Hopefully Wait for the Lord

22 Thus says the Lord GOD, “Behold, I will lift up My hand to the nations And set up My standard to the peoples; And they will bring your sons in their bosom, And your daughters will be carried on their shoulders. 23″Kings will be your guardians, And their princesses your nurses. They will bow down to you with their faces to the earth And lick the dust of your feet; And you will know that I am the LORD; Those who hopefully wait for Me will not be put to shame.24″Can the prey be taken from the mighty man, Or the captives of a tyrant be rescued?” 25 Surely, thus says the LORD, “Even the captives of the mighty man will be taken away, And the prey of the tyrant will be rescued; For I will contend with the one who contends with you, And I will save your sons. 26″I will feed your oppressors with their own flesh, And they will become drunk with their own blood as with sweet wine; And all flesh will know that I, the LORD, am your Savior And your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.” Isaiah 49:22-26

This passage succinctly describes what is to be expected for those believers who “hopefully wait” for the Lord. Many hope and wait for scholarship, wealth, skill, influential people – anything which they believe will bring them happiness if they obtain it. What should we hope and wait for which will bring eternal success and happiness? In Isaiah 49, we learn about God’s promise to us that, when we “hopefully wait” for the Lord – believe and put all our hope in the Lord, we will receive many blessings and the ultimate reward of salvation.

We identify God with different names. We call Him, Jehovah, when we want to recognize He is one who establishes and delivers exactingly according to His promise. In verse 23, Jehovah promises us that, “those who hopefully wait for Me will not be put to shame.” If we believe in Jehovah, we must believe that all those who hopefully wait for Him and honor this contract will return to the Lord and receive eternal salvation.

It seems lonely to believe in and put your hope in God when we see those around us living as they please and seeking only to fulfill their desires. We live differently from them. But we will not be alone when God returns. We will be joined by the many others who also have hopefully waited for God. Though many of us may have lost our way, living according to our own motivations and have become disconnected from God, those of us who have been chosen will find our way back and hopefully await God. At that time, we will join together and return to God.

What will happen when we return to God? We see here in Isaiah 49. “Kings will be your guardians, And their princesses your nurses.” God will move all the rulers and the world to raise us up. Here, the kings represent all the power in the world. To have them be our guardians means that they will protect us with their power and all that they own. While we are not their heirs because we lived according to God’s direction, they will be our guardians, and we will gain all their power through our faith in God. Similarly, princesses become our nurses. Nurses care for children who are not theirs. Though they are not our mothers, the princesses of the earth will give all they have and care for us who have hopefully waited for God.

When they “bow down to you with their faces to the earth And lick the dust of your feet,” we will surely know that God does exactly as He promises in His contract with us. From verse 24, we are shown that, no matter who or how powerful our enemies are, God will protect and make them serve us. There is nothing that God cannot conquer. All the people who tried to take down Daniel, Shadrach, Mesach, and Abednego, David, Joseph failed. None of their efforts succeeded in bringing them down. Indeed, their actions raised them up. If we obey God’s law, all the efforts of the world fail against us. God will never let us down and fall to shame.

Please repeat after me:

“Those who hopefully wait for me will not be put to shame.”

What does it mean to hopefully wait for God? It means we act exactly how God directs. God gives us direction to follow at each moment throughout our lives. If we follow these directives, we are hopefully waiting for and keeping our contract with God. When we honor our part of the contract, God’s promise is to make all the world work for us, make the world our guardians and nurses. Can we alone make the world follow our wishes? Human power on its own cannot achieve all the unachievable tasks we must overcome. If it is something we cannot do with our own strength, God will give us the power to do it. God only assigns us what we can achieve and, if we are lacking, provides what we need to succeed.

We cannot receive God’s help if we do not obey. We must seek, obey, and wait for Him. What kind of person is someone who seeks God’s help without doing their part? They disrespect God. If we do not honor our part of the contract yet expect God’s help, we are treating God as our servant. Our Lord is not in our lives to answer our wishes. There are two kinds of believers. Those who hopefully wait for God and know they cannot live without God’s help and those who disrespect God by seeking from Him without obedience. Are we the former or the latter? Do we dishonor Him with our insolence or do we serve and respect our Lord?

Click for Korean sermon https://soundcloud.com/yhpaik/1988-7-27-1a