ISAIAH 30 BLESSED ARE ALL WHO WAIT FOR GOD2019 Teaching by Jerry B Simmons

Teaching Transcript: Isaiah 30 Blessed Are All Who Wait For God

You are listening to FerventWord, an online Bible study ministry with teachings and tools to help you grow deeper in your relationship with God. The following message was taught by Jerry Simmons in 2019.

This morning as we get into Isaiah chapter 30, I want to begin a little bit differently than I usually would, and that is to ask you to pull out a piece of paper. Maybe you have your bulletin with you, there's some note paper on the back of the bulletin. Maybe you prefer the digital form of note-taking, and that's fine too, but whatever your preference is for writing down some thoughts, writing down some notes, I

I would ask you, first of all, first and foremost, as we get into this passage this morning, to get that out, to get that ready, and be prepared to write down this question that I'm about to give you, this instruction that I'm about to give. And it's really not a question for me or from me, but it's a question from you to God. Okay? So if you've got your paper out, you've got your pen out, you've got your note app out, however you like to do that, here's the question for you to put down. God,

Are you waiting for me in any way? Let's take a moment and write that down. God, are you waiting for me in any way? The question is an important one for us to ask, and it's an important one for us to address to the Lord as we consider verse 18 here of Isaiah chapter 30. And verse 18 again says, therefore, the Lord will wait that he may be gracious to you.

And therefore he will be exalted that he may have mercy on you. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all those who wait for him. We understand and we talk about as believers pretty regularly, I would say this idea of waiting on the Lord and waiting for the Lord. But verse 18 says something interesting as well, that the Lord will wait, well, for his people.

And there is the place where we are waiting for the Lord, and that's a blessed place to be. It says there at the end of verse 18, but there's also a place where the Lord is waiting. And I would maybe encourage you to think about it like a waiting room. And you could think about it this way. Are you in God's waiting room? That is, you know, you're in that seating place, that waiting room to meet with God, to hear from God, to spend time with God. Are you in God's waiting room?

Or flip-flop that, is God in your waiting room? Instead of you waiting on the Lord and waiting to meet with the Lord and waiting to be with the Lord, that the Lord is outside. He's waiting for you outside.

to perhaps come to a place where you need to be or to give him attention that he needs and deserves, that you could be in a place where you have God in a waiting room or you could be in a place where you are in the waiting room and waiting for God. I've titled the message this morning, Blessed are all who wait for God.

And that's what it says there at the end of verse 18. And yet it also says that, well, for God's people in this case, in Isaiah's day, well, God was in the waiting room for them. That they were not in the place where they needed to be. And so God had to wait for,

in order for them to come to the place where they would allow him to work in their lives the way that he desired. And so you can have either waiting room, but the one who is blessed is the one who is not keeping God waiting, but the one who is waiting on God. It's something that we need to consider this morning here in Isaiah chapter 30. You think about waiting, and it could easily seem that waiting should be the easiest thing in the world.

because all you have to do is just sit there and wait, right? And yet, so often, waiting is so difficult and painful and agonizing. I mean, you go to any waiting room, and you can see the stress, right? The agony. There's the tension, the waiting, and you can think about that in the medical, you know, sense, or you can think about that in even just the travel sense, right? You go to an airport, and you have the waiting rooms, and

there's not a lot of peace and rest usually in waiting rooms, right? It's tension and stress and anxiety and commotion and activity. And waiting is just something that can be difficult for us. And yet we need to come to a place and we need to learn what it means to and how to wait for the Lord. And so God has some good instruction for us to help us work through that this morning here in Isaiah chapter 30. We're

We're going to go back now to verse 1 of Isaiah chapter 30 and start to work our way through some of these verses. But looking at four different points, the first point this morning is in verses 1 through 7, and that is wait for God by asking him for advice. If you want to be one of those who are blessed, the blessed who wait for the Lord, here's how we can start doing that. And that is to ask God for advice. Let's read verses 1 through 3. Here's what it says.

Woe to the rebellious children, says the Lord, who take counsel but not of me, and who devise plans but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin, who walk to go down to Egypt and have not asked my advice, to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh and to trust in the shadow of Egypt. Therefore the strength of Pharaoh shall be your shame, and trust in the shadow of Egypt shall be your humiliation.

Here is the Lord begins this address to the people of God through the prophet Isaiah. He begins by pronouncing a woe. It's a word of judgment as well as a word of sorrow. Woe to the rebellious children.

That is, these children of God are rebellious. And so there's a judgment that they will be undergoing or enduring in the near future. And it's not something that is going to be pleasant. It's going to be sorrowful, difficult, hurtful. It's a woe for the people. It's also a woe for God that it's sorrowful that he must bring this judgment.

correction and this instruction, this judgment upon his people, but it is something he must do because of his love for his people. And so this word woe expresses this judgment, this sorrow on both sides for the Lord and for the people that he is correcting. Woe to the rebellious children, says the Lord, who take counsel, but not of me. And the issue here that God highlights in this woe is this issue of taking counsel.

Now, just speaking and considering counsel in general, we can understand that generally speaking, to take counsel is something that is good. We know, you might be familiar with the proverb, right? Proverbs 11, 14, where there is no counsel, the people fall. But in the multitude of counselors, there is safety.

And there is this kind of exhortation throughout the scriptures that there is a need for us to receive counsel, to take counsel, to have other people who have input into our lives.

And we may have different kinds of relationships to this concept of counsel throughout our lives, especially, you know, being younger and then kind of growing up. You can go through these different phases of your life where perhaps there's this season where you just don't receive counsel at all. You're just in a place where you don't want to hear from anybody.

And nobody can tell me what to do. And I know what I need to do. I don't want to hear from you what you think I should do. And we can find ourselves in that condition where we are not open to receiving counsel at all. And I think generally speaking, we would understand that that's not a good position to be in. And yet it is a position that we might find ourselves throughout our life. That we're just not able to or willing to receive counsel at all.

But that's not the condition of the children of Israel here. They were receiving counsel. But God's problem with the counsel that they were receiving was that, well, it was not from him. Now, you might be in a season and you might be the kind of person who does seek counsel and perhaps you have your trusted advisors, that you have maybe a handful of people that, you know, you respect them.

what they have to say. And, and you would want to hear, you would want to know what, what, what do you think I should do in this situation? And, and there might be many occasions where you seek out counsel from those people. And perhaps you even have, you know, kind of different people for different types of counsel. Well, I need counsel for my, you know, marriage relationship. And so this is the person I go to. I have a trusted advisor there, you know, I'm,

I'm working through some financial things. And so here's who I go to to talk about, you know, financial conditions and situations. And here's my career situation. And so this is the person I go to. And perhaps you have some trusted advisors that you go to. And you're in that place of being able to receive counsel. And that is very good. And yet at the same time, the question is, are you receiving counsel from the Lord?

And you might think, well, yeah, because, you know, the people that I talk to, I go talk to this person for this situation and I trust them to give me godly counsel. That's a godly man. That's a godly woman. And so, you know, I'm going to a godly person to receive counsel. And again, that's advisable. That's a good thing to do. But it's not necessarily the same thing as taking counsel of the Lord and receiving counsel from the Lord.

And so the Lord speaks to his people and he says, you're receiving counsel. That in itself is somewhat commendable, perhaps under certain circumstances, but there's a problem with the counsel that you're receiving. Because although you're seeking out wisdom and advice, you're not seeking it out from me. And it highlights for us that there is counsel.

The opportunity for us to seek counsel in a way that it's not good. It's not good for us to be in a place where we will not seek out counsel or receive counsel. That's not good. We do need to be those who seek counsel and have others around us who can speak into our lives. But at the same time, we need to keep ourselves in a place where we also are seeking counsel of the Lord. Another type of relationship that sometimes we might have with counsel is that we are

Go to seek out counsel every opportunity we can. So we go from person to person. Here's my situation. What do you think? Here's my situation. What do you think? Here's my situation. What do you think? Here's my situation. What do you think? Here's my situation. And there's this going from person to person, from place to place, and this continual seeking out of counsel of everyone and anyone, kind of without discerning their perspective and how much

much wisdom they have in the situation that we face. And that's another dangerous thing to do. There's a lot of reasons why, but here's one caution I'll just kind of throw out there. It's kind of a side note from the main point this morning. But if you're going, if you're one of those who is going from person to person, asking counsel of every person and in every conversation,

then I would encourage you to maybe just seek the Lord on why that is. Because it might be that you're just looking for an excuse to seek attention. That you're just bringing up your situation and seeking counsel. It's under the guise of it sounds wise. It sounds like a good, righteous thing to do. But

but you can also go beyond really where it's good and appropriate and just use it as a means to kind of satisfy your own self-centeredness. And so something to pay attention to and watch out for. So we need to be those who receive counsel, but we also need to be those who receive counsel from the Lord.

That it's not just about, hey, go to Pastor Pule. He'll give you some sound advice. He's a godly man. And you will get, you know, some great encouragement, some great instruction. It's not about just go to everybody and find out everybody's opinion about what you should do. That's not good or healthy. And it's not about don't tell me nothing, right? I'm just going to do it myself. No, no. You need to receive counsel. And that's the place where the children of Israel were. The children of Judah were receiving counsel.

But God says, the problem is you're not receiving counsel from me. It's something for you to consider this morning. Do you ask God for counsel? Maybe you have your trusted advisors. Is the Lord one of those? Now, that's something that we may wrestle with a little bit because, well, I can go sit down with Pastor Poole and have a meal and have a conversation and we're face-to-face and I can get some counsel. But how do I get counsel from the Lord?

How do I ask God for advice? And that can be something that we wrestle with. And so let me give you earth shattering. Let me just change your world and just, you know, everything you've known, give you truth that you never even imagined before. Here's how you ask God for advice. You ready? You have your paper out, the paper you started with. You can now write down this next one. God, what do you think I should do in this situation?

We can't overcomplicate it in our minds. We can make it way more complex than it needs to be. To ask God for advice, all you need to do is, well, ask God for advice.

And for you, that may take the form of taking out a piece of pen and not a piece of pen, a pen and a piece of paper and writing down. It may take the form of digitally, you know, typing in your notes. But however you prefer to do that, that you would, well, write out your question before the Lord. Invite God to speak to you about the situation that you face and the decisions that you are making.

We can do this in a few different methods and there's a few different forms this may practically take, but one of the ways that we do this is by prayer, where we just in prayer say, Lord, what would you have me to do? What would you lead me in in this situation, in this decision? How would you want me to move forward and to handle this conversation? We need to be

The kind of people, the people of God who ask God for advice and counsel in the things that we face. Another way that we can seek out the advice of the Lord is by spending time in the word of God.

Because here in the Word of God, we have His Word. We have His thoughts. We have His nature, His character revealed. We have His instruction for how to, you know, handle certain things, how to behave in certain ways, and some great insights, not only just in the practical, you know, examples that we have, but then the Holy Spirit ministering to us through the Word and

the Lord is able to give us great advice and counsel for the situations that we face. And so it doesn't have to be complex and it doesn't have to be, you know, crazy and unthinkable, you know, the way that we ask God for counsel, but simply just writing down your question and presenting your situation before the Lord is a great way to take that before the Lord in prayer and to seek him out in his word and

and to find out what he would have to say in advice and counsel for you. Now, the children of Judah at this time were not in that place. They were not asking God for counsel, and God had some serious things to say about that. In verse 1, he calls it rebellion. He calls it rebellion. Now, they were religious. They still believed in God. They still practiced, you know, the sacrifices at the temple. They still did all kinds of religious activities, but the Lord says, you're rebellious children.

You're religious on the outward. You have a good form going on. And yet at the same time, internally, you're not asking God for counsel. You're not desiring the insight from the Lord for your situation. And it really comes down to a matter of God's will versus my will.

that they were not interested in the will of God. They were not seeking out the Lord's will. And so it put them in this place of seeking their own will and their desires. And that's a place of rebellion, of resisting the will of God. Here in verse one, God also says that doing this, they are adding sin to sin. They're increasing their sinfulness by not asking God for counsel and advice.

Because they're not interested in the will of God. They're increasing their sinfulness. They're making things worse in their rebellion against God. And not only that, but it's causing them to misplace their trust. In verse 2, God says they have now trusted in the shadow of Egypt. Their trust is now misplaced. Now, the context for what Judah is facing at this time is important to understand.

At this time, the nation of Judah, having split from Israel, they're just a small little nation. And there's a world power known as Assyria that is conquering the whole world. The world as they knew it at that time. And the nation of Assyria is about to conquer the nation of Israel, which was the other half of the kingdom that was divided. But they were a much bigger and stronger nation than Judah was. And Assyria was conquering them, taking their land. Assyria was...

defeating all the peoples around Judah. And so Judah in that condition decided, well, how are we going to handle this? We're small compared to Israel. We're small compared to these other nations. Assyria is this world power. How are we going to protect ourselves from them? Well, they sought counsel. They talked with each other. They got the elders together, the advisors together. All right, what do we do? What's our best strategy? And they decided our best strategy is to make a good alliance with Egypt.

And Egypt, they're really strong. So if we make an alliance with them, they will protect us against Assyria. They will be a wall between us and Assyria. And they will, you know, protect us so that we survive this attack. They're trusting in Egypt. And it's a trust that is misplaced. Verse 3, he says, Therefore, the strength of Pharaoh shall be your shame, and trust in the shadow of Egypt shall be your humiliation.

trusting in the wrong thing will be a matter of humiliation for us. And when we do not seek God's advice and counsel, we begin to trust in the wrong things. We're going to be ashamed of those decisions later on, those things that we trusted in instead of the Lord. In the next few verses, verses four through six, the Lord kind of expounds this idea of Egypt not being able to help them and the futility of them trusting in Egypt in this way.

Jumping to verse 7, it says, God says, Egypt is going to try to help, but it's going to be pointless. It's going to be in vain. They're not going to be helpful in protecting you from Assyria. And so much so, God gives Egypt a nickname, Rahab Hem Shabeth. And the basic idea of this name is that Egypt in her pride says,

is actually going to end up doing nothing. Rahab sits idle is kind of a literal translation. Rahab is another word for pride. And so the pride of Egypt, the arrogance of Egypt, the strength of Egypt ultimately is going to do nothing. It's going to be of no value. It's not going to accomplish anything. And so here is Judah in this condition, seeking advice and seeking counsel. That's admirable. That's a good quality. We need that quality.

but they're not asking God for counsel. They're not including God in their counselors. They're not going to God first for counsel and putting his thoughts and his advice above all others. If we want to wait for the Lord and be those who are blessed in waiting for God, we need to come to him and ask for advice. If we just listen to our own advice, if we just listen to the advice of others and not the advice of God, we will find ourselves in that place of

Well, that nickname, Rahab Hem Shabbat, that all of those counsels and all of those plans and all those devices that we come up with will end up doing nothing except to further our rebellion in not hearing from God and receiving from God. Now, it's important to understand God will use people to give you his counsel, asking God for advice,

We talked about prayer. We talked about the word. But we also know God uses the body of Christ to minister to one another. And so there are times that the advice of God is given through a human messenger. And that's often the case as well. And so how do we determine? How do we decide? How do we discern which is which? When is it just Rick's advice? And when is it the Lord's advice? Well, again, sometimes we can really make it overcomplicated. Listen, if you don't know...

wait. If you don't know, if you can't tell, I can't tell if this is Rick's advice or the Lord's advice. Well, just wait and continue to ask God for advice. He knows how to speak to you when he wants to. He knows how to confirm things that he is speaking to you. He knows how to get a hold of you and reveal, you know, his advice and his counsel to you. If you don't know, it's okay. Just wait. Wait on the Lord. Seek him for counsel and advice. Wait. Wait.

Again, that can be really difficult for us, but I would encourage you to picture those two waiting rooms. Are you in God's waiting room? You're waiting for his advice. Tough decision, big situation, you need insight, you need counsel. Are you waiting for the Lord? Are you in his waiting room, waiting for him to give you the counsel and advice you need? Or is God in your waiting room?

And you're seeking out your own counsel. You have your own ideas. You have your own plans. You have your own counselors. And you're busy working out those things. And God's here off to the side waiting. He has advice. He has counsel to give you. But you're keeping him waiting by focusing on all these others instead of him. Wait for God by asking him for advice. Well, moving on to verses 8 through 14, we get point number 4 this morning.

I'm sorry, not point number four. Point number two. Really jumped ahead there, huh? Point number two, wait for God by listening to him. Wait for God by listening to him. Number one, we ask him for advice, but part of that asking for advice is to then give him space, give him opportunity to speak. And that is for us to listen to what the Lord is saying. Let's jump into a few of these verses. Verses eight through 11, here's what it says.

Now go, write it before them on a tablet, and note it on a scroll, that it may be for time to come forever and ever, that this is a rebellious people, lying children, children who will not hear the law of the Lord, who say to the seers, do not see, and to the prophets, do not prophesy to us right things, speak to us smooth things, prophesy deceits.

Get out of the way. Turn aside from the path. Cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us. Here as we continue to see the condition of the people of Judah, we see they are definitely in a dark time where they are not wanting to listen to God at all. And God says, Isaiah, I need you to write this down. Just like I encourage you, you know, pull out a piece of paper, you know, hey, write this down. This needs to be noted for the record.

Write this down. My people are rebellious and they will not hear the law of the Lord. Later on, the people are going to blame all of their circumstances on God. That's what we're good at, right? We ignore what God has to say. We don't seek him for counsel. We get into all kinds of trouble and then we blame God. Lord, how could you allow this to happen in my life?

And God says, look, write it down on a piece of paper. I've been in the waiting room. You've kept me here and you've gone on and you've done all these things. And I'm not to blame for what you've brought upon yourself, but that's what we often do. Here's the children of Judah in verse nine. He says, these are children who will not hear the law of the Lord. Now notice it does not say they cannot hear the law of the Lord, but that they will not hear the law of the Lord.

It's not that they're incapable of hearing from God. It's not that they don't have access to the word of God, but it's that they refuse to listen to the word of the Lord. You and I today have great access to the word of God. We have opportunity to hear the law of the Lord like never before. We can hear the law of the Lord in our time of reading. We can read through the scriptures.

We can literally, like actually quite literally, hear the law of the Lord in that we have an abundance of audio Bibles available to us as well. And I would encourage you, if you kind of struggle with the reading, don't give up on reading, but maybe add to your time with the Lord some listening of the scriptures and allow the Lord to minister to you. And you can hear the law of the Lord and hear the scriptures being read to you. It's kind of

strange for us, maybe, perhaps, but, you know, throughout most of history, that was the way that the Word of God was received. There was only a few who owned scrolls, you know, back in Old Testament and New Testament days, but people would hear the Word of God. It was read to them, and that's a legitimate form of hearing from the Lord and allowing God to minister to you. Now, that doesn't mean you have an excuse to just be lazy and never read things for yourself, but

But at the same time, you can be encouraged greatly. This is something I do quite frequently. I have an app and I queue up the passages I'm preparing to teach and I just listen over and over and allow the Lord to minister in that way. Again, it's not that they could not hear the law of the Lord, but it was that they will not hear. And I wouldn't even go as far as to say that today as well. Listen, if you're not getting the word, if you're not hearing the word of the Lord, it's just because you don't want to.

It's not because you can't. It's not because you, you know, don't have opportunity or access. It's just because you don't want to. If you don't ask God for advice, I would suggest it's because you don't want God's advice. It's not because you can't, because you're not holy enough or spiritual enough or, you know, glorious enough. It's not any of those things that we might try to use to kind of calm down our conscience a little bit. But it's really just the reality that I'm just not interested in what God has to say.

I don't really, I'm not that interested in what the word of God says or what God's advice would be. That was the state of the children of Judah at this time. They would not hear the word of the Lord. Going on into verse 10, it expounds that even further. They say to the seers, do not see. Now a seer was another way that they would refer to the prophets. It was another name or title for the prophets. And so they said to the seers, hey, you see visions from the Lord? Hey, don't see anymore, right?

We don't want to hear about your visions. We don't want to hear what God's revealing to you. We don't want to hear what the Lord is saying to you. They spoke to the prophets and said, do not prophesy to us right things. Now that's interesting. To the prophets, they said, look, we don't want you to be quiet altogether. We just want you to be a little bit more, apply some filtering to your message. Don't speak to us right things. Instead, speak to us smooth things. Hey prophet,

Elijah, Elisha, you know, we kind of like that you're around. We kind of like your ministry and stuff, but you know, we don't want to hear everything that you have to say. Can you just give us the things that are smooth? In other words, prophets, if you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all, right? Well, maybe that's a good mantra for, you know, raising children, but that's not a good mantra to give to those who speak on behalf of the Lord. You know what? God does have some smooth things to say.

some good things, some things that are going to encourage you and build you up and make you feel amazing and great. God has those things to speak to you, but not everything that God has to say to you will make you feel that way. For your good, because he loves you, some of the things that God has to say to you are some hard truths that you don't want to receive, that you don't want to hear, that are hard to hear and difficult to receive. But because God loves you,

Because he wants what's best for you, well, there are some right things that God is going to speak. It's kind of like if you go to the doctor, right? Now, everybody wants to go to the doctor and just hear smooth things. Everything looks great, you know? Everything is amazing. You know, your heart's in great condition. Your lungs are, you know, working well. You know, all of your organs are functioning properly. And you know what? That clean bill of health, great. But at the same time, if there's bad news, well, you know what?

You need the doctor. Even though you don't want to hear it, you need the doctor to tell you that news. In a similar way, the Lord has some smooth things for us. But these people are saying, no, no, only speak to us the smooth things. Don't talk about things we don't want to hear about. Don't call us to do things we don't want to do. So much so, God says in verse 10 that they're calling them to prophesy deceits. Lie to us.

Just tell us deceitful things. Just tell us, help us to feel good. That's all that really matters. That's all we need is we just, we just need to feel good right now. We just need to like be encouraged and uplifted and put a smile on my face. That's your job, prophet. And sometimes the Lord does use prophets to put a smile on our faces, right? Sometimes for our benefit and for our good, we also need those other kinds of messages. But the people of Judah were not willing to receive it. It's not unique to them.

It's something that will continue to go on. Even Paul warns Timothy about it in 2 Timothy 4, verse 3 and 4. Paul tells Timothy,

According to their own desires, what we want to hear, what we want to, you know, be told and instructed and encouraged in, and we want to feel good and be reminded of good things and smooth things. And so, well, in the last days, Paul says, we're going to heap up for ourselves teachers that will behave this way, prophets that will speak smooth things to us and prophesy deceits and not address the right things.

Now we could take that too far and that doesn't mean that a prophet is always supposed to be offensive and you know in that way. No, no, no. God has smooth things for us but he also has right things for us and we need to be willing and able to receive both. We need to be listening to God for both the smooth things and the right things. Going on into verse 11 they even go so far as to say get out of the way.

Turn aside prophets, turn aside seers. Cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us. We don't want to be reminded about God. We don't want to be reminded. And you're holding us back. Get out of the way. You're holding us back from where we want to go, where we need to go. You and God and all this message, it's keeping us away from what needs to happen. They were not willing to hear from God, to listen to God. Get out of the way.

You're holding us back. It reminded me of King Ahab. You remember King Ahab and Jehoshaphat in 1 Kings chapter 22? Ahab was the king of Israel. Jehoshaphat was the king of Judah. And Jehoshaphat and Ahab kind of teamed up together, and they were hanging out, and they said, let's go to battle. And all right, yeah, let's do it. And Jehoshaphat says, well, let's hear from the Lord and see what the Lord has to say about this. And so Ahab calls in a bunch of prophets, and they begin to prophesy, oh, go and do valiantly. You're going to be amazing. It's going to be awesome. And

They were all false prophets that Ahab brought in. And Jehoshaphat recognized it. He said, you know, there's something off about these guys. Isn't there a prophet of the Lord that we can seek out the counsel of the Lord from? And Ahab's response is interesting. Oh yeah, there's one left, but I hate him because he always prophesies bad things. He always prophesies evil things concerning me. He doesn't tell me good things. He doesn't tell me smooth things.

I like all these guys because they tell me smooth things and good things, all these false prophets. But I don't like to go to him because he doesn't give me those warm fuzzies. He doesn't put a smile on my face and make me feel good about myself. I don't really like that one. And Jehoshaphat said, no, no, let's bring him in. We need to hear from him. We can be just like that. That is the condition of people in the last days, Paul says. It's something we need to watch out for in our own hearts. To wait for God means that we listen to him.

Means that we receive his word. Now, he goes on in the next couple of verses to say, look, because you're in this place of refusing to listen, well, what's going to happen is you're going to experience sudden calamity. You may not experience immediate calamity so that, you know, today I refuse to hear God's word. And so today, you know, I receive the consequences of it. No, the consequences may come later, but it's all building up. It's like a breach in a wall. There's the little cracks that are forming, but

But there's going to be a point as you add sin to sin and continue in this condition that that wall is going to burst and all that stored up disobedience, it's going to be dealt with at that time. We need to be listening to the Lord. How do we do that? How do we listen to him? How do we hear from him? Well, I'm going to reveal to you some universal earth shattering truth that you've never heard before. It's going to be just mind blowing how amazing and wise this is.

here's how you hear from the Lord. You see what that is? It's a blank piece of paper. Just try that out. Just get a blank piece of paper and hear from the Lord. Listen to him. You know, sometimes listening, again, we make it so complicated in our minds, but it's not that much different than our own relationships together. Me and Pastor Pooley, we can go find some free ice cream later today. We can sit down and have a conversation.

I can talk to him. He can talk to me. It's something we can all understand, right? Now, if I'm seeking to get counsel from Pule, and so I ask him a question, and he goes to answer, but then I keep talking, and then he tries to answer again, but then I keep talking, and then he tries to answer again, but I keep talking, and then I keep talking, and then I keep talking, and he never gets to answer because I keep talking. In a similar way, listening to God, you know, sometimes all we need to do is just pull out a blank piece of paper and be quiet, right?

We talked about seeking advice from the Lord with prayer, and certainly that is one of the ways that we seek out God's advice. But don't forget the other side of that. Well, that is that you ask God for advice and then give him space to answer. Give him space on your note page. Give him space on your calendar. Give him space in the schedule. Give him time and opportunity. Again, talking about spending time with God and his word.

We can easily consume that time in his word with just us talking through the scriptures and us finding out what we want to find out. But there's also that space for, that need for meditating on the word and inviting God to speak. Not, here's my conclusions and here's my cross references and here's what I come up with. But Lord, here's your word and what do you have to say? And giving God opportunity to speak.

We wait for the Lord by listening to him. And so again, I would ask you to consider, are you in God's waiting room or is God in your waiting room? Are you in God's waiting room with your Bible open? You know, your time of prayer and you're just saying, all right, Lord, I'm here. I'm on your schedule. You come speak to me when you're ready. Or is God in your waiting room and you're saying, all right, here's what I'm doing and here's my plan and here's my, and you're doing all the talking and you're saying, God, I'll hear from you when I'm ready.

And we need to have opportunity, space, and listen to God, to be quiet, and to hear from him. Well, continuing on to verses 15 through 17, now we get point number three, and that is wait for God by obeying him. We wait for God by asking him for advice. We wait for God by asking or by listening to him, listening to the advice that he wants to give. And then finally, we wait for God by

Taking that advice and putting it into practice in our lives by obeying him. Here's what it says in verses 15 through 17. For thus says the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, in returning and rest, you shall be saved. In quietness and confidence shall be your strength, but you would not. And you said, no, for we will flee on horses. Therefore, you shall flee. And we will ride on swift horses. Therefore, those who pursue you shall be swift.

1,000 shall flee at the threat of one. At the threat of five, you shall flee till you are left as a pole on top of a mountain and as a banner on a hill. The Lord had advice for the people of Judah. Here comes Assyria, big bad superpower. They're coming, they're consuming everything, conquering everything. God has advice for them, but they haven't sought it. They haven't heard from the Lord. But here's his advice. Here's how to be saved. He said, in returning and rest.

returning is God's call to repentance the whole reason why they're in this situation was because well they had been rebelling against God and ignoring God's word and living out their own ways and refusing to to come back and get right with God and so God says now's your chance and many times God will allow these times of great pressure and stress as that wake-up call for us to say return return to me come get right with me return and rest that's how you're going to be saved

in quietness and confidence, he says. God's counsel is for them to return, to rest, to be quiet, and to trust him. Now that, if you're in the midst of Jerusalem, and you have this, you know, world empire swooping down on you, that is maybe not the most logical counsel or advice, you know, that you might consider. To just be quiet and rest.

And your wife comes downstairs, right? And she's like, what are you doing? You're like pulling out the hammock. I'm going to rest. But Assyria is coming. I know. Yeah. That's why I need to rest. I'm just going to enjoy the sun for a little bit. I'm going to be quiet and rest. Like that's not typically what you do when you're under attack, right? You know, God's counsel is often that way. Later on, the prophet Isaiah is going to tell us that the Lord's ways are higher than our ways, as high as the heavens are above the earth. In other words, God's way different than we are.

And a lot of times the instruction he gives and the advice that he gives, it doesn't make sense in our heads. It's not necessarily what we would think of. You know, sometimes, you know, when you're getting advice from somebody, you go, oh my goodness, that is like such good advice. That's smart. That's like the perfect answer. Oh man, why didn't I think of that? Right? Sometimes you have that experience. Listen, when you're hearing advice from the Lord, you might experience that. More typically, you're going to say, really? That? It's like the opposite of what I would have thought.

It's like the opposite of what I would have expected. You know, when Jesus said, you have to lose your life in order to save it. Like, how does that work? But that's the way that the advice and the counsel of God is. The word of God is. His ways are different than our ways. So he says, hey, prepare for battle by repenting, by resting, by being quiet, and by trusting in me. Now, there are other times where God calls his people to battle. But then there's some times where God just calls them to sit quietly.

How do you know which is which? How do you discern between the two? It's really complicated. Here's what, let me lay out 17 points about how to discern. No, no, one point. Wait, wait for the Lord. If you don't know, wait. Sometimes under the pressure, we feel like we have to act, we have to move. I was thinking about King Saul when he was seeing the Philistines come against him and

The prophet Samuel had set a time he was going to be there and he wasn't there yet. And he sees his people, you know, kind of spreading out and getting discouraged. He sees the armies, you know, gathering on the other side. And he's like, I just got to act. And he steps into gear. He gets into gear and he starts offering sacrifices that he's not supposed to offer. And he allowed the pressure of the situation to push him into action when what God wanted him to do was to wait. And God rebuked him.

Because he wasn't willing to wait. He wasn't obedient. He valued his own perspective more than the Lord's. And that's what Judah's saying. No, we're going to flee. We're not going to rest and be quiet. We're going to flee on horses. That's a good idea. Just give me a fast horse and I'm going to run away as fast as I can, right? And God says, okay, well, that's what you're going to do then. But guess what? Your enemy, they're going to have faster horses. Your best plans, your best techniques, they're not going to be effective. They're not going to be effective.

And your enemy, they're going to be faster. They're going to be smarter. They're going to be stronger. We wait for God by obeying him, even when it doesn't make sense to us, even when it's the opposite of what we would prefer or want to do. And if we put ourselves in the position of disobeying God, well, again, it's going to be something that we become ashamed of. And even our greatest plans, they're going to be proven to be weak. In verse 17, he says, one shall flee at the threat of, I'm sorry, 1000 shall flee at the threat of one.

the syrian is a massive army but because of your position and not waiting for the lord just one assyrian is going to cause a thousand of you to flee you're all going to be freaked out and running away because of one assyrian because of this condition of your heart that you are not waiting for god wait for god by obeying him think about moses leading the people out of egypt they come to the red sea

They're trapped. They've got the Red Sea. They've got two mountains on either side. And then they've got the armies of Egypt chasing after them. And Moses cries out to the Lord. In Exodus chapter 14, verse 15, God says, why do you cry to me? Tell the children of Israel to go forward. Crying out to the Lord, right? Seeking God for counsel and advice. And there's a time where God says, yeah, that's perfect. Let me give you some advice. And then there's time where God says,

I've already given you what you need. Go forward. That's all you need. Go forward. Start to do. Start to obey. And the Lord may do both in our lives. Sometimes he calls us to sit quietly, to return, to rest, to be quiet and trust him. And sometimes he calls us to battle. And if you don't know which is which, wait. Wait for the Lord. Again, it seems like waiting should be the easiest thing in the world, but it can be so...

hard. So difficult to wait in the face of all the things that are going on. But wait, trust God. He's able to work in incredible ways. Well, we're going to finish it up this morning in verses 18 through 22. Here's point number four. Don't make God wait for you. So this is the opposite. If we want to wait for God, we ask him for advice. We listen to him and we obey him. But if we don't wait for God, then what we're doing is we're making God wait for

Again, verse 18. Verse 19. He will answer you.

Here the Lord says, look, I still have plans for you, Judah. You're rebellious. You're ignoring my advice. You're doing exactly the opposite of what I'm asking you to do. But I'm not giving up on you yet. I still have plans for you. You're going to still come back to Jerusalem. I'm still going to wipe away your tears. There's still good plans that I have for you to be gracious to you and merciful to you. The goodness of God is incredible and illustrated over and over again throughout the history of Israel. But...

Even though he had these good plans, in order to accomplish these good plans, God is saying, I have to deal with your rebellion. I have to bring correction. When God waits for you, it's gracious, it's merciful, but it's also corrective and it may be painful. Verse 20, he says, and though the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction,

Yet your teachers will not be moved into a corner anymore, but your eyes shall see your teachers. God's going to bring adversity. He's going to bring affliction to bring correction so that they come back to that place of repentance and rest and quietness and confidence. They won't receive it by his word. And so they will receive it by affliction. But in that is the goodness and mercy of God, because he says, then your teachers will not be moved into a corner anymore.

Through this affliction, through this discipline and correction that I'm bringing to you, God says, you're going to be able to hear from me again. Through this, you're going to be able to hear my voice and be put in the place where you need to be and moved in the right direction again. In verse 21, your ears shall hear a word behind you saying, this is the way, walk in it. Whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left. Through this correction that I'm about to bring, through this discipline,

Now, it would have been much better and easier for Judah if they had sought the Lord's advice, listened to it, and then did it. That's the better path. That's the smoother course for them. But because they refused, it doesn't mean that God gave up on them entirely. But instead, God says, okay, we're going to accomplish it a different way. And it's going to be through this affliction, through this trial that is about to come. It's correction from the Lord.

And through that, you'll be able to hear from me. That's what it does when we make God wait for him. When God's waiting for us to seek him, when God's waiting for us to obey him, when God's waiting for us to listen to him, when God waits for us, it means, well, there's gonna be some correction that's needed. There's gonna be some affliction perhaps that's needed because he loves us. He doesn't just let us go. As the author of Hebrews said in Hebrews 12, the Lord disciplines those that he loves. And because he loves us,

He's going to bring us back to that place of being able to hear from him and receive his instruction. Essentially, we can do it the easy way or we can do it the hard way. And so it brings me back to the question we started with at the beginning. God, are you waiting for me in any way? Is there any aspect of my life, any part of my life that God's waiting for me to receive from him his word, to change my heart, to change my attitude, to begin to behave differently,

according to his desires? Is God waiting for me? Do I have him in the waiting room? In any aspect, in any arena of my life, or am I in God's waiting room? In that place of blessed are all who wait for God. Because I've got my trust in him. I'm resting in him. I've got my confidence in him. Seeking his advice, listening to what he says, and putting it into practice. Listen, there's great blessing and great reward if we will wait for the Lord.

We're going to jump ahead for just a moment to the end of Isaiah. We'll get there in a couple weeks in our reading. But Isaiah 64.4 says, For since the creation, I'm sorry, for since the beginning of the world, men have not heard nor perceived by the ear, nor has the eye seen any God besides you who acts for the one who waits for him. We have this incredible God, unlike anything else that has ever existed, who waits for

I'm sorry, who acts for those who wait for him. Let's be those blessed, those blessed ones who wait for the Lord by asking him for advice, listening to him, and then obeying him. Lord, we come before you this morning and we pray that you would work in our hearts in a way that we would be open and receptive to what you have to say. Lord, that like Jesus, we'd be able to say, not my will, but your will be done.

Lord, regarding the different situations that we face and the decisions that we have to make, Lord, help us to keep your priorities, to keep your word, and to allow you to override what we think, what we want, what we desire, Lord, because you know what's best. And so God, help us to stay in your waiting room, waiting upon you, looking to you, acting when you instruct, but also sitting quietly when you want us to do that.

Lord, that can be really difficult, but I pray that you would give us strength and faith to trust in your love for us, knowing that you desire what's best. You know what's best, and you want what's best to teach us to rest in you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. We pray you have been blessed by this Bible teaching. The power of God to change a life is found in the daily reading of his word. Visit ferventword.com to find more teachings and Bible study resources.