Reminder: I never stick completely to my written sermon. This isn’t a transcript, but the written sermon I was using when I preached.
Friends, listen for a word from God in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, the 25th chapter, verses 1-9.
O Lord, you are my God;
I will exalt you; I will praise your name,
for you have done wonderful things,
plans formed of old, faithful and sure.
For you have made the city a heap,
the fortified city a ruin;
the palace of foreigners is a city no more;
it will never be rebuilt.
Therefore strong peoples will glorify you;
cities of ruthless nations will fear you.
For you have been a refuge to the poor,
a refuge to the needy in their distress,
a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat.
When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm,
the noise of foreigners like heat in a dry place,
you subdued the heat with the shade of clouds;
the song of the ruthless was stilled.
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,
of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.
And God will destroy on this mountain
the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the covering that is spread over all nations;
God will swallow up death forever.
Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of God’s people God will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
It will be said on that day,
“See, this is our God; we have waited for God, so that God might save us.
This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
let us be glad and rejoice in God’s salvation.”
This is the word of God for the people of God.
A Pivot Tonight
Friends, I had meant to take this message in a different direction. I wanted to spend tonight intentionally moving beyond Habakkuk using this passage from Isaiah, particularly verse nine, as a bridge: “…we have waited for God, so that God might save us.” But like many pastors something struck me this week about which I can’t be silent. About which the Spirit wouldn’t let me be silent even if I wanted to pass over it for the sake of an easier message tonight.
But before we go there, let’s get our bearings in tonight’s text, if only because it’s the first time since August 23, that we’ve read from a text outside of Habakkuk.
We’re all pretty familiar with the Prophet Isaiah. I’ve preached on passages from Isaiah many times and several of us locate our favorite or one of our favorite verses in this book. What’s important for us to remember tonight is that Isaiah is earlier in the Bible than Habakkuk, so we’re turning back some pages. We’re also likely stepping back about 100 years in time, though because Isaiah was likely written over a number of years by several authors, we can’t easily put a precise date on the text. There’s no evidence to suggest that writers of Habakkuk and Isaiah ever met, though it’s possible that the writers of Habakkuk may have read some or all of Isaiah.
Verse nine grounds tonight’s passage: “It will be said on that day, ‘See, this is our God; we have waited for God, so that God might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in God’s salvation.’” Not only was that going to be the bridge to Habakkuk tonight, but it’s the source of for the title of this message.
The grammar here is important: on that day. Future tense. Isaiah is picturing a people on the far side of the waiting, turning around to look at it. And what do they call it? Not wasted time. Not the dark years. They say, “We have waited,” the way you’d say, “We built this.” Gaelic, the primary native language of Ireland, has a phrase “Tiocfaidh ár lá” which means “our day will come.” This is the kind of waiting which both Habakkuk and Isaiah would have endorsed. Waiting is something they did. Together.
Habakkuk put it this way at the watchtower: if it seems to tarry, wait for it. Different Hebrew word, same posture. Isaiah’s word is often connected to a cord pulled tight. Waiting here isn’t slack. It’s strain. It’s keeping your grip while the rope burns.
Remember what Habakkuk was handed at the center of the book. The righteous live by their faith. Faith, for Habakkuk, meant faithfulness. Staying put. Staying honest. Staying in the conversation even when the answer seemed late.
Isaiah shows us the far end of that sentence. This is what a people look like who stayed. They look like people who can finally point and say, “This is our God. We waited. And it wasn’t for nothing.”
The City and the Feast
An important similarity between Habakkuk and tonight’s passage from Isaiah are their reflections on power and having clear eyes about the forces of the powerful. Habakkuk looked straight at a ruthless empire and refused to pretend it was anything else. Isaiah does the same. There’s a fortified city in verse two. Walls, palaces, the whole display. It looked permanent. And God made it a heap.
Notice the city never gets a name. Isaiah 24-27 all mention this city and each chapter leaves it unnamed. While scholars have guessed at the name or location for centuries, the text doesn’t give up the name. I think that’s deliberate. It means every generation gets to find its own fortress in the text, whether one of its own upon which God rained down judgement or one of its enemies.
Pay attention to verse three which says strong peoples will glorify God. Cities of ruthless nations will stand in awe. And yet in verse six, the feast is for all peoples. All of them. The vision isn’t the end of cities or nations. The vision is the end of ruthlessness. The table is set for everyone, and the only thing left outside is the cruelty.
This week it was announced that Nidal Hasan, who murdered 13 people and wounded at least 32 others in 2009 at Fort Hood in Texas, would be executed by firing squad. Now, I’m opposed to the death penalty for both moral and other reasons, but I wasn’t entirely surprised by the announcement given that the current administration supports capital punishment with a particular blood lust. What not only surprised, but made me recognize, yet again, the seemingly bottomless moral and ethical depravity of our country, was the announcement by Secretary of Defense Hegseth that the execution would be livestreamed for all to see.
Though Secretary Hegseth attempted to couch a public execution as some type of deterrent or example-setting moment, history unfortunately doesn’t support public executions as anything other than macabre spectator shows. From the executions of criminals in the Roman coliseum to beheadings of the nobility in revolutionary France to public lynchings in the American South which were turned into postcards, humanity has demonstrated that we will find new ways of killing each other and means of making it public entertainment.
Friends, I wish I had something encouraging to say here. Something that could put into context that in 2026 our national leaders are planning a public execution. Words fail me in this moment.
Instead, I want to address anyone who, like me, is tired. I recognize that’s likely all of us. Many of us are running on fumes, not just because of our own responsibilities, but because of the ongoing fire of the world around us. We can take some solace, though, in the place that Isaiah prepares at a table.
Verse 6. “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.” Marrow. That’s not diet food. That’s the stuff hungry people see in their dreams. Anyone who’s lived through a siege or a lean year hears that word differently than we do.
And wine strained clear. Think about that one. All the cloudiness, all the sediment, settled out and filtered. Whatever has been murky gets made clear.
Then verse 7. There’s a shroud cast over all peoples. A sheet spread over all nations. The dread you’ve been carrying isn’t private, though you may experience it in your own ways. It’s a cloud lying over everyone, and God has decided to tear it down.
Verse 8. God will swallow up death forever. In the stories the Hebrew’s neighbors told, Death had a mouth and swallowed gods and mortals alike. Here, Death ends up swallowed.
Then comes the tenderest sentence in the chapter. God will wipe away the tears from all faces. Later on, Revelation borrows this line, because nobody’s improved on it.
Count the verbs. Make. Destroy. Swallow. Wipe. Now count who’s doing them. It’s God, every time. We get the waiting. God gets the rest.
And verse 9 ends with an invitation. Let us be glad and rejoice. Let us. If you needed it, here’s your permission. You’re allowed to exhale. You can be glad without betraying the people who are still hurting. You can rejoice while holding the national disgrace of a public execution. Gladness isn’t the opposite of honesty.
The Noise
That said, we also have to be honest about where we’re sitting. The feast is on the mountain. We’re down here, a few weeks out from an election.
And down here, it’s loud.
Look at verse 5. “The noise of foreigners like heat in a dry place.” The Hebrew here means strangers, outsiders in the sense of invading forces. We’re not talking about immigrant neighbors who’ve moved here. It’s about an invading army.
Noise. That’s Isaiah’s own word. The ads on the television. The social feed that refreshes with one more reason to be afraid. Some of it even comes with a jingle. The song of the ruthless, verse five calls it.
And underneath the noise, are the real fears. Will it be safe at the polls? Will the results be trusted? What if somebody decides to make trouble? Those aren’t small, silly, or paranoid questions. I can’t promise you how it all ends. Neither does Isaiah.
What Isaiah promises is relief and refuge.
Verse four. God has been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat. Shade doesn’t turn off the sun. It makes the heat survivable.
And notice whom the shelter protects. The poor. The needy. The ones most exposed when the weather turns. That tells me something about what our waiting has to look like. If God is shade for the people most exposed, then waiting on God can’t be a private feeling. We have to be shade for each other. Check on the neighbor who’s scared to leave the house. Offer someone a ride. Sit with a friend’s anxiety without trying to fix it. Turn the television off for an hour. The ruthless song will survive without you.
And nothing in this chapter tells us to stay home. Waiting on God has never meant doing nothing. It means doing what’s ours and refusing to believe the outcome rests on our shoulders alone.
On That Day
On that day, somebody will say it. This is our God. We have waited. Tiocfaidh ár lá, our day will come.
We’re not there yet. But we’ve learned the sentence ahead of time. Until then we can rejoice at the tables we make larger and more affirming rather than building higher walls. We can rejoice in the midst of grief.