Our Arm Every Morning

The Folly of Trusting in Nations and the Hope of Zion

Amen. Well, please turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 33. We're continuing this afternoon in Isaiah 33. This whole section, just as a reminder, has been about the folly of trusting in the nations, and we continue with that theme here, of course, where Isaiah, on behalf of his people, expresses a contriteness, an eagerness to rest in the strength of the Lord instead of the strength of nations.

And you go back and forth in this section between statements of judgment on their people for their lack of trusting in God and prophecies about a time when they will one day trust in the Lord. And these things are, of course, fulfilled in Jesus Christ when He has created a people for Himself to trust in Him, when He has established the heavenly Zion, not merely the earthly one but the heavenly one, reigning from on high.

Well, if you have Isaiah 33, please stand for the reading of God's Word, beginning in verse 1. "'Ah, you destroyer, who yourself have not been destroyed! You traitor, whom none have betrayed! When you have ceased to destroy, you will be destroyed.

When you have finished betraying, they will betray you. O Lord, be gracious to us. We wait for you. Be our arm every morning, our salvation in the time of trouble. At the tumultuous noise, peoples flee.

When you lift yourself up, nations are scattered, and your spoil is gathered as the caterpillar gathers, as locusts leap, it is leapt upon. The Lord is exalted, for He dwells on high. He will fill Zion with justice and righteousness, and He will be the stability of your times.

Abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge, the fear of the Lord is Zion's treasure.'". Amen. You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank You today for Your Word, for these sweet promises from the mouth of Your prophet.

We ask that we would receive these things fully, that we would be able to understand them, that we would embrace them, and that we would be moved to humility, understanding that it is when we are weak that we are strong.

Weakness, Sin, and the Need for God's Strength

In Jesus' name, amen. Well, because of sin, because of the fallen condition that we are in, we live in an unstable world where we ourselves are unstable people, quickly destroyed, just like that. There's all kinds of calamity that exists in our world, all kinds of hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, diseases, all kinds of things can take people out so quickly.

All these things exist because of sin in our world. And moreover, people have in their own lives an instability where they lack peace with God because of their sin, where they lack a right understanding of the world around them, and they possess a cognitive dissonance not understanding those things because they cannot understand them as the mind of Christ would have us to, as being things in God's world.

But all of this instability is corrected by God, by this great Savior that we have, Jesus Christ, who came and died for our sin, that we might be at peace with God, that we might hope for a world, a certain hope, not a likely hope, but a certain hope for a world where sickness and death and all other forms of such instability have been taken away.

But as I've said, this is something that can be enjoyed even in this life, knowing that we can have a perfect peace with God. And this happens not when we strive for such things on our own, but rather when we recognize that the only way we can have them is through God, when we recognize that we are not the ones who are strong, that our problems cannot be solved by our own might, but they can only be solved by the Lord's might.

It is when we realize this that God acts. He brings us to such breaking points in order that we might understand His strength in our own weakness. We can go on in ignorance, believing that we are strong, but if we recognize our weakness and we trust in Him, there is found true strength.

Waiting on the Lord in Prayer and Obedience

So you look at this beginning part where it speaks of waiting on the Lord. O Lord, be gracious to us. We wait for You. The people in the past have not waited on the Lord. They have made alliances. They made an alliance with Assyria that they were not supposed to make because it was against the Lord's will, and then Assyria turned on them, and then they went and made an alliance with Egypt, and Egypt has failed them.

And so repeatedly, these people have not waited on the Lord, wait for the Lord to answer His promises, but rather they have taken matters into their own hands. This happens every day when people decide, rather than to wait upon the Lord to take matters into their own hands, to rather than resist sin and temptation, to engage in sin and temptation, thinking that they will provide the things that they offer.

You know, every kind of temptation, the reason why it is a temptation is because it has something good to offer, at least it claims to, but these things never pan out. It never works out that what sin offers will stay, that it will not come with something far, far worse.

And so, rather than, rather than falling into such temptation, we must wait on the Lord. To wait on the Lord is simply to obey His commands rather than to transgress His commands. It is phrased, waiting on the Lord, because it most often involves a sort of waiting, rather than doing something sinful, it involves waiting for God to answer.

Now, waiting on the Lord is not always a matter of inaction. In fact, it must always be a matter of action because it at least involves prayer. You know, we are to pray to the Lord when we wait upon Him.

Waiting upon the Lord is not a matter of sitting around and being lazy and passive. It is a very active matter to wait upon the Lord. I would like each of you to answer this question in your own head.

You know, how much time do you spend each day in secret prayer? And ask yourself whether or not that is reflective of someone who is waiting upon the Lord. Now, even as Christians, even as people bought by Jesus Christ and have been sanctified by Him, there's always going to be room to grow, but we need to be honest with ourselves about whether or not our time in secret prayer truly reflects a waiting upon the Lord.

You know, let me give you a couple of tips if your prayer life is is struggling. I have found over the past couple years much help in keeping a journal. A journal of what I've prayed for so that I'm able to see the things that God has answered.

I'm able to give Him thanks for such things without forgetting them. I'm able to hold myself accountable to pray regularly. These things are, I've found this very helpful and I would commend this practice to you.

It's, of course, not something that's commanded by the Bible, but it is one very practical way that you can hold yourself accountable and really grow in your prayer life. So, speaking of this importance of very actively waiting on the Lord, at the singles dinner recently, I was asked by one single, what would it look like to wait upon the Lord in the matter of pursuing a spouse?

Because a lot of people have the idea that what that looks like is waiting for God to drop a spouse into your lap, right? And that's not how it works. You see in Scripture that's not how it worked, right?

People would send their servants far across the known universe to find someone. Ruth placed herself in Boaz's field. Waiting upon the Lord is always good, but waiting upon the Lord is not always passive.

In fact, it is never passive when you count prayer, and when you count other outward actions, it very often involves something very active. So, something to keep in mind as you consider what it means to truly wait upon the Lord.

God's Strength, Omnipotence, and Glory

It says, be our arm every morning. Every morning. You know, another thing I would commend to you is praying in the morning in particular. You know, I believe we should be praying both morning and evening, but in the morning at the start of the day, acknowledging your need for the remainder of the day.

This is a great way to acknowledge your weakness, which is really the theme of this passage. Acknowledging weakness that we might receive the strength of God. So, when describing this, he says, be our arm every morning, our salvation in time of trouble.

What is the arm? The arm is the strong part of the body. You want to do something that requires heavy lifting. What part of the body do you use? You use your arm. God is the strength of His people to all who trust in Him, to all who recognize their own weakness.

Now, many people doubt the strength of God in things. They doubt whether or not He will act or whether or not He is able. It's simply because they do not see Him working. But we are to have eyes of faith.

We are to look to Scripture and understand that the One who created the entire universe, of course, is able to accomplish the greatest of things. And if He does not do the great thing that you are asking for, it is simply because it is not that great.

It is simply because it is not something that is for good. He knows what is good for His children. He is not the kind of Father that if His child asked for bread, He would give him a stone, or asked for fish, and He would give him a serpent.

Rather, He gives what is truly good. If a child asked for a serpent, He would give a fish. If a child asked for stone, He would give bread. He knows what is good. And He is strong in a way that we are not.

You know, I think one problem with many people contemplating the attributes of God, you know, His strength, His wisdom, His omniscience, omnipotence, all these things, people often tend to think of them as like what I have, but just more so.

That's not the case. God is not in the same species with us. He is not a man that we should compare our strength to His strength. Yes, He is more strong, but He is more strong in the way that His strength transcends our strength.

When we talk about Him being strong, there is an analogy there between our strength and His strength, but it is something entirely different. When you see a strong man lift something, even if it is very small, He is exerting some effort.

You know, a strong man lifting a heavy thing, He is exerting a lot of effort. God does not exert any effort. You see someone using heavy equipment or a tank, right, and they might just have a joystick on the inside.

That would be almost a perfect example, except they would still be using that joystick. They're still exerting some kind of effort. God exerts no effort when He works. There is nothing that He accomplishes that requires Him to lose anything from Himself.

This is the kind of omnipotence that He has. It is not a power that is simply greater than ours in the same likeness as ours, but rather something of an entirely different category. He is able to solve everything.

He is fully trustworthy to solve the greatest of problems, and so we should be going to Him in prayer, seeking His answer for these things. It says that the tumultuous noise, people flee. When you lift yourself up, nations are scattered.

The tumultuous noise, people flee. The tumultuous noise refers to the Lord's army. You know, He's described frequently in Isaiah as having an army of angels, and sometimes in Scripture you even see that this army of angels makes a sound.

You see that, for example, in Ezekiel 1. You see it when David hears the sound of the marching in the balsam trees. There are frequent occasions where God's army makes this loud noise, and so this is a sign of God's military strength in spiritual warfare.

It says, when you lift yourself up, nations are scattered. When God lifts Himself up, nations are scattered. You see, God's concern for Himself, for His own glory, it is competitive with all other glories.

The reason why we must acknowledge our weakness in order to receive His strength is simply because there cannot be a competing strength in the universe. God's strength, being something that transcends our strength, any strength that tries to lift itself up as being like in nature to that will ultimately be trounced simply because it is transcended by something far, far greater.

And this is what happens when we try to rely on ourselves, when we do not wait on the Lord. If you rely on yourself, if you buy into the idea that your own efforts will get you somewhere, that falling into sin and temptation will pay off the things that they claim that they will, then you are exalting yourself above God, or exalting yourself alongside of Him, and these two cannot be together.

Isaiah 42, 8 says, I am the Lord, that is my name, my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols. Isaiah 48, 11 says much of the same. It says, For my own sake, for my own sake I do it, for how shall my name be profaned?

My glory I will not give to another. God does not share His glory with anyone. If you are operating in a way where you would be able to receive credit apart from the Lord, then you are competing with the glory of the Lord.

And this is something that is guaranteed to fail because of the very nature of God's glory. Rather, we must recognize that God, in pursuing His own glory in this way, that we must work cooperatively with His glory, understanding that we can have no glory of our own, but it's only in Him, only in Jesus Christ, that we might have any sense of glory.

It is only in acknowledging our weakness and our entire need for Him that we could have any kind of such strength, any such glory. Romans 8, 16 through 17 says that we will be glorified with Christ if we suffer along with Him.

Romans 8, 28 speaks of how God works all things to the benefit of God's people. Have you ever wondered how that could be possible? How could it be possible that all things work together for good to those who love God?

You know, does a leaf falling somewhere in Japan really work for my good? Does something that works for some other Christian's good really work for my good? Does something that works for someone's harm work for my good?

How does, how can that verse truly be true in the fullest sense? Well, the answer is simply, if all things work together for the glory of God, and God displays His glory in His Son, Jesus Christ, and we, as it said earlier in Romans 8, will be glorified along with Him as we are in Him, then yes, all things truly do work for the good of God's people.

That is found in Jesus Christ. Look, this is the only way that we can have, it's the only way that we can have a strength in this world that will save us from the calamities that we face. This is the only way that we will have a standing on the day of judgment as well.

It is only to be found in Christ, to not have our own glory, to not have our own strength, but to have His strength and His glory. And this is found by trusting in Him. It continues on in verse 4. It says,.

Christ's Victory, the Spoils of War, and the Stability of Zion

The spoil is the result of warfare. It describes God as chasing away the nations with His army, and then His people benefit from this chasing away of the army. They gather the spoil. You know, this is described several places in Scripture.

In Proverbs 13, 22, it says,. Sinner's wealth is laid up for the righteous. You know, the Bible frequently says that what the wicked world leaves behind, all of it will be inherited by God's people. All that is good will be inherited by God's people.

Ecclesiastes 2 .26 says the same thing. It speaks of everything that the unrighteous man works for is given over to the righteous. This also is vanity and striving after wind. And then Ephesians 4 says much of the same.

So, Ephesians 4, it says,. And it goes on to describe these gifts. So, it's saying that, in quoting this passage from the Old Testament, it's saying that Christ, in securing victory on the cross, has secured all kinds of gifts for men.

It goes on to describe how He equips people to be teachers and preachers, etc. You know, this is just one set of gifts that God gives. He gives all sorts of good things to His people. This is just one kind of blessing is all the teachers and leaders that are described there, but He gifts everyone individually as well.

So, if you consider this and you think about the caterpillars gathering, the locusts leaping, this is describing the mass of God's people enjoying the blessings. It's a pretty shocking image to think of locust gathering.

I don't know if you remember, back in the very early beginning of 2020, before COVID became the main news cycle, but there was a lot of fascination with some of the, with some of the plagues that were happening in, oh, was it Africa?

I forget where. But there was serious famine because so many locusts were just eating up everything. And it was wild to watch just so many locusts eating things up. And you imagine a world without any kind of pesticides or anything like that.

You know, if locusts come, what are you going to do? I used to go out in Virginia. We had cicadas there, and I would get a racquetball racket, and I would just like, just go through the air, and you would, you know, hit a whole bunch all at once.

And you could sit there all day, but they wouldn't, you wouldn't have rid yourself of hardly any of them because there were just so many. And there's this, there's these two kinds of cicadas. There's the, I believe it's the seven-year ones and the 13-year ones.

You know, those are two prime numbers, and that's a big deal because it means that every once in a while, I don't know what the, what the multiple, 70, I can't, I can't do math fast enough. 91 years, is that 91 years?

Anyway, every almost 100 years, you have both sets of cicadas. They bury their eggs underground. The seven-year ones come out every seven years. The 13-year ones come out of the ground every 13 years.

And so, once in a blue moon, you know, once every about 100 years, both of them come out at the same time, and there are just so many of them everywhere. And they aren't that harmful, at least not to my knowledge, but man, they are just, it's just incredible to watch, and they're very loud and noisy.

And that's what I, that's what I think of when I read this passage. Picture of God's people being unstoppable, being led by the king who is described in 32 .1. You know, a king will reign in righteousness, and princes will rule in justice.

This whole passage here is still describing the majesty of that king as he leads the people, destroys the enemies, so that the people, like locusts, unstoppable, being able to enjoy the spoils of the enemies.

The Lord is exalted, for he dwells on high. He will fill Zion with justice and righteousness, and he will be the stability of your times, abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge. The fear of the Lord is Zion's treasure.

And so, the Lord for his people who recognize their weakness, who have come to him, trusting in him, praying this prayer. You know, read this as a prayer to be prayed. Oh Lord, be gracious to us. We wait for you.

Be our arm every morning, our salvation in the time of trouble. The people who have come to him and have prayed this prayer, he has made into a righteous people as he exalts himself. You know, the prayer has said, exalt yourself.

When you are exalted, these things happen. And now, the prayer acknowledges that the Lord is exalted. He does dwell on high. He will fill Zion with justice and righteousness. And he has done all of this in Jesus Christ.

We've looked repeatedly through Isaiah about how all these promises are made of Zion, made of Zion where the temple dwells. And what happens to the temple eventually? The temple is destroyed. And it is raised back up again in three days when Jesus Christ resurrects from the dead.

And he builds his city, his Zion, in his church. And these blessings of righteousness, of justice, they are fulfilled in God's people. But every time we stray away from waiting on the Lord, every time we stray away from recognizing our own weakness, these things we lose sight of.

But as we recognize our own weakness, as we recognize our need for humility, our sinfulness, and our need for a Savior, as we recognize these things and remind ourselves of them day by day, then we experience that justice and righteousness of which he speaks.

We experience the stability of our times, wisdom, and knowledge. And thus the conclusion of all this is that the fear of the Lord is Zion's treasure. Why is the fear of the Lord Zion's treasure? Because it is in fearing the Lord, it is recognizing that he is not just simply greater, but even transcendent in his greatness so that we cannot compete with it in any way.

It is only when we recognize this out of a fear of him, that we may enjoy such salvation, such righteousness, and justice, and peace in the kingdom of God. And so as we come to God today in prayer, in the prayer groups that we'll be forming in momentarily, pray acknowledging your weakness before the Lord, because it is in that acknowledgement of weakness that we find his strength, because it is in that that he is glorified.

We are not. There is no competition. But like a surfer who comes against a wave is crashed down and destroyed by the wave, but a surfer who goes with the wave is able to ride it along. We may, in Jesus Christ, receiving the inheritance that he receives, being a co-heir with him, be glorified along with him.

And this is a wonderful, exciting hope that we have. We who do not deserve it. We who are so weak and so worthless, but so strong in him. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the great strength that we have in Jesus Christ.

We thank you for the wisdom that we have in him. We thank you for the glory that we await in him. And we ask that you would grant us a greater humility, a greater repentance, that we might more fully enjoy these things in this life and be more fully prepared to dwell with you and to see him.

In Jesus's name, amen.