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July 28/29, 2013
David Livingston (South Campus) | Isaiah 40:1-31
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that her warfare is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the LORD's hand
double for all her sins.
A voice cries:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
A voice says, “Cry!”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”
All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the LORD blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.
Go on up to a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good news;
lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good news;
lift it up, fear not;
say to the cities of Judah,
“Behold your God!”
Behold, the Lord GOD comes with might,
and his arm rules for him;
behold, his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.
He will tend his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms;
he will carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead those that are with young.
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand
and marked off the heavens with a span,
enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure
and weighed the mountains in scales
and the hills in a balance?
Who has measured the Spirit of the LORD,
or what man shows him his counsel?
Whom did he consult,
and who made him understand?
Who taught him the path of justice,
and taught him knowledge,
and showed him the way of understanding?
Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket,
and are accounted as the dust on the scales;
behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust.
Lebanon would not suffice for fuel,
nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.
All the nations are as nothing before him,
they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.
To whom then will you liken God,
or what likeness compare with him?
An idol! A craftsman casts it,
and a goldsmith overlays it with gold
and casts for it silver chains.
He who is too impoverished for an offering
chooses wood that will not rot;
he seeks out a skillful craftsman
to set up an idol that will not move.
Do you not know? Do you not hear?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;
who brings princes to nothing,
and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.
Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows on them, and they wither,
and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
To whom then will you compare me,
that I should be like him? says the Holy One.
Lift up your eyes on high and see:
who created these?
He who brings out their host by number,
calling them all by name,
by the greatness of his might,
and because he is strong in power
not one is missing.
Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the LORD,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.—Isaiah 40
Introduction
A month ago we did a three-part sermon series on the themes of worship, nurture, and evangelism. I spoke on the last of those themes, using Isaiah’s command: “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” (Isaiah 55:6–7). Today, another three-week series is starting on the threefold “up, in, and out” mission of the church. Our outreach intern, Jesse Albrecht, will preach next week, and Chris Robbins, my pastoral assistant, will finish with inreach two weeks from now.
This morning our theme is inspiring us to upreach, or the delighted worship of our God, and, as you have just heard read, once more my preaching text is from Isaiah. As we get started, listen to these words from Brad House, one of the pastors at Mars Hill Church in Seattle:
So how do we inspire ownership? I have been chasing the answer to this question since I began leading community groups . . . I have rebuked people for their lack of passion, and I have encouraged people just to take baby steps. I have appealed to my leaders’ sense of duty and have stoked their competitive fires. I have set goals and objectives and have put accountability structures in place. And in the end, each of these tactics had differing measures of success but very little sustainability.
What went wrong? It is like trying to inspire a painter with a tube of paint. It is not the paint that is inspiring—it is the sunset.
If you want to inspire people to the mission of God, you must lift up the Son. When we grasp the glory of Jesus, it becomes the sustaining inspiration that transforms life. Isaiah was inspired by seeing Jesus in the temple. Peter was inspired by seeing Jesus after the resurrection. Paul was inspired when he encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus. These men were changed when they saw the glory of Jesus. His mission became their mission. His glory was enough to change everything. (Community: Taking Your Small Group off Life Support, p. 74–75)
Let’s ask God to show us his glory this morning and to make it enough to change everything!
Prayer
Isaiah’s masterpiece prophesy was written over the course of 50 years, from 750 to 700 B.C. This prophet of God lived through the reigns of five kings, from good king Uzziah (at whose death Isaiah experienced his own commissioning vision of the LORD in the Temple in Isaiah 6) through Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, and finally evil king Manasseh.
Chapter 40 lies historically in the midst of two awful crises in Israel’s history, one miraculously averted by God in their recent past, and the other which God had already brought upon them before Isaiah’s prophetic life ended. Chapters 36–38 describe Jerusalem’s miraculous escape from the siege of King Sennacherib when God sent a single angel on a single night to kill 185,000 of the Assyrian king’s soldiers. But God granted no such deliverance when the Babylonians came to town. Their envoys were already present in chapter 39, and that “hammer of the whole world” (Jeremiah 50:23) in God’s hand shattered the southern kingdom before Isaiah’s eyes, looting and laying waste the city of Jerusalem, bludgeoning the Temple to powder, and smashing all but a small remnant of her population who would live in homeless exile for the next 70 years . . . with the sound of this very prophesy echoing in their ears.
God was teaching his chosen people once and for all to be faithful monotheists. The instruments at his disposal were not only the soldiers of king Nebuchadnezzer and 70 years of weeping by the waters of Babylon, but the words out of the mouth of Isaiah. The Jewish religion that emerged out of the post-exilic years would finally be what God had taught and shown the descendants of Abraham from the start, i.e., Deuteronomy 6:4–5, “Hear O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”
So, let’s focus our attention on the “dazzling sunrise” of Isaiah 40 this morning, because here is the start of 27 amazing chapters, not primarily about the judgment that God was inflicting on his people’s idolatry and false worship, but about the promises of blessing they don’t deserve . . . promises that can support and sustain and transform us even if the darkest of days, decades, and even centuries that might lie before us as they did before the Jewish people seven centuries before the birth of their Messiah.
[Parenthetically: More than that, Isaiah saw much further than the period of the exile. He saw far greater things; he was seeing Christ and prophesying his coming along with the dawning of our own gospel age of grace. Chapters 40-66 of Isaiah in fact serve as an Old Testament prophetic summary of the entire New Testament, starting here with John the Baptist’s “voice crying in the wilderness” (40:3) and ending in (65:17–25) with God’s international people inhabiting a “new heavens and earth.”]
Let’s begin by calling this a chapter of comforting questions. That’s the tone God clearly intends in this passage. Though Isaiah posed no less than 15 questions in the 31 verses of this chapter, this is not the same kind of relentless interrogation Job underwent at God’s hands in the latter four chapters of questions of his book (Job 38–41). We know this because:
1) God’s first word to Isaiah was a double command to “Comfort, comfort my people [and] speak tenderly to Jerusalem.”
2) Whereas God bore down on Job with intimidating question after ceaseless question, here God answers many of his own questions. He provides us with his own perfect responses, intent on seeing that we get it right. To get us to know not just the really good questions to ask, but to know his own inspired, encouraging answers that we can comprehend and bank on. His intent is not to overwhelm us but to instruct us, and not merely to inform our minds, but to win the love of our hearts!
So, here is a classroom full of God’s 15 educational questions. Let’s do nothing more than listen to them, lifted out of the fabric of the chapter, listening for the answer most of us already know points over and over to our God:
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? (vv. 12–14)
Who has measured the Spirit of the LORD? (v. 13a)
What man shows him his counsel? (v. 13b)
Whom did he consult, and who made him understand? (v. 14a)
Who taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding? (v. 14b)
To whom then will you liken God or what likeness compare with him? (v. 18)
Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundation of the earth? (v. 21)
“To whom will you compare me, that I should be like him?” says the Holy One. (v. 25)
Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God"? (v. 27).
“Have you not known? Have you not heard?” (v. 28a)
In order for all these questions not to short-circuit in their purpose, let’s not excuse ourselves with projecting the negative emotions we felt from a human “authority figure” like a parent or teacher or police officer or judge onto our Creator and Savior. God is none of those things. He is not a nagging parent or a condemning judge. Rather, he is the One coming with words of comfort to speak tenderly, to put an end to our warfare and our captivity, and to doubly pardon our sins by the infinite merit of his Son’s death. Yet to do so, the One with ultimate authority over us does come asking questions, and of course, these questions have the hard edge of truth to them.
For there to be comfort, there must have been something that needed correction.
For there to be pardon, there must have been the guilt of sin on our part to be covered.
For our warfare to be ended, God must have made a way to lay down arms and make peace by the blood of his Son.
According to verse 9, God charged Isaiah with putting God on display, with showing him off. He’s told, 1) “Climb into a visible position (“get up to a high mountain”), 2) “use your strongest voice” (“lift up your voice with strength”), and “get my people to look at me,” (“Say to the cities of Judah")
So, in our remaining minutes, may the glorious, gracious beams of light of “Sonrise” break over the mountaintops, opening our eyes to see hope in God.
Years ago, two four-foot by eight-foot pieces of plywood were fastened side by side to the stucco exterior of Bethlehem’s old west wall facing the downtown skyscrapers. On it were written three words, all in big, bold, capital letters: “HOPE IN GOD.” The original sign out in front at the corner of 8th Street & 13th Avenue was tiny and out of the way, so strangers in the neighborhood didn’t so much know us as Bethlehem Baptist Church, but as the “Hope In God” church. That’s a good name to go by and a great way to live.
Beginning at verse 10, see God’s self-disclosure of self-disclosure so that Israel would be in awe of him. The awe comes from their realizing he would do for them what no nation has ever before (or since) experienced. They would survive and return from exile. It is a hymn of worship to God’s greatness, expressed in language that is highly impassioned. Isaiah doesn’t just say, “See God.” He commands us over and over to, “Behold!” It’s a cry, a plea that this is someone stupendously worth seeing with our mind’s eye. Be stunned that God is the most surprising of combinations and then also, that he is to be seen in the most glaring of contrasts. The prelude to the rest of the chapter is “beholding” our God as the perfect and glorious blend of might and mercy. Look at verses 10-11 and see that our God is both.
First, the conspicuous, conquering warrior king: “Behold, the LORD God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him” (v. 10). This is the ultimate “superhero” whose strength always wins and whose victory is us. We are his “reward” and his “recompense.” He will regain Israel from captivity and deliver them from the power of their enemies. And that is who God is to us as well. Powerful as he is, the figure swiftly changes, because God is also . . .
Our caring shepherd: “He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young” (v.11). The arm that is mighty is also gentle, with his eye especially on the littlest lambs and the mother sheep who are most vulnerable. He does not drive us along but leads his people with a view to our safety and well-being.
Behold both our high king and lowly shepherd, now as we revisit God’s inspired and inspiring questions in a series of . . .
The first is between . . .
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? (v. 12)
Contrast the use of i) your cupped hand, ii) the distance from the tip of your thumb to the tip of your little finger, iii) the volume of a measuring cup and iv) the capacity of a hand-held scales for measuring the immensity of the ocean and the heavens or the weight of earth’s dust, mountains, or hills. This is impossible in our hands and effortless for the Almighty hand of God! Next,
Who has measured the Spirit of the LORD? (13a)
What man shows him his counsel? (13b)
Whom did he consult, and who made him understand? (14a)
Who taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding? (14b)
Is there anyone who can determine the extent of God’s creative power? Or advise him about how to use of that divine power? Would God ever need to sit down with any of us to solicit our advice, or need our help to provide him with the needed facts so that he could administer justice and judge impartially? Or what about the contrast between . . .
Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are counted as the dust on the scales; behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust. Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor its beasts enough for a burnt offering. All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness. (vv. 15-17)
If the exiles of that day lost their perspective before the might of Babylon, and if we lose ours today because of the real and threatened encroachments of our government or foreign ones on our freedoms, we might hold up a child’s plastic beach bucket full of water and watch a single drop dribble down its side, or we might take just a medium-sized breathe and blow the dust off a hand-held scales, or we could heft a little clod of dirt in one hand . . . all the while thinking, “This is how God accounts the world’s nations and coastlands, and what he is more than able to do with them.” Further, the most extensive and famous forestlands, together with all the animals living in them would not make a fire and sacrifice equal to the worth of our God. Next contrast . . .
To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him? An idol! A craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts for it silver chains. He who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will not rot; he seeks out a skilled craftsman to set up an idol that will not move. (vv. 18-20)
Lest I think myself too spiritual and mature to crowd God out of my life by being this kind of idol-worshiper, how much of my time, creativity, imagination, and money do I daily invest to acquire the relationships and stuff that surrounds me and clamors to be maintained? Spouse, children, house, cars, clothes, occupation, conveniences . . . all kinds of things that offer me pleasure and a sense of importance. All things I think I can control. Something is at work beneath the surface here, urging me to focus only on the surface, only on the material and present life, and perhaps even only on the appearance of all these things. This thing at work to keep me focused on the externals originates in my heart and in yours.
Let me confess what I’ve crafted and set up as an idol that will not move: 1) an ego that constantly wants to take control away from God and control of my life, my work, my future. Jack Miller had the same heart-idol and confessed it this way in his book, The Heart of a Servant Leader: “One of the deepest compulsions of my flesh is to say to my Father, ‘Let me be in control. Let my will be done now. I’ll do your will later” (p. 72). Evidence that we share in the worship of this idol is that we can all be such worriers. Inwardly wanting to be in control of many things makes us worry about them. Miller goes on to say this:
There are certain key areas where we hold on to control and weaken the Spirit’s working in ourselves. Some of us want to retain control of our tongues and use them to defend our rights, gossip, and shift blame to others. Others of us determine to say no to extreme suffering, both for ourselves and for our families. Many cling tenaciously to self-centered ambitions, material possessions, and reputations. Then inwardly most of us want an escape clause in our obedience to the Father. We want ‘to be free’ to say no if at any time in life we find the Lord putting us in a position where we must give up our treasured idols. Has not even a great gift like the family today become a major idol for Christians (p. 91).
Yet a fifth contrast that tempts us to crowd out the love of God from our lives is between . . .
Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been old you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows on them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble. (vv. 21-24)
On this fifth point of comparison that Isaiah struck between earthly “celebrities” and their Maker, his four-fold questions sound exasperated and impatient, like the author of Hebrews who wished his readers hadn’t become “dull of hearing” and who were still baby milk-drinkers, needing kindergarten instruction in the elementary doctrines of the faith, and who by now should have been teachers of these things (Hebrew 5:12–14).
Shouldn’t they (and we know) how very frail even the greatest of men are? Hadn’t God recently demonstrated this by the destruction of boastful King Sennacherib and 185,000 of his soldiers? From God’s enthroned vantage point above the dome of heaven, these princes and judges of that day (and today) look to him like little more than this summer’s batch of grasshoppers. They seem to have merely the lifespan of a plant, scarcely planted, rooted, and then blown away by God’s appointed “scorching east wind,” like the gourd outside the city of Nineveh that shaded the prophet Jonah. “And the LORD said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left?” (Jonah 4:10–11).
How great must be this God of ours who can either pity or dispose of even the mightiest of earth’s men and nations! And for a final contrast, “behold” the one that is between . . .
"To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him?" says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out his host by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power not one is missing. Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God"? (vv. 25–27)
In a final illustration of God’s incomparable greatness, he would have us look to the night sky and its countless stars. This would have been especially pertinent in the land of Babylon, which temporarily held Israel captive. Its so-called wise men were astrologers, convinced that the stars controlled the affairs of men with an absolute determination beyond even that of the gods themselves.
But they and we need neither consult nor fear anything in some dreamer’s “horoscope.” The God we worship created every star, every constellation, every galaxy, the whole expanse of the universe. Massive, distant, and innumerable though they be, each and every star, planet, and moon in the sky remains forever under his control. Which brings Isaiah back to the start of “beholding” this Almighty Maker, namely, that he is a Shepherd and that the stars are his flock, each one of which he knows and names and leads. As one Bible commentator remarks, “It is not due to the ‘laws of nature’ and their normal operation that the stars all appear nightly. It is rather the ‘result of the greatness of [God’s] might and the abundance of his strength’ that ‘not one of them is missing.’ The utmost simplicity of argument is blended with the greatest of insight . . . “ (Exposition of Isaiah, Vol. 2, H.C. Leupold, p. 37).
The Concluding Exhortation & Promise (vv. 27–31)
Now, verse 27 is the exhortation that these six contrasts from verses 12–26 have been moving toward. With such a God as this LORD, how could Israel (and we) have any misgivings about our heavenly Father and his ability to control our destinies? Well, in all honesty, I can hear myself complaining right along with the captives of Isaiah’s day who said in verse 27, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God." Is your voice part of that chorus too? Has God lost sight of you as well? Does it not seem that this God disregards your rights quite regularly?
And when the bottom drops out and God doesn’t give us what we want and when we want it, where do we reflexively look? Where have we set our hopes? On our capacities, our knowledge, our earthly empires and enterprises, our heart’s idols, our heroes, or even on our lucky stars?
Isaiah 40 systematically unmasks all these “alternative gods,” these substitute sources of hope. And in it, God puts himself front and center, saying, “Think things through again. Be more reasonable about who I am and how puny my competitors are. Behold Me, your God! My glory will be revealed. My word will stand forever. I come with might and will tend my flock like a shepherd. I am the Holy One." So, once more in conclusion,
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. (v. 28)
Should we not trust that the One who made the world and everything that is in it is able to control his creation? Isn’t it reasonable that the eternal God who made the “ends of the earth” has arms mighty and powerful enough to prevail over all our adversaries who are over, under, around, and even inside us? Isn’t it unthinkable that such a LORD of heaven and earth would ever faint or grow weary? Especially when it comes to the main task for which he created this world and us, namely, to glorify his name in the salvation of his people? Nor need we wonder if our God lacks insight into the challenges that face him, for “his understanding is unsearchable”!
The truth of the matter is just the opposite. He not only does not lack strength. He supplies it, every bit that all of us will ever need or have needed in the past. Here’s the part of Isaiah 40 that some of us have more than once committed to memory and all of us are beckoned to embrace as we return to our God’s shepherding promise, the tenderness of our great God :
He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not we weary; they shall walk and not faint. (vv.29–31)
You young ones, so full of energy, so tireless at times, even you know about weariness. Even in your youth you have hopefully come to the end of yourselves. But have you come to the boundless energy in the LORD?
To return to the quote with which we started (House, p. 75):
Our apathy toward the mission of God is not because of a lack of knowing what to do. It is our blindness to his glory and grace that keeps us satisfied with nominal Christianity. If you want to light a fire under your church for the mission, don’t simply trot out your goals; lift up Jesus. When we see him in his power and are overcome by his love, we are joyfully compelled to respond to his call to make disciples. We are energized to reach the lost and help the weak. We are inspired to worship and to call the lost to his feet.
Will you lay hold of your share of our God’s boundless energy? It is yours to claim, and anyone’s (even your 67-year-old pastor’s), ours for the having if we will learn to “wait on the LORD,” to lean heavily on him for strength and to bide our time until he comes. Such people do have the experience of mounting up with wings like eagles above the troubles we encounter, of going on miraculously if need be, running without growing weary, walking and not fainting. Here is our course and our source of strength because here is our God!