Sovereign Grace Baptist Church

Free Grace Media

Of Princeton, New Jersey

 

AuthorClay Curtis
TitleImpatient Sinners, Waiting God
Bible TextIsaiah 30:15-18
Synopsis When trial comes, wait on God. Listen
Date05-Mar-2020
Series Isaiah 2008
Article Type Sermon Notes
PDF Format pdf
Word Format doc
Audio HI-FI Listen: Impatient Sinners, Waiting God (32 kbps)
Audio CD Quality Listen: Impatient Sinners, Waiting God (128 kbps)
Length 39 min.
 
Text: Is 30: 15-19 
Date: March 5,2020
Place: SGBC, NJ 
  
Subject: Impatient Sinners, Waiting God
  
When trial comes, wait on God. When our hearts break and we are afraid wait on God.  When opposed by great enemies and obstacles wait on the Lord.  When we see no way this can turn out good wait on the Lord. 
  
When we say wait on God it means hearken to God’s word rather than sinful flesh.  Wait on the Lord by bearing the suffering rather than running from it.  Wait on God by looking to Wisdom himself rather than ourselves 
  
Proverbs 3: 5: Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. 6  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. 
  
The children of Judah ran rather than wait on God.  In our text we see how God dealt with his elect among them. 
  
Isaiah 30: 15: For thus saith the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not. 16: But ye said, No; for we will flee upon horses; therefore shall ye flee: and, We will ride upon the swift; therefore shall they that pursue you be swift. 17: One thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one; at the rebuke of five shall ye flee: till ye be left as a beacon upon the top of a mountain, [as a tree with its branches broken off] and as an ensign on an hill. 18: 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 are all they that wait for him. 
 
This passage is dear to me because years ago God sent a trial and I ran.  Therefore God waited. God used this passage to show me what he had done for me.  I will tell you more about that in a moment 
  
Division: 1) God’s word 2) Our word 3) God’s waiting 
  
GOD’S WORD
  
Isaiah 30: 15: For thus saith the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: 
  
This is the word of the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel.  This is the word we should heed, the word we can trust.  God says, “In returning and rest shall ye be saved.’  Return from Egypt and rest in Christ.  Return from the works of our own hands and rest in Christ.  Return from our wisdom and rest in Christ our Wisdom, “and ye shall be saved.”
 
Things might look bleak, you may see no way it can work out for good but God says, “In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.”  Submit to God with confidence in GodQuietly obey God’s word confident that God is ruling everything that is happeningQuietly submit with the confidence that God who spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all, shall with him freely give us all things. 
 
This is the Lord God’s word.  This is the word of the covenant keeping God we can trust.  He is the Holy One of Israel. Return to Christ and rest in him and ye shall be saved.  Quietly, confidently wait on the Lord by obeying God’s word and Christ shall be  your strength. 
  
OUR WORD
 
Isaiah 30: 15:…and ye would not. 16: But ye said, No; for we will flee upon horses; therefore shall ye flee: and, We will ride upon the swift; 17: One thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one; at the rebuke of five shall ye flee: till ye be left as a beacon upon the top of a mountain, and as an ensign on an hill.
 
Before we cry down the children of Judah, let’s get the picture.  Put yourself in Jerusalem.  You see the Assyrian army approaching stretched from horizon to horizon.  Your generals and advisers and wisest counselors tell you to flee on horses to Egypt where you should make a covenant with Pharaoh.  But you know God’s word forbids it.  Then along comes a man, a nobody from nowhere named Isaiah.  He is just a man, just a sinner like you, except he claims to bring God’s message.  He says, “thus saith the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength:”   So what do you do?  Do you take counsel from your generals or do you take counsel from God? 
  
We have all been in similar situations.  You are in a troublesome trial.  You see an easy way out.  But it requires disobeying God’s word.  There is another difficult, painful way, which God’s word tells you is God’s way.  But it requires you believe God and quietly, confidently wait on him.   Do we disobey God for fleshly ease?   Or do we obey God by waiting on the Lord?  
  
Most every trial we come into comes down to this.  Do we go the way of our sinful flesh for the ease of our flesh as we do exactly what we know God’s word forbids?  Or do we suffer as we obey God’s word and wait on the Lord? 
  
The children of Judah said, “No; for we will flee upon horses;…and, We will ride upon the swift.”  This is our way—the sinner’s way, the way of our sinful flesh.   If left to our flesh we always disobey God’s word for our understanding, our works, our will.  But this is not God’s way.  God says,
  
Hosea 1:7  But I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save them by the LORD their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen. 
 
God’s way is for us to wait on the Lord.  Waiting on God exalts God.   It gives God all the glory.  But to go our way not only disobeys God, it is the same as saying “the work of our hands, Ye are our gods.”  Though for a season, God may permit his child to run after our flesh, eventually God will come in irresistible power and bring his child to say, 
 
Hosea 14: 3: Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses: neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods: for in thee the fatherless findeth mercy. 
  
If we are a child of God then going our way—the way of sinful flesh, the way of disobedience to God—shall result in much pain and sorrow.  God will let us run for a time, “ye said, No; for we will flee upon horses; therefore shall ye flee.”  Remember how Jonah chose to rebel against God?  God let him go for a while.  But then we will find the way of the transgressor is hard.  We cannot outrun God and his trial.  We say, “We will ride upon the swift.”  God says, “therefore shall they that pursue you be swift.”   The faster we run the faster the trial will run after us.  Soon God’s child will find that without Christ we can do nothing just as Christ said.  We will find our Strength gone and our spirit wilting.  Our enemies become mighty while our strength becomes weak.  When we find our courage depleted, “One thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one; at the rebuke of five shall ye flee.”   But all of this will be to bring us down “till ye be left as a beacon upon the top of a mountain, and as an ensign on an hill.”   As the margin says, “A tree bereft of its branches”—a tree with all its branches broken off.  Exposed like a “mast” without a sail. 
 
Believer, in the end we will find that going our own way was much more painful and troublesome than had we simply trusted God and waited on him. 
  
GOD’S WAITING
  
Isaiah 30: 18: 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 are all they that wait for him.
  
When the LORD’s child refuses to wait “therefore will the LORD wait.”  But the LORD’s waiting is not some helpless wringing of the hands worrying about his child.   The LORD’s waiting is the LORD being longsuffering with his child which Peter tells us to account salvation.  God’s waiting—God’s longsuffering—always end in the salvation of God’s child as it did in the days of Noah.
  
1 Peter 3:20: The longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. 
  
The LORD waiting involves the LORD working all things together for the good of his elect according to his purpose.  As God waits, he makes “they that pursue you [to] be swift.” The LORD’s waiting includes the LORD removing our strength so that “One thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one; at the rebuke of five shall ye flee.”   God’s waiting brings us to the end of ourselves “till ye be left as a beacon upon the top of a mountain, and as an ensign on an hill. [a tree with all its branches broken off].” 
 
I mentioned a trial I went through.  It is embarrassing to tell but it is instructive.  This had never happened before then and it has never happened since.  But years ago I was offended  by some brethren.  They were wrong in what they did; they would tell you so.  But I handled it wrong.  My sin was far worse.  I became bitter towards them in pride and self-righteousness, determined not to show mercy and forgive them.  
  
Faithful friends told me I was wrong.  They kept pointing me to Christ reminding me these were brethren for whom Christ laid down his life.  Faithful friends kept admonishing me to receive my brethren in mercy as Christ received me for God’s glory, for the church’s good, for the gospel’s sake (Rom 15:7)  As wrong as the offending brethren were, I was not justified. But I was convinced I was.  I even foolishly thought my bitter envy and strife was for the glory of God.  
  
Therefore, the LORD waited.  For almost a year God sent trial after trial. I rode upon the swift but those that pursued me were swift.  Soon the LORD brought me down so that I was like a tree with all its branches broken off.  Then God used this passage and broke my heart.  There I was refusing mercy to brethren who had sinned against me far less than I sinned against God until God brought me to sob begging God for mercy.  Since I would not wait “therefore the LORD [waited], that he may be gracious unto [me], and therefore [was] he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon [me].”
  
When someone transgresses against us, left to our sinful flesh we will endure suffering only so long.  Then we want wrath poured out on the offender.  But the LORD waited—suffered longfrom Adam’s fall until his Son went to the cross.  Why?  “That he may be gracious to you”—that he might justly give his elect what we do not deserve.  “That he might be exalted”--that we might behold how unlike us God is in judgment.  “That he might have mercy on you”—that he might justly withhold what we deserve.
  
When we suffer only a light cross, without God’s strength we will not wait.  In our flesh we will disobey and seek vain refuge.  “Therefore the LORD waited” as he suffered incomparable travail on the shameful cross until justice was fully satisfied toward all his elect and our sins were completely put away.  Why?  “That he may be gracious to you, that he might be exalted, that he might have mercy on you.”
  
All our days of rebellion we rode upon the swift, without Christ, without God in the world.  “And therefore the LORD waited”—instead of giving us the hell we earned by our sins, the LORD waited till he crossed our path with the gospel and regenerated us. Why?  “That he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he might have mercy on you.”  Christ Jesus had to be exalted on the cross that he might be exalted through the preaching of the cross that he might be exalted in the hearts of his people 
  
John 3: 14: And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: 15: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. 
  
John 12: 32: And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. 
 
Right now the only reason God has not destroyed this world is because he has an elect remnant for whom Christ died—"Therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious to you that he might be exalted, that he might have mercy on you” (2 Peter 3: 3-9).   Why?  Here is why.  Do you see it believer?   The LORD waits, suffering long with his elect, “For the LORD is a God of judgment.”
  
As we see this great display of God’s judgment in waiting on his Son to come into the world, waiting on the cross until mercy and truth met together, waiting to call us by his grace, brethren, we can be sure the Lord will do what is best in our lives in the midst of any trial—"for the LORD is a God of judgment.”
 
When we disobey God’s word by impatiently running from the trial, we have no peace.  Oh, God lets some sinners flee and find refuge and happiness in the world.  But not his chosen, blood-bought people.  God will not allow us to find happiness in disobeying his word, in justifying ourselves before God and men.  God will see to it that we have nothing but strife and confusion and division. Where is happiness?—"blessed are all they that wait for him.”
 
Brethren, in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and confidence is our strength
  
Proverbs 20: 22: Say not thou, I will recompense evil; but wait on the LORD, and he shall save thee. 
  
Proverbs 27: 18: Whoso keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof: so he that waiteth on his master shall be honoured. 
  
Luke 12:37: Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching [waiting]: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.                
  
Amen!