Bible Outlines – Outlines for Preaching
Isaiah 40:27-31
Introduction
There are times in life when disappointment, exhaustion and despair take over us and we feel a heavy burden that does not allow us to move forward. Each of us knows of these moments, moments when we feel powerless to face the problems of the Christian life. These are moments in which we can say like the psalmist: “My soul is cast down to the dust”; or like the prophet Elijah, we sit under the juniper tree and tell the Lord: “Enough is enough, oh Jehovah, take my life.” There really are times in life when God seems remote, disinterested, and the Bible doesn’t make sense to us.
Isaiah’s generation faced devastating days. They would be taken captive. They would live in exile. In such an experience they would sink emotionally and spiritually. When they looked at the long way back home they complained that they did not have the strength to do it. They thought that God was asking them to do something impossible. In this passage the prophet points out a way out of this void.
SERMONIC IDEA: What, then, is the key to spiritual empowerment that God presents to us in this passage? It is composed of three elements: a renewed knowledge of God, a recognition of our condition and a personal appropriation of God.
I. Spiritual strengthening demands a renewed recognition of God. vs. 28
If Tozer was right when he stated that the most important thing in life is to understand who God is, the current generation is in serious trouble. Today our way of seeing God is mostly according to our preference. The problem of the people of Israel was that they had taken their eyes off God and focused on themselves.
vs.27 The reason why the prophet presents us with God in his majesty is so that we understand that we have an Almighty and sufficient God to help us in our weakness. “Your knowledge of God is too human,” Luther told Erasmus of Rotterdam. We need to renew our vision of God. The god we claim to believe in has become inconsequential. He is a god we can manipulate; he is a God who does not make us tremble, who does not encourage us to get up and come to his house to adore him with all our hearts. Daniel said: “the people who know their God will strive and act” and the Lord himself said: “and this is eternal life that they know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” In verse 28 there are four attributes of God that are foundation stones for this life.
God is eternal. “You have not heard that the eternal God is Jehovah” Because he is eternal he knows neither change nor decline. Because he is timeless he can help me in my short time.
God is infinite. “I created the ends of the earth” When we say that God is infinite we mean that he knows no limit. God is immeasurable, that is, he cannot be measured. There are no limits to his presence. There is no place where He cannot be found. Because he is unlimited he can help me in my little space.
God is inexhaustible. “He does not faint or grow weary” God is incapable of fatigue or weakness. Because God is inexhaustible, he can help me in my exhaustion.
God is inscrutable. “And the understanding of him no one can reach.”
The mind and understanding of God are unfathomable and beyond all scrutiny. Because his intelligence is inscrutable, there is no one who can frustrate his designs. Brothers, how much do you meditate on the character of God? Do you take time to meditate on the greatness of it? Is not your weakness due to the fact that you have cast him aside and God has become a stranger to you?
II. Spiritual strengthening demands an acknowledgment of our condition. vs. 28.30
There is a truth that comes out in these verses and that is that God grants his power to exhausted men and women. God demands of us that we recognize our inability, He supplies our need. This is the special way in which God works. He sent a thorn to Paul that buffeted him, shamed him, and humiliated him. Paul begged God three times to remove it from him, but the Lord replied: “My grace is sufficient for you because my power is made perfect in weakness.” He learned to rejoice in weakness because as he said: “when I am strong, then I am strong”. This is the same Paul who learned to say: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” The most select and strongest of us need that power. We will faint sometime in the struggle of life. There is still a third element:
III. Spiritual strengthening demands an appropriation of God. vs. 31
The condition for those who want to have new strength is to “wait on the Lord.” The entire chapter has taught the folly of trusting in “flesh” or idols, making the people see that their wisdom is to turn wholeheartedly to Jehovah. Those who hope in Jehovah are those who believe that HE can free him and expect him to fulfill his promises. Waiting is not passive, but an active and vigilant exercise that absorbs the power of God. “Wait” does not suggest that we sit there and wait doing nothing. It means “to have hope”, to go to God for everything we need. It is like a child coming to his father with a deflated toy, hoping that his breath will fill it up again. The expression “new forces” refers to an “exchange”, like taking off old clothes and putting on new ones. We exchange our weakness for his power. When we wait before Him, God enables us to lift wings when there is a crisis, to run when challenges are abundant, and to walk faithfully in the midst of the demands of daily life. He does not tie eagles to the ground, nor does he make others fly higher than they can.
Conclusion:
Trust in Jehovah forever, because in Jehovah the Lord is the strength of the centuries. Isaiah 26:4