Alright, let's turn to Isaiah
chapter 30. Brethren, whenever the trial
comes, wait on the Lord. Wait on the Lord. When your hearts
break and you're afraid, whenever you're opposed by enemies
and by obstacles, when you don't see any way out,
you don't see any way that it could turn to good, wait on the
Lord. Wait on the Lord. Hearken to
God's Word rather than sinful flesh. That's what we're talking
about by waiting on the Lord. Look to this Word rather than
to sinful flesh. Bear the suffering. Waiting on
the Lord is bearing what you have to suffer rather than trying
to run from it. Bear it. Look to wisdom Himself
rather than leaning to your own understanding. We just read Proverbs
3, 5, Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not
unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him
and He shall direct your path. Now the children of Judah in
our text, they ran rather than waiting on the Lord. This is
what this whole passage is about. God sent them a trial in the
form of the Assyrian army and they ran to Egypt looking for
help. Back to Egypt. Back to their
former bondage. Back to the place where they
were under taskmasters. And anytime we Do not wait on
the Lord. And we seek a refuge for ourselves
and ease for ourselves. We're running back to Egypt. Anytime we do that, we're running
back to Egypt. We're running back to bondage. So now we're going to see how
God dealt with them. Let's see how God dealt with
them. Isaiah 30 verse 15. For thus saith the Lord, the
Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest shall you
be saved. In quietness and in confidence
shall be your strength. And you would not. But you said,
No, for we will flee upon horses. Therefore shall you flee. And
we will ride upon the swift, therefore shall they that pursue
you be swift. One thousand shall flee at the
rebuke of one, at the rebuke of five shall you flee, till
you be left as a beacon upon the top of a mountain. Margin says, as a tree bereft
of its branches, or as a tree with all its branches broken
off. He says, and as an ensign on
a hill. You know, when a flag is on a
hill, it's exposed, isn't it? You can see it. Everybody can
see it. It's exposed. And he brings us to the point
where we know we're exposed to God. Now listen, he says, and
therefore will the Lord wait. They wouldn't wait. And therefore
will the Lord wait. That He may be gracious unto
you. And therefore will He be exalted.
That He may have mercy upon you. For the Lord is a God of judgment. Blessed, happy are all they that
wait for Him. This passage is dear to me because
years ago God sent a trial to me and I ran rather than wait
on God. And I tried to fix things myself. I tried to look too much to my
own understanding and my own work of my own hands. And God
used this passage to show me what I had done and what He had
done for me. We'll talk a little bit more
about that in a little bit, a little later. I want to show you here,
first of all, God's Word. And then I want to show you our
Word. And then we'll see God's waiting. I've titled this, Impatient Sinners
Waiting God. Now here's God's Word. Isaiah
30, verse 15. For thus saith the Lord God,
the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest shall you be saved. In quietness and in confidence
shall be your strength. Now this is the word of the Lord
God, the covenant keeping God. This is the word of the Holy
One of Israel. This is a word we can trust. This is a word we can believe
right here. Now, He says to us, In returning
and rest shall you be saved. Now we find over in verse 1 what
Israel had done. It says, There were rebellious
children, saith the Lord. It says, They took counsel, but
not of me. And they covered with a covering,
but not of my spirit. that they may add sin to sin. You know, most of the time when
we face trouble, sin is already involved. And by trying to fix
it ourselves and not waiting on God, we add sin to sin. He said they walked to go down
into Egypt. They've not asked it in my mouth
to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh and to trust
in the shadow of Egypt. Therefore shall the strength
of Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt
your confusion. But God is so gracious, He gives
this word and He says in returning, come back to God. Instead of
running away, return and rest in the Lord. Rest in the Lord
and ye shall be saved. Now that's God's Word. That's
God's Word. Return from Egypt and rest in
Christ. Return from our wisdom and trust
God's wisdom. Return from the works of our
hands and trust the work of God's hand. Return and you shall be
saved. Things might look bleak. Things
may look like there's no possible way you could see how any good
could come out of this. but in quietness and in confidence
shall be your strength. That means, quietness means,
you remember the meek and quiet spirit. It's a great price to
God. It means a submissive heart,
a submissive spirit to God. With confidence in God, quietness
and in confidence shall be your strength. Why? Because then God
is my strength. Then Christ is my strength rather
than me being my strength. He is saying quietly obey God's
word. You know when we rebel and we
take matters into our own hands, there is rarely a situation where
where we don't know that we're breaking God's Word or rebelling
against God's Word. Doing what God tells us not to
do. We almost always know that. And he's saying here, be submissive
to obey God. To obey God. Be confident that
God's ruling everything that's happening. Is it upon you? Why is it upon you? God's ruling
it. God brought it. Ultimately, you
can look to all the second causes, but ultimately, God set this
in your lap. Quietly submit with confidence,
knowing, have this confidence, that God who spared not His only
Son, but delivered Him up for all His people, shall with His
Son freely give me all things. Have that confidence in God no
matter what the trial is. This is God's Word. This is not
a word of a man. This is not the word of me speaking. This is the Word of the Lord.
In returning and rest shall you be saved. In quietness and confidence
shall you find strength. Now, let's hear our Word. Here's
our Word, verse 15. And you would not. You would
not. But she said, No! For we will
flee upon horses. Therefore, she flee. And we will
ride upon the swift. Now, to get a better understanding
of this, we could sit here tonight, we could hear this, and we could
think, well, they shouldn't have done that. Well, let's get a
better understanding of this. You're in Jerusalem. And you look up on the hill,
and from one end of that hill to the other side of that hill,
on the horizon, is the Assyrian army. And your counselors, your generals,
and your advisors, they tell you, you need to get these swiftest
horses, and you need to ride to Egypt, right now. Get the people out of here. send
an ambassador, go down to Egypt and make a covenant with Egypt
to come help us. That's what you need to do. And
then you have this nobody named Isaiah who comes along claiming
to be God's messenger. And he says, here's God's word. Thus saith the Lord God, the
Holy One of Israel, in returning and rest you shall be saved.
In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. So what
do you do? Put yourself in that place. What
do you do? We've been in situations like
this. Maybe not that dramatic in a smaller type situation,
but it's the same principle. You're in some trouble that's
come to you and there is an easy way out. You see it. You see an easy way
out of this. But you know it would be disobeying God to
take that out. You know God has said this is
not the way out. But it sure looks easy. And then on the other hand, there's
a difficult, painful way. It's difficult. It's painful. You don't think there's any way
you can do it. The fact is, you can't do it by yourself. It's to believe God. And to quietly, meekly submit
to God and trust God. So what do you do? Do you obey
God and trust God in this difficult, painful waiting when you don't
see any way you're going to be saved out of this? Do you have
to just believe God's Word? Or will you disobey God and take
this clearly easy way that can ease you and so your flesh won't
have to suffer anymore if you just take this way? So what do
you do? Well, the children of Judah said
no. They heard God, they heard the messenger speak, they said
no. Didn't say no to their generals, didn't say no to their advisors.
God said, you took counsel, alright, but not of me. No, they said
no to God. Well, actually they said no to
Isaiah. But by saying no to Him, they
said no to God. They said, we'll ride, we'll
flee upon horses. We will ride upon the swift. Now this is our way. This is
a sinner's way right here. This is the way that we choose
if left to our sinful flesh. This is the way we will choose
every time. Every time. We'll disobey God's
Word. for our own understanding. Leading
to our own understanding. We will trust our own hand to
get us out of this. And we'll trust our will. But we won't trust God. But now, listen to what God said,
Hosea 1.7. He said, I will have mercy upon
the house of Judah. You know what that means? I mean,
we can't We can't be working. If God said, I'm going to have
mercy, that means you can't be sacrificing. You can't be working
to get out from under it. I will have mercy upon the house
of Judah and will save them by the Lord their God. I will not
save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor
by horsemen. In other words, God alone is
going to do the saving. We're not going to be able to
look anywhere else but Him. Waiting on God exalts Him. Waiting on
God and trusting God gives Him all the glory. But you know what
it is to go our way? You know what it is to lean to
our understanding and to disobey God's Word? God said, it's to look and say, the work of
our hands, ye are our gods. That's what he said in Hosea,
is to look at the works of our hands and say, ye are our gods. And if we're a child of God,
then our way shall result in much pain and sorrow. This way we thought was going
to be so easy. This way we thought was just
going to clearly get us out of this and be so easy for us is
going to result in a lot of pain and a lot of sorrow if we're
God's child. God will let you go. You want
to go? You want to flee? He said, you
said no, we'll flee upon horses, therefore shall you flee. Jonah
disobeyed God. He decided he was going to take
a ship and get out of town. He wasn't going where God told
him to go. God said, there's a ship. Take
off. They said, we're going to flee
on horses. God said, let me saddle them for you. But we're going to find the way
of the transgressor to be hard. Because we cannot outrun God's
trial. You can't outrun the trial. Listen
to verse 16. He says, You said, We'll ride
upon the swift. God said, Therefore shall they
that pursue you be swift. The faster we run, the faster
the trial will run after us. Can't outrun God. Can't outrun
His trial. Without Christ our strength,
Trying to run in our own strength and go in our own way. You know
what's going to happen? We lose courage. We lose courage. We lose strength. It just wilts
and fades away. Look what he says there in verse
17. One thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one. At the rebuke
of five shall you flee. Our enemies become mighty. Our
obstacles become larger. The weights become heavier. And
our strength becomes weaker. Why is that? Because Christ said,
I'm your strength. Without me you can do nothing.
You know, you hear us preach this and you hear Christ say,
without me you can do nothing. You hear Paul say, I can do all
things through Christ who strengtheneth me. If you want to test that, I don't
suggest you do this, but if you want to test this, you try to
do it opposite of what God says and do it on your own. And you'll
find out you don't have any strength. That's what you'll find out.
You don't have strength. And if we're gods, eventually
we will be brought down. We will be brought down. Look
at verse 17. He says, this will happen to
you. You'll be left as a beacon upon the top of a mountain, as
an ensign on a hill. I like the margin best. As a
tree with all its branches broken off. like a mast. You see a mast with no sail on
it and just a pole. You'll be left like that. In
the end, we're going to find that going our own way, doing
our own thing contrary to God was more painful and more troublesome
than had we simply trusted God and bore the suffering waiting
on God. We need to learn this. It's a
valuable lesson to learn. Nothing appears or nothing is
as it appears. Nothing is as it appears to these
natural eyes. Not when you're dealing with
spiritual things. That way that looked easy will be hard. That
way that looked hard, God will soon make that way easy. Now let's look at God's waiting.
Verse 18, Therefore will the Lord wait. When the Lord's child
refuses to wait, when we won't wait, God says, Therefore will
the Lord wait. This is God's long suffering. This is God's suffering long
with us. And what does that mean when
He says, Therefore the Lord will wait? It's not some helpless
wringing of the hands and just helplessly looking and watching
and just hoping his child will come back to him. It's not that
at all. The Lord's waiting is the Lord
being longsuffering and Peter said you can account that the
longsuffering of God is salvation. We've seen this one place in
the old world The longsuffering of God waited in the days of
Noah while the ark was preparing wherein few, that is eight souls,
were saved by water. But the Lord waited. He was longsuffering
all around. Everybody deserved judgment.
There was not a righteous man in that whole land. But Noah
found grace in the eyes of the Lord. It took Him years and years and
years and years to build that ark. And the Lord was long-suffering. He waited till it was finished. And He didn't make a drop of
rain fall till everybody He told to be in that ark was in that
ark. That's His waiting. That's His waiting. Remember
Abraham when he found out that God was going to destroy Solomon
Gomorrah? And he knew Lot was there. His nephew Lot was there. He said, Lord, if there are just
50 righteous men there, you won't destroy the righteous and the
wicked together, will you? The Lord said, if there are 50
righteous men there, I won't destroy it. Abraham said, well,
let me ask you again. What if there are just 40 righteous
men there? The Lord said, nope. And on it went down to ten. What
if there's just ten righteous men there? The Lord said, I won't
destroy it if there's ten righteous men there. And the Lord waited until he
pulled Lot out of Sodom, that righteous man. He brought him
out before he destroyed it. The Lord waiting involves the
Lord working all things together for the good of His elect according
to His purpose. That's what the Lord's waiting
is. He makes those that pursue you to be swift. You run and you scheme and you
try to get away and He makes those that pursue you to be swift. removing our strength so that
one thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one, that's the Lord
waiting. Taking away all your strength
and making sure you have none. Bringing us to the end of ourselves,
to where we're left like a tree with all its branches broken
off, that's the Lord waiting. The Lord actively doing that
to us. is the Lord's long-suffering.
It's His long-suffering. Years ago, I told you I had come
into a trial. Years ago, I was offended by
some brethren. Now, this has never happened.
It had never happened before then and it's never happened
since. But I was greatly offended at some brethren, some believers
for whom Christ died. They had hurt me. They had greatly
hurt me. And they were wrong in what they
did. They would tell you today they were wrong in what they
did. Because the Lord taught us all through this. But the
way I handled it was terrible. The way I handled it was far
worse than their offense. What I did was, I was determined. I was so bitter towards these
brethren. I was determined I would not
show them mercy and I would not forgive them. It wasn't going
to happen. It just was not going to happen. And I had some faithful friends
that came along and they told me, Clay, you're just wrong. You're wrong. They kept pointing me to Christ
and they kept telling me, listen, Remember what a sinner you are.
And remember how Christ has received you in mercy. Receive these brethren
as Christ has received you in mercy. And they kept telling me that,
and they kept telling me that. They kept praying for me. For
God's mercy upon me. They told me do it for Christ's
glory. They said this is one These brethren are ones that
Christ Himself came down and went to the cross for. These
are brethren Christ laid down His life for. These are brethren
Christ shed His blood for. They're complete in Christ! For
Christ's sake, forgive them. Just like God, for Christ's sake,
has forgiven you. They said, do it for the church's
sake. They said do it for the gospel
sake. We need the gospel. We need this gospel. We need
to hear Christ preach. We can't see this thing dissolve
and divide. We need Christ preach to us. And I was convinced that I was
justified. I kept telling them and telling
them and telling them how I'm justified. I'm just in what I'm
doing. I was convinced I was, and with
all my bitter envy and strife, I was even convinced that what
I was doing, I was doing it for the glory of God. And I'll tell you what God did.
For almost a year, God sent affliction after affliction after affliction. He brought me down, down, down,
down. And He kept doing it until at
last, I was like a tree with all my branches broken off. And then God directed me to this
scripture right here, and broke my heart. Here I was, I wouldn't
show mercy to my brethren who had sinned against me far less
than I had sinned against them. And now here I was, sobbing,
begging God to show me mercy. And God used this passage to
show me what He did for me. Show me what He had done for
me. Because you and I would not wait, because I would not wait,
therefore will the Lord wait. That's what He was doing. He
was waiting. That He may be gracious unto you. Therefore will He be
exalted. that He may have mercy upon you. You notice there if you read
those sentences, therefore will the Lord wait that He may be
gracious unto you, therefore will He be exalted that He may
have mercy upon you. Waiting, God's waiting and God
being exalted are the same thing. He's going to exalt Himself by
waiting. That's what He's doing. And it's
so that He might be able to have grace and mercy upon you. When someone transgresses against
us and we're left to our sinful flesh, we will suffer only so
long. If He leaves us to our sinful
flesh and somebody's offending us, we will suffer only so long. And then we want justice. We
start crying for justice upon them. God is going to remind
His child that we sinned in Adam. And if God would have rained
down justice right then, except for that covenant He had already
made, God would have been just if you just look at the fact
that we sinned against God. But what did He do? He waited.
From Adam all the way till His Son came into this world and
went to the cross and put away the sin of His people. He waited. Why did He do that? that He might
be gracious to you, that He might be exalted, that we might see
God to be our Savior, that He might have mercy on you. The Lord Jesus Christ, we suffer a cross And it's always
a light cross. It's always a light affliction,
whatever it is we suffer. That which I suffered that I
thought was so terribly strong and hard, it was just light affliction.
We suffer a light cross and we just can't bear to suffer. We
start looking for some way to get out from under it. We start
seeking some vain refuge. And therefore, the Lord waited. The Lord Jesus Christ on the
cursed cross with the shame and sinful shame of His sin of His
people upon Him and the curse upon Him and the suffering that
He bore hanging on that cross, waited until He had completely
upheld God's law and justified His people of all our sin. Why
did He do that? That He might be gracious to
you. that He might be exalted, that
He might have mercy on you. We came into this world and went
estranged from our mother's womb, speaking lies, we were rebellious,
and all we deserved from God was to be cast into hell because
we earned it. We earned it. We rode upon the
swift, we were without Christ, without God, didn't want God,
didn't have a need for God, and was determined to have nothing
to do with God. And therefore the Lord waited. Instead of giving us the hell
we earned by our sin, He was long suffering. He waited until
He crossed our path with the gospel and regenerated us and
brought us down to be like a tree with all our branches broke off.
Why did He do that? that He may be gracious, that
He might be exalted, that He might have mercy on us. Christ
Jesus came into this world, He had to be exalted on the cross
so that He could be exalted in the gospel we preach, so that
God would exalt Him in our heart. That's why God waited. He said,
as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must
the Son of God be exalted. And whosoever believeth on Him
should not perish but have eternal life. And He said, and if I be
lifted up, I'll draw all My people unto Me. That's why He had to
be exalted. That's why He waited. And right
now, the only reason God has not destroyed this world It's
for the same reason he didn't destroy Sodom until he got lied
out. Because he has an elect remnant who Christ has justified,
who God's been pleased to choose by His grace, who shall and must
be regenerated because Christ justified him. And so the Lord
waits that he might be gracious, that he might be exalted in their
heart, that he might have mercy on them. He waits. And here's
why the Lord waits. Here's exactly why he waits,
verse 18. For the Lord is a God of judgment. He's a God of judgment. He's
a God of discretion. Now when you look at this great
display of God's judgment, you see how that He waited and didn't
destroy this world until His Son came into this world and
laid down His life for us? You see how that Christ went
to that cross and He did not come off of that cross. He waited
until He put away all the sin of His people so that He could
be gracious in a just way and be merciful in a just way. And
you see how He dealt with you, how He waited all the years of
your rebellion until He crossed your path with the gospel. When
you see all that, just know, whatever this trial is you're
in, God's a God of judgment. He's going to do what's right.
He's going to do what's best. He's going to do it when it's
best. He's going to do it how it's best. Because He's a God
of judgment. He's a God of judgment. Now let me wrap this up. When
we disobey God's Word by impatiently running from the trial, we won't
have any peace. You won't have any peace. Oh,
God might let some sinners flee and find refuge in the world
and find prosperity in the world and find happiness in the world.
But He won't let His children do that. He won't let His elect
do that. He won't let His blood-bought
children do that. While we're doing that, God's
going to see to it that we have nothing but strife and confusion
and trouble in our heart. And that's all you have. When
you're trying to justify yourself and you know you're wrong in
your court of your conscience, you know you're wrong and you're
trying to justify yourself before God and before men, that's hard
work. It is. And there's no peace in
that. There's no happiness in that.
It's troubling. God won't let His child find
happiness in that. Where is happiness? Look at the
end of verse 18. Blessed, happy are all they that
wait for Him. Somebody railed on you? Somebody
said bad things to you? Say not thou, I will recompense
evil. Don't say I'm going to rail back.
I'm going to recompense evil to them. Wait on the Lord, He
shall save thee. You get tired serving the Lord
and you think, I don't see any fruit coming from this. I'm tired
of preaching the gospel. I'm tired of upholding the church
building and giving my hard earned money to the work. I'm tired
of this stuff. The Lord doesn't seem to be doing anything. Whoso
keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof. So he that
waiteth on his master shall be honored. Well, I'm tired. The Lord hasn't
been back in over 2,000 years. He said He was coming back. You
really think the Lord's coming back? Blessed, happy are those
servants who the Lord when He cometh shall find waiting, watching. He'll come and gird Himself and
make them sit down to meet and come forth and He will serve
them. Whatever it is, whatever the
trial, whatever it is that your conscience is, whatever it is,
wait on the Lord. Wait on the Lord. I'm preaching
that to you so you can preach it to me. Wait on the Lord. Amen.