Inspiration in Isaiah: Trust God

Series: Inspiration in Isaiah, #12

September 24, 2006

TRUST GOD

Isaiah 26:3,4

You no doubt have heard the story about a man who slipped and fell off the edge of a cliff in the mountains. He slid part way down until he managed to grab onto the branch of a tree that was growing out of the rock. As he hung there, dangling over a sheer drop of several hundred feet, he prayed like he had never prayed before.

“God, please help me! Save me, Lord! I’ll do anything for you. I’ll be a pastor; I’ll be a missionary; I’ll even be a youth pastor! Just save me!”

Just then he heard a great booming voice from above. “You want me to save you?” “Yes, Lord! Yes!”

“Let go of the branch.”

“What?!!”

“Let go of the branch and I will catch you.”

“Is there anybody else up there?”

It’s easy to trust God when things are going well, but when the heat is on, then it’s a lot harder.

I. Stand Firm in Your Faith Isaiah 7:4-9

Here’s an example of that from Isaiah. To understand the situation, we need to go back to King David’s time. David was the greatest king of Israel. He ruled during what might be called Israel’s golden age. His son, Solomon, started out with a lot going for him, but he made some tragic mistakes, and the result was that the ten northern tribes revolted from the house of David, and set up their own kingdom under Jeroboam. About a hundred years later, Pekah was king of the northern kingdom of Israel, which was also called Ephraim after the most prominent tribe in the north. A man named Ahaz was king of the southern kingdom of Judah. At this time, Pekah allied himself with a neighboring king, Rezin, king of the Aramites, a group of people to the northeast of Israel. Together, they laid siege to Jerusalem, but were unable to overpower it. The very fact of this alliance between Israel and the Aramites terrified the people of Jerusalem, and their king, Ahaz. Isaiah 7:2 says their hearts were shaken like the trees of the forest are shaken by the wind.

But God told Isaiah to tell Ahaz not to worry. Isaiah 7:4-9,

“Say to him, 'Be careful, keep calm and don't be afraid. Do not lose heart because of these two smoldering stubs of firewood--because of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and of the son of Remaliah (Pekah). [5] Aram, Ephraim and Remaliah's son have plotted your ruin, saying, [6] "Let us invade Judah; let us tear it apart and divide it among ourselves..." [7] Yet this is what the Sovereign Lord says:

'It will not take place,

it will not happen,

[8] for the head of Aram is Damascus,

and the head of Damascus is only Rezin.

Within sixty-five years

Ephraim will be too shattered to be a people.

[9] The head of Ephraim is Samaria,

and the head of Samaria is only Remaliah's son.’”

So here’s a situation where the plain facts on the ground are terrifying: two nations have joined an alliance to destroy Jerusalem and the southern kingdom of Judah. King Ahaz does not think he has the military muscle to defeat them, because he had lost a battle to them previously, and is scared to death. But God says that this invasion is not going to happen. He points out that the capital city of the Aramites is Damascus, and the head of the capital is the king, Rezin. “Only Rezin.” He’s only a man, and this is a word from “the Sovereign Lord”. Furthermore, the capital of the northern kingdom of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is “only” Remaliah’s son, Pekah—again, only a man.

The Sovereign Lord promises that within sixty-five years, the northern kingdom will no longer exist as a people. This was in the year 735 B.C. By 670 B.C., sixty-five years later, the Assyrians had not only captured the capital, Samaria, but they had deported many of the upper levels of society, and replaced them with conquered peoples from other parts of the world, thereby mixing the former Israelites with many other nations. This was the end of the northern kingdom, and the end of the separate identity of the ten tribes that had formed it.

But look at the warning God gave Ahaz through Isaiah in Is 7:[9b], “If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all.” The key thing was for Ahaz to trust God. God basically said, I’m going to protect and defend you—as long as you trust me. But if you doubt me, all bets are off, and you will not stand at all.

That’s pretty much what He has said to us, as well. In Ephesians 6, we have God’s equipment for fighting spiritual battles. Our struggle in life is not against other people, as it so often was in the Old Testament. Those physical battles are metaphors or pictures of the spiritual battles that we fight with what Paul called “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms”. One of the pieces of armor that God gives us to fight this battle is the shield of faith, with which we can block all the flaming arrows of the evil one. No matter what Satan throws at us, if we trust in God, if we take Him at His word, if we believe that what He has said is true, that He will never leave us or forsake us, we can win. Trust in God can block everything the devil wants to do to us. But if we do not stand firm in our faith, we will begin to doubt, we will waver, we will give up on God, we will cave in the face of the pressure. If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all.

We can trust God because He is trustworthy.

II. God Is Trustworthy Joshua 23:14

Near the end of his life, Joshua, the leader who had led the Israelites to successfully conquer the land of Canaan, gathered the people around him and said, Joshua 23:14, “Now I am about to go the way of all the earth. You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the Lord your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed.” God had promised years before, when they had first come out of Egypt, that He would lead them to the Promised Land, the land of milk and honey, and give them a land of their own. It seemed like a pipe-dream to those slaves in Egypt, and to the generation that wandered in the Sinai desert for forty years. But now, they could look back and see that God had, in fact, been faithful, trustworthy.

I know that there have been situations in your life where it seemed to you like God had failed you in some way. All of us have experienced that. But I am absolutely convinced that when we get to heaven, we are going to see that every promise of God has been fulfilled perfectly. We may have misunderstood what was promised; we may have wanted something other than what we got; it may have come later than we wanted; but in the end, God is faithful. He cannot violate His own nature.

There are a number of passages in Isaiah where God exhorts the people to trust Him. Here’s one that speaks to our tendency to trust ourselves.

III. In God We Trust, not Ourselves Isaiah 30:15; 31:1

In the 8^th Century B.C., Assyria was the neighborhood bully in the middle east. Israel and Judah were small fry compared to the shark that was Assyria, and the Assyrians had made noises like they wanted to move into the Israelites’ territory. This naturally had the king, and all the people quite concerned. As they were thinking about how they could solve this problem themselves, God said through Isaiah, Isaiah 30:15,

“This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says:

‘In repentance and rest is your salvation,

in quietness and trust is your strength,

but you would have none of it.’”

The natural human tendency when we are threatened is to begin searching for some way to escape that danger. When we are faced with a problem, we look to see what resources we have. We’ll do a SWOT analysis: What are our Strengths and Weaknesses, what are the outside Opportunities and Threats? Who do we know who can help us here? Where can we get some more of whatever resources we think we need?

This word from the Lord reminds us that we need to repent of our attitude that trusts in ourselves. We need to turn around, turn away from that pride and arrogance, and turn back to the Lord, and rest in Him and His power. Our real strength for the challenges of life is found in quietness, not in hustle and bustle, not in frantic activity, in scurrying around trying to patch something together to get us through this immediate crisis. But a quiet trust in God will prove to be the key to success in every situation.

Hezekiah, king of Judah at that time, sent a delegation to Egypt, looking for a stronger ally against the Assyrians. King David had said, years before, Psalm 20:7, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.” But King Hezekiah had a hard time following that advice. He went down to Egypt because they had lots of horses and chariots, and he thought that they would be able to help defend him in the event of an Assyrian attack. Here’s what God had to say about that:

Isaiah 31:1,

“Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help,

who rely on horses,

who trust in the multitude of their chariots

and in the great strength of their horsemen,

but do not look to the Holy One of Israel,

or seek help from the Lord.”

The problem for many of us is that we are so capable, we often think that we can do it alone. We are a congregation of very smart, well educated people. We admire people who can get things done. We put them in positions of responsibility, and entrust them with big projects. We have financial resources to do almost everything we want to do; we have contacts with people who can get things done for us. (“Check with the Egyptians; I think they’ve got the horses and chariots we need.”) Our first impulse when presented with a challenge is seldom to pray. It is more often to start brainstorming, or start calling people.

I read this week that faith (trust) is living without scheming. Repentance, rest in God, quietness and trust in Him are the keys to a successful life, especially in the face of opposition or challenges. But this whole approach to life recommended by Isaiah is counter-cultural. What would we think of a project manager who said to the CEO, “Well, boss, I’m not at all sure I can pull this off. I’m going to have to pray about it, and really seek God’s help on this one”? The culture around us says things like Roger Dawson says. He’s written a book called Secrets of Power Negotiating. Power negotiating teaches you how to win at the negotiating table, but leave the other person thinking they won. Our culture teaches us, blessed are the pushy, for they shall get ahead.

How different this is from the advice of God: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength.” “Woe to those who trust in themselves, or in others, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel, or seek help from the Lord.”

One of the most important times to trust God is when we are afraid.

IV. Trust God When You Are Afraid Isaiah 12:2; 26:3,4

When the breadwinner has lost his or her job; when your marriage is on the rocks; when you have a sick child, or the doctor has told you you have cancer; when your grown child doesn’t come back to the Lord; or when you have to move and leave all that is familiar and dear to you—in times like these we really need to trust God. Isaiah helps us here:

Isaiah 12:2,

“Surely God is my salvation;

I will trust and not be afraid.

The Lord, the Lord, is my strength and my song;

he has become my salvation.”

I understand this as a decision of the will. We may not feel very trustful, but we choose to trust God. We remind ourselves that the Lord is our strength, and He’s even the one who enables us to sing in the midst of threatening circumstances. We determine to focus our attention on Him, and not on the threats—to keep our eyes on Christ, not on the waves that threaten to overwhelm us.

Isaiah also wrote, Isaiah 26:3-4,

“You will keep in perfect peace

him whose mind is steadfast,

because he trusts in you.

[4] Trust in the Lord forever,

for the Lord, the Lord, is the Rock eternal.”

When I was in college, I attended Fourth Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., which at that time was pastored by Dr. Richard Halverson, who later became Chaplain of the U.S. Senate. At the end of every Sunday night service, Dr. Halverson would sing, as the benediction, the little chorus that is taken from this passage. I hung on every word and every note. It was water to my soul that carried me through each coming week. God will keep in perfect peace the one whose mind is steadfastly fixed on Him, who trusts in Him. The key to that peace is coming to God with all our concerns and fears, and reminding ourselves of who He is. Isaiah insists that the reason we can trust in God so implicitly is because He is the Rock eternal. He will never be moved. God is the ultimately stable One in the whole universe, the still point in a turning world. I go to the mountains and stand under a sheer rock cliff and look up, and am reminded that my God is like that: immovable, solid, steady, dependable, trustworthy.

One reason why we don’t trust God as much as we should is because our goals are too small.

V. Our Goals Are too Small

I think that many times we are willing to settle for much less than we should. For example, if you are a Sunday School teacher, or a Home Fellowship Group leader, and all you want to have happen is that the people in your group know a little more about the Bible or about God than when they came in, that’s easy. An atheist could teach them that. But if you want to see their lives and their character change through the power of the Holy Spirit, then you will have to depend on and trust in God.

If I as a pastor just want to entertain you, that’s easy—well, it would be easy for someone else; I’m not an entertainer. There are plenty of very entertaining people in the pulpits of America, and they typically draw large crowds. But if I want to see you love and trust God more, and give more of your life to Him, and serve Him more effectively; and if I want to see the Holy Spirit fall on our congregation and revive us and lift us up to a higher spiritual plane than we have known before, then I have to depend on God for that.

If all you want to do is raise your kids to be contributing members of society, you don’t really need God. Many secular, unchurched parents are successfully doing that without Him. But if you want to develop in your children a profound trust in God, a deep love for Him, a desire and determination to change the world and advance the kingdom of God; if you want to see your children have God’s heart for the world, and be willing to go anywhere at any time to do anything for Christ, then you will need God’s help, and you have to trust Him for it.

If all you want to do is to make a living, just show up on time, keep your nose clean, do what they tell you, and you’ll make it. You don’t need God for that. But if you want to lift up the name of Christ in your workplace or neighborhood, if you want to represent Him well before the eyes of the world, if you want to see those friends and co-workers come to know Christ as their savior, then you will definitely need to depend on God.

Are your goals big enough to force you to trust God, or are you just cruising through life doing what you can on your own, and asking God to bless it?

One of the things that makes it hard for us to trust in God is the matter of timing. His timing is seldom our timing.

VI. Trust God’s Timing

A. “Just in time” Joshua 3:15-17

Over the years, manufacturers have discovered the benefits of “just in time” inventory control. The “just-in-time” inventory system is all about having “the right material, at the right time, at the right place, and in the exact amount.” Rather than stockpile huge quantities of raw materials in advance, the system is engineered to have just what they need when they need it, but not before. This cuts down on inventory and storage costs.

God’s faithfulness is a lot like that. His provision is often shown when we need and trust Him, not always before. A great example of that is when the Israelites were about to enter the promised land for the first time. They were camped on the east side of the Jordan River, when God told them it was time for them to cross over. We pick up the story at Joshua 3:15, “Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest. Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water's edge, [16] the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great distance away, at a town called Adam in the vicinity of Zarethan, while the water flowing down to the Sea of the Arabah (the Salt Sea) was completely cut off. So the people crossed over opposite Jericho. [17] The priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan, while all Israel passed by until the whole nation had completed the crossing on dry ground.”

You can just picture this: the priests, in front of this huge throng, hundreds of thousands of people, are carrying the ark of the covenant on poles on their shoulders. They are told they have to enter the river first. It is flowing deep and fast with the spring runoff from Mount Hermon. It looks to them and to everyone else like they will be swept away by the rushing river. But the moment their feet step into the river, the water stops, having been cut off miles upstream before that. God was faithful; He met their needs. But they had to trust Him, and take that first step.

This reminds me of the story told by Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch woman whose family harbored Jews when the Nazis were searching for them in the Netherlands. She tells about the time when she was a little girl and her father accompanied her to the train station. Just before she got on the train, her father gave her the ticket. He had it all along, but she didn’t need it until then. Corrie says this is a great illustration of God’s faithful provision for us. He always has what we need, but He waits to give it to us until we actually need it. This forces us to trust Him.

B. Seldom early, never late

In my experience, God is very seldom early but He is never late. We saw that illustrated recently in our daughter’s move. Heather, and her husband, Mike, were moving from southern California to Milwaukee, where Mike was accepted in grad school. They sold their house in Whittier very quickly, and had an escrow closing date of early July. They found a house in Milwaukee that they liked, and signed a contract to buy that. But the buyers in California had quite a bit of trouble getting their financing together. There were many issues, but the bottom line for Heather and Mike was that they could not close on that house on time. At that point, they were in northern California with Mike’s parents for a couple of weeks, so they couldn’t actually be on site to baby sit this problem, but they were told that it would probably close “next week.” We heard that refrain, “next week” for over two months! When they got to Milwaukee, they couldn’t close on the house there because they didn’t have the money from their house in California. After living in a motel room for a week with their 3 year old daughter and 2 large dogs, a relative got them a bridge loan so they could move into their house there. And always it was “next week” the house in California will close—for another month. There were lots of times in those weeks and months that we felt like God was late, but now here they are, settled in their new home, and God has even provided a 2/3 reduction in Mike’s grad school tuition so that they can cover all the additional expenses they incurred during the delay. It certainly didn’t follow our schedule, but in the end, we can see that God was faithful. He always is. We can look back on this experience and be encouraged to trust God in the future, as we reflect on His faithfulness to us in the past.

VII. Trust God in Hardships 2 Cor. 1:8-10

Few of us would ever ask for hardships in our lives. We may see the value of trusting God, and want to do that more, but we won’t ask Him to bring pain into our lives. But as the saying goes, “no pain, no gain.” Pressures and hardships test and strengthen our trust. Paul said in 2 Cor. 1:8-10, “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. [9] Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. [10] He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us.”

Our church supports some missionaries who serve in north India among Muslims. Their son attends a school there for international kids, which has really been good for him. The government has recently launched a program to force all businesses in the area to comply with new zoning laws, and this means that the school has to move. Their son went to school one day last week, thinking everything was ok, and when he came home, he brought all his stuff with him, because the school was closed that day! Now they are scrambling to find an affordable location for 70 elementary students to attend, with all the supplies, computers, equipment, etc. M_____ writes that the parents are opening their homes, and everyone is looking for a new location. She says, “Honestly, we are totally trusting that God will provide for this need. You can only imagine all the details and logistics of our school’s situation at this time. Please pray for the leaders and staff as they work through this sudden transition… It feels like a bit of a roller coaster ride, but we are learning to trust God more in our situations! We certainly don't live in a place of stability, but a place where we HAVE to trust Him!”

That’s the value of hardships. They force us to trust God. They push us beyond our own resources so we have to depend on Him. So the next time you face something like that, don’t grumble; rejoice that God is strengthening your trust in Him.

VIII. Remember God’s Faithfulness Joshua 4:1-7

When the people of Israel had all crossed over the Jordan River, the priests with the ark of the covenant remained standing in the center of the river bed. God told Joshua to have one man from each tribe go back to the center of the river and pick up a large stone and bring it back to the western bank. They piled them up at the place where they camped that night. Joshua explained, Joshua 4:6, “In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' [7] tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.”

When God shows up, when He shows Himself to be trustworthy, it is a good idea to make a memorial to remind ourselves of His faithfulness. We forget so easily! One day there is a great victory celebration, and we are praising God. But the moment another crisis appears, we forget the past and start worrying again. So we should make a photo album, or hang something on our wall, or put something in our wallet that will remind us that God came through for us that time, and we can trust Him in the future.

Take a moment and jot on your outline some significant event in the past where God showed Himself to be faithful to you. And then try to think of some way you could memorialize that.