The Big Picture
TCF Sermon
October 3, 2004
Sometimes, reading the newspaper can be fun:
How about these headlines:
Two Sisters Reunited After 18 Years at Checkout Counter
War Dims Hope for Peace
Drunk Gets Nine Months in Violin Case
Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half
Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead
Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges
These are funny, but, most days, news headlines paint a scary picture of our world, don’t they? If you did nothing but listen to or watch or read news, and had no other perspective on the world, I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to maintain any kind of positive attitude about our world.
Here are a few stories and headlines I came across just these past few weeks:
Baghdad Bombings Kill 35 Children and Seven Adults, the Largest Death Toll of Children Since War Began
Hurricane Jeanne was blamed for at least six deaths in Florida after causing floods in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico last week in which at least 1,680 people died, with some 800 still missing in Haiti.
Iran is perhaps the biggest problem on the horizon of the next U.S. president because it is moving toward development of nuclear weapons. Anybody depressed yet? Anybody scared yet?
There’s the daily news from the middle east: At the center of many of the world’s most significant issues is radical Islam – a seemingly insurmountable foe.
After all, how can you reason with people who think it’s not just OK, but honorable, to cut off the head of a civilian worker - a person who’s there to help rebuild a nation’s infrastructure?
One of the most disturbing things to me in recent weeks was the terrorist killing of more than 300 school students in Russia. Killing of innocent adults is horrible enough. But children? Holding them hostage? Killing them? Where’s all this terror going to end? What’s a believer in our Lord Jesus Christ to do?
How are we to view our world today? How are we to respond? I believe there are many answers to this question in the Word of God.
But for at least one aspect of this, turn with me to Isaiah chapter 40. As you’re turning, let me give you a quick background. The prophet Isaiah was writing here to a people in exile. Israel and Judah were living under an evil empire. They had been driven from their homelands, and were virtually powerless to do anything on their own.
They’d seen their share of people killing other people, their own brand of terror.
I’m guessing that many of the people of Israel and Judah at the time of the message of Isaiah chapter 40 experienced the same kind of despair that people of our day might have, after we review the horrors of the daily news.
Without the perspective that the Word of God can provide for us, it’s easy to become hopeless – to despair of ever seeing anything positive....to think...We’re powerless. The world is a hopeless place. Where’s God? Where is He in all this stuff?
Of course, we also have the stuff that hits closer to home, that impacts our daily lives. What we must remember is something that we’re going to discover this morning as we read our text, Isaiah chapter 40. What this chapter reveals, among many other things, is that our God is a God of the big picture. That’s the title of this morning’s message. The Big Picture.
I’d encourage you to read the whole chapter on your own sometime this week, but we won’t take time to do that this morning. However, we are going to read much of it this morning, so hang with me...
Isaiah 40:1-31 Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
vs. 5 “the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it.”
last part of vs 6 "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. 7The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the LORD blows on them. Surely the people are grass. 8The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever."
Now listen to this word picture of God:
“12Who 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? 13Who has understood the mind of the LORD, or instructed him as his counselor? 14Whom 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?
15Surely 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. 16Lebanon is not sufficient for altar fires, nor its animals enough for burnt offerings. 17Before him all the nations are as nothing; they are regarded by him as worthless and less than nothing. 18To whom, then, will you compare God? What image will you compare him to 21Do you not know?
Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood since the earth was founded? 22He 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. 23He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing. 24No 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.
25"To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?" says the Holy One. 26Lift 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.
27Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the LORD;
my cause is disregarded by my God"? 28Do you not know? Have you not heard?
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. 29He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall; 31but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.”
There’s so much here, we could probably spend several weeks on this, but for the purpose of this morning’s message, I’d like to take you through several points here.
I considered several titles for this morning’s message. It might be helpful in seeing part of the message of Isaiah 40 if I tell you about a few I didn’t use.
The loser titles, the discarded ones, the ones which were voted off the island.
One was God and the grasshoppers. Obviously, that would have come from verse 22.
How about macro to micro? I almost went with that, because one of the things we see here is that God is a big God, in charge of, creator of, sustainer of, all the big things...
Remember the great truth in the old children’s song:
Our God is so big, so strong and so mighty, there’s nothing our God cannot do.
The things He’s made out of nothing...like the universe. Like the billions and trillions of stars He created and knows by name. He’s so big that nations are as nothing, nothing but dust on the scales in comparison to Him. The same nations we worry about having nuclear weapons. The same nations that breed and support terrorists. The same nations that despise Christianity.
To God, those nations, and even our nation, are smaller than dust. That’s our macro God and His macro view of creation. Macro means very large in scale, scope or capability. We definitely worship a macro God.
But after all these verses telling us how big God is, Isaiah doesn’t leave us there. After all, just the fact that God is so powerful, and we’re like grasshoppers...that fact alone doesn’t give us comfort...in fact, it could add to our fears.... after all, you can step on grasshoppers.
But Isaiah doesn’t stop there. He talks of little us..... You and me. God’s people. Those who hope in the Lord, or wait on the Lord. He says He’ll sustain us, strengthen us, comfort us. Even though he knows each of the stars by name, and I think we could agree that’s a big task, as we’ll see here in a moment, he also knows each of us by name.
He knows us intimately, he knows the number of hairs on our heads. He’s a macro God, in charge of the macro universe.
But at the same time, He’s interested in little us. We’re micro. We’re minute in scope or capability. If nations are like dust on the scales, then we’re not much in the grand picture of things. Yet He loves us, cares for us, strengthens us, sustains us, helps us.
Another discarded title presents another truth from this passage – God is coming!
A verse we didn’t read from this passage a moment ago is verses 9 and 10. Let me read it to you from the New Living Translation.:
“Tell the towns of Judah, “Your God is coming!” 10 Yes, the Sovereign LORD is coming in all his glorious power. He will rule with awesome strength.”
That was a welcome message to the people of God. Remember, they were in exile, and most of them were suffering. While Isaiah 40 didn’t necessarily tell them how or when He was coming, it told them God had not abandoned them, their time of punishment was over, and God was coming.
The last discarded sermon title was: Underestimating God. That’s a real theme in this chapter. The people of Israel had clearly underestimated the God they served. It’s clear from verse 27 that they had questioned God. “27Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the LORD; my cause is disregarded by my God"?
That is, God can’t see what’s going on in my life, and He doesn’t seem to care. The people had underestimated God, both His power and His love, and this chapter reminds them why they shouldn’t underestimate Him.
But ultimately, even though all these other titles describe a truth contained in the midst of Isaiah chapter 40, I thought for our purposes this morning, at least, the key is this: The Big Picture.
Let’s go back to the beginning again and look at some key verses.
vs. 1 – this whole chapter is about comfort.
It says “comfort my people.” The truths in Isaiah 40 were designed to build confidence in our creator God, and as a result of that confidence, to bring comfort. They needed comfort because they were separated from their homeland. They needed comfort because they were suffering. They needed comfort because they didn’t see how that suffering, the horrible things they had endured and were enduring, would ever end.
We need comfort sometimes, too. In the macro sense, as we look at world events, as well as in the micro sense, the things that don’t impact world history, but certainly have a huge impact in our lives as individuals and families.
We need comfort and encouragement. So God says, “comfort my people.”
Part of the reason we can find comfort is because of what’s spoken in verse 5:
“the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it.”
Notice, it doesn’t say might be. It doesn’t say could be. It says, “The glory of the Lord will be revealed.” We can count on it. We can depend on it. And as we see who God is, as He is described with such clarity in these verses following, it gives that statement great credibility.
We read about the power of God, versus how puny we are, in comparison to the Creator.
Now, as we’ve already noted, we’re not unimportant or insignificant in terms of God’s love and care for us. But in the scheme of His grand plan, His outworking of the Big Picture of time and eternity, we’re nothing by comparison.
That’s why Isaiah writes in comparisons and questions.
“12Who 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? 13Who has understood the mind of the LORD, or instructed him as his counselor? 14Whom 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?”
Anybody here done any of those things? Anyone here think they can advise God on how things ought to be done? Even a man on earth as powerful as the president of the most powerful nation on earth has advisors. Who’s God’s advisor? God, I think you should do such and such with these Muslims. God, I think you should have waited to allow that hurricane, until the people of Florida had a chance to catch their breath.
God, you shouldn’t have allowed those children in Russia to die. But Isaiah says,
“Who has understood the mind of the Lord?” Who taught the Lord the right way?
One commentary noted:
“It is evident from the tone of this section, marked as it is by a series of challenging questions, that the exiles were not automatically inclined to credit the power and love of Yahweh their God to which vv 10 ff had referred. Vv 12-26, therefore, emphasize His incomparable power and greatness, and vv 27-31 stress His willingness to extend that power to those who trust in Him.
The exiles had to be challenged in their thinking and to be persuaded of the truth of the divine promises.”
Sometimes, if we’re honest, in the midst of these things, we, too, must be challenged in our thinking. We, too, must be persuaded of the truth of God’s promises. Essentially, from verse 12, to verse 26, Isaiah is dealing with these Big Picture questions we all have from time to time. In this chapter, he moves from creation, to nations, and back to creation, to respond to these doubts, these questions.
If we’re honest, we have to say we sometimes have these questions, too....especially in light of the events of the world we live in, but also in the day to day things we deal with.
God answers with these questions in Isaiah 40. But the bottom line of His answers is this. Trust me. Trust me. Hope in Me. Wait on Me.
Twice in the course of this chapter, He asks, “Do you not know? Have you not heard?” And then continues by reminding us of the Big Picture.
It’s a Big Picture He sees now, and has always seen.
“21Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood since the earth was founded?”
and then, “28Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth”
God was there “from the beginning.” – vs 21
“since the earth was founded” vs 21
“the everlasting God” vs 28
“The Creator of the ends of the earth “ vs 28
Have any of you parents ever responded to a question of your kids with this statement? “I’ve been around longer than you.”
Think of it this way. I spent more 20 years in the media before I left my last business to work full time at TCF. I got a degree in radio and television....spent four years in radio, five years working for a cable TV network, 15 years in self-employment handling public relations tasks for a variety of companies in national and international media. I’ve had 60 national magazine articles published, more than 500 newspaper stories published.
I don’t want this to sound like bragging. It’s just the bare facts of my media career. These are things I did. Would you assume from these things that I know something about the media? That would be a fair assumption, unless I was really good at faking it.
Now what would you think if, say, Caleb Clutter, came up to me and said, “Coach Bill, let me tell you a thing or two about the media.” Now, Caleb’s an incredibly bright kid. But he’s six years old.
He doesn’t have the knowledge I gained through 20-plus years in the media. As many analogies go, this one breaks down, because I learned, and nobody taught God.
But it gives you an idea of what God’s after here. He’s been around since before there was time. He can hold oceans in the hollow of His hand. He can hold majestic mountains on scales. He weighs islands like not just dust, but fine dust.
He can sit on a throne above the horizon of the world, and we look like grasshoppers to Him. I’m glad he didn’t say we’re as smart as grasshoppers, too, but He could have, in a comparative sense. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy...a simple covering for Him.
If we would think it ridiculous for Caleb, who’s six, to tell someone like me, who had 20-plus years of media experience, what the media business is all about, how much more foolish is it for me, someone who’s lived 48 years, has never been further south than Padre Island Texas, to tell the God who’s existed from before there was time, who holds the earth as easily as I hold this squishy ball, how to do anything?
He flung the stars into the night sky. That’s an incredible thought. I thought about that a lot as I prepared this message. When we’re over at my in-laws lake house in Arkansas, I like to go down to the lake shore after dark, because on a clear night, with the absence of city lights, you can see so many more stars than you can see in the metro area. You can even see the Milky Way, which is billions of stars in our galaxy, so tightly packed together, that if you didn’t know what you were looking at, you’d swear it was a thin cloud in the sky. But it’s not.... it’s stars.
There are way too many stars to actually count, but scientists have come up with varying estimates to how many stars there are.
1. 1021 stars in our Universe. If you write that number out, it looks like this: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
2. It’s also about 10 times as many stars as grains of sand on all the world’s beaches and deserts.
Another estimate -- 7 followed by 22 zeros or, more accurately, 70 sextillion -- was calculated by a team of stargazers based at the Australian National University.
3. Visible to the naked eye: a few thousand, in the Milky Way: around 10 billion and at least 10 billion galaxies!
4. Other star enumerators I located on the Web offer numbers ranging from more than 200 billion stars in our galaxy to 3 thousand million billion stars (3 followed by 16 zeroes), in the universe.
So, the sheer numbers are beyond our ability to grasp. But let’s try to bring it down to size. Our sun is the closest star. When scientists calculate what size a star can be, they usually get answers like one tenth (1/10) the size of the Sun for the smallest, and about 50 times the size of the Sun for the biggest. The Sun is 868,000 miles (1,400,000 kilometers) across. Do you know how wide the Sun is compared with what we are familiar? One hundred and nine Earths can be strung horizontally across the middle of the Sun.
So not only are there these billions and billions of stars, but they are of a size that’s also hard for us to imagine. The bottom line – we can only make a sort of educated guess about these things. But Isaiah says God created each star, and knows each star by name.
The Word tells us here in Isaiah, “He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.”
Lisa has a string of Christmas lights in her room. To God, that’s kind of like what the stars are. Verse 18 has a central idea in this chapter - to whom would you liken God? Who are we going to compare Him to? Now, we human beings think in analogies. We seek comparables within our experience to deal with something outside of our experience. The Bible does this in speaking of God in human terms (anthropomorphism).
So, does God literally stretch out the heavens like a tent to live in? No, He doesn’t need to. It’s a literary device to begin to attempt to help us understand His vastness, His greatness, His power, His omnipotence.
All of our anthropomorphisms fall short. All of our analogies are inadequate. They only help us catch a glimpse of our Creator. So, as one commentary noted,
“the problem lies in assuming that we have comprehended, has “gauged” or fully understood, the mind and spirit of God, so that we are in the position to make recommendations to God, or correct him in his thinking or acting.”
We look at human power and sometimes feel awed by its action or ability. Yet, nothing in human existence is as fragile as power. God can take it away in an instant.
“23He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing. 24No 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.”
In that regard, Saddam Hussein is no different than George Bush or Bill Clinton before him. Isaiah shows clearly the frailty and temporary nature of humankind. But, to counter this complaint the argument looks not to the nature of humanity, but to God.
First, Yahweh is a God of the long view. In verse 28 He’s the everlasting God. His strategies point to the ages, not to the moment. Israel complained that God doesn’t watch, doesn’t care.
Our sense of time is different than God’s. Think about this. We need more immediate satisfaction. God’s content to wait. We get tired of waiting...He doesn’t grow weary as we do. He doesn’t give up as we do. He moves toward His plans and purposes through decades, through centuries, through millennia.
Finally, God recognizes our frailty.
“30Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;”
But those of us who are older, and can’t run like we used to, can’t maintain the energy of our youth, can appreciate this idea even more. If we hope in, if we wait on the Lord, on His plan, on His timing, and we must do that in trust... in confidence that He knows best...He will renew our strength.
This is the most familiar verse in this chapter...
“31but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
commentary: “The word may mean wait or hope. Here the ideas overlap: “waiting hope” or “hopeful waiting.” An attitude which can wait for the God of the ages and his plan will gain strength to rise above the moment, not tire or faint, but go on and on. The figure of the eagle’s wings is apt. The soaring eagle is borne aloft not by his powerful wings, but by the wind’s currents... Those waiting are those prepared to be lifted up and carried aloft by the spirit of God in his time and his way.”
The people of Israel ultimately didn’t trust God. It’s an idolatry of the mind, which demands that God and His plans make sense to them. We cannot judge God completely by our own perceptions and experience. The perspective of God’s greatness in size and time requires waiting on and hoping for.
God’s time is not our time (in John 7:6 Jesus says: the right time for me has not yet come; for you any time is right).
God’s moment is not our moment. Those who can learn to wait on God’s time and hope in God’s way, will renew their strength, will run and not be weary, walk and not faint.
Yahweh is a God of the long view... the God of the Big Picture.
At the beginning and the end of Isaiah 40 lies the positive message. Yahweh is coming, in accordance with his own plan. He is neither discouraged nor weak. He cares for his own who trust him and wait for him.
There’s a close alliance between waiting and hoping:
Psalm 33:20 We wait in hope for the LORD; he is our help and our shield.
Psalm 39:7 "And now, Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in Thee.
Psalm 130:5 I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.
Micah 7:7 But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me.
Romans 8:25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
Titus 2:13 while we wait for the blessed hope--the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ,
Whatever we’re troubled by, whether it’s the seemingly insurmountable problems of the world, or a seemingly insurmountable problem in our own home, let’s determine to wait hopefully for the Lord. Let’s determine to remember that He sees the Big Picture. He will renew our strength.
