And if you have a Bible, let me invite you to turn with me to Isaiah, chapter 40, verses 12 to the end. A.W. Tohsir wants to say the most important thing about us is what comes into our minds when we think about God. That is, who do we understand Him to be and then who do we understand ourselves to be in light of Him?
Well what does Isaiah have to teach us in this chapter? Let me invite you to hear Isaiah chapter 40 beginning at verse 12. This is the Holy and inspired Word of God. Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance.
Who has measured the spirit of the Lord or what man shows Him, his counsel. Whom did He consult and who made Him understand? Who taught Him the path of justice and taught Him knowledge and showed Him the way of understanding? Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are accounted as the dust on the scales.
Behold, He takes up the coastlands like fine dust. Lebanon would not suffice for fuel nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering. All the nations are as nothing before Him. They are accounted by Him as less than nothing and emptiness.
To whom then will you like in God? Or what likeness compare with Him? An idol. A craftsman casts it and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts for its silver chains.
He who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will not rot. He seeks out a skillful craftsman to set up an idol that will not move. Do you not know? Do you not hear?
Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundation of the earth? It is He who sits above the circle of the earth and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers. Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.
Who brings princes to nothing and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness? Scarcely. Are they planted? Scarcely sown?
Scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth. And He blows on them and they wither. And the tempest carries them off like stubble. To whom then will you compare me?
That I should be like Him, says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see who created these? 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 of them is missing.
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. Have you not known?
Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He does not grow faint or weary. His understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint. And to Him who has no might, He increases strength. Even youth shall faint and be weary and young men shall fall exhausted, but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles.
They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. Amen. This is the word of the Lord.
May He write it on our hearts. Let's look through in prayer. Our Father in heaven, you are greater and better than we know. Instruct our hearts and teach us to know you truly.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So much that happens in this world is simply out of our control. Whether we speak of wars in Europe and in the Middle East or economic uncertainties or political upheaval or disease and death, life is very uncertain for all of us.
And it was so for Israel when Isaiah wrote to them. They were on the cusp of the invasion from the Assyrians from the north in 740 BC, which would be followed by the invasion of the Babylonians in 586, and it would bring just disaster upon the people. Isaiah, just before this, in verses 1-11 promises the Messiah. He promises the good shepherd who will come and save his people, but what they don't know yet is that things are going to get harder before they get better.
And they don't yet fully understand that how ugly it will get. Asiria will decimate the 10 northern tribes, the Babylonians will do the same to the south, lives will be wrecked, families were going to be uprooted and transplanted and pulled apart, community split, dreams crushed, loved ones were going to die, and God's kingdom on earth was going to be assaulted. That's the context in which Isaiah is writing to them. And here's what the people will begin to say to themselves.
Verse 27, my way is hidden from the Lord. My cause is disregarded by my God. Doesn't he know? Doesn't he care?
Is he not interested? It's going to be that kind of mood that you find in the novel Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, an important book comes to light in the story, and it's titled, What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth Given the Experience of the Last Million Years, and the chief character is anxious to read it, but when he does, he finds that it doesn't take long to read. The whole book consists of one word. What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on earth given our experience?
One word in the whole book. Well, some Israelites were tempted to think that way. Two, they're going to grow despairing. What's going on?
When is the Messiah going to come? Why is he not come sooner? Did God get stopped? Did he get stopped?
Did he get sidetracked? It doesn't God know? Doesn't God care? God help.
And so what does the prophet do in this passage? Well, he reasons with them. Through a series of rhetorical questions about God and about themselves in order to give them hope in their weakness. And so we want to think about this.
And what does he tell us about God? Let me outline it broad rush in five parts and then three particular applications at the end of the passage. First, what we learn about God here, God is incomparably huge. Verses 12 to 14.
He speaks of water first. Verses 12 who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand. He says, I got to spend the summer on a boardwalk in New Jersey, ocean city, walking nearly every day along the boardwalk and off and out onto the jetties that were massive boulders stuck out 100 yards or more into the ocean and just surrounded them on three sides. Just by pounding waves and surf and contemplating just this verse who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand.
And on a clear day, I would imagine myself out at the horizon point, maybe 20 miles or something and swimming, right? So head down low and turn around, look back and there's the whole coastline of North America so to speak and down to my left South America and then water 20 miles in every direction. And then I would turn back, imagining myself headed to Europe in leaps of 20 miles at a time. And how many times it would take 150 of it?
It's 3,000 miles across this massive expanse of water. It's an unbelievable amount of water and it's just a small part of all the water in the world. The Arctic Ocean is on average 3,407 feet deep. The Atlantic on average is 12,000 and some odd feet deep.
Now most of us have never experienced anything like that. We've waited in five feet, 10 feet up to our shoulders, maybe swam with three or four feet of water under our feet and worried about sharks. Could you imagine being out where it's over two and a half miles down? That's the Atlantic.
The Indian Ocean is 500 feet on average deeper, 12,740 and the Pacific, the granddaddy is 13,740 feet deep on average and it's deepest place as least as we've discovered in the, in or near the Mariana Trench is estimated to be 35,994 feet deep. You could cut Mount Everest off at sea level, turn it upside down, put it in that trench and still cover it with a mile of water. There is a massive quantity of visible, accessible water in the world and the writer says, who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand? Just imagine him pouring it out.
Oh, there's the Atlantic. There's the Pacific. And then he looks at the heavens and marks off the heavens, first of all, with the expanse of his hand. I mean, think of the heavens.
I mean, just the visible ones, visible from the earth, the observable universe is a sphere with a radius of about 46 billion light, well, maybe that isn't actually visible from the earth, not to us, but the scientists tell us, a radius of 46 billion light years, that's 93 billion light years in diameter. Our own Milky Way galaxy is roughly 100,000 light years in diameter and our nearest sister galaxy, Andromeda, is roughly 2.5 million light years away. There are probably more than 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe as the scientists see it. And then we simply marks off the heavens with the span of his hand.
And then look at the land there. Who is in close to the dust of the earth in a measure and weigh the mountains and scales in the hills in a valance of sister law? Some of you know we're out in Colorado and she loves to climb 14 years. She's got her little kids.
She had like her two-year-old climbing 14 years with her or something like that. There are 53 14 years. That means they're over 14,000 feet high in Colorado. God weighs them.
It says, it's just a big deal to him. He isn't small. He isn't dominated by things in his creation. Look what he's done.
The writer says, could any of you have done that? Not at all. And he didn't even help. Look at verse 14.
Who did he consult? Who made him understand? Who taught him the path of, hmm, not creation, justice. It taught him knowledge and showed him the way of understanding.
Nobody. Nobody taught him anything. So no circumstances should alarm you. You remember Jesus on a boat with his disciples, I mean commercial fishermen who've been around the block, so to speak.
And they're out on the water and the waves come up and the winds come crashing and the water comes over into the boat and they think they're done. They think it's going to sink and they're all going to drown and Jesus is what? He's sleeping in the back of the boat. And they wake him up, don't you care about us and what does Jesus do?
He just says peace. To the wind of the waves, he says peace. Be calm. And it's all calm.
How could he do that? Because as Colossians 1 says of him, he created the heavens and the earth. All things visible and invisible, all were created by him, through him and for him. He is in control of all things.
Our God is in comparably huge, the writer says. And so then he invites you to compare God to the biggest things humans even organized humanity could do. The nations. That's next thing, verses 15 to 17.
And here he shows us that only God is indispensable to the world. Behold, he says, verse 15, the nations are like a drop in a bucket. In our day we're pretty impressed by what goes on with the great world powers, right? We're very impressed and we sit on the edge of our seat to find out what's going to happen between Russia and Ukraine or what's going to happen in the Middle East.
And it's not wrong to be concerned about the well-being and welfare of people, of course. But sometimes we think, well, what's the UN going to do? Or what's NATO going to do? Or what's the US going to do?
Because we all know, don't we, in our heart of hearts that, well, as Madeline Albright once put it Secretary of State of the US, the US is the lone indispensable nation in the world. The hubris to believe we're alone of all indispensable. Or that we can fix everything as the world's policemen. But some people believe that.
We have an amazing ability to imagine that the nations are in turmoil and nobody's in control and nobody can get it all right except for maybe a few really important people doing all the right things. Well, I mean, think of the history of the world and the nations. And their organization and their military power and the Assyrians, the ancient Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans, well, I mean, think of it in our own time, Britain, when it was said that the sun never set on the British Empire. So vast was their dominance across the world.
Or think of China today or Russia. I mean, what is the writer saying to us? He's saying, what are these to God? Verse 15, behold the nations are like a drop in a bucket and are accounted as the dust on the scales.
Behold, he takes out the coast winds like fine dust. Verse 17, all the nations are as nothing before him. They are kind of by him as less than nothing, an emptiness. You ever think about a drop in a bucket?
Think of it this way. Again, the scientists tell us, estimated, of course, that there are 326 million trillions of gallons of water in the world. And there are roughly 15,000 drips in a gallon. And God says, the nations are but a drop in a bucket.
Lightweight, inconsequential, compared to God. But Israel isn't all of them. And certainly the Christian church is so often afraid of them. I mean, nations do have vast armies and resources wielded by those who are wicked.
They can do terrible things. But God, Isaiah says, doesn't bat an eye at them. Verse 16, even the whole resources of a nation are not worthy of him. Listen to that verse, Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.
He imagines that the whole nation of Lebanon set on fire. That wouldn't be adequate fuel for the proper sacrifice worthy of God. And you couldn't take all of their animals of that whole nation and offer them as a burnt offering to him and it'd be worthy of him. But you know, some people still think about God.
Yeah, I can take him really. But you know what the really important thing is? It's democracy in Egypt or free market capitalism in America. And look, we're all the beneficiary, free market capitalism, what's not to like.
But that's a whole different story. That's not really the important thing. God is the important thing. Are you worried about the kingdom of God on earth?
Are you concerned about the Christians being killed, tortured in North Korea or arrested in Iran? It should grieve you because we care and they're our family. But it should not drive you to despair. Remember what Jesus said?
He said, just before he ascended into heaven, he said, he was disciples, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Not all authority in heaven and on earth will one day be given to me. It has already been given to me. And he elsewhere said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against her.
Everyone can stop the advance and the expanse of God's kingdom. He's bigger than the collective will of all the dictatorships and all the democracies. All nations, verse 17, are as nothing before him, organized humanity even at its best. He's not even to be compared to him.
Now that doesn't mean that when it says the nations are as nothing, it doesn't mean that they mean nothing to him as if he didn't care about them. But it means they are nothing before him. Not their value to him, but their stature by comparison to him is what the writer is saying. There are no indispensable nations, but there is an indispensable God.
And he is. So then what might we compare God to if not the nations? Well, the writer suggests idols. Look at verses 18 to 20.
And he teaches us here and reminds us that God is uncontrollable by religious humanity creating whatever idol they think they can make that will manipulate the gods. Right? And you just can't reduce him. Verse 18 to whom will you like in God or what likeness compared with him?
And then verse 19 he says, and idol. Exclamation point. Let's compare God to idols. Well, what about idols?
Well, they seem to have some advantages, right? People seek them out. They find a skillful craftsman to notice that language set up an idol that will not move. Because why?
Well, you'd want to be able to control it, you know? You want to keep it where you put it. You want to see him when you expect to. And you want to be able to take him with you wherever you go, right?
So that you can bow and worship this gold or this silver or this piece of wood. This is what idolatry is. This is imagining that you worship whatever God through this man-made thing. I always enjoy telling the story because I just love what it says about my mom.
But when I was growing up, and I had no idea until after I was 18 and became a Christian, but when I was growing up, my parents had two idols on the mantle in our family room. That my dad had fashioned to, he had them made to represent what he thought were the spirit beings that kind of had territorial authority over our family. And I had no idea that's what those things were. One day my mom just couldn't take it anymore and threw him away.
I was not real happy about that. I didn't know any of that until later. But I think mom just had enough Christian sensibility to know that this isn't right. And besides who would think that little thing made by a human is the deity or that somehow you've got it so you just rub its belly the right way and the true deity is going to show up on your behalf.
Now the writer says don't think that way. You can't domestic, domestic God, right? You can't control him and you can't manipulate him. You can't command him.
Peter tried to command Jesus. Jesus told him look I'm going to go to Jerusalem and I'm going to suffer and be killed. And Peter said no, Lord, no. And Jesus turned to him and said what?
Get behind me Satan. For you have in mind not the things of God but the things of man. You can't tell Jesus what to do. You can't tell him what he cannot say.
You can't gain some advantage that puts you in authority over God or over Jesus. He is simply uncontainable and uncontrollable by even the religious. So don't let idols seduce you. Isaiah is saying to his people in moments of fear and weakness and even terror.
Don't go looking to them for your help. And then fourthly he says only God is unquestionably sovereign. Notice that language verses 21 to 24. Do you not know?
Verse 22 it is he who sits above the circle of the earth and it's inhabitants are like grasshoppers. The world dwarfs us all. But God dwarfs the world. The world is his footstool above which he sits secure and all the feverish activity of its billions does not, does no more to affect him than the chirping and jumping of grasshoppers in the summer sun does affect us.
Now that may be true about the common man. Yeah but what about the movers and shakers? What about the leaders and the elites with power? I mean people like Owen the ancient world's sennacher of Assyria or Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon or Alexander the Great or Nero of Rome.
I mean don't those tyrants really dominate? No the writer says. Verse 23 God brings princes to nothing and he makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. So it's just not the case that a Hitler or Stalin or a Saddam Hussein can crush God's purposes.
It's just not the case that a Putin or a Biden or a Trump or a Harris, why not even the second coming of Ronald Reagan can rule the world. Do you think these men and women really determine the destiny of the world? Verse 24 they're here today and gone tomorrow. Look at that language.
Scarcely are they planted? Scarcely sown. Scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth. When he God blows on them and they wither and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
He just simply breathes on them like their dandelion seeds and he scatters them to the winds because God is unquestionably sovereign in the world. And God you remember as Paul says in Ephesians raised Jesus from the dead and seated him above all authority, rule or dominion. For what? For the good of the church.
Jesus is ruling and reigning over all things for the good of his people. And then finally God is invincible in power verses 25 to 26. To whom then will you compare me? That I should be like him says the holy one.
Lift up your eyes on high and see who created these. He brings out their host by number and calling them all by name by the greatness of his might and because he is strong in power not one of them is missing. I think nothing will make you feel smaller or more insignificant by comparison with the stars. If you can get outside on a clear night without the background lights and just consider the vast expanse and the sheer quantity and distance of just the stars you can see or on a bright sunny day.
Well, just a quick passing glance at our own son. I mean, to stare at it will cause you to go blind. It well generates its energy by nuclear fusion of four hydrogen nuclei into one helium releasing energy. I have no idea how it does that.
I don't know why it does that. This is what the scientists say happens. Incredible amounts of energy in its core. The sun fuses 620 million metric tons of hydrogen every second.
And supposedly it will take 5 billion years before it runs out. Its surface temperature is approximately 9,941 degrees and stay outside too long in the bright sun and it will burn your skin. It's just one sun though among a spiral disk of 200 billion stars we call the Milky Way. And our galaxy is just one of billions of galaxies known to us.
There are literally trillions of stars and God calls them each by name. He is their maker and their master. They are all in his hand to do his will and what they do is well shine light. Certainly at least that.
And if half of them went missing in the night sky probably most of us wouldn't even notice unless of course it was our own. And we wouldn't be around long enough to really know. Can you imagine this? He holds them all in his hand.
He calls them each by name and yet he calls you by name. Jesus knows each of his people, each of his flock and he calls us by name. And we not the stars are made in his image. We not the stars are loved by the Father in such a way that he set his own son to redeem us from our sin and reconcile us and bring us home to himself.
There is no power at work in your life that Jesus doesn't dwarf and he cares for you. Paul ends Romans 8 saying I am convinced of this. I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor demons, nor things present, nor things future nor any powers can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Our Lord, you are safe in his hands.
He is not abandoned. His people. Christ is the good shepherd who never loses track of his sheep. Nobody can stand in his way.
Nothing can replace what he can do. He is incomparably huge. He only is indispensable to the world. He's uncontrollable by the religious.
He's unquestionably sovereign and invincible in power. And so the writer says, well in response to the people, what do they say? Verse 27. Well he says to them, why do you say it Jacob?
And why do you complain? My way is hidden from the Lord. My cause is disregarded by my God. What's he saying to them?
He's saying to them your God is too small in your imagination. Your thoughts of him are unworthy of him. You're too big for your own britches but he can help you. Three points of application.
First he counters their bad theology with good theology. He tells them who God really is like. Now some of you have heard this story before but we were traveling in Washington DC, I don't know if it was 15 or however many years ago and the kids and I were walking down the street and a guy came up doing this to one of my younger than teenage sons and he wanted money. But he was following, he was tracking him.
I kind of went up to engage the conversation in this guy. Well he looked like he had worked out quite a bit in prison. And it wasn't a scary moment. Then he caught his fingers like this and he put his finger on my head and said you're going to get yourself killed.
It was broad daylight in the middle of a block and there was a policeman up that way. There were lots of people and crowd. I wasn't that concerned but afterwards our little Sarah had been deeply concerned about it and was worried that we were going to have a fight. That was going to happen.
I said sweetheart, this is how I said it at the time. You understand. Sweetheart Daddy would kick his butt. Now I can say I don't really know.
Probably not. But my daughter, it was funny but it just immediately relaxed her. She just, because I mean in her little mind, yeah, my dad's big and powerful and he's protective and he can do anything. Well, this is what the writer is saying to us about our heavenly Father.
Our greatest need in our problems ultimately is not a fix to the problem but it is God himself and to have a sight of him. In all his transcendence. Have you not known, he says. Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God, verse 28. The creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint. He does not grow weary.
His understanding is unsearchable. And so I would simply say to us in the first place, Isaiah counters bad theology with better, with good. And so don't be afraid of theology. Theology is just thoughts about God and every one of us is a theologian.
Every one of us has thoughts about God. Just try to be a good theologian and not a bad one. Try to think God's own thoughts about himself from his word instead of what your own imagination will undoubtedly get wrong and make him small. And then secondly, he confronts them with the truth about themselves.
Speaking the truth in love to them, he says, you know, you're weak. Well, how does he say that? Well, look at verse 30. Even he's just ain't gonna be weary.
And young men shall fall exhausted. I mean, if even these best specimens of vigor and strength, I mean, these Olympic athletes of the world, right? Even they get tired. They stumble.
They fall. I mean, how much more than the rest of us? That doesn't mean God doesn't care. He shares his strength with them.
He says, he increases the power of the weak, he says. Would Paul say, God said to him, in his weakness, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. It's okay to be honest about your neediness. You are needy.
But he is strong. And then finally, he calls them to trust. He counters their theology. He confronts them with the truth.
And he calls them to trust, verse 31. But all of them to wait for the child to do their strength. They shall mount up on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary.
They will walk and not be faint. Sure, they're gonna stumble and fall. But they'll get up again and again. They'll get up and go forward.
And you can face your future with hope and confidence, I say it says, because your circumstances can't confuse God. Your circumstances can't but fuddle him, can't stifle him, can't control him. You can't manipulate him. You can't always understand him.
You can, as the writer, lean on him and hope in him. He's utterly trustworthy. After all, didn't this incomparable, indispensable, uncontrollable, unquestionably sovereign and invincible in power creator go to the cross for you. He did.
But you trusted him, let's pray. Father, thank you. God, you hold us in your hand and no one can snatch us out of your hand. In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.