Isaiah 30:15 For thus saith the LORD God, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not.
Have you ever been in a holding pattern on a commercial jet where you are circling the airport again and again and you don’t know why? Sometimes the pilot may know, but you just have to trust there is a reason for the wait. The pilot has the forward looking perspective and you see nothing except the ground miles below you. I remember flying into Kodiak Island, Alaska. Just as we were about to land, the nose tilted up, the pilot throttled it, and I was thrown back in my seat. We went back up, curved steeply to our right, and made another attempt. It was kind of frightening. What had happened was that at the last second, fog had obscured the runway. The pilot knew that, but he didn’t have time to tell us. We just knew something was not quite right. We had the goal, the runway within our grasp, then it just disappeared. We were literally left hanging in midair.
Maybe you are wondering today if you should take action or if you should wait. Haddon Robinson, a man who preached and taught preaching, once told a story. “When I was a younger man, I didn’t know when to stop studying. I would parse every verb and study every word. I came to realize that the whole point is that God’s Word transports ideas. The goal is to get the idea, not to have every word sliced and diced.” Sometimes we don’t know what we are waiting for, and there is a difference between waiting and doing nothing. It is not so much what you are waiting for as it is Who you are waiting for.
In Isaiah 30:7 Judah had sent ambassadors to Egypt seeking help when they should have been seeking God. God said, “For the Egyptians shall help in vain, and to no purpose: therefore have I cried concerning this, Their strength is to sit still.” Egypt did nothing. You might well point at Egypt and say, “This is Egypt’s strength? Their strength is to sit still?” They did nothing.
In contrast, verse 15 says, “For thus saith the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel; in returning [bringing back your ambassadors from Egypt] and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and you would not.” So, Egypt did nothing, but Judah was to do something which looked like nothing. They were to rest. Resting, waiting, and trusting in God is not nothing.
Winston Churchill, who was a very opinionated and decision-prone man, used to talk about how he made decisions. He essentially said, “With some decisions you wait until all the factors that inform your decision come to maturity. Until then, if you don’t have to make the decision, don’t.” Now that wasn’t an alibi for dithering. It was a philosophy of not making a decision if you don’t know all the factors that have an effect on your decision. Don’t make your decision until you know what is involved. Likewise, maybe today you don’t know what is involved. Wait on God.
Interestingly enough, in verse 18 it says, “Therefore will the LORD wait.” Now He is not waiting to know something or have some strength. He has it all. He waits “that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore he be exalted.” God gets the credit because God does the work. It continues, “That he may have mercy upon you: for the LORD is a God of judgment.” God knows how to make decisions, what is right and what is wrong. It finishes, “Blessed are all they that wait for him.” So, God waits for us to wait on Him.
The long and short of it is that there is a difference between waiting and doing nothing. Doing nothing is what Egypt did. They sat on their hands. To be quietly patient and rest is what Judah was to do. So, if you have a decision or a question today, maybe you feel like you are circling the tarmac and don’t know what the wait is. You may not know the answer to your question, but you know the One Who does. God would say to wait on Him.
The conclusion of all this is in verse 31 where it says, “For through the voice of the LORD shall the Assyrian be beaten down.” Egypt and Judah couldn’t beat Assyria, but God could and God did. God can and God will. So, wait on Him.