WAITING ON THE LORD

Waiting on the Lord

Shelby G. Floyd

I HATE TO WAIT

I don’t know about you but I hate to wait. Do you hate to wait? You know you can go and have an appointment at a doctor’s office, say at 9:00 am. You get in there, sit down, 5, 10, 15 minutes go by, and they haven’t called you. You go over to the magazine rack and you start looking around and all you find is a 1995 Readers Digest and it is may be 1/2 hour, 45 minutes, or an hour before they get to you. I hate that. They are better than they used to be, I believe. They seem to schedule a little bit better.

I Hate To Wait At the Bank

I hate to go to the bank, at the drive up towers. As you pull in there you look for the shortest line. Maybe there are five or six lines and you usually pick out the shortest. There are only two cars in line there and there are four to five in the others, so you pick the one with the fewest cars because logically you think “I’ll get through there faster.” Well one car pulls away and the next pulls up, but they have so many transactions they should have gone inside to take care of them. So, you sit there and see in the long line, where you could have been, that they’ve all gone through. That really makes me mad. I hate to wait and I think you probably do too.

Children Hate To Wait For Christmas

You know when you were a little child it was all you could do to control yourself as you waited for Christmas. It seemed like Christmas would never come. I can look out there now and see that you parents can’t wait for it to be over. It is a wonderful thing for little children and it is hard to wait when you anticipate something like Christmas.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “WAIT ON THE LORD” IN OUR TEXT?

What does it mean to wait? I want us to read Isaiah chapter 40. Recently this text came to my attention and I thought I’m going to preach a sermon on that one of these days because I have never spoken on this text. I’ve been preaching for forty years and it just shows you how inexhaustible God’s word is. I’ve never really spoken on this text; it’s new to me.

Isaiah 40: 29-31.

He gives power to the weak,

And to those who have no might He increases strength.

Even the youths shall faint and be weary,

And the young men shall utterly fall,

But those who wait on 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.

NKJV

The NIV says “those who hope in the Lord,” but most of the other translations are translated by the word wait, like the NKJV that says “those who wait on the Lord.” Since that is the topic I prefer that reading today.

What does it mean to “wait on the Lord?” I’ll tell you one thing, it doesn’t mean just to stand still and do nothing, that’s not the idea. I know that is the way we wait in many areas of our life. We have to stand still and be quiet and not do anything. The word wait in the original Hebrew means, “to be bound like a rope” or “twisted” or “bonded together.” So to wait on the Lord means that you trust Him, that you humble yourself and rely on His strength, that you obey His word and commands. It conveys all those meanings. Sometimes its very difficult to wait on the Lord for things to happen, for things to take place, but if we will do those things, if we will trust the Lord and if we will humble ourselves under His mighty hand and make sure we obey his will then we will be blessed.

THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF WAITING

Waiting On the Lord Physically

There are different kinds of waiting on the Lord. There is a waiting on the Lord in a physical sense. Maybe the person has had a heart attack or is dealing with some dreaded disease. The doctors tell you that you are going to be all right, but it is taking forever for you to get well. It takes a lot of patience, it takes a lot of humility to say “Lord I know that you know what is best in my life, but why do I have to wait like this?” Maybe an illness is terminal and a person is facing death. You have to wait on the Lord, because none of us know the day or the hour when we will make our exit out of this world:

Heb 9:27

And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,

NKJV

So that is one sense in which we have to wait on the Lord.

Wait On the Lord Emotionally

There are other people that have to wait on the Lord in an emotional way. For instance, maybe you have lost a loved one in death, a father, mother, sister, brother, son or daughter and the funeral is over but the emptiness is still there. You hurt inside. You have to wait on the Lord. Maybe a person is having marital problems, and you are trusting in the Lord to try to help you solve this problem but things are not going too well and you have to wait on the Lord and trust that He will help you to get through that kind of situation. Maybe it’s a divorce a person is going through. Those types of emotional situations will try your faith. You will say “Lord, I’ve tried to serve you and do what is right, why am I having to go through this?” There is a positive in every negative, just remember to look for the positive and wait on the Lord. He has a plan for you and for your life. Maybe you’re a single parent and you have to raise the children by yourself. My heart just goes out to both men and women who are single parents and they have to carry that responsibility by themselves. That is a hard load and burden to deal with. But, if people will trust God, humble themselves, ask for His strength and help and do what He says, it will turn out all right. If we do the right thing it will always turn out best in the long run.

Then I think about widows and widowers. As we get older we don’t know if we will always have our mate with us and we look around and we know that men die several years younger than women do on the national average. So, there is no doubt about it as we look at the older population there are more widows than there are widowers. Your heart goes out to them. You just say, “I don’t know what it would be like to be lonely and to be by myself.” Blessed is that widow or widower that has family to give them support. I am thankful that I could take my mom into our home for three years and show her love and affection. You know, somebody said that you can tell a lot about a nation, and I suppose a family, as to how they treat the older people. I am grateful that we live in a country where even our politicians, for whatever reason, look out for the elderly population. If we live way up into the years we have to wait on the Lord and trust Him that he will help us.

Maybe it’s a person that has lost a job that must wait on the Lord. It costs so much to live anymore, just the basic food, shelter, and clothing. To loose a job is an emotional trauma and we don’t know how long we have to go before getting another job. So, we have to wait on the Lord and trust Him. He has promised that if we do the right thing he will never leave us or forsake us. (Heb. 13:5-6.) David said,

Ps 37:25

I was young and now I am old,

yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken

or their children begging bread.

NIV

These are just a few of the situations in the emotional area that we have to wait on the Lord.

Waiting On the Lord Spiritually

What about the spiritual waiting?

We are talking about our relationship with God and our spiritual relationship with one another. A lot of times we see people and they fall away from God, they are not spiritually minded, they do not draw close to God and then all of a sudden when things go bad, they say “Oh I miss that relationship with God.” Sometimes it takes years for that to happen. We have to realize that the most important thing of all is to wait on the Lord in a spiritual sense.

EXAMPLES OF WAITING ON THE LORD

Wait on the Lord and he will renew your strength.

Jesus Had To Wait On the Lord

I want to give you a few examples of people who waited on the Lord. You know Jesus was 30 years old before He started preaching. I remember Brother N. B. Hardeman said one time a lot of young preachers are like picking an apple off a tree while it is still green. They haven’t matured enough. Jesus was not that kind of a preacher. He was 30 years old so he was a mature adult before He started preaching the gospel of the kingdom. When he got ready to go back to Heaven he told the apostles, “I want you to tarry in the city of Jerusalem and WAIT (there it is SGF) for the promise of the Holy Spirit.” That is found in Luke 24 and Acts 1:4. They went back to Jerusalem and they had to wait about ten days for the day of Pentecost, for the baptism of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles.

Job Had To Wait On the Lord

Then I think about Job, he is a good example of waiting on the Lord. Was there any body that ever suffered like Job did? His friends, supposedly good friends, tried to put a guilt trip on him that it was happening because he did not serve God and obey God. He kept his integrity, and his faith. He waited on God, trusted God, humbled himself, and the Bible tells us his later end was greater than his beginning. God poured out his blessings after that event was over.

Abraham and Sarah Had To Wait On the Lord

I think about Abraham and Sarah. You know God made a promise to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, when he was about 75 years old. He said, Abraham, “look up to the stars in the heavens, and see if you can count them and can you count the sands on the seashore? I’m going to bless you and make you a great nation and your offspring will be as great as the stars in the heavens and the sand on the seashore.” He said, “lift up your eyes and look to the north, south, east, and west, and I am going to give you this land for an inheritance.” But, the most wonderful promise of all, He said, “you are going to have a son, you and Sarah, and in your seed, in your offspring, I will bless all the nations of the earth.” That’s the spiritual promise.

When you read of Old Testament Israel, offspring of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, (of course his name was changed to Israel), they became a great and mighty nation. God delivered them out of Egyptian bondage, brought them into the promise land and that promise was fulfilled. They became a great nation. They were a numerous people--so numerous you could not count them. Then the lineage, the genealogy, the family tree from Abraham all the way down to Jesus Christ is traced in Matthew chapter 1. The family tree is given all the way to Abraham. That was through his stepfather, Joseph. Joseph was also of the lineage of David and Abraham. If you go to Luke chapter 3, that promise was fulfilled through Mary, she was also of the lineage of Abraham and David and actually he traces the family tree all the way back to Adam. So, literally He was the seed of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David. Regally and legally he was the son of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David through his stepfather Joseph. So, Abraham was 75 years old, had no child when God made the promise to him. When he got up to about 100 years old, he still didn’t have a child, and he had been waiting all those years. We’ve seen people sometimes who have waited years to have a child and can’t have any. These people will sometimes adopt a child and for some reason or another even after they adopt a child, they are able to have a child of their own. That is double joy and blessing.

But, Abraham and Sarah didn’t have a child, so they had been waiting all this time and finally Sarah had waited a long time and she couldn’t stand it so she said “Abraham, take my hand maid, take my servant, Hagar, and perhaps she will raise up a son for me. So Abraham listened to his wife. Sometimes its good to listen to your wife and sometimes it isn’t good to listen to your wife. I can find both examples in the Bible. Adam shouldn’t have listened to Eve and I don’t think Abraham should have listened to Sarah here, but he did and of course Ishmael was born. Later on, God said, Ishmael is not the son of promise. When they were about 100 years old, God made that promise again and Sarah laughed. I was reading that this past week, and I want to preach a sermon one of these days on laughter. I’ve never just preached a sermon on laughter, but the word Isaac means laughter. How would you like to name your child laughter? Every time Sarah would look at Isaac she would think I laughed when God told me I was going to have a son. She was past the normal age of child bearing, but God kept his promise. They waited and they didn’t wait and that caused some real problems.

Every time God’s people do not wait on the Lord, they are going to have negative consequences and suffer for it. Later on after Hagar bore Ishmael, she despised Sarah because she had a child and her ruler did not. Later on when Isaac was born Ishmael mistreated Isaac. God had to separate them. So there are always disastrous consequences when we do not wait on the Lord.

THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT—WEARINESS!

I could give other examples but that is good enough to bear out that it is always good to wait on the Lord. I want us to look at the human predicament:

Isa 40:30

Even the youths shall faint and be weary,

And the young men shall utterly fall,

NKJV

Do you remember when you were young? I can remember when I was young and I couldn’t wait to start working. My dad got me a job with his boss on a farm up at 46th and Emerson, in Indianapolis--a 1200-acre farm. My first job was to work with an elderly man by the name of Al Jolly. He drove a little Allis-Chalmers tractor with a cycle bar on it and 3-legged dog always followed him. Our job was to go around and clean out the fencerows. He must have cut that dog’s leg off with the little cycle bar, but it didn’t stop him for he kept on going. Later on I worked on the farm, and couldn’t wait to drive a tractor. I worked 12 hours a day and made $40.00 a week, which was good money back in the 1950’s. Then I would walk home, 4 or 5 miles, and then probably go out and have a good time in the evening. You can do that when you are young because you have so much energy. But Isaiah says in our text that even young men sometimes get weary and they get tired. When we are young we think we will always have plenty of energy but when we get older we know we just don’t have the energy we used to have some times. It takes us a little bit longer to regenerate. However, I feel like in some ways that God even in a physical sense has blessed me, as I have gotten older. I’ve got a lot of energy for a fellow 66 years old. I still play basketball with the young people. I wake up at 5:00 in the morning, I don’t care if I go to sleep at 10:30, 11:00, or 11:30, and I automatically wake up at 5:00. I can’t go back to sleep so I get up. I thank God every day that I have that much energy. I told somebody the other day that I probably will work until I’m 85 or 90, because I can’t let my little old mom out do me because she worked until she was about 82 or 83. So I am thankful that God has blessed me even physically with energy and strength. He has renewed my strength, but the ordinary thing Isaiah says is for us to get tired and weary. The truth of the matter is that in each of those areas that I talked about waiting on the Lord, we grow tired and weary. In the physical sense, we get tired and weary and we have to renew our strength by getting rest and regeneration. In an emotional sense we have to do that. We have to learn to deal with our emotions, because if we don’t, it will affect our bodily health. When you have emotional problems that are upsetting you and keeping you awake you have got to turn that over to the Lord. “Lord I can not handle that by myself, I’m tired and weary and worn out. I am turning this problem over to you, I’m doing the best I can, but I’m turning it over to you so you can help me so I can renew my strength.”

In a spiritual sense it is especially true that we grow tired and weary. When we are burdened with sin and sin is ruining and controlling our lives, we see that it is true. Coming back from Florida, there was a man that sat down beside me, and he worked with an engineering firm. He said there were six of them working in Bradenton, Florida and there were 16 of them working up here in Indianapolis for an Indianapolis Company. He said that he flies to Puerto Rico, works 9 days, and then gets to come home for 4. He said they were having a meeting and it was cheaper for the company to fly 6 people up here than to fly 16 people to Florida. He volunteered to tell me his ex-wife had a drug problem, so he was divorced. He said he had a 16-year-old boy that he had to leave by himself while he goes to Puerto Rice for 9 days. He had an older son that is a plumber and he works for 3 or 4 months and gets laid off and he said he was going to take him to Puerto Rico with him. I began thinking, “everybody you talk to anymore have their lives messed up because of sin.” Of course, I could see why, I got a coke, and he had to have a coke but he was pouring Jim Beam in his. People don’t seem to have a clue why they are having so many problems. When you get away from God and start disobeying his word, right then your life is going to fall apart spiritually and there will be little hope. You are going to be burdened, weary, and worn out when you get to be an elderly person with no hope of an ever-lasting life and immorality. I just thought that would to God that every body could find the blessings that we find in Christ and in the church. Even with the problems that we have it’s nothing like the problems that the people of the world deal with. Amen?

That is the human predicament. He said even youths grow tired and weary and young men stumble and fall.

THE BLESSINGS AND BENEFITS OF WAITING ON THE LORD

I want to close out this morning with pointing out some of the blessings and benefits of waiting on the Lord. Let us look at Isaiah 40:31:

But those who wait on 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.

NKJV

The Lord Will Bind Us Back To Him

Those who hope or wait on the Lord, the Lord will bind us back to him. So, first when we wait on the Lord we are bound back to him, twisted together with him like a cord or like a rope. That is the literal meaning of the word “wait.”

The Lord Will Renew Our Inward Strength

He will renew our strength. One time I heard my Uncle O. B. Perkins preach a sermon on new things in the Bible. He listed about 10 or 12 things that are new and it was great sermon. “New” is one of the key words in the New Testament. We have a new high priest, Jesus Christ, after the order of Melchizedek. We have a new covenant. We have a new city called Heaven. We have a new name Christian. We go through the new birth. We have a new kingdom. We have a new law, the new covenant. Everything is new. Everything is going to be new when we get to Heaven, a new earth and new heaven. There will be no tears, no separations, no sorrow, no sighing, no death, and no sun because God and the Lamb will be the light in that city.

Our text says that God is going to renew our strength. It is an interesting use of this word renew because actually it means, in the original Hebrew, that we exchange our strength for His strength. If you have something that has a guarantee on it, and it doesn’t turn out to be like it says, you take it back and exchange it for one that is right. That’s what we can do, when we wait on the Lord we can come to Him and say “my strength is puny, I’m weak and worn out and weary. I’m going to hand my strength over to you so that you can renew my strength and exchange it and give me the strength that comes through Christ.” That’s what Paul meant when he said, “I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.” (Phil. 4:13.) “I can do all things!” Renew your strength through the Lord Jesus Christ. How do you do that? Paul tells us in Eph. 6:10-18:

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints--

NKJV

This defensive and offensive amour will make us a strong soldier in Christ Jesus, especially the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit. When we wait on the Lord, He is going to renew our strength--inward strength.

The Lord Will Renew Our Upward Strength—“They Shall Mount Up with Wings like Eagles”

Next Isaiah says, “They shall mount up with wings like eagles.” (Isa. 40:31.) I’ve been reading quite a bit about eagles. I didn’t know too much about them, but I did know this, they were created by God to mount up toward Heaven. The story was told of a farmer that was out one day and he found an egg of an eagle. He brought it home and put it in the nest with the chickens. After a while it hatched out and it started living like a chicken.

I can remember when I was growing up that we always had some chickens. My mom would order them from the catalog and they would come on the Greyhound bus. It was so fascinating. We would get that little box with a bunch of little holes in it. We’d hear those little chickens peeping in there. Then we put them in a fenced in area where they could run around everywhere. We would have to feed them and give them water and they would scratch for worms. That’s the way this eagle did. He thought he was a chicken but he was an eagle. He started scratching around on the ground, eating worms, and finally one day he saw a great big bird fly over and scream out with a loud cry and flap his enormous wings. He asked the chickens who that was and they answered, “Oh that’s an eagle, but you’re a chicken,” so he went back and spent the rest of his life scratching in the dirt and living like a chicken. You know there is some thing in that for us. We see people today that are living like a chicken. They are down here in the filth and dirt, and all that sinful living serving Satan. We were not meant to be like that, we were meant to be like the eagle and arise from this earth and live in the heavens. That’s where the eagle lives. We’ll have more to say about that in a succeeding lesson.

I want to talk a little bit more about “mounting up on the wings of an eagle.” That is one of the most beautiful phrases in the Bible. The Bible says in Col. 3:1-4:

If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.

NKJV

We are to mortify our members that are upon the earth and we are to be raised with Christ and to be seated with Him in the heavenly places:

Eph 1:3

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,

NKJV

Eph 2:4-7

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

NKJV

We have to mount up on wings. People in the air force have to get their wings. Well we can get our spiritual wings, and God will lift us up and we will soar on high like the eagle. That is upward strength. We have inward strength because he will renew our strength when we exchange our strength for His strength. The Bible says that He will strengthen us, in the inner man, by His Spirit. (Eph. 3:16.) So, God will strengthen us inwardly, He will strengthen us upwardly when we mount up with wings like eagles. Then He says, “They shall run and not be weary and they shall walk and not faint.” (Isa. 40:31.)

The Lord Will Help Us to Run and Walk without Weariness and Fainting

While I was in Bradenton, Florida, I walked about 4 miles each day. I really enjoyed that, and really wasn’t that tired. God renewed my strength so I wasn’t even tired. That’s what our text says in Isaiah 40:31, “they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” The Bible also says that in Gal. 6:9:

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.

NIV

The word says that we shall not faint if we walk in God’s way.

Do you remember the story as told in the movie Chariots of Fire? It was back in 1924 at the Paris Olympics, and Eric Liddell was supposed to be the fastest man in the world. He also was very strong spiritually. The race he was supposed to run and win was on Sunday. He refused to run it. Every one talked to him, “you ought to go ahead; one Sunday is not going to make any difference.” He refused to do so and he lived by his convictions. As it turned out there was another race he was allowed to run that he had never run before, I’ve forgotten exactly how long it was, but anyway, he won that race and became an Olympic champion. God blessed him because he refused to compromise his convictions. He trusted in the Lord, he waited on the Lord. We admire people like that.

THE STORY OF THE THREE TREES

I want to close with a little story that I read in the book that the ladies studied in their Bible class. It’s about three trees. In the forest there were three little trees. The other trees asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. One little tree said when I grow up I want some body to come and cut me down and create a beautiful cradle for a little child to sleep in. That would be wonderful, that would be a sweet thing to do, be a bed for a child to be cradled in. They asked the second tree what do you want to do when you grow up to be a big tree. Well I want somebody to cut me down and saw me up in lumber and create a mighty ship that sails the oceans and carries passengers and cargo. That would be a worthy ideal when I grow up to be a big tree. The third tree was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. He said all he wanted to do when he grew up was to stand tall and straight and to point people to God.

Years went by and they waited and one day the wood cutters came into the woods and they cut down the first tree, sawed him up and made a rough hewn manger for cattle to eat their feed in. He was really upset and said he wanted to be a beautiful cradle but they had made him into a manger and trough where the cattle eat their hay and their grain. But the Lord said that the tree should wait on Him and He would show him how he would be blessed. And so it happened in the days of the Herods, that Jesus was born and they couldn’t find a place in the Inn and so they cradled Him in that manger in the stable. What a wonderful blessing because the tree trusted the Lord and waited on the Lord.

One day they came into the woods and cut him down the second tree, but instead of building a mighty ship they build a fishing boat. The tree was really upset. I wanted to be a mighty sailing vessel on the Mediterranean Sea, but instead I’m just this little fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee. One day Simon Peter, and James and John, partners in the fishing business, along with Jesus got in that boat, pushed out a little ways from land, and the Lord stood and taught them the gospel of the kingdom. After His teaching was over He told Simon Peter, “Launch out into the deep and let down the nets for a great catch,” and they caught so many fish that when they filled the boat they were about to sink. That’s when Peter said, “Lord depart from me for I am a sinful man.” (Lk. 5:1-11.) That little boat became a blessing because it waited on the Lord.

One day the woodsmen came into the forest and cut down the tree that wanted to stand tall and straight and point people to God. What they did was cut it down and made a rugged cross, a rude ugly cross that criminals would be crucified on. The tree was really upset and said, “How can I point people to God when people are going to be put to death on this tree?” One day they took Jesus outside the gate, like they did the Old Testament sacrifices, and they caught Simon Cyrene as he was coming into town and turned him around and made him carry the cross out to Calvary where Jesus was crucified on the cross. And my friends because that tree waited on the Lord, the cross is still pointing people to God Almighty and the Lord Jesus Christ.

The apostle Paul said, “God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of Christ by which the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world.” (Gal. 6:14.) God wants us to wait on Him so he can renew our strength and we can mount up like eagles to heaven and so when we run and when we walk we will not grow weary and faint. He wants us to put our trust in Him.

Jesus said,

John 14:1-6

"Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know." Thomas said to Him, "Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?" Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

NKJV

We encourage all who are burdened by sin, who are weak and weary, to respond to the Lord’s invitation. Will you repent of your sins and be baptized for the remission of your sins? (Acts 2:38-41; Mk. 16:15-16; Rom. 6:1-6.) Wait on the Lord and heaven will be your eternal home. (Isa. 40:29-31.) *