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Why Is Isaiah 40 the Chapter God Wrote for People Who Are Too Tired to Keep Going_ · Bible stories

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  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Bible Stories. You may notice there
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  Speaker 1: QR code to donate directly. Thank you for helping us
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  Speaker 1: keep these Bible Stories going. There is one sentence in
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  Speaker 1: Isaiah chapter 40 that God did not write. He copied it.
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  Speaker 1: Somebody worn out was already saying it, and instead of
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  Speaker 1: correcting them, God put their exact words into the chapter
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  Speaker 1: and left them standing there. One sentence out of 31 verses.
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  Speaker 1: That is the only line in the whole chapter that
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  Speaker 1: comes from the tired people. Everything else is the reply.
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  Speaker 1: Most Christians do not know that sentence is in there.
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  Speaker 1: What they know is the eagle verse at the end,
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  Speaker 1: and what they have been told is that it means,'
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  Speaker 1: Your strength is coming back, and this season will pass.'
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  Speaker 1: That is the popular answer, and it leaves people worse
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  Speaker 1: off than before, because Isaiah chapter 40 never promises that
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  Speaker 1: the hard thing will end. The people who first received
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  Speaker 1: this chapter went into captivity anyway. They lost their homes,
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  Speaker 1: their city, and their temple, and the chapter that was
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  Speaker 1: meant to comfort them stopped none of it. So the
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  Speaker 1: eagle verse cannot be a promise that the tiredness is temporary.
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  Speaker 1: It is the last line of an answer, and the
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  Speaker 1: thing it is answering is that one sentence, which means
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  Speaker 1: the whole chapter only makes sense once you know what
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  Speaker 1: those people said. It is a sentence most believers have
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  Speaker 1: thought at two in the morning and would never say
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  Speaker 1: out loud in church. All of this matters if you
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  Speaker 1: are still praying, still reading, still showing up, and have
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  Speaker 1: simply stopped expecting anything to change, if your body is
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  Speaker 1: now slower than your faith, if the day ends and
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  Speaker 1: you cannot say what you did with it, only that
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  Speaker 1: you got through it. And the answer God gives is
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  Speaker 1: not the one anybody expects. Out of everything true about him,
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  Speaker 1: this chapter picks one thing to say to people who
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  Speaker 1: have nothing left, and it is the last thing any
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  Speaker 1: of us would think to bring up at a hospital bed.
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  Speaker 1: Then it closes with the most quoted promise about strength
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  Speaker 1: in the Bible, a promise that moves in the wrong
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  Speaker 1: direction and ends on the smallest thing in the verse.
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  Speaker 1: Start with the sentence. It arrives near the end of
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  Speaker 1: the chapter, and it arrives without any softening. God does
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  Speaker 1: not describe their mood or summarize their condition. He repeats
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  Speaker 1: the actual words they were saying to each other. Why
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  Speaker 1: do you complain, Jacob? Why do you say, Israel, my
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  Speaker 1: way is hidden from the Lord, my cause is disregarded
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  Speaker 1: by my God? Isaiah chapter 40 verse 27 Look at
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  Speaker 1: what they were claiming. Not that God does not exist,
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  Speaker 1: not that he is weak. They believed in him completely.
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  Speaker 1: Their claim was that their particular life had slipped off
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  Speaker 1: his desk, that whatever he was attending to, it was
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  Speaker 1: not them. My way is hidden. My case has been
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  Speaker 1: set aside. That is a very specific kind of tiredness.
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  Speaker 1: It is the tiredness of someone who has not lost
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  Speaker 1: their faith and cannot find any comfort in it either.
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  Speaker 1: They are not arguing about doctrine. They have simply concluded
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  Speaker 1: that they are too small to be tracked, and that
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  Speaker 1: after so many years of asking, the silence must mean something.
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  Speaker 1: God does not scold them for saying it. He quotes
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  Speaker 1: it out loud so that everyone can hear how it sounds,
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  Speaker 1: and then he spends an entire chapter dismantling it. Once
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  Speaker 1: you know verse 27 is there, the rest of the
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  Speaker 1: chapter stops looking like a general poem about God's greatness.
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  Speaker 1: It reads like a case being built. The chapter opens
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  Speaker 1: with a command, and the command is not given to
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  Speaker 1: the tired people. It is given to whoever is listening. Comfort,
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  Speaker 1: comfort my people, says your God. Isaiah chapter 40 verse
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  Speaker 1: 1 The word is doubled in the original, the way
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  Speaker 1: you say something twice to someone who did not believe
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  Speaker 1: you the first time. And the verse continues with instructions
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  Speaker 1: about tone. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, God says, and tell
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  Speaker 1: her that her hard service has been completed. Hard service
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  Speaker 1: is soldier language. It is the word for a long assignment,
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  Speaker 1: the kind that has an end date somewhere, but not
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  Speaker 1: a visible one. God is saying to a worn-out nation
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  Speaker 1: that the tour is over. Here is what makes this strange.
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  Speaker 1: When Isaiah wrote this, the exile had not happened yet.
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  Speaker 1: The previous chapter ends with the prophet telling King Hezekiah
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  Speaker 1: that Babylon would one day carry his sons away. Then
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  Speaker 1: chapter 40 opens with comfort for people already in captivity,
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  Speaker 1: people who at that moment were still living in their
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  Speaker 1: own houses with their own vineyards. God was speaking comfort
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  Speaker 1: into a grief that had not arrived. He was preparing
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  Speaker 1: the words in advance, so that when those people finally
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  Speaker 1: sat down in a foreign country with nothing left, the
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  Speaker 1: sentence would already be written, and waiting for them— Think
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  Speaker 1: about what that says about how God treats exhaustion. He
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  Speaker 1: does not wait for the collapse to start preparing the answer.
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  Speaker 1: The comfort was ready decades before the sorrow. A few
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  Speaker 1: verses later, something happens that most readings skip past. A
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  Speaker 1: voice tells Isaiah to speak, and Isaiah has no idea
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  Speaker 1: what to speak. A voice says, cry out, and I said,
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  Speaker 1: what shall I cry? Isaiah chapter 40 verse 6. This
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  Speaker 1: is the prophet, the man with the assignment, handed a
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  Speaker 1: microphone and a crowd of broken people, and his honest
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  Speaker 1: answer is a question. What am I supposed to say
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  Speaker 1: to them? Anyone who has sat next to a hospital
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  Speaker 1: bed knows that feeling. Anyone who has tried to encourage
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  Speaker 1: a friend whose marriage is ending, or a son who
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  Speaker 1: has stopped calling, or a widow six months in when
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  Speaker 1: everyone else has gone back to their own lives. You
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  Speaker 1: want to help. You open your mouth and discover you
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  Speaker 1: have nothing that would not sound small, and the answer
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  Speaker 1: God gives Isaiah is not what you would expect for
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  Speaker 1: a message meant to comfort. He tells him to say
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  Speaker 1: that people are like grass. Grass in that part of
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  Speaker 1: the world came up green after the rains and was
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  Speaker 1: gone within weeks once the hot wind blew in off
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  Speaker 1: the desert. Everyone watching knew exactly how fast it happened.
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  Speaker 1: The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word
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  Speaker 1: of our God endures forever. Isaiah chapter 40 verse 8
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  Speaker 1: At first this sounds like bad news for tired people.
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  Speaker 1: You are fragile, you are temporary, your strength is seasonal.
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  Speaker 1: But read the sentence to the end. The point of
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  Speaker 1: the comparison is the second half. Your strength runs out
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  Speaker 1: on a schedule. What God has said does not. So
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  Speaker 1: when you are measuring whether God's promise to you still stands,
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  Speaker 1: do not use your own energy level as the measuring stick.
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  Speaker 1: The promise and your stamina are made of two different materials.
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  Speaker 1: Peter quoted these exact lines many years later when he
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  Speaker 1: was writing to Christians scattered by persecution, people who had
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  Speaker 1: lost their homes and their standing. He reached back for
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  Speaker 1: this verse because it says, the one thing an exhausted
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  Speaker 1: believer most needs to hear, everything about you can wear
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  Speaker 1: out and the words spoken over you will still be standing.
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  Speaker 1: Then the chapter does something that looks at first glance
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  Speaker 1: like a change of subject. It starts asking enormous questions.
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  Speaker 1: Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand,
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  Speaker 1: or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?
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  Speaker 1: Isaiah chapter 40 verse 12. Picture the image. Every ocean
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  Speaker 1: on earth held in a cupped palm, the way you
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  Speaker 1: would carry a little water to your mouth. The whole
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  Speaker 1: sky measured with the span between a thumb and a
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  Speaker 1: little finger. The chapter keeps going in this direction for
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  Speaker 1: verse after verse. Nations are a drop left in a
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  Speaker 1: bucket after it has been emptied. Nations are the dust
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  Speaker 1: on a set of scales, too light to move the needle.
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  Speaker 1: God sits above the circle of the earth, and the
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  Speaker 1: people below look like grasshoppers. If you have ever felt small,
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  Speaker 1: this can land wrong. It can sound like being told
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  Speaker 1: that your problems are not worth mentioning. But notice who
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  Speaker 1: this section is aimed at. It was written for people
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  Speaker 1: about to be marched off by the Babylonian Empire, the
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  Speaker 1: most terrifying military power they had ever seen. The nations
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  Speaker 1: being called a drop in a bucket are the ones
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  Speaker 1: with the armies. The empire that can crush you is
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  Speaker 1: dust on a scale to goldfish. That is not a
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  Speaker 1: rebuke to the small. That is an accurate reading of
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  Speaker 1: the thing you are afraid of. And the chapter makes
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  Speaker 1: sure the point is not lost. It asks who God
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  Speaker 1: consulted to learn how to run the world. Who taught
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  Speaker 1: him the right path? The answer is nobody. He did
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  Speaker 1: not need advice on how to create the ocean, and
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  Speaker 1: he does not need advice on how to handle your situation.
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  Speaker 1: Nothing about your life has presented him with a problem
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  Speaker 1: he is still working out. In the middle of all
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  Speaker 1: that sighs, the chapter stops and asks a question that
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  Speaker 1: sounds almost like a challenge. With whom, then, will you
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  Speaker 1: compare God? To what image will you liken him? Isaiah
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  Speaker 1: chapter 40 verse 18. And then, instead of answering with
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  Speaker 1: something majestic, the chapter describes a workshop. A metal worker
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  Speaker 1: casts an idol. A goldsmith covers it in gold and
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  Speaker 1: makes silver chains to hang on it. And a man
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  Speaker 1: who cannot afford any of that goes out and picks
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  Speaker 1: a piece of wood that will not rot, then hires
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  Speaker 1: a craftsman to set the thing up so it will
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  Speaker 1: not fall over. Read that last part slowly. The whole
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  Speaker 1: concern is that the god might topple. So they anchor it,
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  Speaker 1: they fasten it down. The object they are going to
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  Speaker 1: ask for help cannot stay upright without assistance. Isaiah is
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  Speaker 1: not making a joke at the expense of people long dead.
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  Speaker 1: He is making a point that lands directly on an
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  Speaker 1: exhausted believer. Everyone leans on something. When you are strong,
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  Speaker 1: you may not notice what it is because there is
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  Speaker 1: enough of you to carry it. Tiredness is what exposes it.
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  Speaker 1: The savings account, the career, the reputation, the marriage, your
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  Speaker 1: own competence, your own health. Each of those can hold
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  Speaker 1: a certain amount of weight and no more. And what
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  Speaker 1: tired people discover, usually at the worst possible moment, is
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  Speaker 1: that the things they had been depending on without noticing
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  Speaker 1: need more support than they give. That is the real
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  Speaker 1: comparison in this chapter. On one side, a god that
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  Speaker 1: has to be carried in, set up and secured so
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  Speaker 1: it will not fall on its face. On the other side,
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  Speaker 1: a God who carries. Isaiah says it plainly a few
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  Speaker 1: chapters later, in words that belong to anyone getting older.
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  Speaker 1: Even to your old age and grey hairs I am He.
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  Speaker 1: I am He who will sustain you. I have made you,
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  Speaker 1: and I will carry you. I will sustain you, and
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  Speaker 1: I will rescue you. Isaiah chapter 46 verse 4. Notice
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  Speaker 1: how long that promise runs, not until you retire, not
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  Speaker 1: until you become a burden to the people around you,
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  Speaker 1: to the grey hairs and past them. The promise is
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  Speaker 1: made to the far end of a life, the part
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  Speaker 1: people are most afraid of, the part where you can
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  Speaker 1: no longer do for yourself the things you used to
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  Speaker 1: do for everyone else. This is why the size language
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  Speaker 1: earlier in the chapter is a comfort rather than a lecture.
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  Speaker 1: A small god would be worth worrying about. A god
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  Speaker 1: you have to maintain, prop up, defend, and keep from
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  Speaker 1: tipping over is one more thing on your list, and
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  Speaker 1: you do not have room for one more thing. The
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  Speaker 1: god of Isaiah, chapter 40, is the only one in
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  Speaker 1: the room who is not asking to be held. Right
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  Speaker 1: in the middle of the power language, without any warning,
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  Speaker 1: the chapter puts down a picture so gentle it seems
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  Speaker 1: to belong in a different book. He tends his flock
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  Speaker 1: like a shepherd, he gathers the lambs in his arms,
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  Speaker 1: and carries them close to his heart. He gently leads
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  Speaker 1: those that have young. Isaiah chapter 40 verse 11 The
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  Speaker 1: same God who holds the sea in his hand bends
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  Speaker 1: down and picks up a lamb. Look at which sheep
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  Speaker 1: get the attention in that verse, the lambs who cannot
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  Speaker 1: keep up, and the mothers with young who can walk
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  Speaker 1: but only slowly because something small is depending on them
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  Speaker 1: and setting their pace. God does not drive the flock
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  Speaker 1: at the speed of the strongest animal. He sets the
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  Speaker 1: speed of the whole company by whoever is struggling most.
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  Speaker 1: That is a picture worth holding on to if you
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  Speaker 1: are the slow one now, if you used to be
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  Speaker 1: the person who organized everything and now you need help
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  Speaker 1: getting to the car, if your prayer life used to
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  Speaker 1: be an hour and is now a sentence before you
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  Speaker 1: fall asleep. The shepherd in this verse is not waiting
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  Speaker 1: impatiently at the front of the flock for you to
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  Speaker 1: catch up. He has already shortened his stride. And notice
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  Speaker 1: where the lamb is carried, close to his heart. The
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  Speaker 1: weakest animal in the whole flock ends up in the
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  Speaker 1: safest position of any of them, closer to the shepherd
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  Speaker 1: than the strong ones who are walking on their own.
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  Speaker 1: Now the chapter arrives at the moment where the argument turns.
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  Speaker 1: God tells them to go outside and look up. Lift
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  Speaker 1: up your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created
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  Speaker 1: all these? He who brings out the starry host one
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  Speaker 1: by one, and calls forth each of them by name.
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  Speaker 1: Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one
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  Speaker 1: of them is missing. Isaiah chapter 40 verse 26 Every
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  Speaker 1: detail in that verse is doing work. He brings them
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  Speaker 1: out one by one, the way a shepherd brings sheep
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  Speaker 1: out of a fold individually rather than in a rush.
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  Speaker 1: He calls each one by name, which means he is
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  Speaker 1: not counting a quantity, he is addressing individuals, and then
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  Speaker 1: the line that decides the whole chapter. Not one of
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  Speaker 1: them is missing. That is attendance language. It is what
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  Speaker 1: you say when you have checked a list against a room,
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  Speaker 1: and everyone who should be there is there. For the
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  Speaker 1: people hearing this, it hit even harder. The empires around
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  Speaker 1: them named their gods after the stars. Babylon read the
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  Speaker 1: sky for omens, and built its religion out of those lights.
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  Speaker 1: Isaiah says those famous powers are a work crew that
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  Speaker 1: God brings out at evening and calls by name, and
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  Speaker 1: none of them ever fails to report. And here is
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  Speaker 1: the piece almost everyone misses. The very next sentence in
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  Speaker 1: the chapter is verse 27.' My way is hidden from
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  Speaker 1: the Lord, my cause is disregarded by my God.' The
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  Speaker 1: star verse and the complaint sit side by side on purpose.
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  Speaker 1: God counts a hundred billion burning lights individually, by name,
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  Speaker 1: every single night, and not one has ever gone unnoticed,
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  Speaker 1: and you are standing underneath all of that, telling him
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  Speaker 1: that your life slipped past him. He does not answer
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  Speaker 1: that with anger. He simply puts the sky next to
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  Speaker 1: the sentence and lets the two of them be in
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  Speaker 1: the same paragraph. After quoting their complaint, God answers with
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  Speaker 1: a question that sounds almost surprised. Do you not know?
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  Speaker 1: Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God,
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  Speaker 1: the creator of the ends of the earth. He will
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  Speaker 1: not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one
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  Speaker 1: can fathom. Isaiah chapter 40 verse 28 There are a
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  Speaker 1: hundred true things the chapter could have said about God
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  Speaker 1: at that moment. It could have said, He is holy,
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  Speaker 1: or just, or merciful, all of which are true, and
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  Speaker 1: all of which appear elsewhere in Isaiah. Standing in front
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  Speaker 1: of people with nothing left, the chapter reaches for one
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  Speaker 1: specific attribute. He does not get tired. Read that as
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  Speaker 1: the answer to what they said, because that is what
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  Speaker 1: it is. They had assumed God had moved on to
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  Speaker 1: something else. Their assumption made sense, since that is what
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  Speaker 1: every other helper in their lives had eventually done. People
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  Speaker 1: who love you get exhausted. The friends who called every
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  Speaker 1: day in the first month call every few weeks by
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  Speaker 1: the sixth. The family who came to help after the
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  Speaker 1: surgery went back to their own crowded lives. Nobody intends
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  Speaker 1: for their attention to run out. It simply does, because
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  Speaker 1: attention is a thing that can be spent. God tells
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  Speaker 1: them that the one resource that has failed them in
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  Speaker 1: every other relationship does not exist in him. He has
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  Speaker 1: been paying attention to their situation for as long as
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  Speaker 1: it has existed, and doing so has cost him nothing.
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  Speaker 1: And then the sentence that follows is the hinge of
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  Speaker 1: the entire chapter. He gives strength to the weary and
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  Speaker 1: increases the power of the weak. Isaiah chapter 40 verse 29.
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  Speaker 1: The tirelessness is not just a fact about him. It
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  Speaker 1: is a supply. He has more than he needs and
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  Speaker 1: he distributes the difference to people who have run out.
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  Speaker 1: Then the chapter makes a move that should stop anyone
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  Speaker 1: who has ever felt disqualified by weakness. Even youths grow
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  Speaker 1: tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall. Isaiah
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  Speaker 1: chapter 40 verse 30. If this chapter were about rewarding effort,
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  Speaker 1: this is where you would expect the strong ones to
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  Speaker 1: be held up as the example. Instead, the young, the fast,
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  Speaker 1: the ones at the height of of their physical strength,
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  Speaker 1: are the only group in the chapter described as falling over.
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  Speaker 1: Why put them there? Because the tired reader is already
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  Speaker 1: doing a comparison in their head. They are looking at
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  Speaker 1: people with more energy and assuming that is what a
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  Speaker 1: person who is right with God is supposed to look like.
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  Speaker 1: The chapter cuts that off. It says the fastest runners
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  Speaker 1: you know are on the same schedule you are. They
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  Speaker 1: have not found a source of strength that you failed
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  Speaker 1: to find. They just have not reached the end of
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  Speaker 1: theirs yet. Which means being worn out is not evidence
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  Speaker 1: that something went wrong in your walk with God. It
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  Speaker 1: is evidence that you are made of the same material
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  Speaker 1: as everyone else. Now the famous verse and the detail
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  Speaker 1: that changes how it feels. But those who hope in
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  Speaker 1: the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on
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  Speaker 1: wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary.
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  Speaker 1: They will walk and not be faint. Isaiah chapter 40
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  Speaker 1: verse 31. Almost every promise you have ever heard builds upward. Good, better, best.
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  Speaker 1: This one goes the other way. It starts with soaring,
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  Speaker 1: which is the most spectacular thing a body can do.
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  Speaker 1: Then it steps down to running. Then it comes to
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  Speaker 1: rest on walking, the slowest and least impressive thing in
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  Speaker 1: the sentence. That ordering is not an accident of poetry.
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  Speaker 1: It is the shape of an actual life. There are
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  Speaker 1: seasons where faith feels like flight. Something happens, a prayer
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  Speaker 1: is answered, a burden lifts, and for a while you
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  Speaker 1: are carried. Most people have had a few of those.
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  Speaker 1: They are real and they are rare. Then there are
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: stretches where you can still move at a good pace,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: still serve, still carry other people, but you feel every
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: step of it. And then there is the longest part
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: of most lives, which is walking.' ordinary days in an
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: ordinary body,' getting up again on a Tuesday when nothing
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: has changed, 'making the same meal, taking the same medicine,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: 'saying the same prayer for the same person who has
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: not changed in eleven years.' The chapter does not end
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: on the eagle, it ends on the walk.' If it
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: had stopped at soaring,' it would have been a promise
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: for the people having a good year.' Ending where it does,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: it becomes a promise for the people having a long decade.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: There is something else worth seeing in that order. Flying
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: is the one motion on the list that a person
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: cannot do on their own at all. Running and walking
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: are things a body does. Soaring is borrowed entirely. By
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: putting flight first and walking last, the verse places the
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: most impossible thing and the most ordinary thing in the
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: same promise, under the same source of strength. The steady
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: walk of a worn-out believer is being supplied from exactly
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: the same place as the moment that felt like flight.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: which means the seasons you think of as your weakest
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: are not seasons when God's strength stopped arriving. They are
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: seasons when it is arriving in the form you actually needed,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: which was the ability to stay on your feet. And
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: look at the words attached to that last step. They
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: will walk and not be faint. God does not promise
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: that walking will feel like flying. He promises you will
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: not collapse. That is a smaller promise than the one
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: people quote, and it is the one that actually gets
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: a person through 20 years of caring for someone who
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: is not getting better. Everything in verse 31 depends on
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: the phrase at the front of it, those who hope
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: in the Lord. Older Bibles say those who wait upon
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: the Lord, and the underlying word carries the sense of waiting,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: of expecting something that has not arrived yet. The root
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: behind it has to do with strands twisted together into
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: a cord. Both pictures help. Waiting because the strength arrives
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: on God's timing and not at the moment you request it.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: And twisting because a single thread pulls apart under almost
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: no weight while the same threads wound around each other
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: will hold a boat to a dock. Nothing was added,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: they were simply joined. This matters because of how people
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: hear the word wait. It sounds passive, like sitting in
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: a room until somebody calls your name. In this chapter,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: it describes what the tired person is doing while they
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: are still tired, still turning toward God when there is
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: no visible result, still opening the Bible at a kitchen
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: table at six in the morning with no feeling in
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: it at all. That is the waiting. It is not
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: the delay before the strength comes. It is the very
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: thing the strength is promised to. And the word behind renew,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: their strength, is not the word for topping something up.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: It carries the sense of exchange, the way you change
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: out of one set of clothes and into another—' The
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: promise is not that your own reserves get refilled so
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: you can go back to running on yourself.' It is
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: a trade. You hand over the strength you no longer have,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: which is nothing,' and you are given strength that belongs
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: to the God who never gets tired.' That is the
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: only reason the promise can be as large as it is.'
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: If it depended on what was left in you, it
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: would fail in the first hard week.' There is one
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: more thread running through this chapter, and it reaches all
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: the way to Jesus. Near the beginning, a voice calls
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: out about a construction project in the desert. A voice
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: of one calling. In the wilderness, prepare the way for
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: our God. Isaiah chapter 40 verse 3. In the ancient world,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: when a king was coming, crews went out ahead of
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: him and fixed the road. They filled in the holes,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: leveled the rises, cleared the rocks because the king should
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: not have to struggle to arrive. Notice which direction the
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: traffic goes. Exhausted people usually assume that the work in
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: front of them is a journey they have to make.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Get yourself back to God. Climb back up to where
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: you used to be spiritually. The road in this chapter
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: runs the other way. It is being built so that
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: God can come out to where his people are, and
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: the place he is coming to is a wilderness, the
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: least likely address in the world. Centuries later, a man
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: appeared in the desert near the Jordan River, wearing camel
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: hair and eating locusts, and the Gospel writers opened his
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: story by quoting this exact verse. John the Baptist was
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: the voice, and the one the road had been built
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: for walked out of Nazareth and into the wilderness to
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: be baptized by him. So the shepherd of verse 11,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: the one who gathers lambs in his arms and carries
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: them close to his heart, took on a body and
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: went looking for people. And when he described his own
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: ministry in a single invitation, he used the vocabulary of
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: this chapter— Come to me, all you who are weary
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: and burdened, and I will give you rest. Matthew chapter
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: 11 verse 28. He did not say, Come to me,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: all you who have sorted yourselves out. He addressed the
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: exhausted directly, as a group, and called them over. That
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: is Isaiah chapter 40, standing up and walking around. The
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: God who does not grow weary came into a body
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: that did. He got tired enough to fall asleep in
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: a boat during a storm. He sat down by a
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: well at noon because the walk had worn him out.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: He knew what the end of a person's strength feels
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: like from the inside, and he went to the cross
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: carrying a weight none of us could have lifted, and
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: then he stood up again on the third day with
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: all of it behind him. Being honest about this chapter
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: means being honest about what it leaves out. It does
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: not promise that the exile will be cancelled. Those people
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: did go to Babylon. It does not promise that your
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: circumstances will change by spring, or that the diagnosis will reverse,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: or that the son who stopped speaking to you will
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: call this year. Isaiah chapter 40 never says the road
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: will get easier. What it says is that you will
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: be held up on it, strength to the weary, power
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: to the weak, walking without collapsing. The promise is about
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: what happens inside a person while the hard thing continues.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: And that is the promise a tired believer can actually use.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: Anyone can be encouraged by a guarantee that the trouble
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: ends next month. Almost nobody is still standing on that
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: kind of encouragement three years later. This chapter is built
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: to be leaned on for decades because it never depended
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: on the trouble ending. Think about who is actually reading
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: verse 31 this week. Someone in their 70s who can
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: no longer drive to the church they gave 40 years to.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: watching services on a screen in a living room that
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: is too silent, wondering whether God notices a faith that
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: now mostly happens alone. Someone caring for a husband who
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: no longer recognizes them, doing the same unglamorous tasks every
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: day with nobody watching, too tired at night to pray
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: more than a few words. Someone who has prayed for
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: a child for so many years that the prayer has
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: worn smooth like a stone, carried in a pocket, and
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: who cannot remember the last time they expected an answer.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: Someone whose body has become the main obstacle in their life,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: who used to serve and now has to be served,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: and who has started to suspect that they have become
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: useless to God. Every one of them, at some point,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: has said some version of that one sentence. My way
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: is hidden from the Lord, not out loud, not as
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: a doctrine, just as the quiet arithmetic a person does
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: at two in the morning. And this chapter answers it
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: by pointing at the sky, by naming stars, by counting attendants,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: and by putting the weakest animal in the flock in
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: the safest place in the flock— So why is Isaiah
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: chapter 40 the chapter God wrote for people who are
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: too tired to keep going? Because the comfort in it
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: was prepared before the grief arrived. It tells you plainly
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: that your strength is seasonal, and then tells you that
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: what God has spoken is not. The empire you are
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: afraid of gets called the dust left on a set
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: of scales, while the god who is that far above
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: it stoops down, picks up the animal that cannot keep up,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: and carries it against his chest. It counts the stars
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: by name, and then, in the very next breath, answers
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: the person who feels uncounted. Out of everything that could
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: be said about God to weary people, it chooses his
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: tirelessness and then tells you he hands out the difference.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: The strongest people in it are put on the ground
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: so that the promise ends up standing over those who
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: have nothing left. And the last word of that promise
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: is not flight. It is a walk. You may not
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: get the soaring this year. Many faithful people go long
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: stretches without it. What you are promised is that you
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: will still be walking when the day is over, and
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: that the walking itself, unremarkable as it looks from the outside,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: is being done with strength that was given to you
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: rather than produced by you. The people Isaiah wrote to
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: did go into exile. They did lose the temple, the city,
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: and the life they knew. And 70 years later, a
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: group of them walked back up the road toward Jerusalem.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: And the reason they were still a people at all
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: is that somebody had written down, long before it started,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: that their hard service would be completed. God said, comfort twice,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: because he knew you would not believe it the first time.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: He is not tired of your situation. He has not
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: misplaced your file. The same voice that calls each star
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: out by name every evening knows your name, your street,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: your diagnosis, the hour you wake up and cannot get
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: back to sleep, and the prayer you have almost stopped saying.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: Lift up your eyes. Not one of them is missing,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: and neither are you. If this video helped you grow
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: deeper in God's Word, I want to personally invite you
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: to be part of what we are building here. Every
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: video on this channel takes many hours of study and
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: careful research to make sure we bring you content that
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: is faithful to Scripture and worthy of your time. If
• 33:34
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• 33:37
  Speaker 1: keep making these videos, you can find a link in
• 33:40
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• 33:44
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• 33:49
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• 33:54
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• 33:57
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• 34:02
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• 34:05
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• 34:09
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