Isaiah 40:12-26 - Who is Like Our Lord?

Sacred Bible and turn to the book of Isaiah.

For those of you that are just visiting or just recently come in, we're studying through the book of Isaiah.

We started it in September of last year and we've been going through it.

Just give me a second.

My computer has forgotten what my face looks like.

I think maybe that's telling me to get my beard trimmed.

There we go.

We started our look at the book of Isaiah in September and we're continuing on and we'll finish it probably February or March of next year.

As we study through this book, we've entered into a new section.

As you turn the page from chapter 39 to 40, you leap about 100 years forward, away from a nation trembling under the grip of Assyrian advance and now to a nation in defeat, captured by the Babylonians and torn away from their homeland captured by the Babylonians and torn away from their homeland.

For those of you that are on our Google group, our NHPBC Google group, I wrote out a little introduction that expands that a little bit.

And if you would like to be on our church's distribution or Google group, just please let Micah or me or the office know that you'd like to be so In your bulletin or three email addresses.

You can write to me or to Micah, or me or the office know that you'd like to be so In your bulletin, or three email addresses.

You can write to me or to Micah or to the church office and just request to be put on our Google discussion group and you'll be able to get all those things.

But here we are in chapter 40, where God is now speaking to a people in defeat, a people who have been captured, a people who have been captured, a people who have been torn from their land.

And so, before we look deeper into this chapter, let's pray together.

Father, we ask that you might give us an understanding of your word here, as you spoke to the people in this situation and as you speak to ours, our generation in ours, and we ask, lord, that you might infuse us with the hope and encouragement and the promises and the insight that this section of Scripture provides, and we ask this in Christ's name, amen.

Have you ever had your world collapse around you, to feel like it's moved and even disappeared beneath your feet?

To feel like all those things that you once counted on, whether it be your routines or those things that you considered your or perhaps even your purpose to have been swept aside and left disoriented left, confused left, dejected left, depressed left wandering about in a world that doesn't make sense anymore.

Well, that's exactly how the Judeans would have felt right in this moment.

How the Judeans would have felt right in this moment.

They're in exile in Babylon.

They were known as God's chosen people and now they're a captured people, not captured by the living God, but captured by idol-worshiping nations that speak different languages than they.

In Babylon, their temple has been destroyed, their nation is gone and their hope, well, it's not only dimmed, it's disappeared.

There's strangers in this world that's now filled with idols and empires, and they are gathered there, disillusioned and tempted to believe that maybe, just maybe, that Yahweh has failed them.

And in this moment they're going to be tempted.

They're going to be tempted to abandon Yahweh in discouragement, or tempted to acquiesce to the gods of power around them.

And I think we can understand that.

We're not in Babylon, we're not in captivity, but we're surrounded by a world system that's full of powers, be they political or cultural or technological, or even scientific, that pull at our loyalties to Christ.

We're constantly under pressure to deconstruct or to round the sharp contours of our Christian faith, to assume that trusting God belongs to some past, simpler time and isn't something that is applicable to this modern day.

But Isaiah speaks.

He speaks to people in his time, to those that are just beyond his time, as he does in this passage.

And he also speaks to our generation.

And he doesn't just whisper, he shouts.

And he doesn't just whisper, he shouts.

And he doesn't just tell people what to do, he tells them who to look at, he tells them who God is.

And in the midst of all the illusions and disillusions of the people in Babylon, we're going to find in this passage of Scripture that God reveals himself as creator, as one superior over the nations, one who exposes idols for what they really are, who humbles rulers and exalts himself over the heavenlies.

See, this passage is not just some old passage that we're going to look at, and look at it with some sense of nostalgia and wonder what it might've been like back then.

It's a living reality.

Isaiah speaks of rescue and as we go deeper into the section of chapters 40 to 55, we'll see that rescue motif brought out time and time again.

And he's not inviting us to escape at this moment.

And he's not inviting us to escape at this moment he's inviting us to live with hope in the middle of Babylon, just as he was calling the people here to do so.

And he calls us to lift our eyes up and to look Behold your God, because if we don't, our eyes are going to be focused on the things here and tempted to give ourselves to them.

So let's walk through this text, verses 12 through 26 of Isaiah, chapter 40.

Isaiah 40 · chapter mention

And in it let us see how we are to lift up our eyes to behold our God.

The first thing I want to do is just rehearse some of the temptations, and these temptations are going to be coming to us from this whole section of Scripture.

So I'm not going to turn to a very verse in this moment, but just to give you a bit of a summary of the pressures that are in play here.

The first thing we want to note is these dangerous temptations, and there's two of them.

The Judeans, who were in exile, faced a dangerous temptation to move away from the faithfulness of God and, first of all, to abandon Yahweh, and first of all, to abandon Yahweh.

Here they are, in exile, crushed by defeat, and tempted to shift their allegiance to Babylon's gods.

There were two, there are many, but there were two key deities in Babylon.

The first was Marduk, also known as Bel, and you might have heard the name Belshazzar if you've read the book of Daniel.

So there's that name stuck in, or that name of one of the gods stuck into his name.

That's the chief God who was associated with order and kingship and creation.

And then there was Nabu Nebuchadnezzar.

You hear it?

He's the God of wisdom and writing and prophecy.

And from an ancient Near East perspective, judah's defeat was not just a military victory and conquest of Babylon over the people.

This was a battle of the gods, and the gods of Babylon won.

That's how they would have looked at it.

The exiles would have been tempted to think that their loss was not just simply they didn't have enough arms to hold their city they didn't have enough arms to hold their city but rather these two gods of Bel and Nabu were more powerful than Yahweh.

They would have thought, and had been tempted to think, just as the rest of the ancient Near East world did at that time, that these gods had empowered the Babylonian military to conquer and to absorb their homeland, that Bel and Nabu had defeated Yahweh, that Bel and Nabu had destroyed Jerusalem, that these gods had plundered Yahweh's temple and that these gods had plundered Yahweh's temple and that these gods had captured their king.

And so they were tempted tempted to believe that Yahweh was weak, that he was defeated and that he was powerless, and that they were right and justified to refuse Isaiah when he had spoken to them, and the other prophets when they had preached to them, because, in their mind, by losing this battle and being brought into exile, everything that those prophets had told them was just a lie, because look what happened.

But the problem wasn't that Yahweh had failed and he shouldn't be trusted, because the prophets had told them that the people had failed and weren't going to be trusted and that where they were was a consequence of their abandonment of the Lord over the decades and even centuries.

But there was a second temptation to acquiesce to Babylonian rule.

There was the risk of just giving themselves over in complete surrender, to eradicate any of the contours of what it meant to be a servant of Yahweh and to assimilate as best they could into Babylonian culture without any allegiance to Yahweh at all.

So, though they might have private devotions to Yahweh, their public life and service would look exactly like what Babylon wanted, and they could have even quoted a verse to do that Wrongly.

But Jeremiah told them in Jeremiah 29 and verse 7, pursue the well-being of the city that I've deported you to Pray to the Lord on his behalf, for when it thrives, you will thrive.

And so some of them, instead of engaging with wisdom, would have considered that a capitulation of full assimilation and just dive straight in and done everything to be as Babylonian as they could be.

Dive straight in and done everything to be as Babylonian as they could be.

What's at the heart of this?

It's a misunderstanding of who God is.

They had rejected him based on false assumptions, rather than recognizing his continued sovereignty, even in their hard situation.

Chesterton is reputed to have said it's hard to find the actual proof of this, but he's reputed to have said that the effect of not believing in God is not that you believe in nothing, but rather that you are open to believing anything.

And that's exactly what's happening here.

By denying Yahweh, they're opening themselves up to an understanding and a lifestyle that is completely wide open, and that's our temptation as well.

We live in a world.

We're not captured by Babylon.

We're residents in it, however, and there are a lot of parallels in the ideologies and the institutions, and even the political and entertainment figures in our world that are calling out for our allegiances, that are promising to us security and wisdom and prosperity, if only we give up our spiritual allegiance to God.

Materialism and consumerism run rampant in our society, promising us fulfillment, but always leading to another gnawing heart that's unfulfilled Political and national idolatry that demand our loyalty and even call us to capitulate to them.

Technological supremacy is telling us, like Nebo, the gods of wisdom, that those things possess all the understanding that we need for life.

Celebrity and influences, figures in entertainment or on social media, are telling us that we need to be shaping our values and shaping our behaviors according to the contours that they provide by way of their own example.

And then science exalts itself proudly as the final authority over all things that are true and real, as though they were the sole source of truth.

Until you get three scientists in a room and find out how much they have to argue with each other.

Bel and Nebo they embodied the dominance of Babylon.

They embodied the wisdom and cultural supremacy, and these were great temptations to the Judeans.

And Isaiah, in this section of scripture, is going to challenge all of that.

He's going to wash away this false reality by reminding them of who Yahweh is, of who God is and that he reigns supreme.

And the critique that he gives is not calling the people simply to reject false idols, but to expose how ultimately powerless they are in comparison to the almighty God.

And this is our answer today.

It isn't for us simply to be blasting the critiques of society, exposing all of their weaknesses in every way, unless we do so in comparison to the all-encompassing supremacy of God himself, who is the source of life and truth.

Who is the source of life and truth?

And so what Isaiah has to say is vital to us.

And as we go through this section of scripture, there's one thing that we're going to do Once we've understood that these temptations are here, is we get a sense of understanding God.

And so I want us to look at this passage, and we're going to break it down into five sections very quickly Verses 12 to 14, we're going to see Yahweh as creator.

Verses 15 to 17, as sovereign over the nations.

Verses 18 to 20, as Lord over all in comparison to the idols.

Verses 21 to 24, that he is in command of the rulers of this earth, and verses 25 and 26, even stands above and controls all the stars and planets in the sky.

What the people need is not something to do or something to argue against, but a God to behold.

And so let's behold him as Isaiah unpacks these comparative statements.

First of all, that God is the creator, that he is full of incomparable wisdom and sovereignty.

Earlier in the book of Isaiah, in chapter six, when the prophet was given his commission to preach, he was given a vision where he went into the very throne room of God and saw him exalted.

But it wasn't just the Lord that he saw.

He also saw some angelic beings, seraphim, who were surrounding the throne, who were crying out holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

And he heard them speak.

He heard the Lord speak who will I send, who will go for us?

And that us word is really interesting.

It's almost as though God is speaking to a divine counsel and saying we need a messenger on earth, and who's going to be that one?

And so there might be some temptation in reading that plural, that this divine counsel was like Yahweh's counsel, like all the other gods had, who would gather together and confer with one another in order to make decisions that marked heaven and earth.

Isaiah wipes that whole perspective completely away here.

Look at what he says here, verses that we're looking at.

Look at what he says here, verses that we're looking at.

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand or marked off the heavens with the span of his hand?

Who has gathered the dust of the earth in a measure or weighed the mountains on a balance and the hills on the scales?

Who has directed the spirit of the Lord or who gave him counsel?

Who did he consult?

Who gave him understanding and taught him the path of justice?

Who taught him knowledge and showed him the way of understanding?

And the answer is no one, nothing.

There's no divine counsel of wisdom that God needs to hear.

No, he speaks it all and they join in glad reflection of his glory.

But they don't advise him, they don't counsel him, they don't teach him, they don't guide him.

He issues his decrees because he is self-sufficient, self-existent, absolutely sovereign, and his understanding is beyond measure, particularly for us In our Western world.

Skepticism has limited God to train him as weak or uninvolved or necessarily needing us.

And yet Isaiah here stands and this passage stands among the greatest statements in all of Scripture of the divine supremacy of God, and here he is placed in comparison with all creation and he is above it and is beyond it.

But, as we'll see, he's also involved in it.

When we think about this world and the precision of our atmosphere and the electromagnetic forces and all the things that grant us the ability to have life here, do we think that there was just some sort of chance, random smashing of atoms together that somehow brought life and brought an ecosystem that actually sustains and engenders that life?

No, there's a living God behind it all who brought it together.

We think about the depths of the oceans, and here it tells us here that he has all of it in his hands.

He measures the sea in his hands.

Isaiah says in another place we haven't even mapped the sea, let alone understood how to hold it all together.

The scale of the universe.

Billions and billions of stars lay out there, yet scripture says that God calls them all by name.

We don't even understand the outer reaches of our galaxy, let alone the universe, but God governs it without effort.

When we think about the complexity of our person and anyone who studied the body deeply just understands how miraculous it is that's an intelligence beyond our human comprehension.

All of this matters today because we need to understand who God is, because there are forces out there that are tempting us to doubt God's wisdoms, to simply lower our eyes down to earthly explanations.

But here we are to meet a God who has no philosophers to inform him, no powers to rival him, no counsels to guide him, because he alone is God and he is worthy of trust and worship and reverence.

Isaiah moves on from that in verses 15 to 17 to talk about Yahweh in comparison to the nations of the world Verses 15 to 17.

Look, the nations are like a drop in a bucket.

They're considered as a speck of dust on the scales he lifts up the islands, like fine dust.

Lebanon's cedars are not enough for fuel or its animals enough for a burnt offering.

All the nations are as nothing before him.

They're considered by him as empty nothingness.

Little Judea, little tiny place I mean Rhode Island is big compared to Judea right Are surrounded by mighty nations and have been for a long time.

The Egyptians, a longstanding force.

They had just come through the scare of Assyria and its mighty empire.

It was known for its brutality and its widespreading campaigns.

And now here they are in the grip of Babylon, another empire that's going to span the reaches of continents.

But their past and their present isn't just the only time.

The future is going to be with the Medes and the Persians, and then the Greeks, and then the Romans ahead.

Each of these nations gobbling up vast territories, sweeping nations into their control, engulfing people in their relentless conquests.

And from a human perspective, all of those nations, in comparison to little Judah, seemed absolutely unstoppable.

And yet Isaiah offers a different perspective.

What are they to you, god?

Nothing, nothing.

And he uses these comparisons A drop in a bucket.

You ever wonder where that phrase came from.

Well, it comes from Isaiah A speck of dust on a scale not even measurable to the gram.

There's not enough trees in the mighty forest of the cedars of Lebanon to even gather together enough wood or to find enough animals to even provide a sufficient sacrifice to the glory of this God.

They are, as he sums it up, utterly nothing.

Not just nothing, but utterly nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.

Today we live in a world where nations are again exerting their powers, and they're doing so with increasing degree of nationalistic fervor and conflict, and they're going to continue to rise.

To continue to rise, and there will be someone with enough intellect and enough wickedness of heart to capture the sweeping mindset that will lead nations against nations, perhaps even in our own area.

But there's a living, eternal God that calls us to trust him, even in the midst of all of that.

You see, empires, in order to exist, depend on human strength, but God is the source of all strength.

Empires expand by way of conquest, and yet God has expanded his kingdom by a simple message of love and life in a savior.

Human rulers desire control.

Jesus said that he's come to give life, and life more abundantly, and to set people free in the liberation from sin and death and judgment.

And so Isaiah is calling people, in these introductory moments, before he gets into the deep heart of this section, to look away from themselves and look away from Babylon and look to God and to recognize that every ruler, every empire, every force is nothing but nothing in comparison to him.

He moves on to the idols in verses 18 to 20.

And in the ancient world, victorious kings would identify themselves with idols, because an idol once crafted signified the presence of that God, and so when the Kings commissioned the making of idols, they were showing that they were equated with that God and had the power of that God and the presence of that God, and that they were elevated themselves as human rulers into a place of divine supremacy.

This is why Nebuchadnezzar was so proud of himself in the book of Daniel, because he felt that everything that he had been given was a sign and seal of the God's endorsement of who he was.

And so they would publicly celebrate their victories by taking the spoils of war and by building the monuments and idols around the public square.

And if you were to walk around Babylon you would see those everywhere.

The taking of objects of worship were considered an act of supremacy by the gods over one another.

And so, for example, when you go to 1 Samuel, chapter 5, and the Philistines there go to battle with the people of Israel, and the people of Israel foolishly bring the Ark of the Covenant into the battle, thinking that somehow that's going to help them win the war because the presence of God is with them.

1 Samuel 5 · chapter mention

They'd already bought into the whole idolatrous understanding and the Philistines win.

And what the Philistines do?

They capture the Ark of the Covenant, thinking our God has beat your God.

And what do they do to show humiliation to the God of the people of Israel?

They stick the Ark of the Covenant in the Temple of Dagon.

Our God rules, but what happened?

But what happened?

They woke up the next day and they found out that their idol of Dagon had gone, clunk and had fallen down, and that's just not a good thing when your God falls down.

So they're like they prop him back up.

They're like fix that problem, our God rules.

Again, they wake up the next day.

He's got no head or hands.

This ain't good In the ancient Near East.

When you cut off hands and head, well obviously it means utter defeat.

And so when they walked into the temple of Dagon and it had no head or hands, the Lord was saying he is utterly defeated.

This wasn't just an accident of fragile stone or metal that happened to crack in some stress places.

This was God saying Dagon, you're dead.

And the message was clear Yahweh does not coexist with these gods, he overthrows them.

And so here they are in this moment of history and they're surrounded by these idols and they need to understand, in comparison to Yahweh, what these things are.

I mean, they look big, they look impulsive, they're made with silver and gold, they look remarkable and they've been implanted with divine powers.

And it seems to have happened.

I mean, we're in Babylon and they've captured our city, and they've killed a king and captured another one, and here we are in chains.

It seems like they're powerful.

Until you read these words, with whom will you compare God?

What likeness will you set up for comparison with him?

An idol, something that a smelter cast and a metal worker plates with gold and makes silver chains for, and a poor person contributes wood for a pedestal that will not rot?

He looks for a skilled craftsman to set up an idol that will not fall over.

They've got to get a good craftsman and they have to get good wood, because it's really not a great thing if your God dry, rots or gets moldy or falls over.

They have no authority.

Later, in Isaiah chapter 46, these gods are described as burdens that have to be carried by people, and in Isaiah chapter 21, he places a judgment on false worship by saying Babylon has fallen.

Isaiah 46 · chapter mention Isaiah 21 · chapter mention

The images of its God lie fallen on the ground.

Here we're seeing a declaration of Yahweh's true supremacy.

These things are just crafted by hands.

They're not powerful.

They need a craftsman, they need a metal worker, they need someone to purchase the wood, they need someone to build them.

It's absurd.

It's absurd.

What is God telling the people here?

Look up, look up, don't be scared by them, don't capitulate to them, don't acquiesce to their demands, don't be fearful, don't be despondent.

Your God is supreme over all things, even in the middle of Babylon, because idols will fall before him, nations will crumble before him and kings are nothing to him.

And that's the next section in verses 21 to 24.

Do you not know?

Have you not heard?

Has it not been declared to you from the beginning?

Have you not considered the foundations of the earth?

God is enthroned above the circle of the earth and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers.

He stretches out the heavens like thin cloth and spreads them out like a tent to live in, and he reduces his princes to nothing and makes judges of the earth like a wasteland.

They're barely planted, barely sown, and their stem hardly takes root in the ground when he blows on them and they wither and, like a whirlwind, carries them away like stubble.

Yeah, nebuchadnezzar seemed like a great ruler for a little while, and then he was dead.

Hitler seemed like a great ruler for a little while, and then he was dead.

And you could name every dictator that you can think of, and they're all dead Because they rose up in a whisper of a moment and they were cut down by death.

But there's one man who went into the grave and came out of it and he lives forever as Lord over all.

His name is Jesus, and his kingdom will not end or fail.

And so here the Lord is telling us not to invest ourselves or not to be afraid of these forces that are in this world today, be they governmental or ideological, or even our own personal ambitions or the constructs and forces of social media.

These things are nothing in comparison to God.

These things are nothing in comparison to God.

And then, last of all, in verses 25 and 26, the authority of the creator over the heavens.

To whom will you compare me or who is my equal, asked the Holy One.

Look up and see who created these.

He brings out the stars by number.

He calls all of them by name because of his great power and strength.

Not one of them is missing Now.

This was a particularly important message in Babylon, because the Babylonians were full of astronomical and astrological interest.

Their advances in understanding the heavenlies has built a foundation for our understanding and our society, even to this day.

Their observations of celestial moments were so precise that we use a lot of their constructs in all sorts of arenas now.

But they believed that knowing the stars ordered their religion and ordered their governance and ordered the future.

That's how they looked at it, and so they invested the heavenlies with God-like qualities and and they did so in very intricate and profound ways that we're still trying to discover they put together a numeral system that recorded the details of the celestial movements and were able to predict eclipses and planetary movements and seasonal cycles in a way we're just now doing.

They were able to track planets using a graph-based calculations that are a lot like integral calculus that we learn today.

They were able to analyze the celestial cycles and to forecast planetary movements to such a degree that we use those things now for observational skill and foundation and understanding.

But their stargazers used all that to predict the future, and we might laugh at that.

But just pick up a Wall Street Journal or a USA Today or the Washington Post and just jump over to the horoscope section and tell me, if we still don't do that, what's your sign?

Well, those 12 zodiacal signs were formulated by the Babylonians and the Lord says don't look at creation, don't look at the nations, don't look at the rulers, don't look at the stars.

Look to me, behold your God, because he knows them far better.

He numbers and names all of them, and to name something means to control it, and he numbers and names all of them is why Isaiah says that, because he's got all of it understood and he controls it all and he commands the stars, and that's why, in the New Testament, we find this star moving people, called the Magi to a place not to draw attention to the glory of themselves, but to draw attention to the glory of the newborn babe, jesus.

The stars point to the glory of the Savior, not to the glory of themselves, and the ability to protect and control the future.

Psalm 8, when I observe your heavens, the works of your hands, the moon and the stars which you set in space, what is a human being?

That you remember him, a son of man, that you consider him?

You see, the heavenly beings are there for God's glory, not their own.

And so the Lord here throws down a challenge, a challenge of superiority and comparing himself to everything around, and he eliminates all rivals.

Nothing can compare, not nations, not idols, not rulers, not celestial beings, and he eliminates all rivals.

Nothing can compare, not nations, not idols, not rulers, not celestial beings, babylonian power and culture.

Well, it's weak, it'll be defeated.

It cannot be the strength that you think it is to cause you to abandon God or to acquiesce to its control.

You don't need to deny the Lord and you don't need to round off the contours of your identity in him, because he is over all of this.

And so Isaiah, as he launches into this section, that comes to a climax and we're just in the sort of rumblings of the beginning.

But it comes to a climax in chapters, later chapters is simply saying look up and hear the word of a God who says comfort, comfort, comfort.

You won't hear those words of comfort if you're still thinking, in your despondency and in your defeat, that somehow God is not able because life isn't how you wanted it to be.

You won't hear those words of comfort if you're looking on social media and wondering who you are in light of those strolls through Instagram.

You won't hear that word comfort If you're sitting in the middle of a biology class and just told it's all some freak accident.

You won't hear those words of comfort If you're chasing after that next paycheck in order to make yourself feel better, not just take care of your needs.

Political and cultural powers, materialism and wealth, self-worship and autonomy, science and human achievement, the identity of our person in the light of those around us, are just going to erode and erase the contours of God's glorious supremacy over all of them.

Lift up your eyes, behold your God.

That's the answer.

Let's pray, father.

I pray for us that we'd keep our eyes where they need to be.

Lord, it concerns us because, rightly, we have enemies in this world that are seeking to measure themselves up against you and claim victory.

We want to hear what is the heart of worship, to proclaim and behold the greatness of you.

And, lord, may we exalt you in every way rather than, as some are doing, simply reducing you to an accessory for human need and ambition.

I pray, father, that all of us would be messengers of this one command behold your God, so that we might not give into the demands or surrender our allegiance to these false idols.

Father, we commit ourselves to you and into your hands we offer ourselves, and we thank you that you so wonderfully embrace the undeserving and that you call to these people even in the midst of their despondency, dejection, disobedience and disillusionment.

You impressed upon them words of eternal comfort and hope, and we pray in our generation that we might be recipients and messengers of that same comfort and hope, that consolation, which is found in Jesus Christ, and we pray this in his name, amen.