[Renewed Strength title slide]
Good morning. Please turn to Isaiah 40 in your Bibles.
One of my favorite Disney movies is Up. And one of my favorite Disney characters is Carl Fredricksen.
When we first meet Mr Frederickson, he’s on one of those chair lifts going down the stairs of his house.
(I hate those things. One of these days, they’re gonna drive me up the wall).
He’s got his cane balanced on his lap, with the tennis balls on the legs. And everything about the scene tells you— this man is worn out. He’s tired. He’s sad. He’s alone.
And I remember thinking— why is this movie called “Up?” Because it sure doesn’t look like there’s anything close to “up” about Carl Frederickson.
This man’s “up” days are way, way behind him.
Except they’re not.
Carl Fredricksen is about to soar.
He meets Russell. He attaches thousands of balloons to his house. He flies to South America. He fights the bad guy. He discovers a new purpose and a new relationship. And somehow this old, tired, brokenhearted man finds the strength for another adventure.
And over the course of the movie, the guy on the left becomes the guy on the right. [two images of carl— one old and cranky, the other kind]
He soars again.
I love that story. And maybe I love it a little more right now because, if I’m being truthful with you, I’m tired.
I’m a month away from my 60th birthday. And if I’m bring honest, I don’t want to be sixty. I still want to be the young summer camp staffer with boundless energy. I still want to be the kid with the metabolism of a hummingbird who can eat anything.
And I’m not that guy anymore.
But I know I’m in good company. [Jeanette Kelley story—you know you’re getting old when…]
But the truth is, weariness doesn’t have to have a thing to do with age. Isaiah 40 is brutally honest about that. Look at verse 30:
“Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted.”
Even the young get tired. Even the strong stumble. Sooner or later, every one of us reaches the limit of our own strength.
But God doesn’t.
And that’s why Isaiah 40 is such a fitting place to end this series.
For five weeks we’ve been talking about sanctification—the lifelong process by which God makes us more like Jesus. And we’ve talked about effort. Renewing our minds. Asking God for a clean heart. Developing healthier habits. Becoming better in our relationships.
Sanctification takes effort.
And because sanctification is lifelong, we can’t possibly sustain it on our own strength.
And maybe that’s why I need this sermon as much as anybody in the room today.
Because here’s what Isaiah wants tired people to know:
The effort of sanctification comes from us.
The strength for sanctification comes from God.
Listen to Isaiah 40:28–31.
Isaiah 40:28–31 ESV
28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. 29 He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. 30 Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; 31 but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
This is God’s Word. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray, and then I want to share with you four very simple encouragements from Isaiah 40:
• Remember God’s Power
• Recognize Your Weakness,
• Rely on God’s Strength,
• Resume Your Journey.
[Pray]
1. Remember God’s Power
To really appreciate what Isaiah is saying to us now, we need to understand what he was saying to them then. Isaiah ministered in Judah during the eighth century BC, when Assyria was the great threat to God’s people. And for much of the first 39 chapters of Isaiah, the message is not encouraging. God’s judgment is coming.
But beginning in chapter 40, Isaiah looks ahead to a future generation who would experience that judgment. Jerusalem would fall. The temple would be destroyed. Many of the people would be carried hundreds of miles from home into exile in Babylon.
And you can hear how defeated they feel in verse 27:
“My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God.”
In other words, “God, do you even see us? Do you know what we’re going through? Do you care?”
Whoa. Now, who is that a word for this morning?
God, do you see what’s happening to my family right now?
Are you paying attention to the stress I’m under at work?
Do you see what’s happening in my marriage?
Do you know how tired I am of fighting this same battle?
God, I’ve been praying about this for months. Are you listening?
Do you see me trying to hold all of this together?
That’s where weariness can lead us. We start interpreting God’s attention through the lens of our exhaustion.
“If God saw me, surely He would do something.”
“If God cared, surely this would be different.”
“If God were really paying attention, surely I wouldn’t still be here.”
And I love God’s response to His weary people. God says to a group of people who are wondering if God is paying attention, “Hey, are YOU paying attention?”
“Have you not known? Have you not heard?”
In other words, “Remember what you already know about Me.”
God doesn’t give them new information. He reminds them of something they already know.
“The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.”
Judah was exhausted. God wasn’t.
The King of Babylon looked invincible. He wasn’t.
They couldn’t understand what God was doing. God could.
Sometimes when we’re tired, we don’t need somebody to give us one more thing to do. We need somebody to remind us of what we already know.
You’re tired. He’s not.
Your strength may be running out. His isn’t.
So remember who your God is. He is still the everlasting God. He is still the Creator of the ends of the earth. He still doesn’t faint. He still doesn’t grow weary. And His understanding is still beyond ours.
Your inability to see what God is doing doesn’t mean God doesn’t know what He’s doing.
Your exhaustion is not evidence of God’s absence.
Your strength runs out.
God’s doesn’t.
And here’s the really good news: God doesn’t simply possess unlimited strength.
He gives it away.
Look at verse 29:
“He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.”
And that brings us to the second thing Isaiah wants weary people to understand.
2. Recognize your weakness — vv. 29–30
I want you to notice who qualifies for the strength God gives.
The faint. The person who has no might.
You kind of expect it to be different. You expect: “He gives power to the strong. The rich get richer. The strong get stronger. God helps those who help themselves.” That’s the way the world works, right?
But that’s not the way the gospel works.
Because God doesn’t give power to people who view Him as an accessory or a life hack. He’s not there to give you that last little burst of energy to put you over the top.
And then verse 30 drives the point home:
“Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted.”
Isaiah deliberately points to the people we expect to be strong. The young. The energetic. The people who ought to be able to keep going.
Even they get tired.
There are days when I wake up tired. Anybody else? And I’m not talking about needing another cup of coffee. Sometimes you’re tired all the way down to your soul.
You’re tired of being the strong one in your family. You’re tired of caring for someone who isn’t getting better. You’re tired of fighting the same temptation you thought you’d have beaten by now. You’re tired of trying to hold a marriage together. You’re tired of grieving. You’re tired of waiting for an answer to a prayer you’ve prayed a thousand times. You’re tired of serving people who don’t seem to notice.
Maybe you’re even tired of trying to become the person God wants you to be.
And here’s something I think somebody needs permission to admit this morning:
You’re tired.
That doesn’t mean you’re failing.
It means you’re human.
We have limits. God doesn’t. We get tired. God doesn’t. We reach the end of ourselves. There is no end of Him.
And yet some of us have a hard time admitting that. We think being a good Christian means always having something left in the tank. So we keep pushing. We keep pretending. Somebody asks how we’re doing, and we say, “Fine.” We tell ourselves, I should be able to handle this. I should be stronger than this. I shouldn’t be this tired.
But notice what God does not say to the faint in verse 29.
He doesn’t say, “What’s wrong with you?”
He doesn’t say, “Everybody else seems to be keeping up.”
He doesn’t say, “Try harder.”
He gives power to the faint.
God never asked you to be the everlasting one. That’s His job.
And recognizing your weakness isn’t the same thing as surrendering to it. This isn’t permission to quit. It isn’t an excuse for laziness. It is simply admitting the truth about ourselves that Isaiah has already told us:
We are not God.
Our strength has limits.
And strangely enough, that’s not bad news. Because as long as I believe I have enough strength on my own, I don’t have much reason to depend on God for His.
Maybe that’s why some of us have to come to the end of ourselves before we discover how much we’ve been depending on ourselves.
So when your strength runs out, don’t look deeper inside yourself trying to find some reserve you don’t have.
Look up.
The answer to weariness isn’t pretending you’re stronger than you are. It’s learning to depend on Someone who is stronger than you could ever be.
And that’s exactly where Isaiah takes us next:
“But they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength…”
We remember God’s power.
We recognize our weakness.
And then we rely on God’s strength.
3. Rely on God’s strength — v. 31a
Verse 31 begins with one of the great promises of Scripture:
“But they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength.”
Now, depending on the translation you’re reading, yours may say “wait for the LORD” or “wait on the LORD.” Translations are pretty evenly divided between the two.
And in the Hebrew, either one gets at the idea. The word is qavah. It means to wait, but it’s not simply killing time until something happens. It carries the sense of waiting with expectation—hoping, looking for, trusting in the one you’re waiting for.
But in English, we can hear two very different things when we talk about waiting on someone.
When I hear “waiting for” somebody, I picture the dad sitting in the driveway while everybody else is still inside getting ready.
The engine is running. He’s checking his watch. He’s drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Maybe he’s given the horn one little courtesy tap—which everybody in the house knows isn’t a courtesy tap.
Come on! What are you DOING in there? I’m waiting for you!
And sometimes that’s exactly how we wait for God.
God, come on. I’ve been sitting here forever. When are You going to do something?
But there’s another sense of waiting on someone. Think about a really good waiter at a restaurant.
A good waiter is attentive. He’s watching the table. Your glass gets low, and he’s there to refill it. You finish one course, and he’s ready for the next. His attention is focused on you.
Now, again, don’t misunderstand me. That’s not the sense of the word in Hebrew. But I think the English expression gives us a helpful picture of the posture Isaiah is describing.
Waiting on the Lord means turning our attention toward Him.
Looking to Him. Hoping in Him. Trusting Him. Depending on Him for what we cannot supply ourselves.
Waiting on the Lord isn’t passive. And it isn’t sitting in the driveway with our arms crossed, wondering when God is finally going to get with the program.
It’s trusting God for what I cannot supply myself.
And that’s important, because look at what Isaiah promises:
“They who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength.”
He doesn’t say they’ll discover strength they didn’t realize they had. He doesn’t say they’ll dig deeper and find another gear. He doesn’t say, “Believe in yourself.”
They receive strength by depending on the God whose strength never runs out.
That’s the difference between biblical encouragement and a motivational speech. A motivational speaker tells you to reach down inside yourself and discover how strong you really are.
Isaiah has just spent three verses telling us we’re not that strong.
Even youths faint. Even young men fall exhausted.
So the answer can’t be, “Try harder to be strong.”
The answer is:
Rely on God’s strength.
And this brings us back to something we’ve been saying throughout this series. Sanctification requires effort. God doesn’t renew our minds for us. He doesn’t practice our habits for us. He doesn’t call us to put sin to death and then tell us to sit back and watch while He does all the work.
Grace doesn’t eliminate effort. Grace supplies the strength for effort.
That’s the balance I want us to see.
The effort of sanctification comes from us.
The strength for sanctification comes from God.
So waiting on the Lord may begin with a prayer as simple as this:
God, I don’t have what I need for this.
I don’t have enough patience for this.
I don’t have enough wisdom for this.
I don’t have enough courage for this.
I don’t have enough strength for this.
But You do.
And I’m looking to You for what I cannot supply myself.
That’s not weakness. That’s not quitting. That’s dependence.
That’s what it means to wait on the Lord.
And Isaiah says that those who do “shall renew their strength.”
And what does that renewed strength look like?
Well, Isaiah gives us three pictures:
Sometimes we soar.
Sometimes we run.
Sometimes we walk.
And that brings us to our final encouragement:
Resume the journey.
4. RESUME Your JOURNEY — v. 31b
I chose that word “resume” on purpose. Because this isn’t really about starting a journey with Christ. In a few minutes we want to extend an invitation for anyone that doesn’t have a relationship with Jesus to do just that. But no, this is an encouragement to get up and get going again. For those who feel tired and burned out. For those who feel like your relationship with Jesus is running on fumes— stagnant. Like you’re just going through the motions.
How do you resume the journey?
Isaiah says:
“They shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”
You know, Isaiah would make a terrible motivational speaker. If this were a TED Talk, we’d reverse the order. You start out walking. Then you pick up the pace and start running. And finally the music swells, the eagle appears on the screen, and you SOAR!
Can you imagine how lame that scene from Rocky would have been if it had ended with Rocky just limping along? Looking at those steps of the Philadelphia Museum of art and saying to the crowd, “Yo— you go on. I’ll catch up?”
And yet, Isaiah goes the other direction.
Soar.
Run.
Walk.
I don’t want to make more of that order than Isaiah intended, but I do know this:
Most of life is walking.
Getting up tomorrow and doing the next faithful thing. Loving your family. Going to work. Opening your Bible. Saying your prayers. Resisting that temptation one more time. Forgiving again. Showing up. Taking another step toward becoming more like Jesus.
Years ago, I heard a camp pastor preach this passage, and he described three people he knew.
One was a Christian politician he had worked for—one of those high-capacity people who seemed to operate at a different level from everybody else. He was soaring.
Another was a pastor of a small rural church. He wasn’t changing the world, but he was faithfully serving the corner of the world God had given him. He was running.
And then he talked about his mother, who was battling cancer. For her, victory was getting out of bed in the morning, opening her Bible, spending time with Jesus, and facing another day.
She was walking.
I’ve never forgotten that.
Now, I don’t think Isaiah is giving us three categories of Christians. But I do think there’s something wonderfully encouraging here.
Renewed strength doesn’t always look like soaring.
Sometimes God gives you strength to soar. Sometimes He gives you strength to run. And sometimes He gives you enough strength to put one foot in front of the other.
And there are seasons when walking is victory.
Maybe you’re soaring right now. Praise God. Soar.
Maybe you’re running. Keep running.
But maybe you barely made it here this morning. Maybe you’re exhausted, and soaring sounds impossible. Running isn’t happening either.
Then don’t despise the walk.
Isaiah doesn’t say, “They shall walk, and God will be disappointed that they aren’t flying.”
He says:
“They shall walk and not faint.”
Take the strength God gives you for the step that’s in front of you.
And take the next one.
And the next one.
That’s sanctification.
Five weeks ago, we said sanctification is the lifelong process by which God makes us more like Jesus.
Lifelong.
Which means we’re not finished.
There’s still some wall left to paint.
So we renew our minds. We ask God for clean hearts. We practice healthier habits. We work toward better relationships.
And when we get tired—and we will—we wait on the Lord.
We rely on His strength.
And we keep walking.
The series ends today.
Sanctification doesn’t.
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