“Discovering Joy Amidst Suffering (Isaiah 40:27-31)” | 12/20/2020
Isaiah 40:27-31 | 12/20/20 | Will DuVal
We begin this morning with a pretty HEAVY question: Have you ever felt like God FORGOT about you?
Maybe you lost someone really close to you.
Maybe they CHOSE to leave you. You were hurt, trust broken.
Maybe you just long to have someone close to you - a spouse that God hasn’t supplied, a child He hasn’t provided…
Maybe you just failed an exam that you needed to pass in order to graduate on time.
Maybe you live with a chronic infirmity or illness. A Mental illness, depression, anxiety…
Or Addiction - Maybe you’ve prayed the SAME prayer for years, for God to relent, to DELIVER you, like the apostle Paul: “a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me… Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me.” (2 Corinthians 12:7-8) But it didn’t. And maybe your demons haven’t either.
Maybe you’ve prayed for the deliverance of a loved one. Prayed for their SALVATION. But it feels like your prayers fall on deaf ears.
Whatever the cause, I suspect we’ve ALL gone through those moments in life, haven’t we, when we were tempted to feel like God had forgotten us. And what do ALL of those moments have in common? When do we tend to feel forgotten? When life is all “giggles and rainbows”? No, when we SUFFER. We feel forgotten when we suffer.
It felt like God had forgotten me when my father left our family. Or worse, like God was specifically punishing me.
It felt like God forgot me when my marriage and my faith were in shambles by the end of Divinity School.
It felt like God forgot me when I lost my job at Culver. Evicted from our home, three months pregnant, no job, no health insurance… “God, have you forgotten about us?”
This morning is our final full-length installment in our Advent sermon series “The Weary World Rejoices”, in which we’re examining the various contributing factors to weariness. Why was the world so weary when Jesus appeared that first Christmas day, why is it so weary TODAY as we await his return, and most importantly, how can such a world possibly REJOICE in the midst of it? And we’ve seen that WAITING makes us weary, MONOTONY makes us weary, TOIL makes us weary, but ALL of that pales in comparison to SUFFERING, and its unparalleled ability to make us weary. Exhausted. Tired. Ready to throw in the towel and GIVE UP!
That’s exactly how the prophet Isaiah had foretold, here in chapter 40 this morning, that the Israelites were gonna feel during their coming exile to Babylon. Isaiah is writing in around 700 BC, over a CENTURY before the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem and took the remaining Judeans into captivity. But the horrors of their suffering had been predicted almost 1,000 years earlier, when God gave the Law to Moses; God had warned His people:
“if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today [and for nearly 1,000 years, they DIDN’T!], then all these curses shall come upon you... Your dead body shall be food for all birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away… You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall ravish her… You shall father sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours, for they shall go into captivity… You shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything. And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you. 49 The Lord will bring a nation against you… And they shall besiege you in all your towns throughout all your land… 53 And you shall eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies shall distress you… 56 The most tender and refined woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because she is so delicate and tender, will begrudge to the husband she embraces, to her son and to her daughter, 57 her afterbirth that comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears, because lacking everything she will eat them secretly, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in your towns. 58 “If you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the Lord your God, 59 then the Lord will bring on you and your offspring extraordinary afflictions, afflictions severe and lasting, and sicknesses grievous and lasting… until you are destroyed.” (Deuteronomy 28:15-61)
And that’s a gruesomely accurate depiction of exactly what happened to them some 900 years later during the siege of Jerusalem. And Isaiah is prophetically penning these words in ch.40 for those people taken into exile. Here’s his message of hope for them: he says, “God has not forgotten about you, in your suffering.” I know it FEELS like it, but he HASN’T. Isaiah will go on to reassure them in ch49: ““Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.”” (Isa 49:15) A mom will forget her nursing BABY, before I forget YOU, O Israel.
And Isaiah offers us THREE core truths about suffering here, and about the JOY we can find in the midst of it, as followers of Jesus. And what does ANY of this have to do with CHRISTMAS?! With the birth of our Savior, we celebrate these remaining 5 days of the season? All THREE of Isaiah’s points about suffering center around one OVERARCHING theme: that “Christ’s Incarnation is God’s PROOF that He hasn’t forgotten about us in our suffering.”
Jesus - Isaiah’s prophesied child born of a virgin who would be called Immanuel - “God with us” (Isa 7:14), the “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” whose kingdom of righteousness and justice would have no end (9:6-7) - THAT Jesus, his birth proved that God hadn’t forgotten about his people’s suffering. On the contrary, as we will see, God entered INTO our suffering, ultimately, to redeem us from it.
Would you stand with me as you’re able, turn in your Bibles... Isaiah 40:27-31:
27 Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?
28 Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
29 He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
30 Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
31 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.”
This is the word of the Lord… Let’s pray…
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Point #1: We may GROW WEARY from our suffering (vv27, 30)...
V27: “Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?”
Isaiah, writing in the prophetic future tense, anticipates these words on the mouths of the Judeans taken into exile in the 6th c: “God - why have you FORGOTTEN about me? My “right” is disregarded - “God, don’t I at least have a right to LIFE? Yet it feels like I’m languishing away here.”
V30: “Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;”
God declares: “On that day, under the suffering that is coming for you, even your YOUTHS are gonna faint and grow weary.”
When you’re YOUNG, you think you’re invincible, don’t you? When I was in high school, our youth group used to take mission trips to Guatemala to serve at an orphanage there. And one of my youth pastor’s most strategic moves was capitalizing on teenage boys’ perceived inexhaustibility. He would put the 4 or 5 guys who were most competitive all in the same work group, and then make sure to put the prettiest high school girl on the SAME work project, and watch the magic unfold. Because if you think your teenage son likes to sleep a lot during a PANDEMIC, with virtual school, or over Christmas BREAK, with no reason to wake up... just send him to Guatemala to do hard manual labor for a week straight with his crush watching, and by the time he returns home, I guarantee you - you can sit on his head and he’s not waking up, because “even YOUTHS grow faint and weary”.
But nothing makes us weary like suffering. Have you ever been SO sad, for SO long, that you literally felt like you had run a marathon? Like, “I haven’t even moved a MUSCLE all day, because I’m so depressed I could barely drag myself out of bed, but I am utterly exhausted!” The Bible is filled with descriptions of folks who can empathize:
King Hezekiah, suffering from a terminal illness, exclaimed: “Like a swallow or a crane I chirp;
I moan like a dove.
My eyes are weary with looking upward.
O Lord, I am oppressed!” (Isaiah 38:14)
Baruch, the prophet Jeremiah’s trusted friend and scribe, wrote: “‘Woe is me! For the Lord has added sorrow to my pain. I am weary with my groaning, and I find no rest.’” (Jeremiah 45:3)
God’s people, collectively, expressed their weariness of suffering in the Book of Lamentations, an entire BOOK in the OT devoted to that purpose: “Our pursuers are at our necks; we are weary; we are given no rest.” (5:5)
And most famous of all, the suffering JOB, who essentially, and exhaustedly, declared: “God - I’d be better off DEAD! Please KILL me!” He said, At least in death, in Sheol - “There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest.” (Job 3:17)
Suffering makes us WEARY. Like nothing else does. Maybe some of you are weary this morning. Maybe you feel like you’ve been suffering SO long, God must have forgotten you. It’s okay; you can be honest about those feelings. You don’t have to pretend this morning; God knows what’s on your heart anyway; there’s no use trying to hide it. GOD hasn’t tried to hide it, in his word. Suffering is about as BIBLICAL a concept as you will find. There are 2,334 pages in my Bible, and 2,332 of them are FILLED with suffering. There’s a page at the beginning, where God created everything “Good”, perfect, no suffering, and there’s a page at the end, spoiler alert, point #3, when He promises to wipe away every tear from every eye, but for 2,332 pages in between, there is SUFFERING. To be human, is to SUFFER.
Jesus knew this better than anyone. He knew exactly what he was doing when he decided to take on flesh in Mary’s womb. The “Incarnation”, literally, the “En-FLESH-ment” of the eternal, second person of the Trinity - Scripture says He did it, for the very PURPOSE of suffering:
Philippians 2:5-8 “Christ Jesus… though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,[b] 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,[c] being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” As if humbling himself to the point of bearing the splinters of a manger weren’t enough, he humbled himself to bear the splinters of the CROSS as well. For you. For me.
1 Peter 3:18 “Christ also suffered for sins”
1 Peter 4:1 “Christ suffered in the flesh”
Isaiah 53:3 “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”
And Isaiah goes on to prophesy that Jesus, God’s suffering servant, wouldn’t just be afflicted by MEN; He would be “smitten by God… [“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” - Jesus endured the most excruciating suffering of ALL: separation from God the Father, as he bore the full weight of our sin on that cross.]
But [BUT…] he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.”
You can be HEALED this morning, friend, of your most life-threatening suffering of all, because of Christ’s wounds: the pain of your enslavement to SIN. Jesus died to set you FREE. He was PIERCED for your transgressions, your sins. Crushed for your iniquities. And his chastisement, his paying the punishment that was rightfully owed you and me because of our sin, Jesus’ suffering has now brought us… BOUGHT us… PEACE. Reconciliation, restored relationship, with God the Father, the Creator and Lover of your soul - it can be yours today, if you will but trust in Jesus. Repent and give your life to him. And discover the JOY of peace, from eternal, spiritual suffering under the weight of your sin.
But make no mistake, Jesus doesn’t promise us a life free of suffering, at least not in THIS life. He said, “If you’re gonna follow ME, you’ve got to take up YOUR cross.” He said, “In this world you will have trouble.” (John 16:33) Suffering. Hardship. God has not promised to INSULATE us from all suffering, from weariness; No - what He promised us...
Point #2: Is that He’ll (But God) SUSTAIN US in our suffering. (vv28-29)...
Here’s his promise to those same weary Israelites, in Isaiah 40: “Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
29 He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.”
Isaiah says: “Take heart; YOU may grow weary, but YOUR GOD doesn’t!” “He does not faint or grow weary”. He’s the “everlasting God”. He’s the “Creator of the ends of the earth”, so he is MORE than qualified to handle whatever life is throwing at you at the moment! And he promises here to do just that:
Not to SAFEGUARD you against all suffering, but to SUSTAIN you through it:
Not to PROTECT you from ever facing trials, but to PRESERVE you in them.
Not to BAIL you out of hardships, but to BUOY you in the midst of them.
“He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.”
And the Psalms are FILLED with weary laments of suffering, but equally FILLED with God’s promises of sustenance and ultimate deliverance:
Psalm 6:2-9 “Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing;
heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.
3 My soul also is greatly troubled.
But you, O Lord—how long?
4 Turn, O Lord, deliver my life;
save me for the sake of your steadfast love.
5 For in death there is no remembrance of you;
in Sheol who will give you praise?
6 I am [WHAT???] weary with my moaning;
every night I flood my bed with tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping.
7 My eye wastes away because of grief...
[but… BUT… There’s ALWAYS a BUT, to biblical suffering...But] the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.
9 The Lord has heard my plea;
the Lord accepts my prayer.”
God SEES me, he HEARS me, and most importantly, He is here WITH me, in my hurt.
Psalm 69:1-3, 32-35 “Save me, O God!
For the waters have come up to my neck.[a]
2 I sink in deep mire,
where there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters,
and the flood sweeps over me.
3 I am [WHAT?] weary with my crying out;
my throat is parched.
My eyes grow dim
with waiting for my God… [But THEN the psalmist preaches HOPE to his weary soul…]
you who seek God, let your hearts revive.
33 For the Lord hears the needy
and does not despise his own people who are prisoners...
35 God will save Zion”
In the NEW Testament, the apostle Paul described himself this way:
“Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor 6:10)
We have a hard time making SENSE of that today, don’t we? If you look up “sorrowful” in the dictionary, it’s defined as “SAD”, and if you look up “rejoice”, it means “to be GLAD, or HAPPY” - so which IS it, Paul? Are you SAD… or are you HAPPY? Sorrowful, or JOYFUL?
I really appreciate John Piper’s rather personal exposition of this verse; Piper shares:
“My mother was killed in a bus accident in Israel in 1974. I was 28 years old. My brother-in-law called me and told me that my mother was dead, and my father was seriously injured and might not make it. That’s all he knew. He would keep me posted. I hung up the phone... I went to the bedroom, knelt down by the bed, and wept for a long time. And in my weeping — in my weeping; simultaneous, not sequential — I was rejoicing. The weeping was owing to, of course, the overwhelming pain of sorrow and loss — massive loss of one whom I so, so cherished.
The joy was this: “Thank you that I had such an amazing mom. Thank you that you gave her to me for 28 years. Thank you that, evidently, she didn’t suffer very much. Thank you that she is in heaven and not in hell. Thank you for countless kindnesses she showed me growing up. Thank you that my father is still alive; please save him. Thank you that I will see her again. Thank you, Jesus, for dying for us and covering her sin and my sin and his sin.” Every sweet memory that tumbled to my mind made tears flow more and joy taste sweeter.
So... it is not stupid double-talk to say “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing”. That’s simultaneous reality. I’ve tasted it.” (Piper, “Does Joy Come After Suffering, Or in It?”, Dec 18, 2020; www.desiringgod.org)
And if you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, brothers and sisters, you’ve tasted it too. The JOY of God’s sustaining strength in your weakness.
Here’s how Paul put it, in the REST of his “thorn in the flesh” passage, from 2 Corinthians: “I will boast all the more gladly [JOYFULLY!] of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” God’s power and presence “rests” on us in a DIFFERENT kind of way in our suffering, doesn’t it?
Psalm 34:18 promises that “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted”. That’s not just some abstract, intangible, empty mystical sentiment; in Matthew 1:23 - the angel of God announced to Mary and Joseph: ‘You’re gonna call the child’s name EMMANUEL, which means “God WITH us”. John 1:14 “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
Christ’s Incarnation was proof NOT ONLY that God was willing to endure suffering for our sake, but that he came to draw NEAR to those who were already suffering. Jesus didn’t just suffer FOR us; he suffered WITH us, too.
Hebrews 4:15 - “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
And because Jesus was not JUST fully God - God with us, The Word - but ALSO fully human - Jesus got hungry, imagine that, Matthew 4:2; but he never got HANGRY. He never sinfully snapped at people, when he was famished; speaking of weariness: John 4:6 says “Jesus, wearied from his journey, [was sitting beside the well]. ...”, but he didn’t take it out on the woman at the well - because he was “in every respect tempted as we are, yet without sin”, that means that you and I too can trust, 1 Corinthians 10:13, that “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” God doesn’t just PRESERVE us in our suffering, more importantly, he preserves our FAITH in it. He has promised to provide a way for us to escape the temptations of doubt, of falling away, of SINNING and forsaking the LORD; God can and will sustain us.
So much so, that Paul has the audacity to claim: “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame.” (Romans 5:3-5). WHY? Because...
Point #3 - OUR hope, lies in God’s promised coming REDEMPTION of ALL our suffering (v31).
V31 of Isaiah 40: God promised to do far more than just SUSTAIN these weary, exiled Israelites; he assured them: “those 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.”
He doesn’t say “run and take BREAKS from getting tired”; he doesn’t say “they’ll be able to walk a really long WAY before fainting”...
No! They will NOT grow weary, NOT faint! The vision here is one of a fully restored, FUTURE redemption from ALL weariness, and ALL suffering.
In Jeremiah 31:25, God promises “I will satisfy the weary soul, and every languishing soul I will replenish.””
Psalm 30:5,
“[God’s] anger is but for a moment,
and his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may tarry for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.”
Psalm 126:5
“Those who sow in tears
shall reap with shouts of joy!”
Yes, Jesus does offer us his sustaining power to see us through life’s hardships, but he offers us SO much more than that. He also offers us his SAVING power, to actually REDEEM those sufferings - to take what the Enemy meant for evil, and turn it for GOOD. To bring BEAUTY from ashes, as Isaiah will go on to say in his prophecy.
Because friends, if the Incarnation was proof that God was willing to enter into our suffering, to be WITH us in it, and if Jesus’ Crucifixion has the power not just to SUSTAIN us, but to actually SAVE us from the very worst of our suffering - from sin and separation from God - then the most JOYFUL news of all comes in understanding the magnitude and meaning of Christ’s RESURRECTION. Once again, God’s promise to redeem our suffering, to turn our tears into shouts of joy, isn’t just empty hope;
God has PROVEN the POWER of his PROMISE by raising Jesus from the DEAD!
And if God can take even the very WORST evil, the worst SUFFERING this world has ever known - the horrific death of the perfect, sinless Son of God - and redeem THAT, turn THAT, and use THAT for good… for the greatest good the world has ever known - the salvation of all mankind! - then God can take even the worst of YOUR suffering, friends, and redeem it as well. Use it for YOUR good. Make good on his promise, to “work all things together for your good”. If you belong to Him.
Even the death of that loved one.
Even your divorce.
Even your struggling marriage, suffering under the weight of crippling debt and job instability.
Even your childhood abuse.
Even your terminal cancer.
Don’t let the shiny, West County veneer fool you; we’re not immune from suffering at West Hills; some of you have experienced the very WORST of it. Some of you still are, today.
It’s true - Jesus promised us, “In the world you will have trouble.” Suffering. He ALSO promised: “But take heart; I have overcome the world.” And for everyone who is in him, in Christ, this morning, the Bible says, “if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” as well (Rom 6:5). The redemption of your suffering.
You may not experience it in this life. You WON’T experience it FULLY, in this life. But God’s word exhorts us to "rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.” (1 Peter 4:12-13) Now we see in part; one day we will see in full. And til THAT day, we hold fast to the promise of God, that “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Cor 4:17-18)
The Incarnation is God’s reminder, his tangible PROOF, that He has not forgotten you in your suffering. And one day, he has promised that ““He [really] will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things [will] have passed away.”” (Revelation 21:4) And until that day, friends, you can rest in the assurance that God sees your pain, he KNOWS your pain because he tasted the very WORST of it FOR your sake, and he will sustain you until he returns or calls you home. Amen.
Let’s pray...