Isaiah 49:8-16

If only this were true. What a great passage here in Isaiah 49. So much hope and reassurance packed into these 9 verses. Almost every verse speaks of restoration and promise, of freedom and plenty, of compassion and healing and love. It’s a beautiful picture of God’s care for His people. This is our heart’s desire, to have our emptiness filled, our fears calmed, our hunger satisfied, our thirst quenched. To be so confident and so holy and so above the problems of this world, nothing could touch us. To be so "Christian", to know God so well that we never doubt. This sounds so good. If only this were true.

It doesn’t look true, does it? It’s too good to be true. The life described here in Isaiah 49 sounds like heaven, and heaven seems pretty far away right now. There is plenty of hunger, plenty of thirst, for food and water, for meaning and purpose, for safety and security, for answers to the unanswerable. Life seems to be crumbling around us instead of being restored, rebuilt.

And honestly, we’re just not sure where God is in all this. We know the Bible well enough to know that God is present. He’s everywhere at all times, after all. We know that God is aware. He’s all-knowing, right? We know that He is able to do something about all this, since He’s all-powerful. And we know that He should WANT to do something about these problems that He sees, because He is good, He’s a good God.

So why isn’t He doing something about this? Is it because we did something bad? Is God mad at us? Do we need to pay for the sins that we’ve committed? We know that Jesus paid for our sins on the cross, but does that mean all of our sins? Does it mean He completely paid the price? Do we still have to pay?

It would be wonderful to experience the hope and joy that we hear in Isaiah 49. But Isaiah 49 doesn’t always fit with real life, here, now. There are times, many times, that we can see the goodness of God, His faithfulness, His protection. And yet, there are times, many times, when His goodness seems gone, His protection doesn’t seem to be working. We’ve been hit by disease, we’ve lost a job, we lost a baby, we lost a parent. And when life doesn’t match the promises of God, then we really wonder what God is doing. The doubts start to creep up. We want to know God, but we’re not so sure we really know Him. He seems to say one thing in Isaiah 49, and then do another thing in real life.

So when we read verse 8, and the rest of the verses, we have a mixture of emotion. We’ve seen it, and yet not. We know it’s true, it just doesn’t always seem to be true. Verse 8:

In the time of God’s favor, He answers. And the time of God’s favor is now. If you know that Jesus died and rose again for you, for you, then things between you and God are okay again. You are in God’s favor. When Jesus allowed Himself to be pinned to that cross, He diverted God’s anger away from us, and He directed God’s favor towards us. Instead of the wrath of God blasting at us, God’s love and mercy rained down on us.

And now, with God’s favor on us, His eyes shining in love towards us, He answers our cries. In this day of salvation, every day ever since that awful Good Friday, He has been and is and will be helping us.

And yet. There are days, sometimes weeks, or months or years, where it doesn’t seem like He’s answering anything. We want Him, we need Him to answer. We would love Him to say "yes" to our request, but even to hear a definite, "just wait", or even a "no" would be comforting. At least we’d know that He’s there. But He just doesn’t seem to answer anything, and we wonder. It would be so good to hear Him answer, to see His help. But our experience seems to cancel out the promise of an answer

He promises to restore the land, at the end of verse 8:

He promises to set things straight, the way they’re supposed to be, to reassign the inheritances, because some of got too much and some too little.

He promises to make people free, verse 9:

No more hunger, no more pain, no more death, no more tears. No suffering of any king. Just plenty of plenty. Food anywhere and everywhere you look. Fresh running streams with unpolluted water to drink from. Verse 10:

It’s the life that everyone wants, everyone craves. And our Lord gives this life out generously and freely. People from all over the world flock to the Lord, to find His life, His full, abundant, eternal life. Verse 12:

People, lots of people, mobs of people loving Jesus, praising Him, worshiping Him. What a sight!

It’s such a wonderful sight that the whole earth, all of creation bursts out in joy. Verse 13:

And yet, we don’t always feel His comfort. Sometimes, we know overwhelming grief. Sometimes we just can’t see His compassion. Sometimes God seems very demanding, cold, always angry. Sometimes, it seems like there’s so much want. Why can’t God feed the hungry? Why are there people who are homeless? Why do people get sick? Where is God in suffering?

We look around, and while verse 8 says that God is going to set things right, that He’s going to make sure everyone has enough, while we hear that God is bringing justice, we look around and see a whole lot of injustice. The price for food is going up, and it’s the people who are already struggling that now have to struggle harder. It’s the poor who suffer the worst from the cyclones in Burma, and it’s the rich who hoard all the help that the people could be getting. We look around, and it’s not right. It’s just not right.

God said that in the time of His favor, He would do all things great things. And yet, we don’t see it. And yet, it’s not right. And yet, and yet, and yet. And we’ve had too many "And yets." And they’ve all piled up, and we’re just not sure anymore. The good seems to outweigh the bad. The pain seems to outweigh the healing. If God would do all of this because He loves us, then He must not love us. He must not care. He must not be around. We just don’t understand. Verse 14:

We know our theology well enough to know that God doesn’t forget us. We have that clear in our heads. We know He’s here. But that almost makes it worse. Because why doesn’t He do something. It’s as bad as if He had forgotten to do something about the problem. It’s as bad as if He had left. How can He care if all these bad things are happening? How can He be good if He’s not making sure that things work right? No, even though my head knows better, my tells me:

If the Lord had forsaken us, if the Lord had rejected us, He wouldn’t care how we felt, and He wouldn’t answer. If the Lord had forgotten us, if He had turned His head away, He would be busy with someone else, and He wouldn’t answer us. But the Lord has rejected and the Lord hasn’t forgotten, and the Lord answers in verse 15:

Do you hear His voice, His love-filled voice? How could He ever forget you? You’re His child. A mother, who went through the pains of labor, who gave birth, who fed her baby, who love her child could never, would never be able to forget she had this child, that she loved this child.

And even if a mother could, even if a mother did, as impossible as this is:

says the Lord.

You know what He didn’t say? You know how He didn’t answer? He didn’t explain anything. He didn’t explain why the bad things happen. He didn’t explain why the promises don’t match how we’re feeling right now. He didn’t tell us when He was going to make everything okay again. What He did is He pointed to His love, His love that can’t be questioned, even when everything else is questionable. His love that can’t be doubted, even when there are nothing but doubts. Verse 16:

His hands are carved with your name on them. Those hands. The hands that were scarred because of us. As the nail went through His palms, He was looking at your name, engraved there. And He let that happen because of His love.

Everyone of us has storms in our lives, times when we really are not sure what God is doing, but it doesn’t seem very good. Some of us have storms right now. Some of us have just come through them. All of us have storms ahead of us. And when the compassion and the care, the protection, the comfort just don’t seem to be there, God doesn’t seem to be there, then we go back to His love. And we may not understand what He’s doing, but we know that He loves us. And we may not understand where He’s going, but we know that He can’t not love us.

When the hurt is too much, go back to His love. Like a mother can’t forget her child, the Lord can’t forget you. Like a mother’s compassion can never go away, the Lord’s love will never stop. He can’t forget and He can’t stop caring. Your name is carved on His hands. He can no more forget you and what you’re going through than He can forget His own hands. And the impossibility of losing His love, the absurdity that He could forget, how ridiculous it seems that He would stop caring starts to chase the tears, the doubts, the fears away.

And in their place comes the comfort. Looking at His love, knowing His love, the emptiness, the hunger is filled with satisfaction. The injustice begins to turn into justice. The prayers begin to be answered. Life begins to make sense. Maybe not completely yet. Maybe not always as we want. But it doesn’t matter, when we see His love, when we know His love.

That’s how, even in trouble, that’s how, even in tears, that’s how, even when we don’t have the answers, we can still