Putting Steel in Backbones

We left Isaiah in chapter 39, where he had just hit them with some devastating news,
and now it has come to pass. EXILE.

So while the first 39 chapters of Isaiah has established some things—the biggest being that God can be trusted, now that we are in a meltdown, now that things are falling apart, now that God’s people are in exile, we got some unanswered questions:

Does God want to deliver? Maybe we have sinned too far—maybe he has cast us aside and doesn’t even want us anymore

Can God deliver? Maybe he could deliver us from the Assyrian god, but Babylon proved too strong? Maybe our sin proved too much?

Is God going to deliver? And if so, when, how long can we hold out?? How can we have the power to hold out?

Doesn’t happen all at once, but little by little, over time, these questions chip away at faith, they take the courage out of people, they are the weapons of your true enemy—spiritual discouragement.

What do you tell these people? What can you say at the bedside? To the person who has just received that diagnosis? Who has just gotten the phone call from the sheriff about the car accident? To your people who have been quarantined from each other for 5 months? Into that darkness, Isaiah 40 speaks,