You’ve heard that saying – “asleep at the wheel” right? Well the truth is, that many of us as we drive down this highway called life – are doing just that. We’re asleep to God’s amazing plans and purposes for our lives. Are you … asleep at the wheel??

 

Asleep at the Wheel

Life is full of transitions isn’t it? We go from being a child to being an adult, they call those years our teenage years and anybody who’s been a teenager will know that it’s an awkward often difficult time. You se it’s this transition thing from something we know to something we don’t, from A to B. And what we’d really like is, we’d like our transitions to be quick and simple and direct and comfortable and predictable and safe. That’s what we’d like them to be.

But transitions never are. From single to married, from married to single, from staff member to supervision, from supervisor to manager, from employed to unemployed, from student to teacher. Whatever the change is, whatever the transitions is, there’s always an awkwardness, an uncomfortableness about it.

So we’ve been looking at this whole transition thing by putting ourselves in Israel’s shoes in this series. They’d been exiled in Babylon for seventy years but at the end of seventy years God’s ready to bless them again and take them back home to the Promised Land. Now you’d think that when Isaiah announced that, there’d be shouting and dancing in the streets. But think about it, most of them had been born in slavery. They’d been there over seventy years!

And while they’ve heard of the Promised Land it’s a bit like a dream land! Does it really exist? And hey we’re slaves right? Dominated by the dominant world power of the day the Babylonians, right? How are we ever going to see the Promised Land? That’s the reality. And when we’re in our version of Babylon, when we’re in that difficult place we’d rather not be in, come on, how difficult for us to even begin to imagine that God would actually restore our lives?

Sometimes fear is our default mode. It’s true for many of us. Most of us respond to uncertainty and transition with what? Fear rather than faith. And that is where Israel was; they needed some convincing that God was going to bless them. That’s where many people are today. How about you?

So God sends them the prophet Isaiah and as we saw in the last program, three times in chapter 51 in the book of Isaiah God says to his people, “Listen to me. Listen to me. Listen, to me.” It’s like an alarm clock at 6 in the morning going Ring Ring Ring! What’s he trying to do? He’s trying to get their attention, he’s trying to wake them up and in fact the very next thing he says to them is, “Wake up!” Let’s hear what God has to say to His people back then and what He’s saying to you and me about His plans and purposes for us today. Isaiah Chapter 52, verses 1 – 6:

Awake! Awake! Put on your strength oh Zion, put on your beautiful garments Jerusalem the holy city for the uncircumcised and the unclean shall enter you no more. Shake yourself from the dust, rise up oh captive Jerusalem loose the bonds from your neck oh captive daughter Zion for thus says the Lord your God you were sold for nothing and you shall be redeemed without money.

For thus says the Lord God, ‘Long ago my people went down into Egypt to reside there as aliens and the Assyrian too has oppressed them without cause, now therefor what I am doing here,’ says the Lord, ‘seeing that my people have been taken away without cause, they’re rulers house’, says the Lord, ‘and continually all day long my name is despised therefore my people shall know my name therefore in that day they shall know that it is I that speak, here am I’.”

This is God shouting, “Wake up people!” You know what it’s like when you first wake up out of a deep sleep and your kind of groggy and disorientated and if you default mode is fear and you’re traveling through your difficult place – your Babylon, your health issue, your marriage issue, your family issue, your money issue, your whatever issue – when you’re in that place and your default mode is fear, Hey! You’re going to take some waking up. To wake up from the drowsiness of that negativity to the potential and the amazing future that God has for you.

We need to get dressed in the garment of praise, we need to put on the strength we have in Christ! We need to shake the dust off our attitudes where it settled from lack of movement, cos tell you, fear has a tendency to paralyse us, we just kind of sit there and hope it’s all going to change. We need to lose the bonds of captivity to our circumstances that are choking us.

What a beautiful picture. God is wanting His people to wake up to the fact that by his sovereign will and His immense power He’s already started doing some amazing stuff but the God of their fathers is going to redeem them without money in other words He’s going to do it, He’s already doing it, and it’s going to cost them nothing. No work, no effort, cos God is going to do it.

“Wake up to what I’m doing here people”. That is what God’s saying to Israel and my friend that is what He’s saying here to you and me today. When we’re in that dark and difficult place of transition from something we know to something we don’t, from something that’s comfortable, albeit trying, to something that’s maybe not as comfortable and familiar, we almost want to sleep, most of us want to stay where we are. It’s out default mode; we’re not expecting God to move.

I’m not saying God’s going to wave a magic wand and solve all your problems over night that may be his plan, that may not be his plan but he may have a plan to fill you with exquisite knowledge of his present, the sort that is only available in the dark place that you’re in the sort of knowledge the presences of God and his healing an comforting spirit that simply wouldn’t be as poignant or as powerful in a place of light as it is in a place of darkness.

Whatever God’s plan is for you let me tell you, He has a plan. A plan for good, a plan to bless you, a plan to be your God right smack bang in the middle of that place that you’re in at the moment. You’re God has a mighty plan and a mighty purpose for your life and I don’t care if you’re 8 or your 80 or you’re 800, your God has a mighty plan and a purpose for your life. And today through his word this is what God is saying to you. “Wake up my child, wake up to the plan that I have for you.”

Wow, see the stuff that we could end up missing out of if we are not in God’s word? If we don’t’ open God’s word and read it and read it as though he means to speak to us through it? Wake up to the plan that God has for your life for whatever it is, it’s good! And it’ll be such a tragedy for you to miss out on God’s plan for your life. Wake up!

 

Beautiful Feet

Good news about tomorrow always brightens up today have you noticed? And there are probably only one or two people, and perhaps you’re one of them, who needs a bit of good news about tomorrow today.

Like the nation of Israel a few hundred years BC when they were coming to the end of exile and slavery in Babylon, back in around 520BC give or take a few years. They desperately needed some good news. But you see for the last seventy years as slaves all they were used to was bad news, and for someone only used to bad news it can be really hard to get the good news though. God had to shake them and wake them up.

He used the prophet Isaiah to do that as we’ve seen so far in this story, and of course you and I can be like that too. If all we’ve been used to is bad news for a long time, it’s kind of hard to wrap our hearts around some good news. It’s hard to have hope for tomorrow when the circumstances of yesterday and today are screaming at you there is no hope!

Are you with me? Sure you are. You’ve been there at that rock point out there on the battlefield where the enemy whoever or whatever that enemy’s been in your life is threatening to overwhelm you. When your Babylon has enslaved you and has robbed you apparently of all your freedom and your future and your hope in God.

So the old Isaiah has been waking and shaking God’s people, telling them that God is on the move and that good things are about to happen. It’s not an easy message to get through to them or to me. So God calls Isaiah to say something that’s really going to get our collective attention. Isaiah chapter 52 verses 7-10:

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace; who brings good news; who announces salvation. Who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’ Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices, together they sing for joy; for in plain sight they see the return of the Lord to Zion. Break forth together into singing, you ruins of Jerusalem; for the Lord has comforted his people, and he has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

Beautiful feet, what the blazes is God on about? Have you looked at your feet lately? Hardly the most attractive part of your anatomy are they? Leave them in a pair of shoes or socks for too long and they get a bit smelly too. God is nothing if not an edgy communicator. You know how sometimes advertiser will use shock tactics to get your attention? To stand out from the crowd to get their message noticed? That in effect is what God’s doing here. He’s grabbing our attention. He’s grabbing your attention and my attention.

Come on, if someone brought you the good news that you had just won 10 million dollars in the lottery, you could kiss their feet couldn’t you? That’s the picture here. This isn’t just good news, it's not just even great news or fantastic news, this is stunning brilliant totally life changing news. God has a plan to save His people, Israel back then – you and me today. And it’s the sort of news that should have us singing and dancing in the street.

Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices, together they sing for joy; for in plain sight they see the return of the Lord to Zion. Break forth together into singing, you ruins of Jerusalem; for the Lord has comforted his people, and he has redeemed Jerusalem.

There are some joys, some pleasures, some delights that are only available to us when all around us is darkness and gloom. I can tell you that, not just because I’m reading it in the book Isaiah, but because I’ve experienced it myself. In the days when all that I held dear had been taken away from me, the days were black and the nights were even blacker. And nothing that anybody said or did made one iota of difference to the pain and the isolation I felt.

Pain is the unique individual and isolating experience, when you suffer you suffer alone on the inside even if there are people around on the outside to comfort you. There’s just one thing one thing, that cuts through the darkness, that cuts through the pain with a light so warm and so gentle and so beautiful that they’re simply aren’t any words to describe it, and that my friend is the voice of God saying, "I have to come to comfort you. I have come to redeem you."

The people who came to bring me that news, I’m picturing their faces right now, I could kiss their feet. And once I was able to light my candle the flame that raged in their hearts burned ever brighter in me. Once I’d met Jesus in my black hole, He became my friend and my companion and my comforter in a way that no one ever has to me and no one else ever will be to me. He came to save me and to lift me out of that pit. Something He did even while the circumstances around me where still against me.

The joy of meeting Jesus in that dark place is a pleasure so exquisite that I wouldn’t swap those dark days for anything because the Lord bared His holy arm before the eyes of all the nations and all the ends of the earth saw the salvation of our God in me.

The good news is, God is only a side. Doesn’t mean He’ll always see things the way you do or do things the way you’d want him to do or when you wanted Him to do them. See we only see a small part of the puzzle He sees the whole picture and His plans and His purpose go way beyond anything we could ever imagine. But in the face of the most terrifying inky blackness I’ve ever faced in my life I remember the experience of that joy and of that comfort and of that peace that goes way beyond any understanding. There are no words to describe the beauty of God’s presences in that dark pit with me.

I know that God has a future planned for each one of us. I know that God has a future planed for you, a future that is so far beyond anything you can imagine or hope for its better than winning the lottery. It's better that anything this earth has to offer, because it involves him in our lives. It involves Jesus leading you forward through whatever transition you’re going through, through whatever dark hole your traveling through, though whatever pit you’ve fallen into, it involves Jesus leading you through that place and out on the other side.

My friend when you look back in the days to come, when you look back at the difficult transition that uncomfortable time, you’ll see the arm of the Lord, you’ll see what God has done, you’ll give glory to God because He was in that place with you and He did it for you. And that’s the news that Jesus asked me to bring you today. May it bless your socks off. 

 

Don’t Just Sit There 

There are plenty of people who want to wallow around in pain and misfortune until the end of time. Now please I’m not being harsh here when something bad happen, when we lose a loved one, when we get a bad medical diagnoses, when a marriage falls apart or we go to work in the morning only to come home unemployed in the evening, come on it knocks the wind out of us.

We go through all sorts of emotions, we go through shock, pain, anger, fear, and resentment there is a whole cycle that we go through in what’s called the grieving process. And that’s natural, we need to go through those stages and if you’re in that cycle somewhere at the moment I am definitely not knocking that. Please understand me.

But at some point, we have to get up off the canvas; at some point we have to accept that the world has changed irrevocably and get on with the business of living. If you’ve just lost your partner of 30 or 40 years nothing can ever bring them back, the world has changed; at some point you have to get on with life.

But I know people who are in the business of being perpetual victims. It’s like their default mode. They always look at the glass and decide that glass is half empty and they live their lives like there is a water shortage. I’m bringing you good news today! Your God reigns and He is determined to get you through whatever it is that you’re going through and He is determined to bless you in His own way, in His own time, believe it or not.

The question is, what response is God looking for from us? When He lays out the good news before us the way He’s been doing through His word today on the program? When God speaks and as when I read the word of God from the book of Isaiah – that’s exactly what He’s doing make no mistake about it – when God speaks He’s blessing into your heart, what response is He looking for?

Well in the very next verse, Isaiah chapter 52, verse 11 after He tells people to rejoice after He says, look I’m bringing you good news, go and dance in the streets, go and party, go and have some fun, what’s the next thing He says to his people Israel, who are about to be released from captivity? He says verse 11 chapter 52:

Depart, Depart! Go out from here. Touch no unclean thing, go out from the midst of it and purify yourself he who carries the vessels of the Lord.

Hang on, what’s all that about? Okay, let’s understand it in the context of what’s going on in the history of Israel. Right now when God is speaking to them, as we’ve seen they’ve been in slavery for seventy years in Babylon and Gods about to restore them and bring them the fantastic news we’ve been talking about this last little while, and they’re struggling to wrap their minds around it, to understanding it, to comprehend it.

Three times in the book of Isaiah in chapter 51 God says,  “Listen to me, listen to me, listen to me!” Then as we’ve seen he says “Wake up, wake up”. He’s like an alarm clock here trying to get their attention and now he’s giving them the next piece in the puzzle, “Don’t just lie there…you’ve got to get up and out of that nice warm comfortable bed that you’ve made for yourself and hit the track Jack because I’m doing something and if you want to get with what I’m up to you have to get up and go!"

For Israel that meant that they had to get used to the fact that they were about to leave Babylon that might at first? Sound like good news. They’re going from slavery to freedom – that’s what God’s been telling them here through Isaiah – they’re going from Babylon back to the Promised Land! Great news! You’d think!

Here’s what Isaiah was running into with the people, they’d become comfortable in their slavery. Okay, they were slaves but they had a roof over their heads, they had food on their tables, they were safe. What? Leave Babylon? Are you crazy?  The same thing had happened centuries before as Israel had fled Egypt under the leadership of Moses. They went only a few miles into the wilderness when they turned on Moses saying in effect "what have you done you idiot? It’s risky out here, it's uncomfortable, its uncertain out here, better we should have stayed back in Egypt at least there we were safe and we had food and a roof."

There’s nothing new under the sun. We still behave like that today because we prefer the certainty of our despair to the uncertainly of a future in the Promised Land. Listen to that again. We often prefer the certainty of our despair to the uncertainty of a future out there on a journey to the Promised Land.

God promises a whole bunch of stuff but to get it we have to pick up our cross and follow Jesus. Die to ourselves in order to gain our new lives in Christ. Listen again to this one verse.

Depart, Depart. Go out from here. Touch no unclean thing, go out from the midst of it. Purify yourselves you who carried the vessels of the Lord.

Don’t just sit there, get going and along the way on the journey stay pure and holy. Don’t mix it with the rubbish that the world’s dangling under your nose like it’s a viable alternative to the holiness and perfection of God. Don’t think you can have a foot in both camps…one on God’s journey and one staying back in the world in Babylon, which has put you in slavery in the first place. Are you silly?

It’s like standing waiting for your luggage at the airport and having one foot on the ground and having one foot on the moving conveyer belt. That works for about half-a-second before you end up flat on your face. It's one or the other. Its staying stuck in your present circumstances which are grooving you into slavery or getting out on the road and getting moving on God’s journey, God’s way to God’s destination for your life!

So friend, which one is it going to be? Going to stay stuck where you are or are you going to get going with God’s plan?

See, when the shock of the impact is over, when you’ve come to the point where you can begin to function again after a tough time a difficult time of transition even though it’s still tough, even though its still uncertain and uncomfortable and fearful are you going to get moving with God’s plan for your life or not? What does that mean? What does that look like?  It means pressing into God and starting to function again in your gifting’s and helping other people and serving other people and seeking heart after heart after God and in that a journey begins somewhere.

Journeys don’t’ happen by lying to bed and listening to the alarm clock and pulling the covers over our heads. Journeys don’t happen while sitting on the couch complaining that Gods not doing anything, the journey begins when we hear the call of God when we feel him shaking us saying, “Wake up!" The journey begins when we take those first few steps because he said to us to “depart, depart. Go out from here.”

A builder may have an architect’s plans in his hands, but unless he digs the holes and pours the foundations and puts the frame up and starts laying the bricks row upon row there ain’t going to be a house. No house at all. There are way too many people who have heard God’s call because He does have a plan for them, for you, and then with covers pulled up over their heads, their lying there complaining that don’t know what God’s plan is for them. Well, what’s it going to be for you? Are you going to keep lying there with the covers pulled over your head complaining ‘I don’t know what God has planned for me?’ Or are you going to do what God’s called you to do?

Depart, Depart Go out from here. Touch no unclean thing.

Get up out of bed. Go to the bathroom, have a shower, clean your teeth, put your clothes on and go and do the things that God made you to do. The things that you’re gifted to do. The things that you’ve been called to do and somewhere in the middle of that God’s plan for your life will begin to emerge. See that is what God’s called you to do.