TITLE: He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands TEXT: Isaiah 40:1-31
OPEN: (lead the congregation in singing)
He’s got the whole world in His hands [Repeat 4x]
He’s got the Sun and the Moon in His hands [Repeat 3x]
He’s got the little bitty baby in His Hands. [Repeat 3x]
He’s got you and me Brother in His hands. [Repeat 3x]
APPLY: That’s a great little children’s song. It was originally written by a full-blooded Cherokee Indian named Obie Philpot while he was in training as part of the military in WWII. When he was deployed, he’d left the lyrics to the song in his locker. Someone found the song and managed to have it put on the radio while he was at war.
Since that day, it has been sung by a number of individuals as diverse as Mahalia Jackson and Perry Como. And it’s been sung for decades by numberless children in Sunday Schools and church camps
It’s a great little song.
And it’s a great song, because it is a comforting song.
· He’s got the whole world in His hands
· He’s got you and me brother in His hands
· He’s got itty bitty babies in His hands.
· He’s got EVERYTHING in His hands.
He’s a majestic and caring God who can protect us from all kinds of difficulties and hardships. And the song echoes a powerful promise from Romans 8:31 “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
Here in Isaiah 40 God’s power is painted with broad strokes.
In verse 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?”
The answer – nobody.
Nobody is as all powerful as God is.
In verse 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 answer – nobody.
God is all knowing and there is no one who is wise enough to teach Him something He doesn’t already know.
In verse 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.”
In verse 17 “Before him all the nations are as nothing; they are regarded by him as worthless and less than nothing.”
In verse 26 “Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.”
And in verses 22-23 “He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in. He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing. No sooner are they planted, no sooner are they sown, no sooner do they take root in the ground, than he blows on them and they wither, and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.”
God is God… and there is nothing like Him.
God is God… and you can’t even begin to understand how powerful and majestic He is.
God is God… and if He’s for us - there ain’t nobody who can be against us!
He’s got the whole world in His hands.
I have a Bible program on my computer, and just on a whim I did a word search of the phrase: “hand of the Lord”. And I found a number of times where that phrase appeared.
For example:
· It was the hand of the Lord that brought the plagues upon Egypt.
· It was the hand of the Lord that parted the Jordan river so Israel could enter the Promised Land on dry ground.
· And during the days of Samuel, the hand of the Lord helped Israel defeat the Philistines.
In fact, something is happening the first Tuesday of November.
Does anybody know what that is? (Election day).
That’s right – Election Day.
And while, there are a number of people running for state offices as well as Congress we’ve been exposed to the Presidential race for more than a year now. But now that the two main parties have selected their candidates you can’t help but hear people talk about how much concern and fear they have about what would happen if one or the other of these men became our President.
Now, as an American citizen I have my preference of who I’d like to see elected.
And as Christians we should vote and make our voices heard.
But - as Christians – we should never be afraid.
Why?
Because “The king’s heart (or the heart of any politician) is in THE HAND OF the LORD; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.” Proverbs 21:1
Whoever gets elected – whether I like them or not - when you and I pray, God holds their heart in His hand, and He will direct them according to His desires.
He’s got the whole world in His hands.
(pause…)
BUT, does He?
Does God really have the “whole world” in His hands?
There’s an old adage “God is in His heavens and all is right with the world”
But that’s not true.
God IS in His heavens… but not all is right with the world.
· There are thieves and rapists, and murderers
· There are terrorists, and tyrants and drug lords
· There’s hunger and poverty and all kinds of pain and sorrow in this world
God IS in His heavens… but not EVERYTHING is “right in the world.”
It’s called the “Problem of Pain and Suffering” and it causes many theologians a great deal of pain and suffering because: how can we say we serve an all-mighty God if He can’t stop human suffering.
Religions of the East (like Hinduism), have a solution to the dilemma of human suffering.
They teach that human suffering is the result of the sins of the person who is suffering. They suffer because they’re getting what they deserve. They have offended one of their gods in a past life, or done some wickedness in a previous life, and so they need to come back again and again (called reincarnation) and hopefully work off their guilt.
For the Muslim the solution is even simpler.
They deal with human suffering by saying:
"Allah has willed it, and you must learn to accept his will without question."
In other words: you can’t know… so don’t ask..
Religion struggles with this concept because many people have endured such tragedies in their lives that their faith has been shaken. They’ve been so overwhelmed by the unfairness of what they’ve seen that they turn against God. They shake their fists toward heaven and said, "God, if you allow such things to happen, then I reject you. I curse you…and I don’t ever want to have anything to do with you again!"
Several years ago, a Rabbi by the name of Harold Kushner’s wrote a book entitled, "Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?" It became a best-seller.
In that book Kushner gives a different kind of answer.
He says that "God is limited in His power, and therefore He is not a participant in our lives. Instead, He is a spectator watching us with interest." He says, "God wants to see good things happen to His people but He is not always able to arrange it."
His conclusion is that God is not all-powerful and we ought to understand that and love God anyway and forgive Him for His shortcomings. (with grateful acknowledgement to a sermon by Melvin Newland on sermoncentral.com)
Obviously, that isn’t the picture we get out of Scripture.
In the Bible God IS all-powerful
He has NO shortcomings.
God is God.
But the Bible ALSO deals with the Problem of Pain.
Some of the great men and women of Scripture faced terrible hardship and pain in their lives.
All you have to do is read the story about Job
All you have to do is read in the book of Genesis about a young man named Joseph whose brothers hated him, sold him into slavery, and ended up in prison.
All you have to do is read in the book of Ruth about a woman named Naomi whose husband and sons died while she was living in a foreign land.
These were real people who faced real tragedies and suffering.
Jesus warned us "… In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." John 16:33
The 11th chapter of Hebrews tells us about the faith of some of the great saints of God.
It talks about Noah, and Moses and David but then it says this:
“… Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection.
Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.
Hebrews 11:35-38
So, the Bible doesn’t ignore pain.
But if it doesn’t ignore it - how do it explain it???
Well, first of all, it doesn’t trivialize it.
The Bible never gives a simplified answer to all suffering.
There’s no “one size fits all” to explain why people experience tragedy and loss.
Sometimes, as in the case of Joseph, suffering is a tool God uses to shape our character.
Sometimes (as Jesus taught us) it is the result of persecution and opposition by others.
But most often, suffering is shown in Scripture, as the result of sin.
Notice what Isaiah tells Israel “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.” Isaiah 40:2
Sin is the core of all suffering.
Sin is the rebellion of men and women who have sought to do life THEIR WAY,
God created the world.
He owns the world.
It’s His possession
But because of sin, the world is not completely in God’s hands.
Many people fail to understand this, and because they don’t understand it, they can slip away from God into unbelief.
ILLUS: The story is told of a philosophy professor who had always challenged his students with this question: “Did God create everything that exists?”
A student would usually bravely reply: “Yes, he did!”
“God created everything?” the professor asked.
“Yes sir, he certainly did,” the student replied.
The professor answered, “If God created everything, then God created evil. And since evil exists, and according the principal that our works define who we are, then we can assume that God is evil.”
He’d used this argument for years to undermine the Christian teachings some of his students had.
But this time, one of his students challenged him. The student stood and asked: “Professor, does cold exist?”
“What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?”
The young man replied “In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Absolute zero (-460 F) is the total absence of heat; and all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have less heat.”
The student continued, “Professor, does darkness exist?”
The professor laughed, “Of course it does.”
“Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present.”
Finally, the young man asked the professor: “Sir, does evil exist?”
Now uncertain, the professor responded, “Of course, as I have already said. We see it everyday. It is in the daily examples of man’s inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil.”
To this the student replied “Evil does not exist either sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of something. It is the absence of God. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God’s love in his heart. It’s like the cold that comes when there is no heat, or the darkness that comes when there is no light.”
Evil is what happens when so much of the world refuses to be in God’s hands.
And – as the Bible teaches us – suffering in this world comes both from our own sin… and from the sin of others.
But now wait a minute!
If God is so all-powerful why doesn’t He just sweep down and remove all the taints of sin?
If the sinfulness of mankind lies at the heart of our suffering and pain in this world why not – with one powerful stroke - annihilate every sinful person on the face of the earth.
Why doesn’t God do that ??? (pause…)
Well… if He did that, there wouldn’t be any of us left!
“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23
None of us could survive if God simply decided to wipe the world clean of every impurity.
The beauty of Isaiah 40 is that it contrasts the suffering of God’s people with the power and majesty of their God. And it points at sin as the root cause of His people’s pain.
But right in the middle of this chapter.
Right in the middle of the discussion of the suffering of Israel and the majesty of their God.
Right there… is a prophecy about the coming of Jesus.
When John the Baptist was baptizing people at the Jordan, he quoted vs. 3
“…I am the voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’" John 1:23
John the Baptist had been sent to prepare the for Jesus.
Look with me at Isaiah 40:3-5 It speaks of John’s ministry by saying:
“A voice of one calling: ‘In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.
And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.’”
And then vs.9 and 10 it declares
“You who bring good tidings to Zion, go up on a high mountain. You who bring good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout, lift it up, do not be afraid; say to the towns of Judah, ‘HERE IS YOUR GOD!’ See, the Sovereign LORD comes with power, and his arm rules for him..."
From the time of Adam and Eve, men and women have sinned and sinned again.
And their sins have damaged and perverted the world so much that Romans chapter 8 tells us the creation of God has literally been in agony, groaning because of the bondage that mankind’s sin has imposed on it.
VIDEO ILLUSTRATION: A man by the name of James Choung has developed a way of describing what has taken place.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCVcSiUUMhY)
What Mr. Choung is pointing out to is exactly what Isaiah 40 has said.
The world was designed for good
It was damaged by sin
But God wasn’t satisfied to leave us that way.
His desire was to put our lives In His Hands
And equip us to be sent out into our worlds and bringing healing thru Jesus.
This morning, will you put your life in the hands of this loving and merciful God?
