Trusting God in Bad Times

The message given in the Sunday night service in the Gettysburg United Methodist church.  The Bible verses used are Isaiah 52:1-12.

            There are a lot of ways in which things on earth are not going well right now.  I don’t mean that as a political statement.  It’s just a statement of fact.  We could talk endlessly about why things are the way they are, and what we ought to do to change them, and we probably would not come to any agreement.  In fact, we might not even come to an agreement on exactly what things are not going well, much less why they are that way and what we ought to do about it.  

            But the fact remains that things are not going well right now in a lot of ways.  And it’s unsettling.  But maybe it’ll help if we remember that this is not the first time things have not gone well on earth.  There are many times in history when things did not go well.  Many times in the Bible when things did not go well, too.  And our reading from Isaiah talks about one of them.

            God, speaking through Isaiah, remembers the time when the people of Israel were sold into slavery.  He remembers when they were oppressed, first by Egypt, and now by Assyria.  God talks about how He is being mocked.  God talks about how all day long, His name is constantly blasphemed.  

            This was a tough time for the people of Israel.  It was a tough time for God, too.  I mean, not that anyone could do anything to God, but God clearly did not like the way He was being treated by the enemies of Israel.

            And so God says, this is not going to go on forever.  God is going to take care of things.  God is going to set things right.  And it’s going to be awesome.  People are going to shout for joy.  They will burst into songs of joy.  God will comfort His people and redeem Jerusalem.  “The Lord will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.”

            Now, we have to be a little careful at this point.  It’s easy to start making analogies here.  It’s easy to substitute the United States for Israel, and say that God’s promises to Israel will be fulfilled in the United States.  The Bible does not say that.  God does not promise that.  God does not promise to restore the United States the way God restored Jerusalem.  But I do think there are lessons we can take from what happened to Israel.  We can see how God responds in certain situations, and we can see how God expects God’s people to respond, too.

            First, God does not like being mocked.  God does not like being blasphemed.  God does not like it when He is not given the respect He deserves.

            Now, it’s not that God is thin-skinned or vain or anything like that.  But think about it. Here’s God.  God, the almighty.  God, the all-powerful.  God, the creator of everything.  God, the one without whom no one and nothing would even exist.  And here are these puny human beings making fun of Him.  Here are these puny human beings ignoring Him.  Here are these ignorant human beings speaking out against Him.  I think God has every right to not like it when He is treated that way.  And God has every right to do something about it.

            And God will do something about it.  God will “lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all nations.”  God will use God’s might and power to make things right.  When?  I don’t know.  God has been remarkably patient with human beings so far.  That’s probably another way we could describe God--as the all-patient God.  But God is not eternally patient.  There will come a time when God’s patience will come to an end, and God will set things right.

            We wait for that time.  Some will wait in fear, but as Christians, we really should not be afraid of it.  After all, we--I certainly hope--are not among those who are mocking or blaspheming God.  We may not always give God the respect He deserves, but when we don’t it’s usually more of a slip-up than true disrespect.  For the most part, we try to give God respect.  We try to be faithful.  We try to serve God as best we can, within the limits of our human nature.  If we’re doing that, we really don’t have to fear the time when God’s patience comes to an end.  In fact, we should look forward to it.  We should be among those who shout for joy and burst into songs of joy.

            But the question for us is, as Christians, as people who claim to be God’s people, what are we supposed to do?  Or are we even supposed to do anything?  Are we supposed to just wait quietly for the time God is going to act?

            Well, here’s what God, speaking through Isaiah, says to his people.  God says, “My people will know My name” and “in that day they will know it is I who foretold” what was going to happen.  And because we know that, here’s what we should do.  In verse seven, God says that we should “bring good news, proclaim peace...bring good tidings… [and] proclaim salvation.”

            So, basically, what we are to do is proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, right?  Now, Isaiah does not mention the name of Jesus, because this is the Old Testament.  This is before Jesus came.  But that describes Jesus and His gospel right?  The good news--the word gospel means “good news”.  Peace--we call Jesus the Prince of Peace.  Salvation.  Salvation is only possible through faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior.  So, without saying the name, God says that what we should do, while we’re waiting for God to act, is proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.

            And while we are doing that, we need to stay faithful to God.  We need to live our lives the way God wants us to live them, to the best of our ability.  God says, “Touch no unclean thing.  Come out from it, and be pure, you who carry the articles of the Lord’s house.”

            It was tempting for God’s people then, just like it’s tempting for God’s people now, to go along with what the world did.  Peer pressure is not something that was just invented in modern society.  It’s been around for thousands of years.  The pressure to conform, to do what everyone else does, to not stand out or be thought of as different or strange--that affected people thousands of years ago, just like it does today.

            God tells His people not to do that.  And you can see why.  If we’re going to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ--if we’re going to bring good news and proclaim peace--our lives need to show that we mean what we say.  People need to see that our faith makes us different in some way.  Now that’s not to say that we should be self-righteous or arrogant.  Jesus saved some of his sharpest criticism for people who were self-righteous and arrogant.  But if people cannot see that our faith in Jesus has any effect on our lives--if it looks like we’d be living in pretty much the same way whether we believed in Jesus or not--telling people about Jesus is not likely to be very effective.  We need to stay away from the things of the world that are “unclean”, as Isaiah puts it--the things that take us away from living the way the people of God should live.

            And the other thing God tells his people is to be confident.  Don’t panic.  Don’t get discouraged.  God says, “Do not leave in haste or go in flight; for the Lord will go before you, the God of Israel will be your rear guard.”

            That can be hard to do.  When we look at the world, as we see things happening that don’t seem right to us--in fact, lots of things happening that don’t seem right to us--it can be easy to get scared.  It can be easy to get discouraged.  But in a way, this is a test of our faith, right?  This is where we find out whether we really trust God.  

If we don’t trust God, we probably will get discouraged.  And we may start to panic.  I don’t doubt that the people of Israel got discouraged sometimes, when they saw things going wrong for them.  But if we trust God, we don’t need to get discouraged.  If we trust God, then even when we see things going wrong--even when we see a lot of things going wrong--we can stay confident.  We can know that God is seeing all the things that are happening.  And we can know that God is going to use all these things.  God is going to use them, in some way, to bring honor and glory to His holy name.  And God is going to watch over His people while He does it.  God goes in front of us and behind us.  God will always be faithful to us.  We need to be faithful to God.

So when you look at the world, don’t be discouraged, and don’t be scared.  Instead, spread the good news of Jesus Christ.  Live your life in a way that shows you believe in that good news, and in a way that you are different because of that belief.  And be confident, trusting that God will take care of us and that God will ultimately make things go the way they are supposed to go.

Things may be bad, but God is good.  God is great.  And God always wins.  If we stay faithful to God, we will see the greatness and goodness of God.  And we will shout for joy and sing songs of joy.