In the waiting God draws near.

My righteousness draws near,

my salvation has gone out,

and my arms will judge the peoples;

the coastlands hope for me,

and for my arm they wait.

Isaiah 51:5

As God’s people wait for Him, the experience is NOT that God grows distant in the waiting. Rather, God comes NEAR as we wait. This short section of Isaiah 51 shows us how God promises to draw near as His people hope in Him and wait for His will to be done in their lives.

There is in this passage first a call to pay attention. It is issued to the Jews as God promises that in their return from exile there would come a time (I believe this particular prophecy is clearly fulfilled in a future kingdom of Christ) when the land of Israel would be light to all the nations of the earth. God will rule, with Israel at the center of a new kind of world, one where justice and a perfect planetary order exists (Isaiah 51:4).

With that kind of future in view, God’s people were then called to trust Him as they waited for it to happen. We are still called to do so. In the meantime, in the gospel, in the redeeming work of Jesus, God’s righteousness is very near. He is not far away. Christ has come. God’s salvation has arrived. The kingdom is still around the corner, but SALVATION IS NOW HERE! The gospel has gone out and continues to be the good news this world desperately needs. Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead to reconcile us with God forever in eternal life. This is our happiness. This is our “near” experience with God as we still wait for a bright future that absolutely will come to be. It is certain. God is near as we wait. 

All the waiting I do now is in anticipation of this greater future hope. Eschatology isn’t about charts, graphs, or news headlines forced upon the biblical text. It is instead about all our hopes, all our pains, all our grieving over what is wrong in this world, finding complete fulfillment in Jesus, Who is not only Savior and Lord, but coming Sovereign of all the earth! He will reign as He is ever and always near now to save us!

Lord,

In my present waiting may I hold my hope out in the beauty and the comfort of this much bigger picture of Your coming Kingdom. You are near now and Your rule is here now as I wait. You are near in the experience of my salvation. You are also my only expectation!

Amen

well worth the wait

Kings shall be your foster fathers,

and their queens your nursing mothers.

With their faces to the ground they shall bow down to you,

and lick the dust of your feet.

Then you will know that I am the LORD;

those who wait for me shall not be put to shame.

Isaiah 49:23

There is a unique promise meant only for Israel in this verse. But there is also a universal principle for all those even now who must wait upon the Lord. The promise illuminates the principle. The principle encourages us as we wait.

First, the promise… This is a direct “thus says the LORD” message to the nation of Israel through the prophet Isaiah. The direct message begins in context with Isaiah 49:22. It is a promise of great hope — of a complete turnaround of circumstances. God would not let the Jews stay captive among the Gentiles forever. In fact, when the time would come, the nations into which they were scattered would carry them back to Israel. Kings would treat them like foster princes and princesses, supplying all they needed. And history records their promise as completely fulfilled. In fact, we have the books of Ezra and Nehemiah to see just how true this promise was. The Persian kings provided safe passage back to Jerusalem as the exiles returned. Funds from their former captors rebuilt the temple and the walls of the city. A generation that was born in captivity returned to the full experience of the freedom of this promise as they grew up waiting on God to make it come true. The Jews returned home to find an open door from God all ready for them to occupy. He did it all.

This then leads the the principle… those who wait on God will not be disappointed. God will reward our waiting. God is in our waiting. God IS what we wait for. God also waits with us. God waits for us. Waiting on the Lord NEVER lets anyone down. Not once. Not ever! Waiting on the Lord gives us perspective and brings peace when we really trust the God Who works it all for His glory and our good. And we will never be put to shame as we wait on Him!

Lord,

I will not be disappointed in this season. I will wait with joy. In fact, You are now my reward IN THIS WAITING! I see Your good hand at work even now as I wait. I will know You are the Lord as You continue to bring new life, new experiences, new perspectives, and new hope to me! And in all this, I am confident, You will bring me home again.

Amen

God’s performance in the waiting

…but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;

they shall mount up with wings like eagles;

they shall run and not be weary;

they shall walk and not faint.

Isaiah 40:31

There is an encouraging general promise here for those who “wait for the LORD”. This is one of those few “poster child” verses on the subject of waiting. It is popular as an athletic motivator. It was the “theme verse” for my Christian high school soccer team. I remember mentally quoting it on hill runs and on the daily workout routine while soccer season was going. We love the motivation to “run and not be weary” (even though we still get side stitches and cramping muscles!) 

But there is much more here than just a Nike commercial version of trusting in Jesus. In order to understand the promise of strength that comes as we wait on God, we need to see this verse as the strong conclusion to a much bigger message found in the fortieth chapter of Isaiah.

The bigger message of Isaiah 40 is tied to three bigger themes that are the message being preached to us: 1) God is our comforter (Isaiah 40:1-5); 2) Our lives are transient but God’s Word stands forever (Isaiah 40:6-8); and the biggest major point, 3) God’s power is great beyond description (Isaiah 40:9-31). It is within this message that the promise for “power as we wait” is given to conclude ALL these points. It isn’t at all about our ability to achieve by our own performance. It isn’t even about winning anything at all by our own efforts. It is every bit about God’s ability. We are just what He will choose to use… even in our weakness and weariness, to display His glory! I will run my life with these three thoughts in mind…

God displays His glory by comforting me. God comforts repentant sinners in sorrow and confession (Isaiah 40:1-2). God then repairs in me what sin damages so that His glory is clearly shown in my life (Isaiah 40:3-5).

God displays His glory through His everlasting Word in my brief existence. I am just summer grass, a wildflower blooming in a vast pasture that may briefly blaze into beauty only to eventually wither, brown, and fade. God’s Word is what will remain forever. I have my only hope and my only significance in centering this brief flowering existence around all that God says (Isaiah 40:8).

God displays His glory in all His actions toward me. He restores, rules, and rewards me (Isaiah 40:9-10). He leads me like a shepherd in love and wisdom (Isaiah 40:11). He controls all the physical universe AND all the nations led by people (Isaiah 40:12-17), and this implies nothing is an accident in my life either. He rules and overthrows human idols, even the ones I have foolishly followed (Isaiah 40:18-26). My questions ARE ANSWERED in waiting on the God Who does all this in my life (Isaiah 40:27-31). 

This is how Christians are empowered by waiting for the Lord. This is how I too can wait and find strength. When I know the God Who displays His glory ALL THE TIME, I can find in the waiting His glory revealed, and that will strengthen me to run on.

together we wait

O LORD, be gracious to us; we wait for you.

Be our arm every morning,

our salvation in the time of trouble.

Isaiah 33:2

We wait, Lord, for You.

What else can we do?

You have all power.

In You we wait now

knowing You will show us how

You care and make right

what bothers us day and night.

Be gracious, Lord, we pray.

What else can we say?

You will do good for us

because You’ve given Jesus.

Salvation has for us come

in the saving life of Your Son.

In anticipation we wait with prayer

until Your answer You make clear.

We wait, Lord. You will do it…

How else can we know it?

Your arm in the morning reveals

how You save us, our wounds healed.

Our salvation in our troubled cry.

You bring mercy from on high.

Grace to us, peace, salvation, power

all in Your time… at Your perfect hour.

God waits too.

Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you,

and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.

For the LORD is a God of justice;

blessed are all those who wait for him.

Isaiah 30:18

God waits too. He waits for people to repent. He works His discipline on His children so that they may change, repent, come to see His ways, and return from times of straying to be changed by a new appreciation of His grace. That is why the word “therefore” begins this verse. We have to go back in the context to see just why God is “waiting to be gracious”.

If we go back just a few verses to Isaiah 30:15 we see a wonderful offer of rest made by God to His people. He wanted them to return and rest in Him for salvation. He asked them to quietly trust Him for strength even as His judgment was beginning to bring difficulties to them. But Israel refused this gracious offer: “But you were unwilling.”

Instead of returning to the Lord in repentance, God’s people fled from God (Isaiah 30:16a). A reverse exodus occurred in which many of them tried to flee to Egypt (Isaiah 30:17a). But pursuing enemies still swiftly caught them (Isaiah 30:16b). Those left in Jerusalem were few and the city was decimated by the refusal of God’s people to return to God in His just discipline of them (Isaiah 30:17b).

So God waited for them. He would wait out the entire seventy year exile for them to again return to Him. During this time God would show His power, sustaining the Jews even in far-off Babylon. He wanted to be gracious, and again He would be. He showed them mercy even as His discipline worked to change their hearts. His justice prevailed as He waited, and as they learned to wait on God to restore a people upon whom God waited as well. This mutual waiting worked God’s will for a new generation.

So in my waiting I will let the Word of God and the Spirit of God search my heart. I am sure I need to change. I am sure God is working a new thing in me in this season of change. God is certainly patient with me as I grow, sometimes even as I have resisted that this current season is definitely His work in me. I come to believe that I must rest in Him as I wait, and as He waits. I will wait on the God Who graciously, mercifully, and mightily works to build a better work in me in this waiting, It is a waiting that both God and I must do.

walking and waiting

In the path of your judgments,

O LORD, we wait for you;

your name and remembrance

are the desire of our soul.

Isaiah 26:8

Waiting on the Lord… waiting in the Lord… waiting for the Lord… all are focused on God’s greatness and power to be known in His work as we wait. We wait though in “paths of His judgments”, which means that His past work, which we remember by knowing His Word, informs our hope for what He will do as we wait.

To understand the “path of judgments” in Isaiah 26:8, we should look back one verse at the path described in Isaiah 26:7. There the “path of the righteous is level”. God makes the path that way for those who will obey and follow His will as revealed in His Word. His previous judgments (another description of God’s Word or His Law) straighten and level the way we are currently traveling. It is in that level path that we wait, trusting God for where it leads as we walk it.

As we walk the path God has set before us, we wait for Him. We don’t stand still. There isn’t a bench to rest on. We are IN THE PATH. We are ON THE PATH. We are moving forward, we just may not see the end destination. We hike along as we wait. Waiting then isn’t as passive as we may think. God lays a way before us as we wait and in that level path we begin to grow in our faith and our trust in Him. We focus on God as we look ahead along the path we are traveling.

The straight and level path of His judgments is before us. And also, we worship as we focus upon waiting for what comes. We remember past joys. His name is indeed great! We know it. We know it because of the gospel’s work in us. We know it because of Who Jesus is to us. We praise the God Who saves! And we remember. All believers in Jesus know what we are delivered from: a past life dominated by sin and destined for judgment in the Second Death. But in Christ we are delivered from sin, death, and hell. We have hope… always. And in that hope we wait as we walk forward on the path that God has made for us that leads from the cross and the empty tomb, on to the glory God will reveal in us! Walking and waiting we press on to this high calling.

He “hides” when we have turned from Him.

I will wait for the LORD, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.

Isaiah 8:17

This commitment to wait for the Lord is part of a bigger message the prophet Isaiah received from the Lord and proclaimed to God’s people. The Lord was bringing a swift and catastrophic judgment on Israel for their rejection of Him. God would become both a sanctuary for a few remaining righteous remnant AND an offense and cause for stumbling for the majority of Israel and Judah. God would ensnare and trap in judgment the people of Jerusalem. The sinful nation would fall and be broken —  would be captured and taken away by enemies. God would indeed seem to be hiding, but even His judgment is the means to bring glory to Himself and to draw hearts to Him again (Isaiah 8:13-15).

The reason God would seem to be hiding was because the people would not be seeking Him. Don’t expect to find what you will not look for! Instead, they had turned to spiritualism, mediums, and necromancers for their spiritual advice. They would neglect God and His Word in the most occultist way possible in their culture (Isaiah 8:19). This rejection of the light of God’s Word led to immense emotional distress, physical loss and hunger, and then rage against God, as they stupidly did not recognize their own rejection of God had led to all their pain, gloom, and darkness (Isaiah 8:20-22).

Yet the prophet chose to wait on the God Who had turned away from the people that had turned away from Him. The nation may have rejected God and borne His judgment as a result, but the faithful still had hope. God would spare a remnant. God would be worth waiting for. Hope remained even when the darkest sins brought the most dangerous times of judgment. This shows us a contemporary truth: God’s mercy and grace are still our hope in difficult times.

Lord,

We live in a dark world too. People reject You, and although in this day You have no covenant of the Law with us like You did with Israel, You do still reward the faithful and punish the faithless. As many stumble in the dark, turning from the dawn of Your teaching and testimony to the darkest of sins and spiritualism, may Your people still faithfully wait, hope, and trust You still. You are our hope, dear God! The light of Your testimony and truth shines on us! Be our hope as we wait.

Amen