Sermon Central
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Have You Forgotten Who God Is
Contributed by Christian Cheong on Sep 26, 2025 (message contributor)
Summary: God poses questions to help His people remember and trust Him. He redirected them from their wrong thoughts about Him and their situation, to His unchanging character and trustworthiness.
Isaiah 40:25-31 Have You Forgotten Who God Is?
Introduction:
• Prophet Isaiah was speaking to the people of Israel in exile – a people who feel forgotten and abandoned.
• In their suffering, the people questioned God’s goodness. They felt that God was blind to their plight and was ignoring their pain.
God responded too, with His own set of questions, to enlighten them.
• Let’s read Isaiah 40:25-31.
Notice the questions here – in verses 25-26, 27 and 28.
• 40:25-26 shows their WRONG THOUGHTS ABOUT GOD.
• 40:27 shows the WRONG THOUGHTS ABOUT THEIR SITUATION.
• 40:28 directs them to the TRUTH about God and their situation.
God posted these rhetorical QUESTIONS to get His people to think:
FIRST – 40:25 “25To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One. 26Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these?”
This question has to do with their WRONG THOUGHTS ABOUT GOD.
In their captivity, the Israelites felt that God was too powerless to help them; “too weak” to respond to the powerful empires and their pagan gods.
• But God spoke into their despair and asked, “To whom will you compare me?” (v.25)
Exiled in a foreign land and seeing many idols and false gods, the captives may be tempted to think that the pagan gods were great.
• But the Lord says, “Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these?” (v.26)
• The evidence is clear, even in a foreign land - the Lord is the Creator of the universe.
• 40:26b “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.”
• He is the Creator and sustainer of all that was made.
God is NOT unaware of His creation. Look at the stars, even with billions of them, He knows it when one is missing.
We can all have wrong thoughts about God.
• God cannot be the product of our imagination. He cannot be who we “think” He is, but who He says He is.
• Our knowledge of God can only come from REVELATION. God reveals Himself through creation, His actions in history, His Word and Jesus Christ.
J. B. Phillips wrote an interesting book entitled “Is Your God Too Small?”.
• He says many people have a distorted and overly “human” conception of God.
• Our thoughts of God are too “human”. We imagine God to be, sometimes, much like us – weak, limited and powerless. We think of Him in human terms.
• We project our own understanding, reasoning, or emotions onto Him. He is who we THINK He is, not who He SAYS He is.
• If we have 40 of us in this room and each of us has our own “impression” of God, then we can have 40 different “gods”, all projected by our imaginations.
Isaiah challenged them to look at the stars and remember their Creator!
They had wrong thoughts (1) about God, and (2) ABOUT THEIR SITUATION.
SECOND - 40:27 “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”?
God has not abandoned His people, no matter how bad the situation was or how much they had failed Him.
• Listen to what the Lord says in the next chapter, Isaiah 41:10 – “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
• This was God’s promise to them right from the beginning, when they were led out of Egypt. Deut 31:6b “He will not leave you or forsake you.”
God’s presence is not conditional on our actions but on His unchanging character.
• 2 Tim 2:13, "If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself."
• That’s WHO He is. He never abandons anyone on whom He has set His love.
Where is God in all this? Frankly, the true answer is, He is right there.
• He is right there watching it all happen because this outcome has been prophesied by the prophets (N Isaiah, Hosea, Amos; S Isaiah, Jeremiah).
• The empires were instruments of God’s discipline for Israel and Judah.
• Not to destroy them but to educate them, to correct them.
In “Knowing God”, J. I. Packer says, [Knowing God, p.94]
“It is as false as it is irreverent to accuse God of forgetting, or overlooking, or losing interest in, the state and needs of His own people. If you have been resigning yourself to the thought that God has left you high and dry, seek grace to be ashamed of yourself. Such unbelieving pessimism deeply dishonours our great God and Saviour.”
