Sermon Tone Analysis
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*EPIPHANY 05*
*Isaiah 40:21-31** *– *Year B*
/“//Soar like an eagle”/
*/Isaiah 40:21-31 (NIV) \\ \\ /*
21 Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood since the earth was founded?
22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,
and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
23 He brings princes to naught
and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.
24 No sooner are they planted,
no sooner are they sown,
no sooner do they take root in the ground,
than he blows on them and they wither,
and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.
25 “To whom will you compare me?
Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One.
26 Lift your eyes and look to the heavens:
Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one,
and calls them each by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
not one of them is missing.
27 Why do you say, O Jacob,
and complain, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord;
my cause is disregarded by my God”?
28 Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
29 He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
30 Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
31 but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.
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What comments and expressions do you have trouble accepting in life?
You know, these are the sorts of comments, attitudes or actions of others that you find particularly challenging.
For me, it’s when people, whilst in the midst of suffering and anguish say that God must think they either ‘need this lesson’ or ‘that this has happened because God must think they can handle it’.
Briefly here is the setting for Isaiah.
Isaiah wrote this during the stormy period marking the expansion of the Assyrian empire and the decline of Israel.
Under King Tiglath-Pilseer III (745-727BC) the Assyrians swept westward into Aram (Syria) and Canaan.
About 733 the kings of Aram and Israel tried to pressure Ahaz, king of Judah into joining a coalition again Assyria.
Ahaz chose instead to ask Tiglath-Pilseer for help, a decision condemned by Isaiah.
Assyria did assist Judah and conquered the northern kingdom (Israel) in 722-721BC.
This made Judah even more vulnerable, and in 701 King Sennacherib of Assyria threatened Jerusalem itself[1].
The godly King Hezekiah prayed earnestly, and Isaiah predicted that God would force the Assyrians to withdraw from the city[2].
Into the midst of this situation God sends Isaiah to give them a message.
It’s a message of hope.
He tells them that God has not deserted them – even if their current situation would seem to dictate otherwise.
Even now they are told, God is preparing to deliver His people.
He cares for them – they have not been forgotten.
God will bring them back home – all they need to do is “wait on the Lord” and they will be brought back on ‘eagle’s wings’.
God did as He promised – but for those in the midst of waiting it can be tough.
Maybe today you are feeling the same way as these people?
Maybe you are feeling exhausted, weak and ready to give up?
Maybe there are things happening or have happened in your life that you cannot understand, and you wonder why.
The message here today for you is to “wait for the Lord.”
Rightly so, you will ask, “So what does it mean to ‘wait for the Lord’?”
Just how are we supposed to do this?
Isn’t waiting something that tries our very patience to the limit and is something that not too many of us are very good at?
What kind of ‘waiting’ are we being called to do here?
Are we being called to simply be passive in our situation and just sit wringing our hands in frustration and anxiety and simply hoping against hope that things will change?
Maybe the best illustration I can use is if one was sitting waiting for our Lotto numbers to come up because we really needed the money to pay the bills and believed that if we hoped enough – it would happen.
Is this the type of passivity we are being called to?
Or is our ‘waiting for the Lord’ to be framed in the context of an eager expectation, waiting, anticipating that God is really going to touch us?
That He is going to step into time and space and touch us.
That He is going to show us a way forward and a path to follow in whatever situation we are in.
These questions are answered in our Bible readings today.
We are called to trust in God[3].
That means we are to have a total and unconditional trust in Him notwithstanding how the situations we are facing present themselves.
God still cares for us and wants the best in life for us[4].
To wait for the Lord is to place our trust, our faith and our well being into God’s hands each and every day.
No matter what is happening in our lives and indeed how we feel about, it we are to claim the promises of God and hold on to them.
God loves us.
God knows us.
He promises that nothing will ever befall us that cannot be overcome with Him at our side[5].
We are to believe that God will act in His time and while we may have definite thoughts about when and how God should act, we are called to trust and be patient.
We read in Psalm 147:1-11, 20 (which is listed in the lectionary for today), that we are admonished to ‘praise the Lord’.
When we are suffering and in the midst of pain and trial we certainly may not feel like praising anyone – especially God.
In fact rather than praising God we may feel like lashing out at Him.
What we must understand here is that’s simply satan endeavouring to get into our minds through the circumstances that we are facing.
Remember that satan is the author of all evil, suffering and trial in the world.
So rather than blaming God for any situation that we face remember where the blame rightly needs to be directed – right at the evil one.
We need to understand and appreciate that satan is the one who is the author of evil and it was humanity after all who foolishly disobeyed God’s direct command[6] and believed the lie[7].
We cannot blame God for the ills of this world; rather we are called to simply ‘praise the Lord’ – even in the midst of our troubles.
I did not say this will necessarily be easy – but it’s the most freeing thing you can do!
Have you ever tried really praising the Lord when you are suffering?
Maybe you’ve never thought of praising God in these situations.
Of course it’s always easy to praise the Lord when things are going well in our life, but to praise Him when we are facing trials can be difficult.
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