Answering Anxiety (Isaiah 35:4-7)

Hello, friends, this is Pastor Creighton.

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Most loving Father, you will us to give thanks for all things, to dread nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our care on the one who cares for us.

Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, and grant that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal, and which you have manifested unto us in your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Say to those who have an anxious heart, be strong, fear not.

How should God's people answer anxiety?

How does a Christian respond to feelings of worry, nervousness, uneasiness, unsettledness?

We've all experienced anxiety, right?

We experience it perhaps about an imminent event, something with an uncertain outcome.

How are we supposed to respond to that as Christians?

How do we work through it?

Anxiety always makes me think of uh one of my favorite sketches.

It's a Bob Newhart sketch.

Maybe I've referenced it before, maybe you're familiar with it.

Bob Newhart plays a uh, he's a psychiatrist, and a new patient of his comes through the door, he invites her to sit down.

She begins to tell him, well, some of her anxieties and fears and the matters that cause panic in her heart.

Some are more eccentric than others.

But he asks her if he wants or she'd like his professional opinion.

She says, Of course, doctor, that's why I'm here.

Bob Newhart, without skipping a beat, says, Stop it.

Just stop it.

And the more she protests, well, what do you mean, just stop it?

He says, What are you?

Some kind of nut, just stop it.

I love that sketch.

Maybe I'm not doing it justice.

But I love that sketch of someone who uh, certainly in my uh younger adulthood and in college, really struggled through a number of issues of anxiety.

To work through that.

I love this sketch because it seems so intuitive.

If you feel anxious, just stop it.

Just don't be anxious.

What are you?

Some kind of nut.

See, I think we can all relate because we all feel anxiety.

We feel financial insecurity, we feel social anxiety.

We wonder if we're good enough or if we can measure up, if we're gonna have what it is that we need to get by.

This pandemic has given us more than enough fuel for anxiety, hasn't it?

We feel anxious when we choose to abide by all the protocols and procedures that we're asked to.

We feel nervous about contracting COVID, about transmitting COVID.

We feel nervous about these variants we hear.

But frankly, no one is immune from anxiety.

Even those who choose not to abide, but those who would choose instead a defiant posture towards protocols and procedures, sort of reveal their cards when they get talking about the role of governing authorities or civil liberties.

We're all of us anxious.

I'm not saying that that's the right approach to take.

I'm saying that no one in this pandemic, no one is immune from anxiety because we all experience it.

We all experience anxiety.

Pastor Josh Wideman says anxiety shows no favoritism.

It can affect anyone, regardless of their occupation, age, or spiritual maturity.

I'm willing to bet that there's no one here this morning, no one tuning in online, who has not known this feeling of anxiety.

For those of us, all of us, with anxious hearts, we can read Isaiah chapter 35 and at first reading come away with a sense that Isaiah's best prescription to our anxiety is just stop it.

Isaiah 35 · chapter mention

Say to those of an anxious heart, be strong, fear not.

You know, just stop it.

Is that the best that Isaiah has to offer?

Is that the best that God's word has for us?

See, this can make Christians end up feeling, well, when we feel anxious, because we do feel anxious.

It can end up leaving us feeling faithless.

Can't it?

Make us feel disobedient for feeling anxious.

It can make us feel like God is not a safe place to go with our anxiety, because God is the one telling us just to stop it.

But I think Isaiah gives us more than a simple answer like just stop it.

I think Isaiah invites us to a new kind of posture with our anxiety.

Isaiah invites us to take a giant step back in the middle of our anxiety and to take an eschatological perspective, to take a perspective of our anxiety and the way it fits in the big story that God is telling in and through history and where the story is going.

Isaiah invites the anxious, literally the hasty-hearted, to step back and consider this present moment in light of the huge story that God is telling through history.

Because that's what anxiety does, doesn't it?

It sucks everything, every concern, every weight of life right here into this moment like a black hole.

God and or pardon me, Isaiah, God's word invites us to answer anxiety, to answer anxiety with a sure and certain hope in God's deliverance and in God's restoration.

So this sermon is not promising to be a unilateral solution to all our anxiety, as if we'll never experience anxiety again.

However, God's word can reposture us and help us process our anxiety not with an unsettledness, but with an assurance and a hope for the future.

The hasty hearted can rest in God's sure promise.

So do you have an anxious heart today?

A hasty heart that's getting away on you?

Are you troubled by variants or are you troubled by insecurities?

There is good news for us this morning, good news with which we can answer anxiety.

Say to the anxious heart, Isaiah says, Be strong, fear not.

So how should God's people answer anxiety?

Well, two things.

We answer it with a sure and certain hope in God's deliverance and a certain hope in God's restoration.

Let's answer anxiety with God's deliverance.

Come what may, God will save his people.

Behold, your God will come, writes Isaiah.

Your God will come with vengeance.

With the recompense of God, he will come and save you.

Isaiah is speaking of God's deliverance.

And this should prompt us to ask, deliverance from what?

What does Isaiah have in mind for God's people?

Well, to understand what God is delivering God's people from, we need to understand the story so far.

We could take a giant step back and see this huge story that God is telling in history that began with creation.

A very loving God, and the overflow of his love creates a good creation, and he populates it with these strange carbon-based life forms that he loves very much, created in his image, called human beings.

And they're to partner with God and cultivate creation.

But our first parents fall into self-interested, self-willed rebellion against God and his good purposes for them, and in so doing introduce sin and death and deterioration into creation.

But God's not done.

God instead embarks on a renewal and restoration program with our first parents.

He calls their descendants, a particular descendant named Abraham, and his descendants after him, to form a nation, a nation that's going to be a source of blessing and renewal and restoration to the whole world.

And this nation becomes the kingdom of Israel, which repeats a familiar pattern in Scripture.

This kingdom rebels in self-will and self-interest and rebels against God's will for them.

Isaiah writes in a moment where this kingdom is surrounded by their enemies, and judgment and exile from this land are God's, is uh is imminent.

It's going to be God's word against his people.

So no wonder God's people are anxious in this moment.

Isaiah speaks to anxious hearts on God's behalf.

But Isaiah calls these anxious hearts from rebellion back into fidelity, into right relationship with God.

And Isaiah writes to God's people to point them forward to a day when God is going to answer what is wrong with the world and make it right.

He's going to renew and restore creation.

And this should give present hope.

Present hope in desperate times.

So there's good news for God's people.

The people surrounded by their enemies, about to be overtaken and exiled, have a hope that God will come and save them.

And as God comes, he will bring what Isaiah says is God's vengeance and recompense.

This is a Hebrew way of saying that God is going to come to his people and bring with him his perfect justice.

Everything that is wrong with the world will be put right.

The suffering that God's people have endured will be answered, and their enemies will not have the final word over them.

This is not a work of human beings.

Trust not in princes, we read in our Psalm.

This is the work of God on their behalf.

So there's no threat from which God cannot save his people from exile, from being overtaken by an enemy.

Anxiety multiplies when the outcome is uncertain, doesn't it?

And for God's people, with their enemies at the gates, it can seem like an uncertain outcome for the future of God's people.

But here's God's promise.

There is nothing from which I can't save you.

And I am at work working to deliver you.

See, we want to know that everything is going to be okay, don't we?

We want to know that everything is going to work out for our best.

Even if we have expectations about what okay means, Isaiah gives us a promise.

God will come and save you.

He will deliver us.

Anxiety is a way of collapsing everything into this moment, doesn't it?

Everything in this moment becomes our primary concern.

And seeing this, the problem of this moment fixed, can be something that we get so tunnel-visioned on, but Isaiah invites us to take a step back.

See the big story that God is telling.

God is at work to deliver his people.

He's given us a promise that our current troubles will not have the final word over us.

God will save his people, he will deliver them.

That's an answer to anxiety.

Calls us to take that step back and recognize the big story that God is telling.

And similarly, Isaiah tells Israel that they can answer anxiety with God's restoration.

No matter what's been lost, there is a greater renewal to come.

This is in two parts, Isaiah sees.

There's a restoration for the body, and there's a restoration for all of creation.

Verse 5.

Then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.

See, for many of us, anxiety has a lot to do with our bodies, doesn't it?

COVID threatens our well-being.

Age deteriorates us.

We want to know that we're going to rest secure.

Anxiety is a lot to do with our bodily well-being.

And even if it's not age or a pandemic that's threatening us, well, we we just live in a fallen world, don't we?

Where our bodies are always at risk.

I know of one priest friend of mine, whose uh daughter, when she was first born, was was born with a number of chronic health issues, very serious issues that had her going in and out of the hospital at all times, or just constantly.

By God's miraculous working, she experienced a terrific, uh, uh really miraculous work of healing.

And it's it's been years since any of the symptoms have shown themselves.

But nevertheless, for years, in her earliest years, she was in and out of hospital.

I remember talking to this friend of mine and asking him, how is it that he processed that?

How was it that he had hope in the midst of the health conditions that his daughter was experiencing?

And he said that he prayed for her healing always.

I think that's a right thing for us to pray, is to pray for healing.

But in his prayers, he recognized that even if God does not heal her immediately, which praise the Lord, in this case he did.

It isn't always.

But even if there's not an immediate healing, there will be a healing, a future restoration of the body.

When Christ comes again in glory, we will be changed.

We will have resurrected bodies.

And this was the hope he prayed over his daughter just about every day.

It's the hope that Isaiah is pointing us towards the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

This isn't permission to be reckless with our bodies in the present.

Rather, Paul tells us in Romans chapter 12 that we are to present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

And later in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, in the context of sexual morality, the Apostle Paul reminds Christians that their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, bought with a price, and they belong to Jesus.

1 Corinthians 6 · chapter mention

So glorify God in your body.

So we may be anxious about the ailments that our bodies currently suffer.

But Isaiah invites us to see our deterioration, decay, and death as giving way in a day of glory when all things will be restored as God intended them to be.

And this can give us present hope.

So with our bodies, likewise with creation, for waters break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert, the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.

See, creation will experience a restoration as well.

Where there is lack, there will come a day where there is abundance.

See, water is a source of life, especially in arid climates like Isaiah's writing in.

Lack of water means death, but abundance of water means a thriving life.

So when brought waters break forth in the wilderness, it's a promise that one day there will be an abundance of life.

See, we're probably not anxious about having enough water.

I've got water that comes out of the tap.

I don't know about you.

But we're often anxious about not having the resources that we need to be okay, aren't we?

See, many Christians worldwide today are anxious about where their next meal is coming from.

God's promise is that He will come to save us, and this return will include the restoration of all creation such that we will never suffer lack.

There is nothing we can lose, in body or in creation, that God cannot restore to us and more in the kingdom come.

In Isaiah's day, this was a source for great hope.

Despite the enemies at the gate, God will do a work of salvation such that what is lost will be restored, and we can have confidence even on the darkest days.

See, again, by taking a step back and recognizing the big picture that God is telling in history, we can find an answer to our present anxiety.

Our worst fears will not have the final answer over us.

God will deliver us, and God will restore us.

And this deliverance and restoration takes us into the arena of God's saving sovereign providence.

It's God's saving sovereign providence that we see so clearly in Matthew chapter 6, when Jesus says this in the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

Look at the birds of the air, Jesus says.

They neither sow nor reap, nor are gathered into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Are you not of more value than they?

And which of you being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?

And why are you anxious about clothing?

You know, but the resources you need in life?

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.

They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

But if God clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and thrown tomorrow thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

And Jesus says, But seek first the kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

So are you of an anxious heart?

Jesus gives us anxious hearts a comforting invitation.

Look at birds, look at lilies, recognize that God in his saving sovereign providence cares and provides for everything, including us.

So this remains true in a pandemic.

God remains the King of kings and the highest authority there is, even while he works his sovereign providence through the imperfect government officials that he has appointed for such a time as this.

We do not have to be anxious that governments will thwart the big kingdom story that God is telling in history.

He is sovereign.

And God has promised to deliver us.

God remains all capable of saving us and restoring us from plague and pestilence.

Even as we anticipate the day where His saving sovereign providence will see us fully restored in a new creation, we do not have to be anxious that COVID will be the end of us.

God has promised to restore us, and in Jesus that restoration is breaking through into a new age.

That's what healing the deaf and mute is all about.

See, anxiety suggests that the future is grim and uncertain, but God's word gives us full assurance.

He will deliver us and restore us.

His saving sovereign promise providence guarantees it.

And we see proof of this in the cross and resurrection of Jesus, where God in Christ has supremely worked his saving, sovereign providence in history.

This present age, fraught with sin and death and anxiety and the anxiety it generates, has been crucified, and a new age to come of restoration and renewal is breaking in to creation through the risen Lord Jesus, who promises to deliver you and me from death and restore us to everlasting life.

Friends, the cross is proof.

So, how should God's people answer anxiety?

We ought to step back and recognize God's deliverance and restoration.

Is this a perfect solution to all the anxiety we'll ever feel always?

Probably not.

We will still feel anxious.

Christians will still feel anxiety from time to time.

But as Christians, we can stop and we can recognize that God doesn't abandon us in our anxiety.

His word through Isaiah offers us more than just a self-willed stop it kind of solution.

His saving sovereign providence gives us comfort enough to go to him with our anxieties and to choose to trust him.

God will deliver us, God will restore us, and this can give us hope.

So anxious heart, be strong.

Fear not.

Amen.