Like Eagles: The Creator Renews Your Strength

Introduction: when hope looks for something to stand on

Every year end, the same temptation returns. You look back over the months gone by and try to make sense of them. What did you plan? What did you accomplish? What joys remain, what sorrows still weigh on you? Then your gaze turns forward: what challenges are you about to face, what fears are you carrying, what "next step" is taking shape for the new year?

At the heart of this reckoning, one question outlasts all the rest: on whom, on what, will your hope rest? On a first child who's slow in coming? On an illness finally hoping to find its way to healing? On a soulmate who would break the loneliness? On a faith you're still searching for in a world saturated with religions?

This Sunday at Efficient Church, Armel opened the book of Isaiah, chapter 40, verses 12 to 31: a text spoken several centuries before Jesus Christ, addressed to a divided, discouraged, dominated, broken people. A people who had also placed their trust everywhere except in God. And God answers them with a solemn invitation that becomes ours too: People of God, the LORD is your only hope.

Two reasons support this invitation, and they shape the whole message. There are a thousand reasons to worship him. And you have no reason to worry.

The outline of the message

1. There are a thousand reasons to worship him (Isaiah 40:12-26)

Israel is broken. The northern kingdom has been swept away by Assyria, and the southern kingdom, Judah, is under constant pressure. At the moment Isaiah speaks these words, the people are going through a crisis of hope. And God, before he comforts them, comes to remind them who he is.

It's a bit as if the LORD handed you a virtual reality headset and walked you through his greatness. He takes you past four things your heart is tempted to rest on: nature, science, the nations, idols. And each time, he shows that he rules over all of them.

Nature

"Nature does things well," the old saying goes. We look at the sun, the sea, paradise islands, and admiration rises. We want to protect nature, save it, as if it existed on its own. But God asks in verse 12: "Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and marked off the heavens with a span, and calculated the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?"

The hand here is the image of the artist, the potter at his work. Look at the highest mountain in the world, Everest, nearly 8 kilometers straight up on the border between Nepal and China. Massive, imposing, a source of fascination. In God's eyes, it's tiny. He holds it in the hollow of his hand. He weighs it on a scale.

To place your hope in nature is to rest it on something that is itself already in the hand of someone greater. But to turn your gaze toward the author of that nature is to find assurance.

Science

Today, a doctor in Paris can operate on a patient in China. A message crosses thousands of kilometers in a second. These technical feats push us toward admiration, and sometimes toward a quiet deification of human intelligence.

In verses 13 and 14, God asks: "Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD, or has taught him as his counselor? Who did he take counsel with? Who instructed him, and taught him in the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding?"

What intelligent person taught God how to fix the perfect distance between the sun and the earth, far enough not to burn us, close enough for life to be possible? No one. Who gave humanity the intelligence that produced Facebook, Instagram, remote surgery? The Creator God. Science is admirable. But its author alone is worthy of worship.

The nations

Verses 15 to 17: "Look, the nations are like a drop in a bucket, and are regarded as a speck of dust on a balance."

In Isaiah's day, the great powers were called Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Lebanon. Today, you could write other names on that list: China, Russia, the United States, Japan. Strong nations, on which your heart is tempted to lean. Look at what God says about them: fine dust. Blow on it, and it's gone.

What remains of Rome, the world power of its day? A few ruins. What remains of the military greatness of ancient Egypt, comparable in its time to the United States today? Pyramids, some sand, and the traces of a vanished kingdom. Psalm 2 says it plainly: "He who sits in the heavens will laugh. The Lord will have them in derision."

Placing your ultimate trust in a government, in a political system, means risking disappointment sooner or later. They are human, and they all pass away. God, though, rules over every government.

Idols

An idol is any representation to which a person attaches their faith: humanity wanting to make its own god, hoping it will last as long as possible. But how can you compare what is finite to what is infinite?

Armel recounts a visit to Thailand with his wife Gladys. In the heart of Ayutthaya, the former capital of the kingdom of Siam, they saw a statue of the Buddha called Luang Pho To, erected in 1334 AD. Nineteen meters tall, covered in solid gold, it dominates the temple. It was supposed to protect the city and its maritime trade; it was called "guardian of the sailors."

But the city was destroyed several times by enemy nations. The statue was broken and then rebuilt. Ayutthaya lost its rank as capital, replaced by Bangkok. To what will you compare God? No artist, however skilled, has the wisdom to represent God. No material can carry his eternity.

Verses 21 to 25 conclude: God rules over everything. He reduces princes to nothing. He blows on them, and a whirlwind carries away the powerful like stubble. If you are on the side of the eternal God, you have nothing to fear.

2. You have no reason to worry (Isaiah 40:27-31)

In verse 27, the LORD turns to his people: "Why do you say, Jacob, and speak, Israel, 'My way is hidden from the LORD, and the justice due to me is disregarded by my God'?" In other words: after everything I've just shown you, how can you say that God has forgotten you?

God appeals to his people's memory. Remember. He is the same one who made promises to your ancestor Abraham. The same one who, at the exodus, broke the power of Egypt and split the sea in two so you could escape four centuries of slavery. He hasn't changed.

And here is his promise, verse 29: "He gives power to the weak; and to him who has no might he increases strength."

Then comes the comparison that gives this whole passage its breath. Youths faint and get weary, and young men utterly fall. The strength that seemed most solid, that of youth, gives out. But those who wait for the LORD will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run, and not be weary. They will walk, and not faint.

Three important points. This hope is active: it's visible, it impacts the world, it proclaims. This hope is exclusive: it isn't split fifty-fifty between God and nature, between God and human intelligence. This hope is alive today: through Jesus Christ, dead and risen, Isaiah's words find their full fulfillment for you, here and now.

Key takeaways

• God is incomparable: he rules over nature, science, the nations, and idols. Everything your heart is tempted to rest on is already in the hollow of his hand.
• Your memory is a place of spiritual battle. Remembering God's past faithfulness (in your own life and in the history of salvation) disarms present worry.
• Hope in the LORD isn't passive. It proclaims, it walks, it runs. It takes flight when everything around invites you to stumble.
• This hope is exclusive. An "I believe in God, and also in something else" doesn't renew your strength. Only the LORD, in Jesus Christ, keeps this promise.
• The strength promised isn't the strength of muscular youth. It's the strength of the soaring eagle: the strength God gives to the one who, humanly speaking, has run out of resources.

For your personal application

1. Looking back on the year now ending, on whom or on what have you really placed your hope? Your financial situation, someone close to you, a project, your own effort?
2. What quiet "idol" has crept into your life these past months, something good in itself that has become an object of ultimate trust?
3. What past deliverance from God can you remember today, and consciously bring back into your prayer?
4. Where, concretely, have you "run out of resources," and do you need God to make you soar like the eagle?
5. Who in your circle needs this active hope proclaimed to them this week, through a word, an action, a shared prayer?

Verses quoted in the message

• Isaiah 40:12-31 · the central passage of the message
• Genesis 12 · the promise made to Abraham
• Psalm 2 · God laughs at the raging nations
• Psalm 90:4 · a thousand years are like yesterday

FAQ

How do you reconcile "the LORD is your only hope" with the need to make plans for the coming year?

The text of Isaiah doesn't forbid you to plan. Armel even points to the normal practice of taking stock and setting goals. What God challenges is where you place your ultimate anchor. You can make plans, make decisions, aim for milestones, as long as your hope doesn't rest on those plans, but on the One who holds them in his hand.

What does it concretely mean to "hope in the LORD"?

It isn't a passive emotion. It's an active waiting expressed in three ways: remembering who God is and what he has already done, proclaiming his faithfulness even when circumstances say otherwise, and refusing a fifty-fifty split with other securities. "Those who hope in the LORD" are those who, exclusively and publicly, place their trust in him.

And if I don't feel like a Christian yet, is this message for me?

Yes. Armel says so explicitly at the end: this call is the same for everyone, whatever your religious background. In Jesus, who died and rose again for you, this hope becomes accessible. Taking that first step of faith means recognizing that Jesus is the only God worthy of trust, and handing him your life, including the part of you that still doubts.