What God Says About God
Isaiah 40
Rev. Brian Bill
1/25/09
Video: “Who is God?” (Dare2Share)
People in our culture have a lot of questions about God. Unfortunately, many have no idea who God really is because their view of Him is an amalgamation of what they see on TV or movies or read in books. I like to call this a “smorgasbord of spirituality,” where people include ideas and elements they like and discard those they find distasteful. An example of this occurred during the inaugural activities this past week when an Episcopal bishop addressed “The God of our many understandings.” Blogger Denny Burk offers this pointed insight: “In one sentence, he endorsed the idolatry that is endemic to the human condition—the idea that god is whoever we imagine him to be” (www.dennyburk.com).
I’d like to make some comments about the best-selling book called The Shack, which has sold well over a million copies in a little over a year. The book has connected with a lot of people because there is a “Great Sadness” in almost everyone’s heart. The book starts out by describing a man named Mack whose little girl was abducted and then murdered in a shack in the middle of the woods. As you can imagine, his grief is raw and he spirals into a deep depression. One wintry day Mack goes to the mailbox and finds a letter addressed to him from God. Most of the book consists of conversations Mack has with one person of the Trinity or another.
I read this book this past summer on the plane to Mexico and was moved emotionally and troubled theologically. I’ve been asked a lot of questions about it so thought I would offer a cursory commentary. I have included some more extensive reviews on my blog if you’d like to do some further study (www.pontiacbible.org).
Let me start by mentioning some positive elements. If you have been through a personal tragedy or have wrestled with God about something, you can probably identify with Mack. Much of what he learns in the book helps him heal the hurts that he has. In particular, the message that God is “especially fond of him” speaks right to his heart and the themes of love, forgiveness and reconciliation have resonated with many readers.
Having said that, I share Pastor Jim Nicodem’s two fundamental concerns (www.ccclife.org):
1. The God of the Shack is not necessarily the God of the Bible. First of all, God the Father is depicted as a matronly woman known as “Papa,” Jesus is a man in his early 30s and the Holy Spirit is depicted as an Asian woman named “Sarayu,” which is Sanskrit for air or wind. Remember that this is a fictional novel with information about God coming from the imagination of an author who has gone through some dark times. In an interview Paul Young said this: “In 2004, I came to peace with my sense of who I believe God to be. The Shack is the big picture of how I think about God.”
Does anything bother you in this statement? The Shack is his sense of who he believes God to be. Let me ask you a question. What makes it legitimate for people to come up with their own ideas about God? People say things like: “I think God is open to other religions…” or “My God is so loving that he would never send anyone to hell…” How would you respond if someone said some things about you that weren’t totally true?
Imagine you overhear a conversation where two people are talking in a cubicle or in a break room or outside a locker and your ears perk up when you hear your name. Your heart starts racing because you realize that they are talking about you: “I think he’s like this or that…” The weird thing about this is that neither of them has ever even met you. They didn’t get their information about you from you.
Friend, don’t you want to know what God says about God, not what some author might think? The question really is this: What do the Scriptures say about God, not what does the Shack say?
2. The Shack paints an unbalanced picture of God. I don’t have time to get into the universalism the author seems to argue for, or how he downplays Scripture, or his seeming disdain for the church, or several other doctrinal deficiencies. Let me just point out that the God of the Shack is friendly, personable, laid-back, fun-loving, empathetic and humorous. While some of this is no doubt true of God, we need to believe what the Bible says about God. We must keep in mind that God is both friendly and frightening; He is good and great; He is shepherd and sovereign.
To put it in theological terms, God is both immanent (familiar and close) and transcendent (totally other, beyond comprehension). See if you can spot both truths in these two passages.
* Jeremiah 23:23: “Am I only a God nearby…and not a God far away?”
* Isaiah 57:15: “For this is what the high and lofty One says - he who lives forever, whose name is holy: ‘I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite [crushed] and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.’”
We need to have a biblical and balanced understanding of the Almighty and that’s what the Major and Minor Prophets are all about. Last week we learned about Jeremiah and today we’ll see that the Book of Isaiah captures both the greatness and goodness of God. Commentators have pointed out that the 66 chapters of Isaiah correspond in some way to the 66 books in the Bible. For example, the first 39 chapters of Isaiah have been compared to the Old Testament books while the final 27 match up with the New Testament. I think that’s pretty cool. Having said that, though the Scriptures are inspired, the chapter divisions are not.
Please turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 40. My aim is to not smack the Shack but rather to draw your attention to the Almighty in all His greatness and goodness as found in this tremendous chapter. God is bigger than we imagine and yet closer than we realize. We need to find out what God says about God so let’s dig in. In the process we’ll discover that God will shepherd us through our own great sadness.
Verify the Voices
To help us know what to listen to, in the first nine verses, we’re introduced to four different voices. In an effort to personalize them so we can put them into practice, I’ve used the imperative tense.
1. Speak words of comfort. On Wednesday our church hosted the Pontiac Area Ministerial Association Meeting – by the way, there’s a community praise service tonight at First Lutheran church. I was sitting next to a pastor and we started talking about how much our community has been through this past year – the flood, the prison situation, layoffs and now there’s a lot of unsettledness in school district 429. On top of that, people are dealing with their personal problems and stresses. As we talked I noticed that he was getting teary and so was I. We joked about crying because we’re both part Irish and then I told him that the longer I’m in ministry the more I cry. He said the same thing is happening to him. I think that’s a good thing, don’t you?
I am so glad that God longs to give us comfort and to use us to comfort others. Actually, to give comfort is a command. Look at Isaiah 40:1-2: “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. 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.” When a word is repeated twice in Hebrew it is to express emphasis or abundance or intensity. After 39 chapters that describe sin’s consequences, these words of comfort to those in captivity are almost hard to believe.
In the midst of all the economic concerns and stresses in our economy, there is one group of businesses that are thriving. Do know what they all have in common? They’re seeking to provide comfort. According to a CNN story I saw yesterday, these “comfort companies” are enjoying explosive growth as people seek solace in soups, spam and macaroni and cheese.
Our compassionate God offers double comfort and help for the hurting. If you know Jesus Christ, God says to you, “You are part of my people and I am your God.” This is covenant language. The phrase, “speak tenderly” literally means to speak “home to the heart” with gentle and encouraging words. This is love language. Our aim at PBC is to not just speak to the head but to allow God’s heart to speak to your heart through His Word.
Here’s a question. Are your words kind and full of comfort or are they harsh and condemning? 2 Corinthians 1:3-4: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”
God sees your “hard service” and wants you to know that your sin has been paid for by the sacrificial death of His Son on the cross. Receiving “double” for sins is a reference to an Eastern custom. If a man owed a debt he could not pay, his creditor would write the debt on a piece of paper and nail it to the front door of the man’s house so that everyone passing by would see that there was a man who could not pay his debts. But if someone paid the debt for Him, then the creditor would double the paper over and nail it to the door as a testimony that the debt had been fully paid.
What a picture of forgiveness where the payment precisely fits the penalty! Colossians 2:14: “Having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.” This would be a good time to urge you to come back next week and to bring a friend with you because we will be studying Isaiah 53 and focusing on how to be free from our addictions.
2. Seek the way of Christ. This next voice tells us to make sure we have the highway in our hearts prepared for Christ. Listen to verses 3-5: “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.’” John 1:23 tells us that this was ultimately fulfilled by the ministry of John the Baptist when he declared: “I am the voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’”
In that culture workers would smooth out the roads on which a dignitary would travel – it’s similar to what happened in Washington, D.C. this week, when clear paths were made for our new President and the red carpet was rolled out for him. So too, as Pastor Jeff reminded us, Jesus is at work reconstructing our lives. Just as John preached repentance and reconstruction, if we are serious about making the way of Christ straight in our lives, we must be willing to change. If you want to move from the desolation of the desert, then build a highway in your heart. If you want comfort from the Lord then seek comfort from nowhere else. The sense here is this: Allow God to straighten out that which is crooked in your life and when He does you’ll catch a glimpse of His glory.
3. Stand on the Word of God. There is very little that is stable in our world today but we can always count on the stability of the Scriptures. The third voice is heard in verses 6-8: “A voice says, ‘Cry out.’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’ ‘All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.’” In that climate, dry and dusty winds would blow out of the desert and the grass and flowers would just wither away.
That means that every book other than the Bible will fall and its words will wither [drop books to the floor – The Shack, Les Miserables, Systematic Theology, Purpose Driven Life, etc.]. Our technology will tumble as well. I joined Facebook about a month ago and have been surprised to find out that I have 414 “friends” already – before this I didn’t know that I even had 14! Just a week ago I created a group called “Pontiac Bible Church” and it already has 107 members! That’s a lot of people on Facebook but this won’t last and either will Twitter or anything else that’s coming down the technological turnpike. This is a reminder that we should not put our hope in people or in places or in our possessions because it can all blow away in a moment. We are all fading flowers, aren’t we? Instead, we must stand on the Word of God that lasts forever. Jesus put it this way in Matthew 24:35: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”
I like what A.W. Tozer has written about the Word: “If you would follow on to know the Lord, come at once to the open Bible expecting it to speak to you. Do not come with the notion that it is a thing, which you may push around at your convenience. It is more than a thing; it is a voice, a word, the very word of the Living God.”
4. Shout out the wonder of God. As Pastor Joe Michael from Kenya reminded us, we are to take the good news of the gospel everywhere, with courage and conviction. This fourth voice urges us to shout out the wonder of God in verse 9: “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!’” [Go up on ladder and shout, “Here is your God!”] The phrase “bring good tidings” refers to preaching good news, or the gospel of God. We’re to express it with enthusiasm as we lift up the Lord and proclaim, “Here is your God.” Only God can meet a person’s deepest needs so we should do all that we can do to direct people to Him. We are most miserable when we focus just on ourselves. Isaiah 45:22: “Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.”
Once we hear these four calls we must steer them to those around us. Think of it this way. You may be the only voice from God that your friends and family members will ever hear and the only Bible they will ever read. This is what we’re to do. And what we do is based on who God is. God is bigger than we imagine and yet closer than we realize.
The Greatness and Goodness of God
Verses 10-11 serve as summary statements of both the greatness and goodness of God, of His sovereignty and His shepherding heart. Verse 9 ends with the phrase, “Here is your God.” Let’s focus first on the greatness of God.
1. God is great. We see this in verse 10: “See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power, and his arm rules for him. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him.” God is the powerful ruler who will reward those who receive Him and recompense those who reject Him.
The majority of the verses in the rest of this chapter establish that the Almighty is great and sovereign. We don’t have time to hit all of them so I encourage you to read them for yourself this week. Here are two main truths that are fleshed out through the use of rhetorical questions: God is immense and He is incomparable.
* God is immense (12-17). “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 is no one but God alone. Incidentally, did you know that there are 326 million trillion gallons of water in the earth? And yet, God measures it all in the hollow of his hand. He has no advisors and needs no consulting firm. Verse 15: “Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded as dust on the scales…” Verse 17 adds: “Before him all the nations are as nothing…”
[Demonstrate by using water, hand, and dust in a basket, a scale, and a drop in a bucket]
* God is incomparable (18-26). God is immense and He is also beyond comparison according to verse 18: “To whom, then, will you compare God? What image will you compare Him to?” After discussing the insanity of idols, verse 22 takes us back to His immensity: “He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers…” [Remember this verse when people say that the Bible teaches that the world is flat] Again in verse 25, the question is asked, “‘To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?’ says the Holy One.” 69 different times in Isaiah God is referred to as holy.
God then draws our attention to the skies 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.” I did some research this week and found out that no one really knows how many stars there are in the universe. On a clear, moonless night, about 3,000 are available to the human eye. Some estimate that there are 100 billion stars just in the Milky Way and that there are perhaps 100 billion galaxies! One astronomer added, “Although a 50% error either way is quite plausible.” One estimate of the number of stars in the universe is over 3 thousand million billion! NASA alleges that there are “zillions of uncountable stars.” God not only brings out each star one by one, He also calls them by name. We don’t even know how many there are and God has a name for each one! By the way, this should have got Israel’s attention because in Genesis 15:5 Abraham was told that his descendents would be more than the stars.
God is great and we see this through His immensity and His incomparability. Let’s come back now to verse eleven to see that He is not only great, He is good. He is both Sovereign and Shepherd.
2. God is good. Verse 10 speaks of His ruling “arm,” and now we see that He gathers lambs in His “arms.” He is tough and tender. Check out verse 11: “He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.” The word “tend” means to care, guard, govern and feed. Holding one close to the heart is a picture of great tenderness and affection.
He gently leads young parents and He lovingly carries their small children. I’m reminded of Jesus, who when asked if he would bless the children brought to Him, did even more and picked them up and held them in his arms. Mark 10:14: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” If you think that children don’t matter to God, how do you explain the 435 verses in the Bible that mention children? Some of you are young parents and you’re struggling with sleepless nights, sickness and stress. I want you to know that Jesus treats you with gentleness. He understands and is actively involved in your parenting and wants to lovingly lead you to places of rest and refreshment. A shepherd knows that mother sheep need to go a little slower than the rest of the flock because they need to stop and nurse the lambs. Hey moms, the shepherd understands your situation!
God Comforts Even When We Complain
Even though God is great and God is good, it’s easy for us to complain and think that the Lord is not watching or interested in what we’re going through. To a people who had been in exile for a long time, it would be easy to doubt God’s greatness and His goodness. Check out verse 27: “Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O Israel, ‘My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God’?”
It’s very interesting to see how God answers this as He draws us back to His goodness in verse 28. Friend, here is a key point. Whenever you’re struggling, go back to Scripture. The real question is not, “How big are your problems?” The best question is this: “How big is your God?” When you’re in crisis, hold on to the character of God because He knows how you feel and what you fear. God knows we sometimes forget and so he reminds us by asking two questions: “Do you not know? Have you not heard?” We need to relearn what we know and have heard. We need to know that God knows and we need to know that He hears. He knows how to help and when to help.
Here’s what you and I can trust: “The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.” He is like a watchman who always stays awake and never misses a thing. He is eternal, creator, omnipotent and omniscient. He is immense and He is incomparable. When we see Him for who He is, everything else fits into perspective. The prominent philosopher Mortimer Adler came to saving faith late in life. What brought him to faith was his realization that our God was too big and complex to be understood – only a God beyond comprehension and understanding was worthy of being worshipped.
Did you see how the Presidential Oath was messed up on Tuesday? The Chief Justice lost his place and he and the President had to do it over again on Wednesday to make sure it was right. Friends, God never loses his place and He doesn’t need a “do-over.” But we do. God is everlasting. He is creator. He is awake and never gets weary. But before we think we can totally figure Him out, we’re reminded that no one can fathom His understanding. What we do know is this: God is bigger than we imagine and yet closer than we realize.
God Gives Strength to the Weary
I don’t know what your “Great Sadness” is but I know two things. First, there’s something in your life that you’re struggling with right now, or you’re about to. When you’re struggling, it’s easy to think that God doesn’t know or that He doesn’t care. Second, God knows what it is and can give you supernatural strength in the midst of your struggle.
Check out the closing verses in Isaiah 40:29-31. Let’s unpack this passage one verse at a time. “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.” This is in the present tense meaning that God gives strength again and again, not just once. Until we grow weary and become weak we tend to find our comfort elsewhere; when we’re wiped out, we choose heartfelt, desperate dependence on God. As Ben Patterson says, “When you’re well, you think you’re in charge. When you’re sick, you know you’re not.” I read this passage to someone on Friday and while she was crying and shaking I told her that she qualifies to receive God’s strength and power because she was weary and weak. To be weary is to weaken under some form of pressure and to be weak is to not have the inner resources to respond to the pressure. Does that describe you today? If so, I have good news -- you qualify to receive supernatural strength and power.
“Even youths grow tired and weary and young men stumble and fall.” Now that I’m in the upper echelons of my fourth decade on earth, I’m starting to slow down. When I see how young people seem to go non-stop I get tired just watching them. This verse tells us that even the most vigorous cannot keep running forever. Everyone eventually gets tired and weary and will stumble and fall.
“But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.” The key is to hope in the Lord even when you’re in a hopeless situation. One pastor writes: “The Lord takes us to Babylon, where we feel oppressed, constricted and closed in, so that we will recognize our weakness, and actively hope and wait on Him.” The Lord is not looking to change the circumstances for Israel in exile; instead He is looking to change Israel in exile. The word “hope” is an action word that means to wait with expectation. It’s when we throw ourselves at the Lord, believing that if He doesn’t catch us, all is lost. When we wait, God works. To have hope is one of the hardest things to have and to wait is one of the hardest things to do.
When we hope in the Lord, He will “renew” our strength. This is a cool word because it means to exchange, like taking off old clothing and putting on new. It’s when we hand God our weakness and give him all our fears. It’s when we exchange our selfishness and sins for His forgiveness. It’s when we give Him our griping and complaining that He then gives us comfort. If we want renewal we must give Him our rubbish. The exchange won’t happen until we hope in Him, until we exchange our sorrows for His strength.
Notice that when we hope in the Lord, even when we’re in the midst of a mess, our strength will be renewed. God does not always remove the cause of our trouble, but He always gives the needed grace to bear whatever we’re called to endure. Jim Cymbala, pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle, writes about this discovery: “That evening, when I was at my lowest, confounded by obstacles, bewildered by the darkness that surrounded us, unable even to continue preaching, I discovered an astonishing truth: God is attracted to weakness. He can’t resist those who humbly and honestly admit how desperately they need Him. Our weakness, in fact, makes room for His power.”
“They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.” To soar means to ascend or climb. Eagles were thought to be the strongest and most majestic of God’s creatures. If you want to soar, you must submit.
Notice that the three stages go from the great to the ordinary. We start out soaring like eagles and then we run without getting weary and then we walk and not faint. Some commentators point out that this correlates to the three stages of life. When we’re young we’re on the top of the world and feel like we can run all day long and then we end up walking. We go from flying to running to walking. This holds true spiritually as well. We have moments when we’re soaring spiritually, when we seem to rise above everything. Other times we feel like we’ve hit our running stride and we’re doing pretty well. But most of life consists in walking. It’s not always glamorous but the Lord helps us put one foot in front of the other, so that we will not faint.
William Carey, the father of modern missions wrote: “I can plod. That is my only genius. I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe everything. The greatest heroes of faith are not always those who are soaring but those who are simply taking the next step.
The Heidelberg Catechism asks the question, “What is your only comfort in life and death?” The answer is spot on: “That I, with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.”
Friend, you will have no comfort until you come to Christ. You won’t find what you’re searching for in the Shack but in the Savior and Him alone. Remember that God is God and that settles everything. We’re going to show a closing video now and while it’s playing use this time do some exchanging with the Almighty.
Closing Video: “God is God” by Stephen Curtis Chapman
