Deuteronomy 32:1-14 The Message
The Song
32 1-5 Listen, Heavens, I have something to tell you.
Attention, Earth, I’ve got a mouth full of words.
My teaching, let it fall like a gentle rain,
my words arrive like morning dew,
Like a sprinkling rain on new grass,
like spring showers on the garden.
For it’s God’s Name I’m preaching—
respond to the greatness of our God!
The Rock: His works are perfect,
and the way he works is fair and just;
A God you can depend upon, no exceptions,
a straight-arrow God.
His messed-up, mixed-up children, his non-children,
throw mud at him but none of it sticks.
6-7 Don’t you realize it is God you are treating like this?
This is crazy; don’t you have any sense of reverence?
Isn’t this your father who created you,
who made you and gave you a place on Earth?
Read up on what happened before you were born;
dig into the past, understand your roots.
Ask your parents what it was like before you were born;
ask the old-ones, they’ll tell you a thing or two.
8-9 When the High God gave the nations their stake,
gave them their place on Earth,
He put each of the peoples within boundaries
under the care of divine guardians.
But God himself took charge of his people,
took Jacob on as his personal concern.
10-14 He found him out in the wilderness,
in an empty, windswept wasteland.
He threw his arms around him, lavished attention on him,
guarding him as the apple of his eye.
He was like an eagle hovering over its nest,
overshadowing its young,
Then spreading its wings, lifting them into the air,
teaching them to fly.
God alone led him;
there was not a foreign god in sight.
God lifted him onto the hilltops,
so he could feast on the crops in the fields.
He fed him honey from the rock,
oil from granite crags,
Curds of cattle and the milk of sheep,
the choice cuts of lambs and goats,
Fine Bashan rams, high-quality wheat,
and the blood of grapes: you drank good wine!
The Word of God for the Children of God.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
Not long ago, In the middle of the night I was given a sharp moment of pause.
I realized that I hadn’t been invited to participate in something I knew would have been special, an event that I would have loved to have participated in.
It was surprising to feel excluded and forgotten in the middle of the night.
Being woke up out of a nice sleep, I wondered why I had been left out, but I was too embarrassed, tired to ask, so I assumed there must have been a reason for it.
In that sleep deprived weakened moment, it was hard for me to not to draw the conclusion that I had been excluded, that I had been forgotten quite on purpose.
Without regard to the time of day or might we feel it, those uneasy times when we might feel insecure or unwanted, it is natural for us to feel hurt and alone.
Feelings of isolation can create a deep ache in our hearts and a tiredness in our hearts our bones and worse – creates an unending tiredness deep in our souls.
We yearn for a loving connection, relationship, friendship and understanding.
Ironically, when we feel that way, it can be hard to connect with others even if they do reach out to us—because we have just begun to enter a lifecycle, feeling out of touch and unwanted, rejected and dejected, so unreachable, untouchable.
Humanly speaking, there might not be anyone with the knowledge or with the courage to try, who can truly care for us in the way that we need to be cared for.
In these upcoming seasons of both Thanksgiving and Christmas our hurts can sometimes arise again, with memories much too deep for any words to express.
What we need is the sensation of being born aloft as an eagle, as God gave the great Eagle the ability to effortlessly soar high and higher still, in the unseen and unfelt winds, our faith needs to be carried up over our troubled situations.
Him who Created the Eagle with His own hands, with all the necessary natural abilities to fly high, Our Lord and Savior is the only one who can truly do that.
God Created us and God Sees us, knows what we need, and comes to save us.
He scoops us up and carries us high when we are not capable of flying ourselves.
As We Are Watching the Eagle Soar – So God’s Holy Spirit Cares
Isaiah 40:27-31 The Message
27-31 Why would you ever complain, O Jacob,
or, whine, Israel, saying,
“God has lost track of me.
He doesn’t care what happens to me”?
Don’t you know anything? Haven’t you been listening?
God doesn’t come and go. God lasts.
He’s Creator of all you can see or imagine.
He doesn’t get tired out, doesn’t pause to catch his breath.
And he knows everything, inside and out.
He energizes those who get tired,
gives fresh strength to dropouts.
For even young people tire and drop out,
young folk in their prime stumble and fall.
But those who wait upon God get fresh strength.
They spread their wings and soar like eagles,
They run and don’t get tired,
they walk and don’t lag behind.
Isaiah 40:27-31 contains a great promise of strength for the weary: “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 promises us a supernaturally renewed strength—a strength that would compare to our renewal: mounting up as an eagle or running without fatigue.
But what does this mean for us in our moment of tired and how do we receive it?
The context of this verse helps us.
The Israelites who first received this promise were worn out from their hardship – they had been living in exile in Babylon for several decades.
Their perspective was darkened by despairing thoughts: “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God” (Isaiah 40:27).
They thought God either couldn’t help or didn’t care.
Please notice carefully that God’s Prophet Isaiah uses a pair of words—faint and weary—three times in the briefest span of a few short verses (Isaiah 40:27-31).
The Israelites were exhausted and burdened from the circumstances of life.
They weren’t just weak in body, but weak in spirit as well.
How could they endure the hard circumstances of life any longer?
Isaiah responded to these questions with his own: “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 grow faint or grow weary” (Isaiah 40:28).
This was a good word for the weary then and this is a good word for the weary exactly this moment right now: You and I may grow faint, but God does not!
God is an endless source of strength, He gives it generously—“He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength” (Isaiah 40:29).
If we had not heard it before, we are hearing it right exactly now – this is who God is – ever-strong and never-weary One loves to help weak and weary people.
Here’s what this shows us: If we think or believe that our God is too great to be even .01% concerned about us, we actually do not believe God’s great enough.
God’s greatness is not just that he is strong, but that he is strong for us.
God’s glory is not just that he has power, but that he loves to use it to help those who need it – God is not too great to care, Our God is much too great not to care.
God’s greatness is not just that God is strong, but that God is strong for us.
In all our weariness, then, how do we get this strength?
We may expect Isaiah to share the wisdom of the day of physical rest, exercise, diet, endurance and perseverance and tons of self help tips so forth and so on.
But while those are all God-given sources of strength, they cannot give us the deepest strength we need when we come to the end of ourselves.
Isaiah acknowledges this—“even youths shall faint and be weary; and young men shall fall exhausted” (Isaiah 40:30).
In other words, even those in their prime with perfect health have limits.
We need a stronger strength to match our deep discouragements.
So, how do we get it?
There is only one answer, and here we come to the great promise of this text:
“They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.”
Not, those who work for the Lord, but those who wait for the Lord.
This is not about our doing our part and asking God to do the rest.
It isn’t about showing God how strong we are, asking Him to give us a bit more.
No, here we have to admit that we do not have .01% the strength we need.
We acknowledge that we need the strength only He can give.
And we wait for Him, which is more than just passing time.
In Hebrew, this word carries with it a sense of hopeful expectation.
In the mindset and from the midst of whatever it is which we call our hardship, we all have look to Him as the one who works all things together for our good.
As Christians, we look to Jesus, who came to us and said: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
He carried the burden of our sin and judgment upon himself on the cross.
He came from everything to live among those who have nothing, He ministered and He healed, He approached the unapproachable, touched the untouchable and He talked to those no one else would talk to – He raised the weary of body and of soul and was killed for His efforts -Yet by the power of His Father God He rose again, sent his Spirit to empower us and strengthen us in all our weakness.
And we now look to all of Him and wait for Him to work—ultimately looking to the day when Savior Jesus returns to set all things right, make all things new.
In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,
Let us Pray,
Psalm 121 The Message
121 1-2 I look up to the mountains;
does my strength come from mountains?
No, my strength comes from God,
who made heaven, and earth, and mountains.
3-4 He won’t let you stumble,
your Guardian God won’t fall asleep.
Not on your life! Israel’s
Guardian will never doze or sleep.
5-6 God’s your Guardian,
right at your side to protect you—
Shielding you from sunstroke,
sheltering you from moonstroke.
7-8 God guards you from every evil,
he guards your very life.
He guards you when you leave and when you return,
he guards you now, he guards you always.
Lord Jesus, as the Eagle protects her young in the nest, we can’t thank you enough for your care for us. When we feel hurt and alone, it is the greatest comfort to know that you guard us as the apple of your eye. We love you and pray in your name. Amen.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
Loving God, Living God, Loving Hope, Living Hope, Loving Living Life His Way! "Many things are possible for the person who has hope. Even more is possible for the person who has faith. And still more is possible for the person who knows how to love. But everything is possible for the person who practices all three virtues." - Brother Lawrence (1605-1691), Practicing the Presence of God (1692). 