A Word in Season: For the Silver Crowned (Isaiah 46:4)

The Weariness of Age and the Weight of the Future

I may be speaking now to some who wear a silver crown, I mean the grey hairs of old age. Perhaps that's not too far away for some of us, perhaps it seems very distant to others. It may be that at the beginning of a working week we feel weighed down and burdened, we feel our increasing age, we feel the weariness, the sickness perhaps, the aches and the pains, sometimes the creaks and the groans that come with the passing of years.

And whether it's with regard to the next few days, or whether it's with regard to the coming years, or perhaps even toward the end of our span of life in this world, it's easy for us to become downcast and despondent about what lies ahead.

Isaiah 46:4 and the God Who Carries His People

And that's when it's good for us to remember the language of Isaiah chapter 46. The Israelites of the day were tempted to look to idols for their sustaining. Isaiah makes fun of the emptiness of idols and their boasts, their inability to deliver others from burdens.

But he says in verse 3,. That is a testimony that brings great confidence to the heart of every saint, as it should have done to the people of Israel when they first heard it from the lips of the prophet Isaiah.

Even to your old age I am he, and even to grey hairs I will carry you. Now there are two things in this text to which the Lord God draws the attention of his people, his very nature and his very heart.

Even to your old age I am he. God is reminding us that he is the eternal I am, the unchanging God, who was and is and is to come, the same yesterday, today and forever. Our lives and our experience in life changes so radically.

If you're young you might think that this will last forever, if you're older you would say it certainly does not. You recognize the passage of time and the impact that it has upon you and your faculties.

But God is unchanging and whatever takes place in us, among us, around us, to us, the Lord God himself does not change. Even to your old age, God is God in everything that he is. He does not in any way change in his essential nature and his essential character.

The Covenant Heart of God Toward His People

And that means further then, that the very heart of God does not change toward us. Even to grey hairs I will carry you. That doesn't mean that God starts carrying us when we get old, it means that God will not stop carrying us, however much time passes, however much water flows under the bridge.

God has always carried his people, I have made and I will bear, even I will carry and will deliver you. The Lord God loved to make known to his Old Testament people Israel, that he had called them by their name and they belonged to him.

He had formed them a people for himself and in doing so he had covenanted that he would be their God as they would be his people and that having made them he would bear them. And will God be any less faithful to the promises which are yes and amen in Christ Jesus?

No if God has called us to himself, if God has formed us as a people for his praise, if God has called us from every kingdom, tribe and tongue and nation to be his own distinct people, his own special treasure, then this is as true now as it has ever been, that the Lord God even to our old age and even to grey hairs will be our God and will carry us.

He has made us, he will bear us, he will carry us, he will deliver us. So whatever may be our weariness and our weakness, whatever may be our trouble and affliction, however many or however few years we have seen in this world, our confidence lies not in our own strength, not in our length of days, but in an unchanging God and his unchanging heart toward those upon whom he has set his love.