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#4.
The waiting upon God that waits confidently.
p. 184
We have already seen something of the silent waiting upon God (Volume XXXI,
page 131), and the respectful waiting (Volume XXXII, page 144), and before we pass
on to other aspects of the subject, there are one or two other passages to be considered, in
which the same word is used as that which occupied our attention in the last article.
In Psalm 106:, after describing the passage of the Red Sea and the destruction of the
Egyptians, the Psalmist continues:
"Then believed they His words; they sang His praise. They soon forgat His works,
they waited not for His counsel: but lusted . . . . . They envied . . . . . They made a calf
. . . . . They forgat God their Saviour" (Psa. 106: 12-21).
The Margin draws attention to the Hebrew of verse 13, and reads: "They made haste,
they forgot." Waiting for the Lord keeps memory bright, and it is good for the redeemed
to experience and practice it.
Another salutary lesson is found in Isa. 8: It is a day of declension, and departure
from the living God. The testimony is "bound up", the law is "sealed", and "the Lord
hideth his face from the house of Jacob". Under conditions such as these, the prophet
says:
"I will wait upon the Lord, that hideth His face from the house of Jacob, and I will
look for Him" (Isa. 8: 17).
Again, in Habakkuk, in another day of darkness and despair, the prophet learns the
lesson of waiting:
"The vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie:
though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, and not tarry . . . . . the just shall
live by his faith" (Hab. 2: 3, 4).
The Lord's silence must not be misconstrued. It is not indifference, it is not inertia.
He awaits His Own appointed time, and the believer, if he would be in harmony with the
Lord, will confidently wait too.
We read in Dan. 12:, in connection with the prophetic visions: "Blessed is he that
waiteth" (Dan. 12: 12), and in Isa. 64: The "patience of hope" reaches its fulfillment in
the words of verse 1:
"For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear,
neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside Thee, what He hath prepared for him that
waiteth for Him" (Isa. 64: 4).