On Wings of Eagles

February 7, 2016                        NOTES NOT EDITED

On Wings of Eagles

Isaiah 40, esp. 31

SIS— Just as surely as life will knock you down, the love of God will lift you up when you trust Him.

Eagles have unusual eyes. They are very large in proportion to their heads and have extremely large pupils. Eagles’ eyes have a million light-sensitive cells per square mm of retina, five times more that a human’s 200,000. While humans see just three basic colors, eagles see five. These adaptations give eagles extremely keen eyesight and enable them to spot even well-camouflaged potential prey from a very long distance. In fact the eagles’ vision is among the sharpest of any animal and studies suggest that some eagles can spot an animal the size of a rabbit up to two miles away!

The spot on which an eagle landed dictated to the ancient Aztecs the place where they were to build a city.  In some religions, high-soaring eagles are believed to touch the face of God.

Eagles can fly as high as 15,000 feet.  That’s almost “three miles” high.  They can soar effortlessly for hours on warm updrafts of air.  When they spot pray on the ground, they can reach 200 miles per hour as they swoop in for the kill. 

Flying like an eagle has been memorialized in the writings of poets, statesmen, and even rock-and-roll singers.  One of my favorite songs as a young person—and even today—is “Fly Like An Eagle,” by the Steven Miller Band.  This hit song was released in 1976 on a Quadrophonic 8-Track Cartridge—to give you perspective on how long ago it was that I was a “young person.”  The lyrics, if changed slightly, could be a hymn based on our text here in Isaiah 40:31:

I want to fly like an eagle // To the sea

Fly like an eagle // Let [His] Spirit carry me

I want to fly like an eagle // Till I'm free

Oh, Lord, through the revolution

Our text here in Isaiah 40:31, as I said, has been the inspiration for many writers and statesmen.  One of our Founding Fathers, Daniel Webster, told others that when defeat and disappointment seemed inevitable he would read this chapter and find new hope and a new heart (G.W. Truett).  Handel found much of his inspiration for his oratorio, The Messiah, from the fortieth chapter of Isaiah.  Poets the likes of Tennyson and Wordsworth admitted their indebtedness to this passage for much of their writings.  This is truly an “uplifting” passage that can salvage a person’s battered soul from the most trying and troubling circumstances.  Verse 31 sits like a gem atop a beautiful setting of chapter 40.  Let’s read together verses 28 through 31.

We will notice how this chapter progresses through three phases from a person, to a promise, to a practice of bold, confident faith.

1.  A Person (31a)

“But, those who trust in the Lord.”

Note especially the words, “in the Lord.”  Let us unpack this portion of verse 31 in light of entire chapter.  Verse 31 sits upon chapter 40 like a brilliant, sparkling diamond rests upon a fine setting of gold.  A diamond is all the more beautiful because of its setting. 

This verse begins with a one-letter word in the original.  In fact, this letter usually attaches to the following word.  This one-letter word represents the contrasting conjunction, “but,” in English.  This one-letter conjunction acts as a sign pointing both back into the text of the chapter, and forward into the concluding verse.  This one-word conjunction refers us back to a Person described in the preceding verses.  Our hope, our victory, our joy, our eternal future does not rest on an “idea” but upon a Person.  That person is Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their heirs, which includes all those who put their trust in Yahweh. 

We read earlier verses 28-31.  Take note of these verses again with special attention given to the little word, “but”:

²⁸ Do you not know?  Have you not heard? Yahweh is the everlasting God, the Creator of the whole earth. He never grows faint or weary; there is no limit to His understanding. ²⁹ He gives strength to the weary and strengthens the powerless. ³⁰ Youths may faint and grow weary, and young men stumble and fall, ³¹ but those who trust in the Lord will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary;

they will walk and not faint.

The prophet asks the question:  “Have you not heard of Yahweh?”  So many sermons by so many preachers focus on doctrine and dogma, which is well and good, but without an understanding of “Who” saves us, and a relationship with Him, doctrine and dogma are useless.  Before Isaiah delivers God’s promise to “raise us up on eagles” wings, He contrasts the awesome, absolute power of God.  He describes “Who” God is, before He elucidates what God does.

Isaiah describes God as “JUST” and the corrector of the injustices of man in verses 3-5:  ³ A voice of one crying out: Prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness; make a straight highway for our God in the desert. ⁴ Every valley will be lifted up, and every mountain and hill will be leveled; the uneven ground will become smooth and the rough places, a plain. ⁵ And the glory of the Lord will appear, and all humanity  together will see it, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

In his famous speech, “I Have a Dream,” delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. used these words to give hope to a nation divided by race, oppressed by fear, and sweltering in the heat of injustice and inhumanity.  Yahweh is a “Just God.”

Yahweh is an “ENDURING God.”  Isaiah declares, ⁶All humanity is grass, and all its goodness is like the flower of the field. ⁷ The grass withers, the flowers fade when the breath of the Lord blows on them; indeed, the people are grass. ⁸ The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of our God remains forever.”

Now, our nation may no longer take much note of God in our public forums with anything more than a passing tidbit for affect in a public speech, but God is “still” God and He is “still ruling in the affairs of men.”  The power of His Word does not wax and wane with rise and fall of public opinion.  He is an “Eternal Enduring God” Who preceded even time and space and extends beyond even the canopy of eternity.

Isaiah expounds on the Person of God by asserting Yahweh is a “POWERFUL God” with power exceeding even the ability of man to describe it fully.  Isaiah writes, “¹⁰ See, the Lord God comes with strength, and His power establishes His rule.”  The word “strength” suggest a power of “legendary” proportions--the kind of strength to slay dragons or powerful beasts.  It can refer to a sword used in battle.  Isaiah has used this word before.  In Isaiah 27:1 we read:

On that day the Lord with His harsh, great, and strong sword, will bring judgment on Leviathan, the fleeing serpent—Leviathan, the twisting serpent. He will slay the monster that is in the sea.

Nothing is more terrifying in the Hebrew culture than the sea.  Add to that a sea monster—the Leviathan—and it creates the most fearsome picture imaginable to a Jew.  Here, Isaiah demonstrates the “harsh, great, power” of Yahweh.  Yahweh, as a Person, weilds unimaginable and immeasurable power.

Isaiah’s foundational theme in chapter 40 is the Person upon whom we can place our trust.  God is just. God is enduring. God is powerful.  Isaiah also describes God as “GRACIOUS”  Vs 10 says:

His reward is with Him, and His gifts accompany Him.

God delights in giving gifts to His children.  James tells us: “Every good and perfect gift is from above” (1:17). 

As Isaiah portrays the Person of God as one who wields absolute and terrible power, God is also a Person of great tenderness.  Isaiah 40:11 says, “¹¹He protects His flock like a shepherd; He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them in the fold of His garment. He gently leads those that are nursing.”

Many, many Christians are living defeated, ineffective, unfulfilling lives because they have reduced Christianity to religious doctrine and lifeless dogma.  True Christianity involves a direct, daily, devotional relationship with Almighty God through Jesus Christ.  Our hope is not in doctrine or dogma, ritual or religion.  Our hope is in a relationship with a Person—that Person is Almighty God, Yahweh, Jesus Christ!

Think about this for a moment.  When you are sick you don’t put your trust in “medical books or therapeutic ideas.”  No, you go to a “doctor”—a person who can assist you with what you are facing.  Or when we have a legal challenge, we don’t turn to principles of jurisprudence, but we call a lawyer—a person who can assist us in the matters at hand.  This is true in regard to faith, and even more so.  We don’t put our trust in faith, but we put our faith in a Person.  When we get this right and we are living in a daily, dedicated relationship with God through Jesus Christ, then “we rise up on wings of eagles.”  It is a Person—Almighty God—that does this.

2.  A Promise (1-2)

The next phase in our progress toward “rising on the wings of eagles” involves “a promise.”  Like so many passages (chapters) that speak of Israel’s troubles, hardships, and difficulties arising our of her own folly and rebellion, Isaiah 40 begins with a promise:

Comfort, comfort My people,” says your God.  ² “Speak tenderly to  Jerusalem, and announce to her that her time of forced labor is over, [sad days are gone, NLT] her iniquity  has been pardoned, and she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”

The Holy Spirit guides Isaiah to form his words grammatically in such a way that Israel—God’s people, you and I—would have full confidence that our strife and struggle, difficulty and despair, and the wearying consequences of our sin had a strict limit.  All the verbs in this verse, “labor is over; iniquity is pardoned; double punishment has been received,” appear in the perfect tense.  The normal use of the perfect would be to present a past action with continuing results inevitably into the future.  In this case, the meaning is that God has “preestablished” the exact punishment He would extract upon those whom He has elected.  This likely refers to the future relationship which Jesus would establish between God and the elect by paying for the sins of the elect “once for all for” (Rom. 6:10; 1Pet. 3:18). 

In another sense, using these perfect tense verbs in verse two reminds us that God has PROMISED to bring us through our troubles, whatever they might be.  All throughout the Biblical record God acts faithfully toward His elect, even when we act in disobedience.  God does not “overlook” our sin, but neither does He allow our sin and our situations to “overcome” us. 

God’s people are people of PROMISE.  God has promised “never to leave us or forsake us.” God promised this in the O.T. in Deuteronomy 31:6, and God repeats it in the N.T. in Hebrews 13:5.  Not only does God “declare” it, but He also demonstrates it. 

God’s people are people of PROMISE because God’s Book is a book of PROMISES.  According to one man’s count there are 3573 promises in the Bible.  Time Magazine ran an article on a school teacher, Everett Storms, who on his 27^th reading of the Bible decided to tally up all the promises.  The magazine issue of Dec. 4, 1956, carried an article to the effect that schoolteacher Everett R. Storms, of Kitchener, Canada, tallied up the promises, a task which took him a year and a half. Storms came up with 7,487 promises by God to man, 2 by God the Father to God the Son, 991 by one man to another (such as the servants who promised to interpret king Nebuchadnezzar's dream), 290 by man to God, 21 promises were made by angels, one by man to an angel, and two were made by an evil spirit to the Lord. Satan made nine, as when he promised the world to Christ if He would fall down and worship him. Storms then gives us the grant total of 8,810 promises (appears in Herbert Lockyers’, “All the Promises of the Bible, pg. 10).

I have to tell you that I have no idea how many promises there are in the Bible.  I do know there are about 31,102 verses in the King James Bible (and about the same in most similar translations).  If there are 7,487 promises of God to man that would mean that about every fourth verse in the Bible is a promise.  I’m not sure what constitutes a “promise” and I’m sure that we would all have a difference of opinion in that regard, but what seems unmistakable is this:  there are a lot of promises in the Bible!

I am more interested in the “affect” of God’s promises than I am the number.  Many mistakenly think of a promise as primarily dealing with the “future.” That is not altogether a proper way to understand the PROMISES of God.  A promise is not about what takes place in the future as much as it is about how we live in the present.  A promise is “the hope of the future breaking into the hurt of the present.”  One great preacher speaking in regard to the promise of Isaiah 40 referred to it as a “fortifying promise” (Truett).  In other words, the promises of God “shore up or fortify” our present lives.  It is precisely because we know that God will “never leave us or forsake us,” (Heb.13:5) nor will God allow temptations “too great for us to bear” (1Cor. 10:13) that we can live boldly, confidently, and even joyfully in the present, regardless of our circumstances.  When the circumstances of life beat us down, “we soar like eagles on the wings of God’s promises!”  Our trust is in a PERSON who has given us sure and precious PROMISES. 

As we approach that great verse speaking of “rising up on wings like eagles” we now understand that we must have a relationship with the PERSON of God and we must trust the PROMISES of God.  But, if we stop here, we will still not “soar on wings of eagles.”  It simply is not enough to know God and to know His promises.  We must put our faith into . . .

3.  Practice (31)

³¹ but those who trust [wait (ESV), hope (NIV)] in the Lord will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not faint.

When I think of practicing a bold, confident faith as I read verse 31 the word that pops into my head is:  perspiration!  This one verse (v31) has sixteen words in the original Hebrew.  Seven of those words are “verbs”—or “action” words.  Two of them are in the negative—action that will not happen: not be weary, not faint.  That leaves five action words to describe what it means to practice bold, confident faith.  This accounts for over 30% of what it means to “fly on wings of eagles.” It requires “action.”  If you want to beat back the disappointments that assail you, rise up from the difficulties that burden you, or overcome the circumstances that stand in your way—you must “take action.”

You must “wait, renew, soar, run, and walk.”  Summarize these five verbs and practicing bold, confident, overcoming faith means:  “take action.” 

I’ve heard it said many times, “Some Christians are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.”  That means that many people “compartmentalize” their lives into the “sacred” and the “secular” or the “spiritual” or the “physical.”  We have one life—a spiritual soul in a physical body.”  There is only one world:  the world God made which is also the world God controls.  All the world is God’s, so all our life is “sacred.”  The idea of the “secular,” as in the idea of “separating the spiritual and the physical” or the “pious or profane” are merely illusions.  We have one life—one life to live for the Lord.  When we “compartmentalize” the sacred and the secular, we reduce Christianity to an idea (as I said in regard to God’s Person).  This diminishes our faith and we become victims in life not victors.

Often people have come to me for counsel, disappointed with God’s inaction.  They prayed and God did not act.  They prayed, and then they sat back waiting on God to do something!  After all, doesn’t our verse tell us that in order to “fly like an eagle” we must “wait on the Lord?”  Well, yes and no.

The idea of “waiting on God” never means, “sitting idly by waiting for some miraculous, other-worldly, intervention by God.”  That is “over-spiritualizing” what it means to trust God.  God can, and does at times, act in a miraculous, other-worldly, interventionist way.  More often, He answers our prayers when we do something to put “feet on our prayers.”

Most people never break a sweat spiritually.  Most people never “mount up or move in any tangible way” and wonder why life is beating them up. 

Someone has pointed out correctly that most often the word “faith” in the Bible is a “verb,” not a “noun.”  Faith is an action not an idea.  It is no coincidence that we refer to Jesus as the “God-Man.”  All throughout the Bible we see the interaction between the divine and the human.  Salvation is not about eliminating our human nature, but restoring it to its intended glory.  Everywhere God does a miracle in the Bible, man is involved in some way. 

When God wanted to save a remnant from the destruction of the flood, He called a man to build a boat.  When God wanted to deliver His people from bondage in Egypt, He sent Moses with a staff that Moses threw down in the Court of the Pharaoh and it became a snake.  God then used ten very real, very human plagues to convince Pharaoh to release His people.

This divine/human union that finds its fullest expression in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, dots every page of the Biblical record.  The Bible is not a record of a people called to sit back and watch God save the world.  It is a record of God empowering His people to “go into all the world and make disciples.”  Call it a partnership if you like, but the Bible portrays faith as “action.”  Maybe if God’s people would sweat a little more people in our world would suffer a little less!

I don’t know how many people are sitting beneath the “broom tree of despair” (1Kngs.19:3) waiting for God to “do something,” when all along God is beckoning us to join Him in His mission.  I’m sure most of you have heard the story about the man on his roof during a great flood.  A religious man is on top of a roof during a great flood. A man comes by in a boat and says "get in, get in!" The religious man replies, " no I have faith in God, he will grant me a miracle."

Later the water is up to his waist and another boat comes by and the guy tells him to get in again. He responds that he has faith in god and god will give him a miracle. With the water at about chest high, another boat comes to rescue him, but he turns down the offer again cause "God will grant him a miracle."

With the water at chin high, a helicopter throws down a ladder and they tell him to get in, mumbling with the water in his mouth, he again turns down the request for help while waiting in faith for God to act.  Sadly, the man drowns.  He arrives at the gates of heaven with broken faith and says to Peter, I thought God would grand me a miracle and I have been let down." St. Peter responds directly, "I don't know what you're complaining about, we sent you three boats and a helicopter."

Folks, if we are every going to “soar on wings like eagles,” we have to put our faith into PRACTICE in our daily living.

I’m no expert in “flying,” though I’ve logged quite a few miles.  I do know this:  when a storm is approaching a jet can increase its altitude to try to get above the storm.  That’s what happens when the storms of life come.  When the burdens of life become so heavy we fall beneath the load.  When the storms of life hit—and they will—God lifts us higher.  “We mount up on wings like eagles. We run and not grow weary.  We walk and do not faint.”