SOARING LIKE AN
EAGLE
By
Shelby G. Floyd
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.
In the Bible God's people are often
compared to many different things in nature.
For instance God compared his people to branches in a vine, a light on a
hill, sheep, salt, soldiers, runners and many other similes and metaphors. Isaiah as we have noted previously compared
God's people to an eagle. Previously we
have spoken to you about "Waiting on the Lord."
"Have you not
known?
Have you not heard?
The everlasting God, the LORD,
The Creator of the ends of the earth,
Neither faints nor is weary.
His understanding is unsearchable.
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."
(Isaiah
40:28-31)
Today we want to look at this subject from
a different point of view. We want to
study the nature, the character and the habits of the eagle itself. Therefore our lesson today is entitled,
Soaring Like An Eagle.
Of course we have all heard the cliché, "It is hard to soar with
the eagles when I am surrounded by a bunch of turkeys." But according to Isaiah we all can soar on
wings like an eagle.
THE EAGLE AS A SYMBOL
The eagle from the beginning of time has
been the symbol and the national emblem of many nations. And even our own great Republic has the Bald
Eagle as our national symbol. The eagle
is the king of birds. However I have
read that when our country was being formed Benjamin Franklin wanted the wild
turkey to be the national emblem. The
wild turkey was quite different from the tame turkey that we know today. But I'm glad our forefathers chose the bald
eagle instead of the turkey. The eagle
is the king of birds.
The eagle has swiftness of flight. The eagle mounts high up into the heavenly
sky. The eagle is a symbol of
strength. The eagle builds her nest in
high places, on the top of the mountains.
The eagle has a powerful vision.
The eagle is a fierce fighter. In
fact the Air Force has a plane called the Eagle F-15 that is unequaled in its
ability as a fighter plane. And it has
of course all the modern weaponry that allows it to have great vision like the
eagle. I read where in one of our last
wars this plane had like 490 kills to zero.
And so that is an appropriate name to give a fighter plane like that—The
Eagle.
Now we want to look at several
characteristics in the life of an eagle and then make the application to us as
eagle Christians. Jehovah God is our
eagle father and mother. In the Bible
God is compared both to a father and a mother.
So today we want to think of God like an eagle father and mother. And we begin our Christian life like the
little baby eagles. And then we reach
the point where we soar on wings high up into the heavens. That is our ultimate goal.
First baby eagles are born high up on the
mountain in a nest and like all little baby infants their mouth is wide
open. They need to be fed. And the father and the mother eagle mate for
life. And they work together as
parents. There is a sermon in that. Fathers and mothers must work together in
real life to have a successful family.
While the father and the mother both have their separate
responsibilities, still they must work together in the overall picture of
raising children up in the Lord. So the
father and mother eagle work together.
They go out and a find mice and rats and other forms of food and bring
them back and tear them into pieces and stuff it into the mouth of their little
eagles. They must be fed in order to
grow. And that goes on for quite a long
time until they start growing and developing in size. In like manner, God the
Father and Mother Eagle feed their newborn Christians who have an open mouth. When we become a Christian we should have an
open mouth to be fed the Word of God. In
the Psalms David said,
I
am the LORD your God,
Who brought you out of the land of Egypt;
Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.
(Psalms 81:10 NKJV)
I
believe that is an allusion to the father and mother eagle feeding the baby
eagles. "Open wide your mouth and I will fill it." God will fill us with the bread of heaven if
we will open wide our mouth. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount,
Or what man is there
among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks
for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to
give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in
heaven give good things to those who ask Him!
(Matthew 7:9-11 NKJV)
In Luke's account he says that God will
give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.
Therefore God will give good gifts like the Spirit of God through the
Word of God to those who ask him. They
are ours for the asking. Jesus said,
“Ask, and it will be
given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him
who knocks it will be opened. (Matthew 7:7-8).
So like a little baby
eagle we go to God and ask him and he will feed us with the bread of heaven.
When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness
after fasting for 40 days and 40 nights he was very hungry. Like Moses and Elijah before him he was
without food for 40 days and 40 nights.
Satan came to him during his time of intense hunger and suggested that
he turn the stones on the ground that perhaps looked like loaves of bread into
actual bread. Jesus replied,
"It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." (Matthew 4:4).
Therefore
let us open wide our mouth and receive every word of God that comes from his
mouth—the inspired Word of God. And the
apostle Peter said in one of his letters, "As newborn babes, desire the
pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby." (1 Peter 2:2). If we hunger and thirst
after righteousness God will give us that spiritual food.
EAGLES PROTECT WITH THEIR WINGS
Secondly, as the baby eagles mature and
grow they are protected in the nest by the mighty wings of their parents. Little children generally do not worry about
anything because they trust their parents to protect them. God put parents here to protect and care for
the children. If we will remember back
to when we were children we will remember that we did not worry about anything
because we trusted our parents to provide for us. As children the only thing we worried about
was having a good time. The only thing
we were intense about was having fun.
That is the reason children are so happy. And they focus on having fun and what they're
doing. The reason is because their
parents protect them, provide for them and care for them. That is exactly the way the little baby
eagles are. They are in that nest high
up there on the rocky mountain and the mother and the father cover them with
their wings and protect them. And there
is a lesson in that for us. We worry too
much about our security. And the only
real security that we have is in God.
And that is what we learned from our previous lesson. To "wait on the Lord" means to put
your trust and confidence in God. Trust
in the Lord. Do not trust yourself or in
the weak arm of human flesh. If we do we
will be disappointed. Instead lean on
the everlasting arms of God Almighty.
God will protect us. If we wait
on him and put ourselves under the shelter of his everlasting wings he will
protect us and we will be secure. This
is what David had in mind in one of his Psalms,
He who dwells in the
shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the LORD,
"He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust."
Surely he will save you
from the fowler's snare
and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with
his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
(Psalms
91:1-4)
May
we have the faith that David had in the care, the concern and the compassion of
the Almighty! Jehovah Father and Mother Eagle
is going to protect us if we put our trust in him.
THE MOTHER EAGLE "STIRS THE NEST"
Next we shall observe that the maturing
eagle is born to fly. That is his
purpose in life. He was born to fly and
to soar high. He flies to live and he
lives to fly. The maturing eagle is
taught to fly when the mother eagle "stirs the nest." Do you understand what that is? Those little eagles are not in any hurry to
get out of their nest. They are growing
and their mom and dad are feeding them everyday. They are getting fat. Their nest has been made out of thorns and
briars. That is how the father and
mother eagle build their nest. How would
you like to have your bed made out of things like that? But that is only the outer shell. They line that outer shell with animal skins
and fur and they make it very comfortable for those little baby eagles. And they are in no hurry to get out of that
nest. There is a lesson in that for
parents too. If you make it too
comfortable at home your children will never want to leave home. We see some children now who stay with mom
and dad way past the time that they should.
There is a lesson in that. We
could learn something from father eagle and mother eagle, for when it comes
time for those little baby eagles to start flying, the first thing they do is
stir the nest. The mother eagle hovers
over the nest and starts fluttering and flapping those powerful wings and that
blows all of the loose feathers and fur away from those baby eagles. The next thing she does is to go and take her
powerful beak and tear that nest all to pieces.
She pulls out all of that fur and those animal skins and all of a sudden
those little baby eagles are sitting on thorns.
That will move them out of their bed real quick will it not? And then she starts flapping her powerful
wings and then they start to get the lesson.
They think she wants them to start learning to fly. Therefore they start flapping their wings a
little bit imitating their mother. And
then she flaps her wings again. And they
will start flapping their wings again.
And then one day she screeches real loud and she swoops down and she
places one of those baby eagles on her wing.
And they go up to 5000 feet and perhaps 7000 feet and then she starts
swooping and soaring around through the sky and all of a sudden she tips her
wings and the little baby eagle falls off.
He starts to do somersaults and flap his wings as he is heading down to
the ground and all of a sudden before he hits the ground she swoops down and
picks him up on her wings and takes him up again to 2000 feet, to 5000 feet and
perhaps to 7000 feet. She repeats that
process over and over and over again until that little baby eagle is able to
fly. That is the way the mother eagle
teaches her babies to leave the nest.
She stirs the nest.
Well God the Father is compared in the
Bible to the father and mother eagle.
God also will teach his people to fly high. In the book of Exodus the Bible says,
Then
Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain and said,
"This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and what you are to
tell the people of Israel: 'You
yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles'
wings and brought you to myself. Now if
you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my
treasured possession. (Exodus 19:3-5).
Here
we have God's people down in
Since,
then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where
Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not
on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden
with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you
also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3: 1-4).
Christ
wants to take us home on eagle's wings of glory to be with him.
And then in the book of Ephesians, Paul is
talking there about how they were dead in sin, that God had quickened them and
made them alive.
But
because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with
Christ even when we were dead in transgressions-it is by grace you have been
saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly
realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the
incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ
Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-7).
God wants us to learn to fly. I repeat to
you the story of the farmer who was walking along one day and found an eagle
egg. He took it to his house and put it
under a setting hen. It was not too long
until that little eagle was hatched. He
was the oddest looking chicken that they had ever seen. When the other chicks chirped, he
screeched. When the mother hen clucked,
he would not come running. There seemed
to be no understanding between them. They
spoke two different languages. He was
odd. The chicks picked on him. He was an
eagle. One day when he was in the
barnyard, father eagle passed over. He
noticed a baby eagle down there in the barnyard. He gave out a loud screech. Father eagle asked the baby eagle what he was
doing down there in the barnyard. You
are not a chicken. You are an
eagle. Eagles are not made to live in a
barnyard. Eagles are meant to fly. The heavens are your domain. Come up here with me. The little fellow did not know what to
do. He had been living in the barnyard
all of his life. Father eagle urged him
to just jump and flap his wings. You can
fly if you try. The little eagle made a
feeble jump and flapped his wings and landed on top of the barnyard fence
post. Father eagle screeched again. Child, jump higher! Try again.
Make a jump and see how high you can fly. The little eagle did what father eagle asked
him to do. And father eagle did what he
said he would do. And by a mighty jump
of faith the baby eagle was riding on father eagle's wings on his first solo
flight into the heavens.
If you are a Christian and you've been
spending more of your time and energy on earthly things, then I want you to
think of Jehovah Father and Mother Eagle urging you to do the same thing that
the baby eagle was able to do. Try
harder! Jump higher! Flap your wings. Learn to fly.
Soar on the wings of an eagle and fly to heaven. That is what you were meant to do.
THE MOLTING STAGE
Finally I want to talk to you about
another aspect of the eagle and that is the molting stage. This is a time of renewal and restoration for
the eagle. Once each year the eagle must
go through the molting stage. In doing
this he prepares himself for the springtime.
The reason they must do this is because their feathers become dull and
they lose their ability to take the eagle high in the sky. His beak also becomes dull and not capable of
hunting food. His talons have lost their
strength and power. Therefore what they
must do is to come to ground level and many of them never survive this molting
process. They humble themselves and lie
on the ground and pull out all of those bad feathers. They actually scrape their beak on a rock or
something like that until it comes off and a new one starts growing. They also do the same thing with their
talons. They take their beaks and
actually pull their old talons off. And
then new talons also start growing. By
the time spring comes around they have renewed their feathers, their beaks,
their talons and their strength. They
are ready then to do what an eagle is born to do. And that is to fly and be a fierce
fighter. They are ready to protect their
young and to live high in the sky on the tops of the mountains. There is also a lesson in that for us. Many
times we become lifted up with pride, we become arrogant, and we feel like we
are so sufficient to the point that we don't need a thing or anybody to help
us. And sometimes we also forget that
everything that we have and can become comes from God. Therefore God sometimes must put us through
the molting process by humbling us. Just
as the eagle must come down to ground level, we also must humble ourselves by
coming down to ground level. This is
necessary in order to be renewed. This
is what the apostle Peter meant when he said,
All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another,
because, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."
Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up
in due time. (1 Peter 5:5-6)
God
wants us to humble ourselves and confess that we are sinners; that we really
have no strength without him, and then we can start that renewal process, just
as the eagle does when he goes through the molting process. God's people must learn to do that.
King David had to go
through a humbling process. In the book
of Psalms he said,
Praise the LORD, O my
soul,
and forget not all his benefits-
who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,
who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
(Psalms 103:2-5)
Isn't that a wonderful thing that when God
created the eagle he also created the process by which he might renew his
strength? He becomes like a young eagle
every year by going through that molting process. So can we renew our strength! The Bible declares that when we are in Christ
old things become new. We become a new
creature in Christ Jesus. So that means
our strength is renewed. But make no
mistake about it, we cannot soar like an eagle if we have sin in our lives and
we do not do something about it. We must
humble ourselves, confess our sins and seek the forgiveness of God. Sin will bring us down and keep us down. When we observe what is going on around us we
notice that people's lives are being destroyed by sin. God can do something about that. He can renew every person through the
gospel. Something must be done about the
problem of sin. We do not even like to
mention that word anymore or even admit that it exists. But the truth is sin will bring us down,
down, down to the pits of hell.
God said that because
The terror you
inspire
and the pride of your heart have deceived you,
you who live in the clefts of the rocks,
who occupy the heights of the hill.
Though you build your nest as high as the eagle's,
from there I will bring you down,"
declares the LORD.
(Jeremiah 49:16)
We have just seen this in the life of the
brutal dictator Saddam Hussein. He had
palaces all over the country of
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.
(Isaiah 40:31)
We are appealing to you to become like an
eagle in your service to God. Be an
eagle Christian. We urge everyone to
respond to Heaven's invitation. *
* Shelby G. Floyd
delivered this sermon