•Isaiah 49:14-50:3
•When in Doubt
14 But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me;
my Lord has forgotten me.”
15 “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.
16 Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are continually before me.
17 Your builders make haste;
your destroyers and those who laid you waste go out from you.
18 Lift up your eyes around and see;
they all gather, they come to you.
As I live, declares the LORD,
you shall put them all on as an ornament;
you shall bind them on as a bride does.
19 “Surely your waste and your desolate places
and your devastated land—
surely now you will be too narrow for your inhabitants,
and those who swallowed you up will be far away.
20 The children of your bereavement
will yet say in your ears:
‘The place is too narrow for me;
make room for me to dwell in.’
21 Then you will say in your heart:
‘Who has borne me these?
I was bereaved and barren,
exiled and put away,
but who has brought up these?
Behold, I was left alone;
from where have these come?’”
22 Thus says the Lord GOD:
“Behold, I will lift up my hand to the nations,
and raise my signal to the peoples;
and they shall bring your sons in their arms,
and your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders.
23 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 49:14-23, ESV)
24 Can the prey be taken from the mighty,
or the captives of a tyrant be rescued?
25 For thus says the LORD:
“Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken,
and the prey of the tyrant be rescued,
for I will contend with those who contend with you,
and I will save your children.
26 I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh,
and they shall be drunk with their own blood as with wine.
Then all flesh shall know
that I am the LORD your Savior,
and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.”
(Isaiah 49:24-26, ESV)
1 Thus says the LORD:
“Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce,
with which I sent her away?
Or which of my creditors is it
to whom I have sold you?
Behold, for your iniquities you were sold,
and for your transgressions your mother was sent away.
2 Why, when I came, was there no man;
why, when I called, was there no one to answer?
Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem?
Or have I no power to deliver?
Behold, by my rebuke I dry up the sea,
I make the rivers a desert;
their fish stink for lack of water
and die of thirst.
3 I clothe the heavens with blackness
and make sackcloth their covering.”
(Isaiah 50:1-3, ESV)
Main Point
• These verses show Zions response to what God will accomplish through the Servant
• Zion is doubtful
• God declares His love for Zion
• He does not lack desire, nor power, He will accomplish His purposes
Application Points
• When in Doubt
– There are many times in our lives when we feel as though there is no hope
– All too often we can have the same questions presented by Zion
– We have all been in situations where this occurs
– “Does God really love us? Does He really love me?”
– It can even cause us to think as Zion and wonder if we have been forsaken
– Instead of being comforted by the Word…we tend to lack belief that it can be true
– Oftentimes this does not lead to a sense of absolute disbelief in God
– Consider what CS Lewis writes in A Grief Observed
“Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be- or so it feels -welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?
I tried to put some of these thoughts to C. this afternoon. He reminded me that the same thing seems to have happened to Christ: 'Why hast thou forsaken me?' I know. Does that make it easier to understand?
Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not 'So there's no God after all,' but 'So this is what God's really like. Deceive yourself no longer.’”
(CS Lewis)
Application Points
• When in Doubt (2)
– I suspect there have been many who have felt this way
– We do not always understand, and in our lack of understanding we can be blinded by what we experience
– We can see this in regards to loss of loved ones such as CS Lewis…Or in illness
– This feeling that God is there but not here
– It isn’t only the idea of being forsaken
– There is a doubt raised whether God could save us even if He were for us
– Perhaps, God really is being strongarmed by something else
– In our times of being in darkness it is not uncommon to experience these things
– This sinful world full of tyrants of all shapes and sizes
– We feel the power of this sinful world
Application Points
• When in Doubt (3)
– Yet what is the hope in these times?
– What will keep us?
– Those who wait upon the Lord will not be put to shame
– God has promised Zion that He would deliver in a marvelous way
– Through the person of Jesus this has been fulfilled
– All nations have experienced the redemption of God
– That we should wait upon the Lord is not meant to be understood in a vacuum
– God has proclaimed, and He has delivered
– We know these dark nights of the soul are a passing thing in light of the grand eternity we will enter into with Christ
– When the doubt comes, it is the Word of the Lord which we trust
– He is faithful, always faithful, always good
– Knowing those who wait on the Lord will have their doubts cast away, and find themselves without shame
Once very near the end I said, 'If you can - if it is allowed - come to me when I too am on my death bed. ' 'Allowed!' she said. 'Heaven would have a job to hold me; and as for Hell, I'd break it into bits.' She knew she was speaking a kind of mythological language, with even an element of comedy in it. There was a twinkle as well as a tear in her eye. But there was no myth and no joke about the will, deeper than any feeling, that flashed through her. But I mustn't, because I have come to misunderstand a little less completely what a pure intelligence might be, lean over too far. There is also, whatever it means, the resurrection of the body. We cannot understand. The best is perhaps what we understand least.
Didn't people dispute once whether the final vision of God was more an act of intelligence or of love? That is probably another of the nonsense questions. How wicked it would be, if we could, to call the dead back! She said not to me but to the chaplain, 'I am at peace with God.’
She smiled, but not at me.
Poi si tomo all' eterna fontana.
(CS Lewis)
•Application Points
•The Gospel of Christ
–Origins
–Where we began
–Fall
–What went wrong
–Redemption
–How it is fixed
–Glorification
–Where it at leads
