Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1766
“And therefore will the Lord wait, that He may be gracious unto you and, therefore, will He be exalted, that He may have mercy upon you: for the Lord is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for Him.” Isaiah 30:18.
The people were in a great hurry to be delivered from their enemies. The Assyrians had come up in great force and were covering the land with their armies. They had already devastated the neighboring kingdom of Israel and, therefore, the men of Judah were afraid that they would be swallowed up quickly, even as dry stubble is devoured by fire. The Prophet bade the inhabitants of Jerusalem remain where they were, adding, “For thus says the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest shall you be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.” But they would not listen to the counsel of wisdom—they preferred to follow the suggestion of their fears and go down into Egypt for shelter.
They were impatient because they were unbelieving. They were slow to obey, but they were swift to rebel and, therefore, the Lord cries to them by His Prophet—“Woe to the rebellious children that take counsel, but not of Me.” They sent their princes as ambassadors to Zoan to entreat aid from the Egyptian king! Yes, they sent a great treasure upon camels as a bribe to Pharaoh to espouse their cause against Assyria. They would not rely upon their God and so they looked to the land of the viper and the fiery flying serpent—and were stung with bitter disappointment—for vapor and emptiness were the help of Egypt.
It seemed as if the motto of the people then was, “We will flee upon horses; we will ride upon the swift.” Again and again Isaiah urged them to be quiet, saying, “Your strength is to sit still,” but they would not learn that rash haste is but ill-speed. They could not be quiet by reason of their fear and folly. But the Lord waited and turned not from His long-enduring patience. In the words of our text, He showed that if mortals could not wait, yet their Maker could— “Therefore will the Lord wait, that He may be gracious unto you”—and He assured them, yet again, that if they would learn to wait, they would find it their wisdom and happiness, for, “Blessed are all they that wait for Him.”
Here is the subject of this morning’s discourse. Certain of God’s people are in trouble and distress and they are eager for immediate rescue. They cannot wait on God’s time, nor exercise submission to His will. He will surely deliver them in due season, but they cannot tarry till the hour comes. Like children, they snatch at unripe fruit. “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the Heaven,” but their one season is the present—they cannot—they will not wait. They must have their desire instantaneously fulfilled or else they are ready to take wrong means of attaining it. If in poverty, they are in haste to be rich—and they shall not long be innocent.
If under reproach, their heart ferments towards revenge. They would sooner rush under the guidance of Satan into some questionable policy than, in childlike simplicity, trust in the Lord and do good. It must not be so with you, my Brothers and Sisters—you must learn a better way. I hope that the sermon of this morning may go some way, by God’s Spirit, towards instructing you in the holy art of waiting for the Lord. “Those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth.” The text divides itself into two parts—first, it introduces us to a waiting God. And secondly, it speaks of a waiting people.
I. First, we have here A WAITING GOD. I shall not confine our illustration of this waiting on the part of God to the case of the men of Judah described in the text, but I shall come home to your own experience and speak of how the
Lord has waited that He might be gracious to you. Let us behold His long-suffering towards ourselves. In so doing we shall not be leaving the Scripture, for the text as truly describes our own experience as that of the men of Isaiah’s day.
The Word of the Lord which is now to be considered opens, first, with a wonderful reason for waiting—“And therefore will the Lord wait.” “Therefore”—mark that word! The Lord Jehovah does as He wills both in Heaven and earth and His ways are past finding out, but He never acts unreasonably. He does not tell us His reasons, but He has them, for He acts, “according to the counsel of His will.” God has His “therefore,” and these are of the most forcible kind! Full often His “therefore” are the very reverse of ours—that which is an argument with us may be no argument with God— and that which is a reason with Him might seem to be a reason in the opposite direction to us.
For what is there in this chapter that can be made into a “therefore”? “Therefore will the Lord wait.” From where does He derive the argument? Assuredly it is a reason based on His own Grace and not on the merit of man! The chapter contains a denunciation of the false confidences of the people and, because of these, one might have concluded that the Lord would cast them off forever. If they will have Egypt to lean upon, let them lean on Egypt till, like a spear, it pierces their side! God might well say, “Let them alone; they are given to their idols!” But instead, He cries, “Therefore will the Lord wait.” He will let them see the result of their carnal confidences—He will allow them time in which to test and try Egypt and see whether Egypt is not a boaster whose help is to no purpose.