Introduction
At various stages in life, a person's perspectives tend to change. When a baby is born, it takes considerable time growing before he realizes that he is not the center of the universe. In out teen years, often we think we know more than we really do (and our parents don't know much at all). When we get older, we realize that wasn't true. Then when we have kids of our own, we think we know less than we really do because our kids keep telling us so.
Teaching the concept of personal pronouns to a 2 year old is not an easy concept. It is difficult to convey the various ways of referring to self from different perspectives.
For instance, my wife (Mary) was showing Darby (our 2 year old granddaughter) a picture that she had of Mary, her Sister, and her Mom (G.G.). She pointed to each of them and said their name: “That's GG, that's Jackie, and that's me”. Now when Darby sees that picture she says, “That's GG, that's Jackie, and that's me”.
Another example is of a picture of Darby and me. She says, “That's Papa and you”.
And when she wants me to go up to my office with her she says, “Papa, let's go to my office”.
How do you explain such things to the 2 year old mind?
Mary and I have tried to verbalize how that might go:
In the case of calling herself “you” in the picture, we could tell her, “when I refer to you I say you but when you refer to you you say me.” To her, I may as well be saying, “Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do”.
Technological innovations abound in our day. We are able to see farther out into our solar system, our galaxy and to galaxies beyond our own. And as our technology improves, we are face with a greater awareness of the things that we don't yet understand.
We have seen into the details of biological systems to the degree that we understand (to a degree) DNA and RNA. We've begun to unlock the complexities of the machinery within the human body that manufactures cells and customizes them to suite a specific purpose.
But the more we see of the vastness of the universe or the intricate design of the human body, often our focus is on the thing that amazes us without regard for the source of that which amazes us. We fixate on the created rather than the creator.
And Isaiah wants to break us of the problem that has plagued humanity ever since sin entered this world.
This passage is going to place us in a right perspective by starting with God himself. I've called this the theocentric perspective. With God at the center.
And by taking this perspective, we are going to begin to feel very small, and rightly so. But eventually that right perspective will lay the groundwork for a life of meaning and purpose and hope in the Creator who is all excellence in all He does.
Disclaimer: This passage is not written to build up man's pride, ego, and self-esteem. It is meant to drive us to reality. The way things are. The truth about the world and the relationship of the Creator to the created and vice versa. To find a true sense of worth in the Creator himself rather than in his creation.
No Contribution (Isaiah 40:12-17)
Hand of God (40:12)
12 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand,
or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?
Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket,
or weighed the mountains on the scales
and the hills in a balance?
This verse is not attempting to give us a sense of the enormity of God's hand – He is Spirit. These questions use anthropomorphic language describing the things that humans are often in awe of (oceans, the heavens, mountains, etc.). In relation to God, they are insignificant.
Volume & Distance (12a)
Quantity & Mass (12b)
Note: Rather than a vast number of freak chance happenings, things are the way they are because that is the way God created them. The right amount of soil, water, right mix of hydrogen and oxygen, etc. There is purpose and design because there is a Grand designer.
The Mind of God (40:13-14)
13 Who has understood the mind of the LORD,
or instructed him as his counselor?
14 Whom did the LORD consult to enlighten him,
and who taught him the right way?
Who was it that taught him knowledge
or showed him the path of understanding?
The things that we observe and experience with our senses are one thing, we can't comprehend the vastness, but what about the mind that conceived these things. The idea that man could ever comprehend the mind of God is inconceivable. If we can't fathom what He has created, there is no way we could understand His mind.
The way we think and arrive at comprehension is constrained by and dependent on events sequenced in time. Our thought processes are linear.
Some knowledge we are born with. Some things we are taught. Some understanding we gain through experience sensory learning – empirical methods. Some learning is extrapolation – inferential methods. The study of epistemology applies to methods of knowledge acquisition.
Not Understood or Instructed (13a)
Not Given Him Direction (14a)
God has never consulted with anyone to discover what is the right course of action. It would be impossible for God to be indecisive in any way. He is complete and lacking nothing.
Not Taught How To Learn (14b)
You can't teach God anything. He cannot learn.
You might say, I have that problem. Well, you and I might, and that is a problem of stubbornness or perhaps a symptom of old age.
But how can you inform the informed? How can you give to One who has everything?
The Nations (40:15-17)
15 Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket;
they are regarded as dust on the scales;
he weighs the islands as though they were fine dust.
The superpowers of the day (720BC or 586BC) would have seemed immense. Especially to a remnant of a small nation who have not experienced independence in 70 years.
But that is true even today. As you look at the nations, the superpowers, both economically and militarily, they seem pretty daunting.
We have the potential to destroy most life on earth several times over through nuclear armaments.
Wow! You might say. But the important thing is, what does God say?
Drop in the bucket; dust on the scales.
Drop In The Bucket
Have you ever dropped a bit of water into a larger bit of water. I think we all have experienced that.
But then, have you ever tried to distinguish the drop that you just dropped in from all the rest of the water.
No. It is indistinguishable.
Besides that, it also is insignificant. The drop in comparison to the overall volume of water is miniscule.
That's what the nation, mighty or not, really are. Insignificant in the grant scheme of things.
Not something that warrants our awe, that's for sure.
Dust On The Scales
When we lived in Turkey, there were scales everywhere. Big, small, old, new, dirty, all sorts.
In the market, you would buy produce, or olives, or cheese and they would place the product on one side of the scale and then apply weights to the other side.
I never was concerned about the dust that may have accumulated on one side or the other. It made no difference to the price I would pay for the product. It was insignificant.
That's what the nations, mighty or not, really are. They are insignificant.
Land and Natural Resources (16)
16 Lebanon is not sufficient for altar fires,
nor its animals enough for burnt offerings.
A nation may be deemed important because of what it has to offer. It may have a great coast, beautiful mountains, lots of natural beauty and resources that we consider valuable.
They even may have things that are important for worship such as wood for alter fires and animals for sacrifices.
Are not these nations deemed more important for what they have to offer. Are not these types of things good and necessary for what God requires.
Here Isaiah uses this picture of Lebanon. All throughout Scripture the “Cedars of Lebanon” are spoken of.
Cedars was the primary wood used in lining the inside of the temple that Solomon built. And what a large quantity they used.
Cedar also could be used on the fires of the alter.
But even if all the trees in Lebanon were used to build fires for burnt offerings, even if all their cattle were slaughtered in order to make burnt offerings to YHWH, it would not be enough.
God does not look at the resources of a nation and deem them important because they somehow provide something necessary for Him.
All the wood in the world along with all the animals in creation would not be enough.
Nothing and < Nothing
Verse 17 pretty much sums things up regarding nations.
Before God, all nations are nothing.
Principle: Creation contributes nothing to God/Creation owes everything to God.
Applications:
What 'nothings' dominate your attention?
What 'less than nothings' do you need to put in proper perspective?
How are you taking advantage of your access to the all-wise, all-powerful God?
No Comparison (Isaiah 40:18-26)
When you want to see differences and similarities between two objects, you make a comparison by observing the objects along side one another. By listing their attributes and comparing those attributes. There are many ways of comparing two things in order to discover what they are and are not like.
When it comes to God, what can you compare Him to? Man's perception of God? Man's understanding of God? Perhaps you compare Him to objects man uses as substitutes for God.
No Images (18-20)
Why No Images?
Talk about why God prohibited images.
Talk about the bronze serpent on a pole that God had commanded Moses to make.
Why Does Man Want Images?
We are created for worship and we WILL worship something or someone.
We want something tangible, but there is nothing tangible that can adequately represent God and in fact it will always detract from our worship of God.
Fallen man wants the convenience of a god that he controls. One that he can go to when he needs him but doesn't cramp his style. Doesn't make demands that are uncomfortable.
You can carry an image in a box and put constraints around it.
Image Making 101
Verses 19-20 are ironic in the sense that they depict the care in selecting and constructing a proper god.
If you can afford it, you used cast metals, gold overlays, and fine ornamentation.
[Indian friend who showed me the god he worships and how rich that god was]
Skilled Craftsmen
Notice that all these idols required the skill of man to make them what they ought to be.
Where did that skill come from. Some was probably skills that individuals were bent toward. Some artistic types have what we call a “gift”. They are endowed by their Creator to do creative work.
Here they are taking the creative abilities God has given them in order to make a god that repulses God.
God-given talents used to make a god that denies the true God.
A god For All Socio-Economic Levels
Notice the irony here when Isaiah transitions from the gold overlay with chains to the bare-bone model.
Nobody wants a god with wood-rot. So if you can't afford the high grade idol, just pick a good log – maybe Cypress – and give it to a craftsman.
You still want the skilled craftsman.
And you also want to use some of the latest in idol-stabilization technologies.
[Philistine god Dagon, when the Philistines had captured the Ark from Judah]
How Are We The Same?
Are we, in the west, any better. We worship at the shrine of the rich and famous.
We are in awe of eloquent political leaders.
Celebrity is a god that many worship by flocking to every potential hit movie our favorite actor or actress might be performing in.
Pursuit of career, of intellect, of wealth, of things.
All modern-day replacements for the satisfaction we all desire in life.
Four Yeses (21)
...not know? I Know.
...not heard? I've Heard.
...not been told? I've been told from the beginning.
...not understood? I've understood since the earth's founding.
The four questions are posited in the negative. As if to say, you should know, have heard, been told, understood.
The information was available so if you don't know, why is that? What are you lacking, certainly nothing from God?
If you don't know, you can't blame God.
It's similar to the argument Paul uses in the beginning of the book of Romans. Nobody has an excuse for their denial of God. Their own sinful bent is to blame for suppressing the truth.
God's Transcendence and Man's Creatureliness (22-24)
Transcendent:
Very excellent; superior or supreme in excellence; surpassing others
reaching beyond, the limits of human knowledge
beyond and outside the ordinary range of human experience or understanding
40:22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,
and its people are like grasshoppers.
This concept of sits enthroned above is an anthropomorphic way of saying that He is the ultimate Sovereign over all of creation. God is outside of the created order. He is in no way part of creation.
The grasshopper-nature of people is used to give a perspective. As a man looks at a grasshopper in relation to himself, so we are to God.
He is so far above us, even the grasshopper analogy falls apart because we are closer to grasshoppers than we are to God in comparison.
Then Isaiah uses some examples to show how God superintends over all creation.
Two examples are given: the heavens above and the nations below.
The Heavens (22b)
The account of creation goes into greater detail, but this passage points out that as a man stretches out a tent to sleep under, that's the way God stretched out the heavens.
To God, He was laying out a canopy under which man resides.
And each time you and I have the opportunity to look out on a clear starry night, we have the ability to be overcome with the immensity of the heavens. But then to turn that awe of the vastness of space to an awe of the marvelous work of Almighty God.
Whenever we are confronted with something in creation that captures our senses: the Grand Canyon, high mountain ranges, vast oceans, microscopic life, etc. We can stop there or we can choose to acknowledge God as the architect and creator of all things.
We can turn our awe of God's creation into awe of the Creator.
The Nations (23-24)
Once again Isaiah puts the power of nations and human leaders in perspective.
Just like we saw last week as we looked at the description of man as grass, here national leaders are viewed in the same way.
They come to power, serve their purpose, but then are gone. There is nothing lasting in their tenure and they are not the source of their power.
Certainly wicked rulers come to power through a multitude of means.
Sometimes our wickedness as individuals chooses to put a king on the throne (Saul for example).
Or perhaps just as a consequence of fallen humanity, one who starts out as a good leader allows the power to go to his head and becomes a wicked leader.
Or perhaps God raises up an individual or nation in order to serve His divine purpose.
Any way you look at it, the power of man is fleeting and subject to the Sovereign of the universe. He determines the tenure of a leader and He has the ability to crumble an empire.
So Who Was Comparable Again? (25-26)
We wrap up this section repeating the earlier question from verse 18.
Who am I comparable to? What equation can you formulate with God on one side and another (or even multiple others) on the other side?
There is no equation, mathematical or otherwise.
He is the Holy One. The separate and otherly One. He is not in the same category with anyone.
Anyone who is someone but is not this One is no one in comparison to the Eternal One.
Call it obfuscation if you will, but it captures the essence of what Isaiah (God's words) are putting across to us.
Don't even try to compare me to anyone or anything because I am the source of everyone and everything.
And so He ends with a call to look up, fess up, and contemplate:
Who created this? God did!
Not only did He create it, but the hosts of heaven are all accounted for by Him.
We cannot even fathom the number of the stars. The greater our ability to look into space, the more aware we are of the vastness of the universe.
Yet the stars, to God, are like a coin collection to a collector who has each identified and accounted for. Making sure that none are missing.
As one person mention on Saturday morning, we have to number the stars whereas God names them. We are running out of numbers but each is named in God's understanding.
Again, this is an anthropomorphic way of dealing with the fact that to God there are a handful of stars.
No comparison!
Principle: Human understanding, skill, and power cannot compare with God.
Applications:
What knowledge do you have that has become a barrier between you and God?
What skill has God given you that has become a barrier between you and your Creator?
What authority do you have that is keeping you from submitting to God's authority?
No Problem (Isaiah 40:27-31)
After reading through verses 12-26, one might get the idea that God is so far above all that is created, that we as His creatures go unnoticed. He has far greater things to capture His attention. Why should anything that I am experiencing and going through in life be of any significance to God? Creation is insignificant in comparison to Him so of what value am I?
But the first verses of this past section were not attempting to place value on God's creatures. What these verses do is put the source of the value in the Creator himself. Our value is found in our Creator.
Not Unnoticed (27-28)
With the perspective Isaiah has given – the broad ranging comparisons, the infinite significance, wisdom, and power of God – now he is able to deal with the remnant's dilemma.
Sometimes its easy to think that my situation and circumstances are too small for a God who deals with such grandiose things.
On the contrary. Our Lord has infinite ability to know all things, perceive all things, address all things, and to do it all within a single context. Not context switching necessary for God.
And so Israel and Judah, who have a history with YHWH, feel that their alienation from Him has caused Him to be unaware of or unconcerned with their cause.
Same Questions (28a)
Isaiah uses the same questions as he had posed to them previously.
In other word, he is teaching them something that they are already aware of.
The LORD (YHWH) is the everlasting (Infinite and eternal) God. And as if that were not enough, let me expound on that:
Creator of the ends (from one end to the other) of earth (universe)
Inexhaustible (His power has no end), He doesn't tire, He doesn't change
Infinite understanding – even the small issues of your life are in view, He is aware
This is your God, Israel. This is your God, men in this Isaiah study.
He is all-sufficient for all things.
Do you not know? Have you not heard? If not, now you have.
Strength In Hope (29-31)
The last 3 verses may be familiar to many of you. Here he is talking about the frailty of the human condition.
Not only are we physically weak and frail and eventually die, but more importantly, we are spiritually weak. We are tainted by sin. We are easily led astray. We often lose focus on what our mission is on earth.
Strength to The Weary Power to The Weak (29)
Jesus said, in Matthew 11:28-29:
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
This was Jesus talking about the condition of the human soul. The one who is burdened down with the weigh of bearing sin. The fact that this burden is replaced with rest that is found only in him.
And so in faith a person comes to Jesus, and figuratively, lays that burden of sin at the cross where Jesus bore sin for mankind.
The second part of that verse deals with a life where the believer whose burden has been taken is now yoked with Jesus in a life of work in his strength.
So weariness can be the weight of sin, but is also can be a life that has gotten off track from the course that is set out by God for a believer.
Hebrews 12:3:
2 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
In case you forget, and think that the Christian life is difficult (you are correct), don't lose sight of Jesus who is the perfecter of our faith. What did he endure for you? What should be your response? Where will you get the strength for such endurance?
God will and does provide the strength.
You know, weariness and weakness is not a bad thing. It is a reminder to refocus my perspective back into reality.
That reality that God is God and I am weak. He is capable and I am not. Only by faith in Him do I have the strength to carry on.
He uses the young men and youths to illustrate that he is not talking about physical abilities here (not that He can't also provide that when needed however). See, in the grand scheme of things, youth and young men only have a slight advantage – eventually they too grow tired.
But God never tires, never becomes discouraged, never becomes weary and He has the infinite ability to dole out what is needed to accomplish what He requires of His people.
I don't know why it is so hard for me to figure that out. I continue to find myself striving and becoming weary and then it dawns on me (or we read a passage like this) that its not about me.
I have nothing to give in myself. Without faith, it is impossible to please God.
And if I am doing something for God in my own strength, where is faith? It isn't in the thing I am doing. It is not involved in the task at all. And even if God does use my efforts, they are not pleasing to Him – I gain no reward except for stress, strain, and weariness.
He points out to these Hebrews that they must hope in the LORD. Hope is not a wishful thinking I hope so type of attitude.
It is not positive thinking and thus bringing it about (which is impossible and superstitious anyway).
Hope is akin to faith in that my reliance is upon God completely. I am taking him at his word. Trusting in His character and His promises.
Finding my strength in what God has revealed about himself through His word.
Note: Sometimes we want full comprehension before we will have faith. Full comprehension is not possible. We need to look at the evidence we have been given and respond to that. There is nothing more needed than to look at the heavens to see the handiwork of an all wise, all powerful God.
It is faith that pleases God – faith in action through a life live out for Him.
Then whether I plod along through life, following the path that God leads me on, or soar on wings of eagles – either way, I am serving with the right perspective of God with my hope fully set on Him alone.
Principle: God provides the only strength we need for the road ahead.
Applications:
What burden are you carrying that needs to be left at the cross?
When will you become too tired of striving in your own strength and finally put your hope in God's infinite strength?
Circumstances: those nasty things you see when you get your eyes off of God (Warren W. Wiersbe quoting unknown author) Where are your eyes focused? Will you commit yourself to return to this passage again and again to receive the right focus and perspective?
Conclusion
Every once in a while, I need to get a realignment on my car because of all the bumps in the road. The wheels get out of whack and the car wants to go in a direction contrary to where I am steering it.
A change of perspective is like that. Over time it is easy to hit a few bumps and begin to steer out of the direction God has called you and I into.
We need a God like the one described in chapter 40! This is a God who is able to provide the hope necessary for the road ahead.
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