How do we explain the apparent weakness of the church in much of the Western world today? One answer is the absence of waiting.
Consider ancient Israel. In the low-down condition of the Jewish people’s exile to Babylonia, it wouldn’t have been surprising if they had said, “God has forsaken us. He will not help us here.” To such people, the reminder came from Isaiah: This is God we’re talking about!
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”?
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.
He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
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.
God, Isaiah tells us, doesn’t “faint or grow weary.” Of course He can’t! And when we are weary, we ought not to project that feeling onto God, because “He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.” But here’s the rub: The grace comes to those “who wait for the LORD.”
Waiting here means resting in the assurance that the promises that God has made He will fulfill. For the people in exile, it was the promises of God that would allow them to keep their chin up and their feet moving. And it’s much the same for those of us today who are “strangers and exiles on the earth” (Heb. 11:13).
When a young man writes (or, these days, more likely texts) a young woman in the hope of winning and keeping her affection, he is hoping, yes—but he is also waiting. He is waiting in the expectation that the current undesirable circumstance of separation and singleness will come to a triumphant end. In a similar way, it is often the expectation of the fulfillment of God’s promises that is meant to keep us going.
Waiting means resting in the assurance that the promises that God has made He will fulfill.
Our churches today need to understand that God is worth the wait. We can wait upon Him, trust Him, rest on Him, and say in sincerity and conviction, “You can have the totality of me. I’ll go wherever You want me to go. I’ll stay there for as long as You tell me to stay. I’ll do whatever You want me to do. And as I do so, I forsake every idol that I have raised up that stands between me and You.”
Amid troubling and trying circumstances, we ought not to assume that God has lost interest in us. The exiles in Babylon could remember the covenants God had made with Israel in years past. Today, we ought to remember that the awesome God has stepped down into time in the person of Jesus Christ and given Himself for us—so “how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32).
If we will wait, God will keep us all the way to the end and through the end—because He’s promised to do so. And God keeps the promises He makes. We can trust Him.
This article was adapted from the sermon “‘Behold Your God!’ — Part Two” by Alistair Begg.
Get signed up on our Free Newsletter Today!
