“Soar Like Eagles”
Isaiah 40: 21-31
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text for this morning’s meditation is from Isaiah, chapter 40, verses 21 through 31, particularly these words: “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 our text.

In the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, dear Christian friends. Years ago there was a “Charlie Brown” comic strip, which showed Snoopy, sitting beside the smoking remains of his dog, house which had burned down. Lucy, the series psychologist and theologian, said to Snoopy, “You know why your dog house burned down? It’s because you sinned. That’s why your dog house burned down.” Snoopy sticks out his tongue and goes “Pheeeee” and says, “Her kind deserve to be Pheeeeeeed.”

he truth of that comic strip we see every day in the sinful world around us. We live very much in a world that teaches “You get what you earn” and “You get what you deserve.” Some even quote the Bible to prove that if you suffer, you deserve it – “What you sow, so shall you reap.” That’s exactly what Job’s friends tried to tell him in the Old Testament. Eliphaz, Bildad, Elihu, and Zophar came to comfort Job in the loss of his children and the loss of his fortunes. Eliphaz was the first to speak, “Job, think how you have instructed many, how you have strengthened feeble hands. Your words have supported those who stumbled; you have strengthened faltering knees. But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged; it strikes you, and you are dismayed. Should not your piety be your confidence and your blameless ways your hope? Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Where were the upright ever destroyed? As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it. At the breath of God they are destroyed; at the blast of his anger they perish.” Or to put it into the words of Lucy – “You know why your children died? You know why your crops were destroyed and your animals stolen. You sinned – that’s why!” If you were good enough God would protect you! If you were innocent you would not suffer! If you had not sinned these things would not have happened! That’s the way our sinful world looks at things. That’s the advice and council of sinful mankind.

Job gets defensive and proclaims his innocence and his trust in God. The Bible even says of Job, “In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrong doing.” But Job did ask God “Why?” It’s a question people ask all the time – “Why do bad things happen to good people?” And the right answer is “SIN”. Job’s friends were right. It is sin that brought bad things into this world: pain in Childbirth, weeds in the garden, work that required sweat, thorns on the bushes, sickness, pain, and death. Bad things happen in this world because of the sin of Adam and Eve, because of the sins of all people, because of your sins and mine. The Bible is clear that there is no one who does only good and does not sin, not even one. And the soul that sins, it shall die. The wages of sin is death. We sometimes forget that death is what we really do deserve because of sins. As we confess in our worship, we do indeed deserve God’s wrath and punishment because we are poor miserable sinners. But the point of our lesson for today is that we cannot, and must not, trust in our own goodness or in our own righteousness. For if we do, we will fail.

Job asked God “Why”? And God answered Job with a question: “Who do you think you are to question me?” “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid it cornerstone – while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?” That’s exactly the same thought in our text for today in Isaiah. “It is he (Almighty God) who sits above the circle of the earth. It is he who stretches out the heavens like a curtain. It is He who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.” God is still in control of our world. He may allow certain things to happen that are not good as we see it at any given time – But God has his purpose and his reasons for all that happens.

No, the Lord hasn’t forgotten about us! No, the Lord hasn’t turned away from us! That’s what the people of Israel thought in the days of Isaiah. Isaiah said in our text, “Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God?” The people of Israel were always in trouble and always having trouble, because they always looked somewhere else for strength, for courage, for help. They looked to other gods like Baal for spiritual strength. They looked to other countries to be their allies so they would be stronger in battle together with others. They looked to bad leaders to give them good direction. They looked to their own keeping of the law as their righteousness as they ate the right foods, observed the right holidays, worshiped at the right times, and offered the right kind of sacrifices. And when all of these other things didn’t work – then they looked to God and wondered why He had left them!

Nothing has really changed at all. People today go to churches that offer nothing more than motivational speeches telling them now to be perfect. The religion section and the self-help sections at the bookstore have become one and the same. Many of our people are looking to the government these days to bail them out of all their problems. And then when nothing works – they blame God for abandoning them.

And our God given conscious makes this terribly hard to bear. We know we are sinners. We know we haven’t been the perfect people that God expects us to be. And then the devil and our sinful nature says to us – “Well, try harder! Do better! Change your ways!” And because of our sinful nature, we don’t — and we can’t. And that pushes us toward despair – Like Paul saying, “O wretched man that I am, who can save me from this body of death?” But Paul looked in the right direction, away from himself, away from others, and toward God. He said, “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Or as Isaiah said in the Text, “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. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.” It is Jesus who heals Peter’s Mother-in-law. It is Jesus who casts out demons. It is Jesus who heals diseases. It is Jesus who walks on water and stills storms. It is Jesus who raises the dead to life. It is Jesus who suffers, dies, and rises again so that sinners like you and me might have forgiveness of sins, life and salvation.

That’s where the Prophet Isaiah told the People of Israel to look in our text: “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.” He who created this world is the one source of all hope, all strength, all joy. Hope is not found in the creation – but in the creator. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but will have everlasting Life.” That’s God’s promise. That’s our sure and certain hope. God forgives us for Jesus sake. God gives us the strength we need to both to WILL and to DO his will, those good works that “he prepared in advance for us to do”.

Live in the grace and the mercy of God and you will soar like the eagles, run and not be weary, walk and not faint. For the Lord Almighty is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge and our strength. To God be the glory now and always. Amen.

And may the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.