One of the challenges of preaching is coming up with something to preach from week to week. Sometimes the Lord gives you something ahead of time––weeks or months in advance, and other times, the Lord gives you something at the last minute. That’s how it was for me this week. I had nothing.
Not only did I have nothing, but Fridays are my sermon prep days, and wouldn’t you know that Friday just got away from me, Saturday morning was busy, so I didn’t get to start my sermon until 3 p.m. yesterday afternoon, and I still didn’t have a sermon topic. And I thought, Lord, what do you want me to preach on?
And then, I pulled up biblegateway.com, and there it was. The verse for the day. And that’s what I felt the Lord said to preach on today. So if you have your Bibles, please turn with me to Psalms 33, and we’ll look at verses 4 and 5; and then we’ll skip down to verses 20-22. And then, if you have a bookmark, please bookmark Psalm 27, and we’ll also read verses 13 and 14. If you want, you can also bookmark Isaiah 40:31.
These are all promises from the Lord, and it’s something that I personally need to hear often; and it’s something that in this crazy world of ours, we need to be reminded of––and that is the goodness of the Lord.
It’s so easy to get distracted by the worries of this world, the disappointments of life. It’s so easy to fall into that trap––at least it is for me. Of course, I spend a lot of time in a vehicle bouncing between music and talk radio, and talk radio will do that to you. It’ll hit you with the worries of the world pretty quickly, and not give you the hope of God––not even Christian radio, really. But today, I want us to not focus on the negative, but focus on the goodness of the Lord in the world we live in.
Psalm 33:4-5:
“4 For the word of the Lord is right and true; He is faithful in all he does. 5 The Lord loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.”
And then if we go down to verse 20:
“20 We wait in hope for the Lord; He is our help and our shield. 21 In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. 22 May your unfailing love be with us, Lord, even as we put our hope in you.”
And now if we go back a few chapters to Psalm 27:13-14 we read:
“13 I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. 14 Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”
And then from Isaiah 40:31: “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
It’s so easy for us to lose hope. It’s so easy for us to go on day to day wondering, “God, where are you? Why is this happening? Where is my answer to prayer? Why is this taking so long? It shouldn’t need to take years for this blessing to happen. Everyone else is being blessed while life is passing me by. Why?”
In the meantime, as life goes on, as we’re waiting for an answer, as we’re going through what we’re going through, we lose our strength. We lose our confidence and our faith in God. Why is he taking so long? Does he hear me? Does he care? Should I hold out hope any longer? Maybe waiting so long is a sign that God is not ever going to answer my prayer. Should I rethink this whole thing? Should I just accept that life is going to be this way?
It’s easy to trudge along wondering if God hears us or knows that we are suffering in some way––whether it’s financially or loneliness or joy or whatever it might be. Maybe it’s a calling that you’ve felt, but you’re wondering if God is going to do anything about providing for that calling after you’ve made your step of faith to pursue it.
God is saying to you today, don’t lose hope. Hold on. God is faithful, and he knows what he is doing. Trust His timing and trust His provision. Trust that not only will it come to pass, but in the meantime, something is being accomplished in the waiting period.
Let’s go back to our first set of verses. Psalm 33:4-5.
“For the word of the Lord is right and true;
He is faithful in all he does.
The Lord loves righteousness and justice;
The earth is full of his unfailing love.”
In his commentary on these verses, Adam Clarke said, “All the words, laws, promises, and threats of God are perfectly true and just. The dispensations of his providence and mercy are equally so. When he rewards or punishes, it is according to truth and justice.”
The reason why I wanted to point this out is because we see a lot of standards of God in the Bible. Those standards are standards of righteousness, which means that God’s punishment is right and true. How could it not be? How could there be righteousness without a punishment for evil?
Like I said, I listen to talk radio, and all they talk about is corruption in the government. It gets disheartening, especially when you don’t see any righteous punishment going on––when there’s no justice, and you’re wondering, when is there going to be justice for all of the injustices going on?
And then there’s this pitting between the political parties and one news media is on one side and another news media is on the other. Then there’s social media. One friend says something insulting about your political ideology and it becomes difficult to remain friends because they’re not insulting your favorite football team, they’re insulting your standard of righteousness.
We have a God whose standard of righteousness is perfect. He is sovereign and holy, beyond any of us. Beyond any political system on earth. He is not subject to us or our ways. He is neither Democrat nor Republican. And we can’t even get close to his standard of righteousness. We’re too sinful.
And so God’s goodness is evident even in his judgments and punishments. His punishments are good because they are righteous.
But if we are God’s children, we don’t suffer his wrath, but we may suffer his discipline. God disciplines us because he loves us and because of his righteousness that he wants to bestow on us. Wrath is out of anger, discipline is out of love.
Hebrews 12:5-6 says “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”
And Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
This is a promise that God watches out for us and turns the bad into good. Maybe the bad is His discipline for the ones he loves, maybe it’s just a rotten day, maybe it’s more than that. Whatever we go through, God uses it to strengthen us.
Psalm 33:5 says, “The Lord loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.” There are times when the only way God can make us live righteous and holy lives is to discipline us and make us go through hard times. We learn from that experience. Through that, we learn what it means to love, to be kind, to be patient and generous. We learn what it means to go through what other people go through, and we learn humility and Godly sorrow.
But the point isn’t to bring us low, it’s to lift Him up; and in an odd way, it’s to lift us up too. As dad knows, in order to be a soldier, you have to be broken first. You have to be disciplined. Caleb knows it from karate, and the girls know it from training horses. You’ve got to be broken so you can be the person God means for you to be. So his discipline is actually a benefit. Hard times can be a blessing.
So just because we go through hard times doesn’t mean that God isn’t good and that God isn’t working for our good during our waiting period. He is, whether we see it or not.
Going back to Adam Clarke again, he said, “To hear its worthless inhabitants complain, one would think that God dispensed evil, not good. To examine the operation of his hand, everything is marked with mercy and there is no place where his goodness does not appear. The overflowing kindness of God fills the earth.…he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends his rain upon the just and the unjust.”
In his discipline, in his acts of justice, God doesn’t send us out into the wilderness and abandons us. He didn’t even do that with Cain. He still gave a promise to Cain when he was banished.
Psalm 33:20-22 says:
20 We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.
21 In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name.
22 May your unfailing love be with us, Lord, even as we put our hope in you.
Adam Clarke went on to say, “Our whole life is employed in this blessed work; we trust in nothing but him; neither in multitudes of armed men, nor in natural strength, nor in the fleetest animals, nor in anything human: we trust in Him alone “who is our help and our shield.””
It’s not fun to wait on the Lord. Especially when we are so used to having practically everything at our fingertips pretty quickly. Have you noticed? We can order anything online and have it delivered to our doorstep within 3-5 business days; we have quick meals––whether fast food or microwaved or boxed. We don’t have to wait as long as we used to see a movie on TV. We have Netflix, so we can watch an entire series at our leisure. We don’t have to wait a whole week for the next episode to air at 8 p.m., and you better be right in front of the TV because it won’t be rerun for months. We don’t have to buy CDs anymore, we can just type in an album on Spotify and there it is, we don’t even have to own it in order to ‘own’ it.
We’re spoiled by having things right in front of us. We don’t even have to leave our house. We’ve got work online, we’ve got church online, we’ve got doctor appointments online.
But God? Well, we have instant access to God’s throne, but we don’t have guaranteed instant answered prayers in 30 minutes or less. God is sovereign. That means he works in his time, not ours. We can’t make demands. Requests? Sure. But God is old-fashioned. You sit and you wait. And when the time is right, he’ll move on our behalf. Waiting on God is not being idle. There is something going on in that waiting. Maybe God is moving on our behalf and we don’t see it. Or, we could be learning to be patient or kind or humble and not even realize it until later.
Paul said to the Romans that our suffering produces perseverance; our perseverance produces character; and character produces hope.
So back to verse 20, “We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.”
The Enduring Word Bible Commentary says, “Having praised Him and considered God’s greatness from many angles, it was appropriate to simply wait for the LORD – for His guidance, His word, His deliverance – looking to Him as our help and shield.”
It went on to say:
“Earlier the psalmist called God’s people to rejoice because of God’s character and might. Now he calls us to praise God because of our blessed experience of trusting in His holy name.”
And trusting in God’s holy name is the key.
One of the early explorers of South Africa’s ocean waters, Bartolomeu Dias, went around a cape on a stormy sea. His ship threatened to go to pieces, so he called the place the Cape of Storms.
But Vasco da Gama, who came later, changed the name to the Cape of Good Hope, for he saw ahead of him the jewels and treasures of India. You can call this a life of storms if you wish. But if you can see the glorious redemption of eternity ahead of you, you can call it what it is only in Christ—a life of good hope.
We can not only hope for God’s goodness in eternity, but we can also hope for God’s goodness in the here and now.
Psalm 27:13-14 says,
“13 I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. 14 Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”
David was speaking to himself when he wrote this. In fact, this was a prayer for guidance, and David was reminding himself of God’s goodness. Just a few verses before this, David asks God to provide him with a ‘smooth path’ or as some translations put it, a ‘straight path.’
David had many adversaries, false witnesses against him, and violent men opposing him. In asking for a smooth path, he wasn’t asking for an easy life but for a stable and secure place to stand against the storms of this life.
David seeking after God in a time such as this, led him to this statement: “I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.” He would have given up, but he knew that God would find a way to show His goodness in this life (not just the next).
So David further strengthens himself and his readers by encouraging us all to “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”
Though our desire is to have things settled in 30 minutes or less, like they do on TV, we may have to wait 30 days, 30 weeks, 30 months, and maybe even 30 years. However long the Lord deems is necessary.
But our hope is in the Lord. The goodness, the strength, the righteousness, and the faithfulness of the Lord. “For the word of the Lord is right and true; he is faithful in all he does. 5 The Lord loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.”
Waiting on God means that we have an expectant hope. David Guzik shares examples of this type of expectant hope.
He said we should wait on the LORD:
· As a beggar waits at the rich man’s door.
· As a student waits to be taught.
· As a servant waits on his master.
· As a traveler waits for the directions of the guide.
· As a child waits upon his parents.
That is a type of waiting where we should have no doubt in our minds that whatever need we have, it’s going to be provided.
David Guzik said that as in Isaiah 40:31, the idea behind waiting on the LORD as an expectant hope is that we take the time and effort to seek Him, rely on Him, and His strength.
In 2 Corinthians, Paul talks about the ‘thorn in his flesh.’ Whether that’s literal or something figurative, we don’t know. But this is what he had to say about it.
He said:
“8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
Our hope is in the Lord. No matter how weak we are, He is strong. And in God’s ways, the weaker we are, the stronger we are because our weakness provides the perfect opportunity for God to show off.
Let me read from Isaiah 40 again, starting from verse 28:
Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives power to the weak, And to those who have no might He increases strength.
Even the youths shall faint and be weary, And the young men shall utterly fall,
But those who wait on 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.
Notice who God gives power to, the weak. And to those who have no might, He increases their strength. Those who thought themselves strong find themselves weak. God’s strength is reserved for those who know they are weak and know they have no might.
But how do we receive this strength? By waiting on the Lord. Those who wait on the LORD with an expectant hope shall renew their strength. There comes a time when God allows us to come to a point where we have no hope in order to receive our hope in Him, and in nothing else.
In our weakness, at that moment when our hope in ourselves and everything else is gone, God shows up and shows off. In the meantime, in our waiting, God is doing something within us to strengthen us, to discipline us, and to make us more holy so that what happens, in the end, is not just an answer to prayer, but also a process that we’ve gone through where we have become refined. God wants us to become a person who is ready and spiritually mature to receive and handle the blessings we’ve been waiting for.
Let’s pray: Dear Lord, thank you for your faithfulness. Thank you for your grace and your love. Thank you, Lord, for your help. You are an ever-present help in time of need. And we need you day after day.
We need your strength, your peace, your guidance, and your love. We desire your righteousness, and we desire to see your goodness in the land of the living––in the here and now. So, Lord, we open ourselves to you and ask you to strengthen us. May we receive joy, peace, and hope while we are waiting for those things which we need, in Jesus’ name, amen.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on First Baptist Church of Watkins Glen
Featured Image by zhugher from Pixabay
