Sermon for 4/30/23: Fourth Sunday of Easter

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No sermon video this week. Sorry.

Strength for the Weak and Weary
Isaiah 40:25-31

 ALLELUIA! CHRIST IS RISEN! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

 

All too often we fail to depend on God’s power and His tender interest in the affairs of this world He created. Even we, the faithful people of Christ, are not beyond complaining that such a powerful and boundless God has forgotten us. That was Israel’s problem, too. Similar to what we heard from Ezekiel the past two Sundays, the Lord, through His prophet Isaiah, is also addressing Israel as captives in Babylon. Isaiah speaks to those captives in ways that should recall for them the love of God, and even their origin as a people. God cared for Jacob. He blessed him and protected him. As you might recall from a reading during the Lenten season, God had even wrestled with Jacob and changed his name to Israel, meaning one who has “striven with God and man and has prevailed.” And then God repeated the promise that the Savior would come through Jacob’s descendants, the same promise given to his grandfather, Abraham. All of this God did out of grace and mercy. Jacob did not deserve any of it. And when Jacob’s descendants became a great nation in captivity in Egypt, God continued to care for them. He marked every phase of their history with His gracious care.

If God had demonstrated such love for those ancestors of His people, He would continue to care for them. He had pledged Himself to His people; He had bound Himself to them by promise. No matter what difficulties they faced, He was powerful enough to care for them. He loved them too much to abandon them. This message was important for those in Babylonian captivity. In the midst of their tears and heartache, God wanted them to remember that all of life fell within His view, and He continued to love them.

And this lesson is just as important for us to remember. We are God’s people by faith in Jesus Christ. But we are no less likely to complain when things go badly. And God does not just love us when things go well; He loves us always! He has His own reasons for permitting trouble and pain and tears in our lives, reasons He may or may not make clear to us. He is almighty and all-knowing; we are not. But we can trust Him to do what is best for us. He loves us too much to do anything less.

Two important questions appear. “Have you not known? Have you not heard?” These questions are important because they direct us to what God reveals about Himself in the Scriptures, where we learn that God reveals Himself as “Lord,” the God of free grace. He is the God of promise, the true and only God, the One who is everlasting. He is beyond human ability to grasp and understand. God must reveal Himself if we are to know anything about Him. He is the Creator with unlimited power, power He uses for the benefit of His creatures. He has given us life and has provided us a wonderful world in which to live. God gives strength to the weary and the weak. In His mercy, God turns Himself toward His creatures and gives His blessing to them. He was not exhausted by creation, nor does He grow weary with the continuous care of the world He called into existence.

We human beings are as different from God as darkness is from light. We are creatures, not the Creator. We grow weary and weak. Some things we can understand, but more often than not we are ignorant and confused. God knows all things immediately and naturally; but we must learn, a process often slow and tortured. Without the Lord, the best and brightest of human beings will only stumble and fall. The young appear to be tireless and energetic, and yet they, too, will certainly grow weary and stumble. To such limited creatures as we surely are, God promises to give strength.

Isaiah tells us, “Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.” Such strength comes as a gift with faith in Jesus Christ. When we rely on human strength, we will stumble. But when we trust that One who was weary and weak with our sins at His cross, but whose strength was then miraculously renewed in His resurrection, He gives us of His strength. And not only that, but He promises to renew our strength when we have stumbled and fallen, so that we, too, will arise from the ashes of grief and suffering to run and walk as if youth has been forever renewed!

Isaiah here draws on a picture some of us may have seen ourselves: the picture of a majestic, soaring eagle. God promises to be the wind that sustains the wings of His people, if you will. What wonderful comfort for all who hope in the Lord! The entire life of God’s people—your life, your walking and running and soaring—is filled with the boundless grace and tireless strength of God. And even in death, you will mount as on eagle’s wings, which will take you to Him who will share with you His joy forevermore! ALLELUIA! CHRIST IS RISEN! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

 

The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always.  Amen.