

Does he walk away and say you feel absent?

Well, you ought to.

No, he doesn't.

Verse 26, lift up your eyes, look up and see.

He's telling them that he's not hid.

He wants them to look.

It's a divine invitation to come to the end of themselves and to go to him, to meet him, who is the strength, and his strength begins where our strength ends and he redirects their gaze.

He tells them don't look down at your chains, look up at the stars and then look at the one who created those stars.

Each star is shining in its place and it's not forgotten.

He names every one and he can look into the abyss of your hollowed heart and he knows your name too.

You see, he answers their weakness not with condemnation but with comfort, not with shallow optimism, but with a deeper revelation of his nature.

He's eternal, he's wise and he's tender to the weak.

Let's take a look at this passage Jacob, why do you say?

And Israel, why do you assert my way is hidden from the Lord and my claim is ignored by my God.

Do you not know?

Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the whole earth.

He never becomes faint or weary.

There's no limit to his understanding.

Look up and see.

He's eternal, he's not bound by time, he's a creator, he's not limited by creation.

He's tireless, he's never weary or overwhelmed and he's wise.

His understanding is unsearchable.

Now, these things are not meant to be packed off into some little distant high ivory tower to be dissected by theologians alone.

This is not detached theological abstraction here.

This is a revelation of God that we need most when we're ground into the ground.

These are not theological bullet points simply to file away and say, well, I know God is eternal, I know God is creator, I know God is wise, I know God is tireless.

No, I'm glad you could say that, but you need to hear that because it's a lifeline for your soul that's been flattened by grief or sorrow or distress.

And Isaiah is not simply stacking doctrines here.

He's opening up a window to their suffocating soul.

Let's unpack it for just a moment.

He's eternal, he's not bound by time, and we need a God who is eternal, who is present not only in the moment but also in the outcome, that he understands when we're hemmed in by circumstances.

We need a God who is the creator, who can bring something out of nothing and has options that are beyond our imagination.

When we're overwhelmed, we cling to the truth that he never is Overwhelmed.

We cling to the truth that he never is.

His strength doesn't flicker.

His capacities don't run low.

He's not out of help when we need it and when our situation makes no sense.

His wisdom is not missing.

His ways are unsearchable.

It's not absent from us.

It's deeper and higher and kinder than we understand.

One of the things I loved about Adele was going to her house and seeing all the textiles that she was working on.

We just had a sweet little moment earlier before the service about how she found a box we had left at her house because we couldn't fit it all in the container we were bringing to London, and she opened it up and she's been spinning some thread just remembering us over the past month.

So it was delightful.

But often we're like a little child underneath a loom and we're looking up and all we see are the scattered threads that are going this way and that and none of it makes sense and none of it feels like it's a pattern.

Until you get on top and you see it all there in a beautiful artistry.

From the underside it looks like chaos.

From God's point of view it's a masterpiece in progress.

And so the Lord here is not distant.

He's giving them a revelation of himself and he wants to relocate their perspective outside of themselves and their circumstances to him.

But we haven't even got to the greatest thing that he wants to say about himself.

Not only is he eternal, not only is the creator, not only is his strength without weariness and not only is he wise beyond comprehension.

Take a look at the next verse.

He gives strength to the faint and strengthens the powerless.

Who is this God?

Who is eternal?

Who is this God?

Who's the creator who said let there be and there was.

Who is this God that is not weary, whose wisdom never fails?

He's a God who's gentle to the weak.

He doesn't shame the weak, he strengthens them.

He's not annoyed by our weaknesses, he's drawn to it.

He doesn't tell us come back when you're better.

He says come to me, all you who labor and heavy laden, and I'll give you rest, said our Lord Jesus.

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness.

This is God.

He doesn't just pin the stars in his place.

With his power he lifts up the weary, he names the galaxies and he knows us.

And when Isaiah is here speaking about, in poetry, jesus brought and embodied in person In him the everlasting God, stepped into time, the creator entering creation not with power and thunder, but in frailty and flesh.

He became weary to carry our weariness and he walked among us.

And he didn't avoid the failing and the weak and the faint, he moved toward them.

He touched lepers, he wept with the grieving, he relieved the bent and the broken and on the cross he bore the sins of the exiled soul.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me, taking on the punishment of all those who would one day believe on him?

He entered our forsakenness the forsakenness that we deserve because of our sin, so that we might be forgiven and never forsaken again.

He became weak so that in our weaknesses his power might rest upon us.

He was cast down so that we could have the promise that one day we would rise forever.

So if you feel overlooked or perhaps forgotten or ground down by grief or delay or silence, especially if the source of that despair is one of your own making, listen to the Savior here, who spoke to people in the midst of a hollowness of heart and even an accusation against him that they had brought themselves to, and he says to them lift up your eyes.

And he says to them lift up your eyes.

Isaiah, in a couple chapters, will say this he will not break a bruised reed, he will not quench a smoldering wick.

That's our Lord Jesus.

Come to me and I will give you rest.

The voice that spoke the galaxies into being wants to whisper strength into our soul, and I pray that this message in Isaiah will do that.

He's not telling you to come because you need to be stronger.

He's telling you to come to him because you are not strong.

And look, in verse 30 and 31, of the comfort that comes to the trusting.

After lifting up our eyes to who he is, this everlasting, eternal God creator, endlessly strong, ever wise, ever gracious, he gives a word of comfort.

Yous may become faint and weary, and young men stumble and fall, but those who trust in the Lord will renew their strength.

They will soar in wings like eagles.

They'll run and not become weary.

They will walk and not faint.

Even yous shall faint and be weary, and young men will feel exhausted.

Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men will feel exhausted.

Nobody's immune, not the young, not the energetic, not the capable.

We're all all able to fail.

There's a limit to our strengths.

Even a marathon runner hits the wall.

Even the brightest student blanks out.

Even spiritual leaders run dry.

Strength has an expiration date, except for those who tap into someone who's greater than they are.

They who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.

Now, that word renew their strength is an important word.

It doesn't just mean a recharge, it means an exchange Right.

Recharge, it means an exchange right, this is God taking his tank and swapping out your empty one, right?

It's not.

Just let me put a little bit in your tank, let me give you a new tank and waiting.

Waiting is not just quiet stillness and I wonder if God's going to do something one day.

Let me just watch my clock.

No, waiting isn't a time word.

Waiting is a hopeful expectant trust.

Waiting is a hopeful expectant trust.

Micah and David and I, in two separate times, had the delight of hiking the Grand Canyon, and so when I was reading about the Grand Canyon trips, I read a book called Death in the Grand Canyon.

I don't recommend reading that book before you hike the Grand Canyon, but it talked about one of the episodes in which the Bright Angel Creek or river I'm not sure what it's called was flooding into the Colorado and just a wash of mud and earth and stone came tumbling down the canyon and was wiping out the Bright Angel trailhead and also the campground that was there, and some people clambered up onto some rocks as the waters rushed around them and as they rose and they rose, and they rose, they were wondering if they were in the safe spot, but thankfully they were.

Sadly others weren't, but when they were sitting there, with the torrents of mud and earth and water raging beside them and around them on this high territory, all they could do was think of the security of the spot that they were in and hope that it stayed strong.

If you were to put this word waiting, into that, it would be that what are you waiting on?

I'm waiting on this rock to keep me firm.

What is waiting on the Lord mean?

I'm relying on him to keep me firm.

It's not a time question, it's a trust matter.

And the promises here that are just wonderful and seemingly backwards.

We go from soaring into the skies to running with strength, to walking with endurance.

You would think, isaiah, you got this backwards.

We should be walking, running, flying, not flying, running, running, flying, not flying, running, walking.

But I think it's a great picture.

What does he say about this, this comfort that he gives to us?

First of all, we'll mount up with wings like eagles.

Eagles don't escape storms.

They find the updraft and move through them into higher places, and what we receive is a spiritual updraft that brings us through the storms of life to places of peace and serenity, and God's strength can carry us above the circumstances that are dragging us down.

Run and not be weary.

We're given strength for a long race.

Be weary.

We're given strength for a long race.

The people in exile here it's going to be 70 years before they get out of this.

Did you hear that?

70 years?

That's a long time.

Their hardships are going to be lifelong for most, all of them.

There's going to be no escape.

For them.

It's going to be a long, winding, relentless road of captivity in the hands of the Babylonians, but God promises them not release but the ability to run right through it all, every one of those 70 years.

Jesus ran this race.

The writer of Hebrews said that his life ended in death, but he kept his eye forward and for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame.

He knew what was ahead and you'll walk and not faint.

There are a lot of times in life when you don't feel like you're soaring and there's a lot of times when you don't think you could ever run.

Most days are really just simply days of walking, aren't they?

And perhaps you're walking right now through something an agonizing loss, a grinding divorce, a painful disease, the monotony of an ever repetitive life of folding laundry and attending appointments and shaping children and cooking dinners.

But here's the promise monotony of an ever repetitive life of folding laundry and attending appointments and shaping children and cooking dinners.

But here's the promise Even if you don't feel like you're soaring, even if you don't feel like you're running, you can walk and not faint.

God can sustain you step by step.

He can take you through all the headwinds of your hardships, through all the mind-numbing monotony of your mundane moments.

He can take you through them.

And so what we're left with here is really an implicit call to trust.

And that's what we're going to leave with here this challenge and this call to trust.

We've looked at the complaint, we've looked at the character of God, we looked at the comfort to the trusting, and he's bringing it home to them and to us.

Are you going to continue and eventually collapse under the weight of your own strength?

Are you going to put yourself in the hands of someone who else has strength far beyond your own?

You see, the source of that strength is not within us.

We don't survive this life simply by our grit and our willpower and our positivity.

And Christianity is not grit or willpower or positivity, even if some smiling guy from Houston tells you it is, you don't need to dig deeper, you just need to look higher, right, you need to dig deeper.

You just need to look higher, right, you need to look up.

Like Isaiah says here look up.

And the recipients of that strength are not self-made people, they're self-aware people.

God is the one who gives the power.

He's not here to sort of congratulate the proud performer.

He wants to meet the faint and the failing and the falling and provide something they don't have.

And the way to receive it is not through self-reformation, it's through surrender, collapsing into the arms of God, who says that he gives grace to the humble but resists the proud.

And that's not a threat, that's an invitation.

He gives grace to the humble, it's a call to humility, it's an invitation to receive.

You talk to a lifeguard, and one of the things that they'll do when they go to rescue someone who's drowning is wait for them to quit fighting, because if they grab a hold of someone who's full of strength and fight, they could be a victim too.

And what they need for that drowning person is to quit trying to save themselves so the lifeguard can take them to safety.

And here the Lord is telling us stop fighting, stop trying to save yourself, stop trying to dig deeper into yourself.

Look to him.

Look to him when you have nothing, when you can offer nothing.

Lift up your eyes.

Lift up your eyes, let go of your strength and lay down your pride.

Let's draw this to a close.

God's not promising them immediate escape here Like I said, it's 70 years in exile in Babylon but he did promise them something better His sustaining presence.

It's no wonder that the New Testament calls the world system Babylon.

It's no wonder that the New Testament calls the world system Babylon, because in some ways we're in the midst of enemy territory, a world system that is contrary to the ways of God, the embodiment in a city of the world, the flesh and the devil Wrapped up in human construct.

But here's the hope he can sustain us, so much so that we could feel sometimes like we're soaring, many times like we're running and always like we're walking.

So if you're a believer, this morning, your weariness and your weakness, they're not failures, they're not.

And God is not going to walk away and say you're done.

He's inviting you to something better, to a cry, not because he wanted them just to be better or to say that their pain was not valid, but because, with compassion, he looked upon the crowds as sheep without a shepherd, and he brought himself to the cross for us, not just to be alongside of us, but to forgive us, so that he would be able to promise us I will never, no, never, not, ever forsake you, and so that he might bring us into the place where our eyes will be forever dry, where there'll be no tears, where the former things will have passed away, where the new creation exists forever, never, ever wants to be mitigated in all of its splendor and glory.

And so those eyes that wept outside Lazarus' tomb beckon us to come to him.

If you're not a believer, you don't yet know the Lord Jesus as your Savior.

Jesus is not offering you a religion.

He's offering you rest for your soul.

He's not demanding your strength.

What he's calling for is your honesty about yourself.

He's not asking you to bring a resume either.

He doesn't want to see how well put together you are.

He wants you to surrender yourself as you are to him, in the full acknowledgement of your sin and your disobedience and the lack of any deserve to receive any blush of his mercy.

He says come to me, because to the weary he gives strength.

To the weary he gives strength, and to the broken he gives grace, and to those who wait upon him he gives wings.

So lift up your eyes.

Lift up your eyes and look to a God who is eternal, a God who created all things, a God whose strength never flags, a God who's wise beyond your wildest imaginations, and a God who is far more good and gracious than we could ever deserve.

Look up and see.

Let's pray.

Look up and see, let's pray.

Father, as we bow our hearts before the splendor of your word, we have to say, father, that our souls are filled with awe and wonder over who you are, that these words could be breathed into our every day, that this is a revelation of your person, that's an invitation that we don't deserve to hear or to receive, but it's got our very name inscribed on it.

There's no God like you.

There's no God like you, and there's no one we should give ourself, but you, father.

I pray that each of us here, whatever place we are in our spiritual condition, might hear the wonderful welcome of your word, as you spoke to people so many hundreds of miles away from home, distant from places familiar to them, with the buzz of strange languages and customs and food surrounding them, where their hearts cried out with accusation that you had forgotten them.

And yet you spoke peace and comfort and strength and mercy and supply.

Father, when our hearts are tempted to do the same, we ask, lord, that you might remind us to come back here, to you and to this revelation of yourself, so that we might look up and see a God who is great and a God who is full of grace.

And we pray this in Christ's name Amen.