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Well, friends, we continue our consideration of Isaiah chapter 40 this morning and we are
this morning going to consider verses 25 through 31, Isaiah chapter 40, verses 25 to 31.
You’ll find that on page 713 in your Pew Bibles.
This is God’s inerrant, infallible word.
Let us hear it with reverence and awe.
To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him, says the Holy One.
Lift up your eyes on high and see who created these.
He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of his
might, and because he is strong in power, not one is missing.
Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel?
My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God.
Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary.
His understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might, he increases strength.
Young men and youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted.
But they who wait for 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.
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.
Let’s pray for the Lord to bless the preaching of his word.
Gracious Heavenly Father, you are an awesome God.
We would pray, Heavenly Father, that as we turn our attention to this portion of your
Holy Word, that by your Spirit you would cause us, Lord, to be gripped afresh with your incomparable-ness,
with your grandeur, with your glory.
And we would ask, Lord, that as a result, that we would be built up in our faith and
strengthened in our discipleship.
Once again, we ask that you would set a guard over my lips, that I might speak only that
which is faithful to your word and edifying to your people.
In Jesus’ name we pray, and all of God’s people said, Amen.
You may be seated.
Well, children, the three words that I’d ask you to listen for in my sermon this morning
are greatness, justice, and strength.
The title of my sermon this morning is God Unwearied, Strength Renewed.
Well, my dear friends in Christ, Isaiah chapter 40 presents us with a God who is a very, very
big God.
Indeed, he is infinitely big, big in the sense that he is beyond the limitations of time
and space and physical matter.
Now, theologians describe this kind of bigness as transcendence, meaning that God is above.
He transcends above all of the limitations of his creation, and that has many ramifications,
many implications.
And so, for example, God is revealed in the scriptures to be eternal.
That means that he is not bounded by time.
He is from everlasting to everlasting.
Indeed, he is above time.
He exists in the past, the present, and the future all at once because he exists beyond
time.
He is also revealed to be omnipresent.
Children, the word omni means all, so God is all present.
He is not bounded by space.
You and I are bounded by space.
You can’t be here and somewhere else at the same time, but God, all of God, is present
everywhere at all times because he is not bounded by space.
He is also revealed in scripture to be omnipotent, meaning all-powerful, which means he is able
to accomplish all of his holy will in the heavens and on the earth.
Indeed, we see his omnipotence in the very act of creation, where in the beginning God
simply spoke his creative word and all things came into being out of nothing.
Isaiah chapter 40 is a marvelous revelation of the greatness of our God, a divine greatness
which exposes the utter futility and foolishness of our many idolatries.
But dear ones, when we are confronted by the transcendent bigness of Almighty God, we may
be tempted to wonder, is God too big to care?
Have you ever wondered that?
Is God too big to care?
I mean, God is running the universe.
He is governing the stars and the galaxies and the sky.
Surely, he takes no notice of little me or of our little church.
Is God too big to care?
Too big to care about the needs of His professed people?
Too big to care about me and you and our own little world?
Well, this was a question that was apparently on the minds of God’s ancient covenant people
who are addressed by the prophet in this passage, as the people faced trials and tribulations
and sufferings at the hands of their enemies, leading them to make the following statement
as recorded in verse 27, my way is hidden from the Lord and my right is disregarded
by my God.
Speaking of illegal right, God is ignoring my situation.
My way is hidden from the Lord.
It would seem that the people of God were despondent, that they were sapped of their
energy and strength, that they were feeling abandoned by their God.
They seem to think that God’s bigness, His utter transcendence and almighty power must
mean that God was too great to care about their trying circumstances.
But as Bible scholar Derek Kidner points out, the wrong inference from God’s transcendence
is that He is too great to care.
The right one is that He is too great to fail.
Is God too big, too great to care?
No, but He is too great to fail.
His promises hold true.
God keeps His word.
Dear ones, our brief passage for this Lord’s Day morning continues this larger passage
of Isaiah chapter 40, a passage that is truly beautiful and sublime, not only in its structure,
but in its content.
This larger context is a passage that powerfully highlights the greatness, the grandeur, and
the glory of our omnipotent, incomparable God.
Once again, friends, our passage is found toward the beginning of this latter section
of Isaiah, where the prophet Isaiah, through the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, prophetically
foresees a time, anticipates a time of redemptive history, when God’s people are coming to
the end of their Babylonian exile from the promised land.
Remember the people of God were finally kicked out of the promised land because of their
repeated, unrepentant faithlessness and apostasy and going after other gods.
And God, as a discipline and chastening to them, thrust them out of the promised land,
thrust them into Babylonian exile.
But this passage anticipates a time when that exile will come to an end.
This will be a time in redemptive history when God’s words to his people, who were
humbled and chastened by their exile, God’s word would no longer be a word of judgment
and rebuke, at least not predominantly, but rather it would be a word of comfort, a word
of salvation, a word of eschatological hope.
And of course, God will deliver on his word of comfort and salvation through the promised
who is later to be revealed as the suffering and victorious servant of the Lord.
And the people will experience that comfort, that messianic comfort, as they turn in repentance
from the foolishness of their idolatry and renew their faith in Yahweh, the true and
living God, their faithful covenant Lord and Savior.
So as we turn our attention to our passage for today and focus right for now on verses
25 and 26, brothers and sisters, behold the greatness of our God, behold the greatness
of our God.
Verse 25, the Lord asks the people a question, to whom then will you compare me that I should
be like him, says the Holy One.
Here in verse 25, the prophet repeats the thought that was expressed back in verse 18.
And here in verse 25, God himself is depicted as speaking directly, whereas in verse 18,
God the Spirit speaks more indirectly.
So in verse 18, it says, to whom then will you liken God or what likeness compare with
him?
But in verse 25, God himself asks the question again, again to reinforce the truth that is
being taught here.
To whom will you compare me that I should be like him, says the Holy One.
To whom will you compare me?
What kind of answer do you think that Isaiah is expecting to that question?
As the Holy Spirit through Isaiah interrogates the people of God, to whom will you compare
me, God says.
Well, the expected answer is obviously nobody.
Why?
Because God is the incomparable one.
No one compares to God.
But how is God, how does he describe himself here in this verse?
He describes himself as the Holy One.
Now when you think of the term holy, what comes to mind?
What do you think holiness means?
My suspicion is that oftentimes when we think of a holy person, we think of someone who
is peculiarly righteous and godly.
We think of the personal characteristics of godliness and righteousness.
And certainly that sense is there in the term holy, but it’s a secondary sense.
In its primary sense, the term holy actually means different, distinct, set apart.
We sing that wonderful hymn, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, that could be sung different,
different, different is the Lord God Almighty, separate, separate, separate.
He is distinct from us.
And this wording, calling God the Holy One here in verse 25 reinforces the truth that
the scriptures are ultimately God’s speech because it says, to whom will you compare
me that I should be like him, says the Holy One, says the Holy One.
This is the speech of God.
This is God’s revelation, not mere human speculation.
And it is a revelation of the Holy One, the aspect of God’s holiness that gets the focus
here is his distinctiveness, his separateness, his set apartness from his creation.
God is, in other words, he is the transcendent creator and we are merely his creatures.
Who then could ever be compared to such a great and glorious and awesome God?
But then it goes on to say in verse 26, as God continues to address his people through
the prophet, lift up your eyes on high and see.
Lift up your eyes.
Look at what?
Well, on the last Lord’s day, we consider the fact that back in verse 22, the Holy Spirit
through Isaiah draws the people’s attention to the heavens and to the fact that God stretched
out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to dwell in, like an ancient
nomad spreading out his tent.
So the Lord stretched out the heavens and placed the stars and the heavenly bodies in
the glorious heavens.
And so once again, the Lord is saying, lift up your eyes on high and see.
Who created these?
Again, obviously, the answer is obvious.
The Lord, the creator made them.
It was not the stars and the planets and the galaxies.
These things were not made by any man or any lesser being.
They were made by none other than God himself.
And then it goes on to say, he brings out their host by number, calling them all by
name.
There’s actually military language being used here.
We’ll talk about that in a few moments.
Then it goes on to say, by the greatness of his might and because he is strong in power,
not one is missing.
Once again, friends, in verse 26, the prophet turns our attention to the heavenly hosts,
meaning the innumerable stars and heavenly bodies that inhabit the night sky.
Here Isaiah uses, as I mentioned, language that has military connotations.
As God is described as bringing out their host by number, that term host is a military
term.
Heavenly bodies are compared to military hosts under the command of Almighty God.
As Dr. E.J.
Young explains, the sun, moon, and stars are God’s hosts created by him and appointed for
his service.
Among other functions, they serve him by declaring his glory and showing forth his handiwork.
What about where it says God calls them all by name?
What are we to learn from that?
Well, again, as Dr. Young says, the thought is that God has assigned to each member of
his army its particular nature, characteristics, and function.
Although to man, the stars appear innumerable, yet God knows not merely the number but also
the name of each one.
God is not only a divine statistician who has counted the number of the stars, but he
knows them each by name.
He’s named them all.
Now you may recall, friends, that on the last Lord’s Day, I pointed out that scientists
estimate that there are between 100 and 400 billion stars in our own Milky Way galaxy
alone.
Think about that.
One is just one of 100 to 400 billion stars in our own local galaxy.
Furthermore, I pointed out that based on data from the Hubble Space Telescope and deep space
surveys, it is also estimated that there are between 200 billion and 2 trillion galaxies
in the observable universe alone.
That’s what we can see.
There may be unobserved regions of the universe that scientists have not yet been able to
explore.
But think of it.
Each of those billions or perhaps trillions of galaxies, each of those galaxies themselves
contain multiple billions of stars.
And yet, even though from our perspective, the number of the stars in the universe is
innumerable, yet here in our passage for today, we are assured that God Almighty not only
knows just how many stars there are, he also calls them by name.
Truly, my friends, how great and awesome and incomparable is our God.
Well, friends, it’s important to understand that in the ancient world of Isaiah’s time,
it was very common for Israel’s Gentile neighbors to worship astral phenomenon and heavenly
bodies like the sun, the moon, and the stars.
But like many other passages of scripture, this passage reminds us that we are not to
worship the heavenly hosts, for they are not deities.
They are God’s hosts.
They are mere creatures of God, hosts created by God, their sovereign commander.
And in the scriptures, when the scriptures point out that God created the sun and the
moon and the stars, the scriptures are actually engaging in an anti-polytheistic polemic because
many of Israel’s ancient neighbors believed in and worshiped the stars and the sun and
the moon as deities.
Back in Genesis chapter one, we read of the creation of the heavens in verses 14 through
16.
It says, and God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate
the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years.
In other words, God created these phenomenon, these heavenly bodies with a purpose to serve
his glorious purposes and to help mankind to separate, to be for signs and seasons,
days and years, and so forth.
And let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.
And it was so.
God spoke and it happened.
And notice verse 18, and God made the two great lights, the greater light, that’s the
sun to rule the day, and the lesser light, that would be the moon, to rule the night.
And then he also attacks on, and the stars, almost as an afterthought.
Those billions and billions and trillions of stars, oh yeah, God created those too.
Wow, by his almighty power.
David reflects upon this in Psalm 8 verses 3 and 4, the glory of God revealed in the
heavens.
In Psalm 8 verses 3 and 4, David writes, when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
notice that the glorious expanse of the heavens are the work of God’s fingers.
He just needed his fingers, so to speak.
Of course, God doesn’t literally have fingers, but the point is that they were so easy for
him to create, just like he created them with his fingers.
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you
have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you
care for him?
This is the amazing thing that God who created the vast heavens cares for us, his people.
And that is why God is very insistent in his law that his people not engage in worshiping
the heavenly bodies.
So for example, Deuteronomy 4 verse 19 says this, and beware, Moses warning the children
of Israel as they are about to go in and conquer the promised land.
It says, and beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the
moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and
serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the
whole heaven.
They are but creatures of God, creations of God, they are not deities to be worshiped.
My friends, I don’t know about you, but I have observed that the pseudo-science and
occult practice of astrology is rather popular today.
I’ve even met Christians who like to check their horoscope, and I mean it’s one thing
if you check your horoscope sort of as a joke and you don’t take it seriously, but some
folks really take that stuff seriously and they think, oh, I thank my lucky stars, right?
But my friends, astrology is rooted in pagan idolatry, and we as the people of God must
not engage in that.
And so, dear ones, instead of trusting your lucky stars, trust in the sovereign triune
omnipotent God who stretched out the heavens like a tent curtain and placed the innumerable
stars in the sky with great ease, simply as the work of His fingers.
But believer, think about this as well, if God knows the unnumbered stars in the sky
calling each and every one of them by name, then He knows you and me as well.
And this is important.
Let me ask you, dear listener, do you sometimes feel unseen, ignored, unnoticed?
Your fellow man or your fellow human beings, we’re all sinners, and we can be insensitive
to the needs of our neighbor.
We can neglect to notice those who are in need.
But there is one who always notices.
There is one who always sees.
The God who knows the number of stars in the universe and calls each and every one of them
by name, knows you and me through and through.
And guess what?
Yes, He is big, He is glorious, He’s almighty, but He cared enough to send His eternal Son
to die for your sins.
Is God too big to care?
No.
He cared enough to send Jesus to die for your sins and for mine.
But what about God apparently seeming to ignore the needs for justice among His people?
Well that leads me to my next point as we consider verses 27 and 28.
Behold next the justice of our God, behold the justice of our God.
Verse 27, why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel?
My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God.
In other words, the Lord sees that I am oppressed.
The Lord sees our troubles, our trials, our tribulations, our sufferings, and He seems
to be ignoring us.
What does it say then in verse 28?
Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary.
His understanding is unsearchable.
Now how does God address His people in verse 27?
He addresses them as O Jacob and O Israel.
Jacob and Israel being used here, these patriarchal names are used here to refer to God’s covenant
people as a whole.
But why doesn’t He just refer to them by the one name of the patriarch, Israel?
Why does He also include the name Jacob?
Well perhaps the prophet uses Jacob here to remind the readers of the fact that even though
Jacob, you know, some of you know the history of the patriarch Jacob, Jacob was a bit of
a scoundrel, wasn’t he?
He was a liar, he was a deceiver, he was a rather unsavory character, yet in spite of
his deceptive and irreverent behavior, the Lord in sovereign grace had mercy even upon
the deceiver Jacob and graciously transformed that deceiver.
He turned him, transformed him from a deceiver into a true believer, a truly godly man, and
he changed his name to Israel and called him back from his own personal exile back into
the promised land.
So perhaps that is why Isaiah uses the name Jacob here in this passage.
And what is the complaint of the people of God, the people of Jacob?
My way is hidden from the Lord, my right is disregarded by my God.
Oh how foolish and misguided to think that the God who knows all of the heavenly hosts
by name would not know or be concerned about the plight of His covenant people or would
ignore their just cause.
He will not ignore it.
And so again, the Lord interrogates His people, questions them.
In verse 28, have you not known?
Have you not heard?
What answer do you think is expected to these questions?
Of course they’ve heard.
Of course they ought to know better.
They have God’s revelation, they have His law and promises, and they have the prophets,
prophets like Moses and of course like the prophet Isaiah himself.
My friends, here Isaiah highlights a number of God’s glorious attributes to strengthen
the faith and hope of his readers.
And so in verse 28, he says the Lord, Yahweh, is what?
The everlasting God.
That points to God as the eternal one.
He does not, the creator of the ends of the earth, He does not faint or grow weary.
He’s the unwearied one, which means He’s omnipotent, infinite in His power, boundless in His power.
And not only that, it says His understanding is unsearchable.
That points to His omniscience that God is inexhaustible in His knowledge.
He knows everything because He has decreed everything that comes to pass.
Now again, these attributes should not make them doubt God’s concern for them or their
plight, but should rather give them confidence that God would certainly act to rescue them
and to bring justice to their cause.
I’ve shared before that when I was a child, when we gathered for meals around the dinner
table, my father would usually say a short prayer of thanks, but when we gathered together
with our broader family, one of the favorite prayers was, and you know it, God is great,
God is good, now we thank Him for our food.
That’s a very simple, childlike prayer, but it’s also, when you think about it, a very
profound prayer.
Yes, God is great.
He has revealed in this passage of His Word as gloriously great.
He is gloriously, magnificently, incomparably great, but God is also good, and one aspect
of God’s goodness is His justice, a justice which acts to rescue His afflicted people
and to bring His just judgment against all of His and our enemies.
Though the context is a different context, I’m reminded of what the author of Hebrews
says in Hebrews chapter 6 verses 9 through 12, and if you’d like to turn there to Hebrews
chapter 6, let me just read verses 9 through 12.
In this passage, the author of Hebrews is warning the believers that he’s writing to
who are facing persecution and who are being tempted to throw away their Christian faith.
He’s urging them to continue to cling to Christ, but he goes on to say, after this stern and
sober warning, he says,
Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things, things
that belong to salvation.
Falling away from the faith does not belong to salvation.
And then he goes on to say, for God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the
love that you have shown for His name in serving the saints as you still do.
He’s not teaching salvation by works here, but he’s saying God is aware that you have
borne the fruit of faith, and God is not going to overlook that.
Verse 11, And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness, to have the full
assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those
who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
My friends, God is not so unjust as to overlook the plight of His people.
He sees, He knows, He considers, and in His timing, He will act.
But speaking of justice, God’s justice, His perfect justice and His overflowing mercy
come together perfectly in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.
God’s justice and mercy come together perfectly in the saving work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Did Jesus, children, did Jesus deserve to die on the cross?
No, Jesus was sinless.
He’s the sinless, spotless lamb of God.
Why then did Jesus have to die?
He did it voluntarily.
The Father sent His Son out of love for us sinners, and Jesus died to fulfill, to satisfy
the wrath of God against our sin.
In other words, Jesus’ death was an act of justice.
God justly punished our sin on the cross in the person of Jesus.
He bore our sin as our sin bearer, our substitute.
He died for our sins in our place and in our stead, so that we in Him might become the
righteousness of God.
He took our sin upon Himself, and He clothes us by grace with His everlasting righteousness.
Do you know Him in this way, dear listener?
Do you know Him as your Savior?
Have you trusted in Him as the one who satisfied God’s justice against your sin by dying on
the cross for your sins?
Turn to Jesus today.
Trust Him as your Savior and Lord, and you will be assured that His justice has been
done and His mercy has been supremely displayed to you.
And that leads me to my final point, beloved, behold the everlasting God as our unending
source of strength.
Behold the everlasting God as our unending source of strength.
As in verse 29, He gives power to the faint.
Oh, how the people that Isaiah was writing to needed to hear this.
They were weakened, they were downcast, they were despondent.
Their energy had been sapped, but Isaiah points them back to the source of their strength.
He, the Lord, Yahweh, the everlasting God, gives power to the faint, and to Him who has
no might, He increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted, but they who
wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.
They shall mount up with wings like eagles.
Have you ever seen an eagle mount up?
And he shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
The infinite triune God revealed in the Bible is inexhaustible in His divine strength.
As the infinite, everlasting Creator, He, unlike us, never grows faint or weary.
Children, guess what?
God never needs to take a nap.
God never needs to kick back and chill after a tough day of work, no.
God never needs to go away on a vacation or, as the Brits like to call it, a holiday, no.
God never needs to go on a retreat for a time of spiritual renewal or refreshment.
On the contrary, as the all-powerful One, His strength never ends.
He is truly God-unwearyed, and because His strength never ends and He never gets weary,
He is the inexhaustible source of strength for us, His weak and wayward people.
It says in verse 30, even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted.
Sometimes when I see the little ones running about after church, I’ve often made the comment
I wish we could bottle that energy.
I’d sure like to take an energy pill and have the energy that they have, right?
But even the strongest and healthiest and most able-bodied among us, that’s what the
youths here in verse 30 represent, even the strongest and healthiest and most able-bodied
among us can grow weary.
If you’ve been watching the Olympics, these young, strong athletes who’ve trained so much,
even they get tired, even they need to rest, but God never needs to rest.
Neither, and those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, verse 31, but
they who wait for 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.
Now the phrase renew their strength, the Hebrew word for renew here, can literally mean exchange.
As one commentator points out, the Hebrew for this verb is used of changes of clothes,
which can symbolize strength and beauty.
If you turn to Isaiah 52, verse 1, notice how Isaiah uses this language.
He says, awake, awake, put on your strength, oh Zion.
And what does it mean to put on your strength?
Put on your beautiful garments, oh Jerusalem, the holy city.
The beautiful garments that the people of God are to be clothed with is the strength
of the Lord.
By the grace of God, we believers can exchange our weakness for the strength of Christ.
The apostle Paul said in Romans 13, verse 14, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make
no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts or desires thereof.
Instead of giving in to the desires of the flesh, put on, like you would put on a new
piece of clothing, put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
And though it is, again, a different context as Paul is battling against false apostles
and false teachers that were arising in the Corinthian church, 2 Corinthians 12, 7-10
is powerful in relationship to this matter.
It says this in 2 Corinthians 12, 7-10, Paul writes, so to keep me from becoming conceited
because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given to me in the
flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.
Paul’s talking, we’re not exactly sure what this thorn in the flesh was, but Paul felt
weak in his service as an apostle.
He says, three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me.
But he said to me, what did the Lord say to Paul?
My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
When we are weak, that’s an opportunity for God to display his glorious, gracious power.
And so Paul says, therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that
the power of Christ may rest upon me.
For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions
and calamities.
For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Because God is all-powerful, he is able to give strength to those who wait upon him in
faith.
And so, friends, as we close our time in the Word today, a couple of points I want to make
briefly.
First of all, dear ones, Jesus not only provides us with forgiveness for our sins at the beginning
of our Christian lives and indeed throughout our Christian lives as we daily renew our
repentance and faith.
Jesus also provides us with strength for the journey of our Christian life, the journey
of discipleship.
Jesus calls us to take up our cross and follow him.
I’ve got news for you.
None of us can do that.
You cannot, in your own strength or power, take up your cross and follow Jesus.
It’s simply not in you.
Likewise, you cannot, in your own steam, repent and believe.
It’s all a gift of God, not of works.
But for those who wait upon the Lord, who rest in him, who acknowledge their weakness,
their sin, their frailty, and look to Christ alone for strength and grace to them, their
strength will be renewed.
O weak and weary believer, let me counsel you.
Own your weaknesses, own your frailty, own your sin.
Stop relying on yourself, your own resources.
Come and find your strength in your Savior.
Look to the unwearied God to refresh you and renew your strength.
So again, I end my sermon with the question I began it with, and that question is, is
God too big to care?
I hope I’ve convinced you that no.
He’s not too big to care, but he is too big to fail.
You say, well, what is the proof of his care for us?
And what is the proof of his victory?
A simple one-word answer.
It’s a name.
Jesus.
Jesus is the proof that the Father cares.
Jesus is the proof that he is able to renew our strength.
O dear brothers and sisters, let us draw strength from the never-ending reservoir of God’s grace
in Christ, which he makes available to us by his Word and Holy Spirit.
And let us remember that there is a river whose streams make glad the city of God.
That river is the Holy Spirit applying to you and me the redemption of Christ.
Let us look to him and be renewed.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you, God, that though we are weak, though we are frail, though we
are sinful and wayward, you have mercy upon us.
And we thank you that in Christ our strength can be renewed.
And so let us as the Zion of God awake, awake, and put on our beautiful garments, the strength
of the Lord.
In Jesus’ name we pray, and all of God’s people said, Amen.
As we close our time, let’s rise and we’ll sing together.
Number 228, hast thou not known, hast thou not heard.
228.