Isaiah40: Rethinking God

0:02 Looking at our world from a theological perspective. This is the Theology Central podcast, making Theology Central. Good evening everyone. It is Friday, November twenty ninth, twenty twenty four. It is currently nine eighteen pm Central Time, and I'm coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. All Right, I have some some reasons for doing this broadcast this evening. I have some goals I want to accomplish, all right. Just about an hour ago, hour and a half ago, I found out that tomorrow things are going to really be different around here, so broadcasting not going to happen, all right, So there's not going to be any broadcasts tomorrow. So then I was like, okay, well then if I'm not going to be able to do any broadcasting tomorrow, that means then Sunday, if everything goes right at church, then I should be able to come home and upload two hours of teaching.

1:01 We will see how that goes. But who knows if they're going to be any good. I mean, I never know how Sunday is going to go. So I'm like, well, all right, then I guess I could try to broadcast Sunday afternoon. All right, maybe, but since I can't do anything tomorrow, and that's already a guarantee, and you never really can predict I mean, obviously we never know what's going to happen in the future. Well, then let's get something done this evening. So I'm all right, can't broadcast tomorrow, let's broadcast now. So that's one of the reasons I'm doing this broadcast, right, It's because I can't broadcast tomorrow. All right, good, Now what do I do now? There was a couple of things I wanted to broadcast on RITE, A couple of things I had ready, some audio I had saved, I had some antifons for Advent, a discussion about those. I thought, well, I could do those famous antifons for Advent. That could be an interesting thing to talk about, or at least remind everyone of, because I've talked about them I think multiple times. I could do that.

1:58 And then there was a podcast episode that dropped on I think late last night or early this morning called Satan's Satan's Secret Society, and I'm like, oh, what is that all about? So I'm like, oh, we could review that audio. So but I'm like well, the only problem is, not only is tomorrow going to cause me not to be able to broadcast, Tomorrow is going to really mess up sermon prep. Like sermon prep is probably not going to happen. So then I'm like, okay, well, then I need to broadcast something related to what I'll be preaching on on Sunday. So in a sense, I can try to accomplish two things. A little bit of sermon prepper. Maybe I've been really sermon prep, but at least getting me thinking along that those lines. Because of all the other things we've been talking about, I need to get focused back on. And you know what, I need to get focused back on Isaiah chapter forty.

2:45 Right. We took that long detour with James one nineteen through twenty seven. We've been talking about hermeneutics and Bible interpretation. We talked about reading comprehension AI. I mean those conversations. There could be much more or said, but I'm like, I've got to get back to Isaiah forty. So you know what I did. I grabbed the sermon's two point Oh app I hyped in Isaiah forty and I'm like, oh, there's a sermon. Wait this one is called rethinking God. Rethinking God Isaiah forty. I'm like, well, that sounds interesting. Rethinking God Isaiah chapter forty. So is I mean now from the title is do I mean? I know this is an assumption, but when I hear the title, I start thinking, hmm. Is the thinking here is that God sent a message to the people who were in Babylonian captivity, because you know, Isaiah thirty nine sets up the babylon captivity.

3:42 Isaiah forty through fifty five is the message of comfort sent to them. But somehow in this message of comfort sent to the people in Babylonian captivity, one of the things is guys, you need to rethink God. And I'm like, well, I wonder how how does that fit? Hey, I'm sending you comfort, but you need to rethink God. What did they need to change their thinking in regards to God about? I'm like, okay, this could be interesting, right, So I haven't listened to it? Well take that back. I hit play and immediately realized that whoever recorded this obviously didn't know where the volume control was. I literally had to go in and increase the volume by like thirty percent. It was some crazy number like it was crazy. Finally, I think I have it loud enough, so I have it ready to go, and we're just gonna jump in now.

4:29 The goal here tonight is not to do an entire sermon review, because if we do an entire sermon review with a sermon that's forty four minutes and fifty three seconds long, you know that's going to take I couldn't even do it in one part. I could do an hour and a half here. This would probably be three four hours of broadcasting to do an entire review. The goal here is one They're going to be discussing Isaiah forty. That's perfect because well, I need to get my mind back on Isaiah forty. Secondly, that's supposed to help you because you're supposed to be spending all kinds of time in Isaiah forty to fifty five. So then that helps you. And so it gets us back in there, So that that's the main thing, as long as it gets me discussing there, and and then I guess the other thing is I just want to hear their basic hypotheses, right, So what's their hypothesis and how does it relate to Isaiah forty? And you know what we're going to be looking out for I guess another thing, how quickly do they insert us? But I'm not going to make that so much of the issue. And I've got to be really careful how I handle this because for church, what I what I'm going to do on Sunday is move away from all of the controversy. Right, We've we've kind of established that over and over, sermon after sermon after sermon mishandles Isaiah forty. We've seen that I don't even know, I don't even know how many times, and and all the times of all the things I've listened to that I haven't even reviewed. It's crazy, right, It's just crazy how mishandled like. It's like a disease. It's like an epidemic.

5:57 It's all like a pandemic of people miss handling Isaiah chapter forty. We've already established that. So when I get to church on Sunday, I don't want to go back over all of that. I don't want to do that anymore. I've already I've mentioned all of that. Right, we even kind of got into a little bit of trying to fix it. What we're gonna do on Sunday A step completely back and say, okay, guys, Isaiah forty is the chapter. Let's do an observational outline. So we're going to try to do an observational outline on Sunday. It may take two hours, but that's what we're going to do. So in the meantime, I got to get my mind back to Isaiah forty somehow, right, I gotta turn my mind away from James and Ai and reading comprehension and all the other issues and get back to Isaiah forty. So this is my attempt to do that, to do a broadcast to make up for no broadcast tomorrow, and since I can't do a lot of sermon prep tomorrow, this helps me at least get my mind thinking about Isaiah forty, which even tomorrow, if I can't get to the microphone or do any prep, my brain is already thinking about Isaiah forty. So that's what I'm attempting to do. So in a roundabout way, I'm doing this broadcast more for me than you, So I'm being selfish, right, full transparency.

7:15 But if you can benefit from it, great, So are you ready? Here we go rethinking God. Supposedly this is a sermon from Isaiah forty. That's at least the text. I'm very curious. Let's find out. I want us to spend some time together this morning and this evening on the same theme. So really it's a two part sermon. All right. I want us to consider the task that's so so critical for a young church. But it's not just critical for a young church. It's critical for a young believer.

7:55 Okay, now wait a minute, all right, do you see what just happened? Is forty is the text and he wants to talk about the task that is critical for a young church and the task that's critical for believers. No, wait a minute. We're in Isaiah forty. There is no church. There is a nation in Babylonian captivity. If we're gonna say Isaiah forty is about a church, then it's about a church in Babylonian captivity. So but even that, again, you're you're just inserting that into the text. So once again, how long did that take before we got inserted into the passage? How long, ladies and gentlemen, that took maybe what ten seconds? Twenty seconds? Look, I'm telling you there's no end to that. I don't understand. I really I must have missed the memo. Hey, when you read Isaiah forty, don't think about the people it's speaking to. They don't matter.

8:59 It's all about us and you. Okay, all right, but all right, See that's what I didn't want to get back into. So I don't care how much he does that I have to mention it, but I'm going to try not to mention it anymore. I'm listening to what's his basic hypotheses for this sermon, what's his basic thesis, what's his hypotheses when it comes to the text, How is he handling the text? And what can we learn from it? Here we go, and some of you may be young believers, but it's also critical for the older believer. As I was looking at the passage again this week, coming up, looking forward to this morning. Now, one of the reasons I went ahead and chose this one not only because it was Isaiah forty, because it had almost thirteen thousand downloads. Okay, that's crazy. I think it had like thirteen than twelve thousand something, maybe close to thirteen thousand. That means this one is influential, influential, influential, influential, influential.

10:00 So the thing that's influencing the most people. Sometimes that's the most interesting to hear because you're like, wait, one you try to figure out why are so many people drawn to it? And two you're like, what did everyone take away from it? So right here we go. How much I feel my own soul is needy and I've looked at this theme so many times. We're here sweeping through up to the New England area to work on a project on the attributes of God and filming and locations where ministers were used in an extraordinary way, particularly in connection with preaching on the Majesty of God. So Timothy Dwight and the second grade Awakening at Yale, George Whitfield and the first grade Awakening in his last place he preached and is buried in America Jonathan Edwards.

10:49 Of course, so men who were gripped by this big biblical portrait of God and whose lives then were influential. But it doesn't matter how many times we look at passage like this, I feel my own need. I want to talk about rethinking God and refashioning everything based upon what we find of Him in this book. Now a right, So rethinking God, refashioning everything based on what we find in this book. Right, that's kind of the maybe the more the purpose statement. Right now, he said this passage, I'm assuming the passage he's referencing is Isaiah forty right. So okay, I think I know where he's going. I don't think he's gonna deal with the first passage. I think he's going to start talking about verse twelve. I think he's going to start talking about verse twelve to thirty one. That's where I think he's going to go. Twelve to thirty one. Now, let's see if he puts this in its historical intextual content. Let's see what happens.

12:02 Now. That's a common theme today, It's a common activity in parts in the last ten years, in particular. Now, I'm forty three now, right, and I have lived long enough now to see some of the trends in American religion. When I was your age, for those of you that are in college, rethinking God, rethinking church, rethinking families, it was not a very common idea. Brand loyalty was firm. I grew up a Southern Baptist, even in Columbus, Ohio, Southern Baptist. That meant everybody I knew that was a Christian had a West Virginian accent. All right, But all right, I went down south. I'm a Southern Baptist. My father's a Southern Baptist minister, and so it never occurred to me to be anything but Southern Baptist. Everybody else was dodgy, you know, and suspicious until I met some wonderful Presbyterians.

12:52 But that's not really the way it is now, is it. I mean, it's open now. There is a real opportunity to rethink what what is church and what is worship and what is evangelism and what is it to live a God Word life? And those old categories have faded to a certain degree, and it really it frees you up. And this church plant here is an expression of that. That's interesting. I'd have to look at the year of this. I think brand loyalty is still very much in place. Hey, this is your theological team. You stay loyal to that team. Now, maybe there's been more rethinking about how to do church.

13:34 But if you rethink church too much or immediately, will be condemned and criticized. Right, And if you rethink and start challenging interpretations and philological ideas, you everyone says they're open until you say the thing they don't like, and then you get thrown out or they leave. So I. Don't know. I don't know. I'd have to look at the year and what was making him feel this way. I think brand, loyalty, philological team, philological stream, stay in it, don't rock the boat, do what we I think that's still it's always kind of built into Christianity, and it's always operated that way to some level. Maybe the people in the pew are less committed than they used to be, But I'm telling you, you still say the wrong thing, They're walking out the door or you're going to be losing your job.

14:32 While it's common today to rethink church and family and manhood and evangelism, it's also very important that we do it correctly. Western evangelicalism, which we're a part of, is a wash in a scene of confusion. The United States is leading the way through her enormous influence in religion, and she is staggering American evangelicals from one empty idea to the next empty idea, hoping that that the gimmick on the horizon will fix our churches.

15:13 Wait, Christianity is a wash in confusion. Tell me it isn't so tell me. I mean, come on, we've got the Word of God and we've got the Spirit leading us, so we should all have truth and there should not be any Oh wait, yeah, okay, it doesn't matter. To the decade the church, Spurgeon was upset with the church. Everyone is always like the church is in trouble. There's all these new ideas, and there's all these conflicting doctrines and conflicting theologies, and nobody seems to agree. Everyone is always yelling and screaming about how messed up the churches. And yeah, no one's yet to figure it out. And we can't even We're never gonna figure it out, since we can't even agree on which hermeneutical principles apply or don't apply. We can't even agree on how to interpret simple things. We can't agree on the word repentance, the word baptism. I mean, I can go on and on and on and on, and it's exhausting. All right, let's see if he's got some great solution.

16:17 And bring back some weight and effectiveness, and all the world is following us. I spent three years in the little country of Wales, working on a PhD in Welsh revivals. I was always grieved to hear that an American team had arrived in a little Welsh mining village to do ministry, because I've been on both ends. I've been at home when the team returns and says, do you know we had one hundred conversions this week? One hundred children ask Jesus into their heart, and you rejoice, and you think it's worth all the money of sending the youth puppet team overseas. But then I've been in Britain and I've talked to the Masters the next year, and I said, this town of a thousand, which sees perhaps two or three conversions a year, very difficult area to work in.

17:09 They said that one hundred were converted last year. How many are even still attending any church in the town? Two three. It is imperative that we, as American evangelicals who are concerned about more than just US four and no more, that when we come to the scripture, that we're willing to rethink some of the traditions that we've been handed. And generally, I would say that while it's very common today to rethink church and to rethink family, it's not going in the right direction. As a whole. Much of the refashioning of Christianity and the evangelical scene, particularly that which is done among you younger people, is done in such a way that in ten years we will be worse off than we were yesterday. If you read church history, you see that this is not new to us. There are cycles where God brings his church to a position of alarm and she begins to rethink things.

18:15 And usually it is the younger people that have the courage to cry out to God and say, what do you want from us? But there are times in history where the young people have cried out and it's been a wise a group of young people led by older, wise Christians, and they've really laid hold of the great Answer himself. And then there are periods. I always find that baffling. So there's always these times that people that God tells them what he wants. They ask God, what do you want? And then God what God tells them directly? I mean God doesn't tell us in the scriptures. See that seems to say the script I know that this person would not claim this. I know they would say the scriptures are sufficient. The scriptures are the only authority. But if you have to cry out to God, going, God, what do you want? And then God tells you, then that means God is not telling you in the Bible because you wouldn't have to cry out what do you want? God, because it would be in the Bible. So then if God tells them what he wants, why didn't he tell the older generation what he wanted? Or are they not listening? And if they're not listening, God can't speak louder So the Bible.

19:21 God's gonna tell us exactly what he wants because we can't figure it out from the scriptures. See, this just leads to all kinds of just I know, this is just normal Christian talk, right, Oh, we cried out, God told us what he wanted and we needed people seeking God. Well do you mean studying the Bible? Like I don't So, I don't know, I don't know. But yeah, this just never ends. I wonder why it never ends. I wonder the church it's just constantly a wash in confusion and problems and difficulties. Well, one, all the talk about us being so transformed is proven over and over and over not to be true because we're not new creatures. With the old things past away, all things have become new. Practically, we're still sinners. I don't know when the church is ever going to admit that. All every sermon admits how messed up everything is. But at the same time we still sell this idea that well, we basically are almost perfect.

20:12 And then I wish we would stop this nonsense of God talking to us outside of scripture because that's not happening. And three, I wish we would be able to acknowledge. Hey, I think the big problem is is that Christians can't agree on anything in the Bible. So how are we ever going to fix anything? But okay, let's see if we get an answer here. I still want to know what this has to do with Isaiah forty. There's a history where young people have cried out and they've not found the right answer, and they've gone earnestly in the wrong direction. When you look at the rethinking and you read the new books about you know, missional churches, et cetera. Wait, so there's times when people cry out to God and they didn't find the right answer. What why didn't they find the right answer?

21:00 Sir? They cried out to God and God's like sh nobody give them the right answer. Watch this. I do? And I covered my mouth there, like you know, God talking to someone next to him, right, all right, that's why the microphone sounded muted. Okay, all right, that visually that works better than than a dead audio. All right. So the point is so sometimes we cry out to God and we get the answer, and sometimes we cry out to God and we don't get the answer. Okay, I got lots of questions. I'm not particularly encouraged because it's not because it's a lack of zel. It's not that we're not being radical or extreme. I mean, really, let's face it, the words passionate, extreme, and radical are so popular today in church planting books that I think they're going to replace faith, hope, and love.

22:01 It's not that we're not being radical and extreme. It's that we're not being nearly radical enough. And whoever you can think of as the most cutting edge kind of radical and extreme church planter is not being nearly extreme enough. The problem is that we're not going deeply enough. So you can rethink things. You can rethink how to reach the inner city, and you can rethink how to do church, and you can rethink how to do family and how to educate your children. But none of these things is deep enough. We're so quick to go to the question how, and that's the wrong starting place. But the right starting place is another question who? Who is he? Does he have the right to define himself in this book? And will we really rethink him according to what he says? Well, before we look at our passage this morning, just three more introductory things and then that you'll find out the introduction is about half the sermon, right, So if you're getting nervous, don't be too nervous. There are three things I think we have to set on our minds before we go any further and look at Isaiah forty because it's a wonderful passage and I don't want us to waste our time. The first thing is this that this is not a job for spiritual cowards. Have you ever considered that the Bible lists spiritual cowardice and spiritual cowards

23:36 in those lists that describe who will populate hell. It is not easy to rethink family. I have three children, all right. I know to some people that's a very small family. In my church has a small family, and we're looked at with some suspicion. All right, But I grew up with just one other sibling, so I thought we had a massive family, and so does my wife's parents. All right, So we have three children. We homeschool when my child was when our oldest child was four, and someone mentioned homeschool, is said, no way, no way, no way, no way. And now here we are. We homeschool and I'm on the board of a little cooperative effort. You know, homeschooling is not easy.

24:21 And are you thinking what I'm thinking, ladies and gentlemen. What is Isaiah forty a message to people in Babylonian captivity, a nation Judah like Israel? Like? Okay, all right, all right, but let's let's let's hear how this goes. And rethinking church is not easy, and rethinking what a Christian man is is not easy, and rethinking evangelism is not easy, and rethinking Christian finances these not easy things.

25:01 But their child's play compared to rethinking God's. Because I can become a homeschooler, and I can have twenty children, and I can be a church where we have long prayer meetings and we only sing from the old hymns or maybe we only sing from the new choruses. And I can make all those choices, but deep down it hasn't touched the root that John Snyder is still the ruler. I think that many of our new church plants that claim to be reformed have gone into the bedroom and found the church in bed with the world, covered over within our big Armenian blanket. And the newly reformed preacher screams, ah, Armenianism, and he runs in and he rips the Armenian blanket all and throws a Calvinistic blanket over him and then leaves.

25:52 But the church is still in bed with the world. We're still intact with our self determination. Rethinking God's is costly. It's not for cowards. The second thing, rethinking God is not a boring thing. Now I preach boring sermons at times. I know I get bored, but rethinking God is not boring. You if you're a believer, are called into fellowship with Him, and he opens himself up. He has displayed himself to you, and he has commanded you to know him and to embrace him. And it's the beginning. And I don't care how old you are as a Christian you are at the ABC's of Christianity. One time we did a series of sermons on the character of God, the attributes of God.

26:45 I expected it the last twelve weeks. It lasted three years. But at the end of three years, not one person, especially not me, not one of us, had gone in more than a few inches into this boundless, shoreless ocean of God. I have been a Christian longer than I have been a rebel against God. But I feel like I'm a little kid walking up to the seaside and He is calling me in. It's not boring to know God other than by hearsay. Third thing and then we'll look at the passage. It is not impossible. He is incomprehensible. He is infinite. So we're not going to get our little minds wrapped around God and be able to figure him out. But it is not impossible to know God.

27:33 The Bible is not custom designed for a number of things that we are trying to use it for. The Bible does not have a book on courtship. The Bible does not have a book on Biblical manhood. The Bible does not have a book on educating your children or having a Christian business. Or reaching the inner city. Now, certainly the principles for all those areas are in the scripture, but there's no one book that you can go through. People call this the owner man Owner's Manual for life. I don't know. I don't like that phrase. There are principles that people take from the text and try to apply to these situations and these contexts that the Bible was not speaking about. And in many cases we take passages and principles that probably have nothing to do with these sich areas that he just mentioned, and we try to apply it to them. Well, like and maybe I don't know, like maybe Isaiah forty, Maybe.

28:35 What is the Bible? It is only custom design for one great purpose. Everything else is the byproduct. It is custom designed to unveil God to people like us. Is the Bible custom designed to reveal God? Or is it custom designed to show us? Maybe it is to reveal God actions and specific times, specific situations to specific people. Maybe in that case, maybe I just we always like to frame it or it's somehow it's about us. The Bible's designed to do this for us, But these are stories and situations for those people. Somehow, the original people always seem to just they don't matter to us, and that's where I get so bad. But maybe I mean, look, he hasn't gotten Isaiah forty yet, so he's getting ready to get to Isaiah forty. And I know, I look, at least, at a minimum, he's going to discuss the historical context. At a minimum, we'll just see what he does with it.

29:46 So, even though God is incomprehensibly glorious and transcendent, he has stooped down to explain himself to us and you can know him. Well. We're gonna look at two passages that illustrate that, I hope. The first this morning is Isaiah forty, when Judah is facing the sunset, Israel is looking at the beginning of a very dark, deep night. She's going to enter into judgment soon, and we find it. Wait a minute, Wait a minute, all right, where's he going to go? Isaiah forty. They are already in it. This is the comfort given to them while they are in it. They're not about to go into it. They're in it. They go into it in Isaiah thirty nine.

30:33 This is the message of comfort given like one hundred years before they even get there. Now is he going to say, well, the comfort was given before they go there. Okay, now maybe he's going to do that. Maybe he's going to do it, but the comfort is for when they're in it, all right. So again, I know that can get confusing because even when we were looking at it all trying to figure out the timeline, because sermons were saying all kinds of different things. You're like, some sermons made it sound like Isaiah went and gave the comfort, and we're like, no, he didn't, because Isaiah had been dat one hundred years. So yeah, so I'm assuming he's going to clarify this. So just so that you know, it can get really confusing listening to sermons and how they phrase it or how they structure the time timeline.

31:15 Here, find that chapter forty is the promise of a dawn after the judgment. Then tonight we're going to look at a man who was very religious, very respectable in church, then he met Christ and that got all turned on its head. Now he's in prison and we want to ask him, well, now what do you say about the glory of Christ? And we're going to look at Colossians chapter one tonight. So Isaiah forty right now, Well, what's the context very quickly, because we have so much to look at. Hezekiah is the king, and I want you to imagine living at the end of the reign of Hezekiah. Right, so we're all Jewish people, younger and older. Has been morally bankrupt for generations. She has added the emptiness of idolatry to the externals of Jehovah worship. God has withdrawn his gracious presence. The compromised religious leaders don't mention it.

32:18 The periods of national repentance and stirring like Hezekiah's reign, which if you know your Old Testament, it's a wonderful, gracious time. But even that is inadequate. Israel has times where she seems to turn back to God, but then she goes back on the old course. Proud. Hezekiah is visited by some delegates from a distant country, the Chaldeans or the Babylonians. At this time, Babylon is not a world dominating power. She soon will be. She's not a threat. She seems very small, very far away, and Hezekiah, like many of us, would be as flattered. Oh you've come to see me, yes, Oh you ought to. I mean I'm a pretty impressive kidding. Look at what's happened. Hezekiah brings them into the temple and shows them all the gold and silver. Hezekiah brings them into the palace and shows them all off his treasure. They leave. God sends Isaiah the prophet to Hezekiah, and he says to him, you're a fool. The men that came and flattered you today their grandchildren will come and carry off your grandchildren into slavery. And Hezekiah is so self centered that as long he says, as it doesn't happen in my day, I won't worry about it. Now. If you're a Jew and that's your king, that's what you're looking for to raising children in, and that's what you're looking forward to in the future. Is there any real hope? Now, let's

33:49 be honest, because American optimism is destroying the church. We're waking up Sunday after Sunday telling us that the next book that we buy will fix us and a dozen. So, now, that was a good summary of Isaiah thirty nine, basically one through four, or maybe one through eight. I mean that's pretty I think it's Isaiah thirty nine one through eight or at least that's pretty that's pretty good. That's a pretty good summary, well spoken, articulate, clear concise, much better than I could do. That's great. Now, immediately he just looked back to the church, which I don't know how that just happened, But okay, all right, he's given us some content. I told you he would. I was assured. I was assured that he would at least mention some context. What he's going to do with it, I don't know, because he immediately went back to the church.

34:35 Let's see what's going to happen here. We want to be very sure that our hope is built on a solid, substantial foundation, and it is in verses one through eleven. We moved from the very insignificant palace of Hezekiah and the secret thoughts of his selfish hearts. Now we're moving to the royal messenger from God to hear from the heavenly throne. And he speaks in verses one and two of comforts and the Hebrews, so beautiful, lay words tenderly alongside the hearts of my people. What words that the warfares over. It's an amazing grace. Here israel sins against God for generations. Now Israel's offended, God himself will come to rescue them. In verses three through five, the messenger has heard, prepare a road for this salvation, but be very careful while God will bring the Israelites back.

35:32 And later in Isaiah we have a lot of that reference to coming back out of Babylon. The road in Isaiah forty is not for exiles returning. It's not for men. The good news is that there's gonna be a road open between Babylon and Jerusalem, and you can come back. The best news is in the big picture of things, there's going to be a road opened where God will travel, not us, and He will come to us. It's a wonderful picture of Christ preparo road for whom for the king. Another voice is heard. There's no hope Verses six through eight. No hope at all in mankind. Man is like a flower.

36:12 You pick it, it wilts. Man is like grass, you cut it, it withers. I was out walking around this morning, picked this little flower. You know already it's kind of disappointing, all right. If I try to take it back to my wife, She's not gonna be impressed, is she? Because that's us. The Great preachers the Newest Book, we don't last. There's no hope in us. Then God's coming is described in verses nine through eleven. He comes. How does God come? This is a description of God coming in the person of the sun. This is a picture of Christ. He will come as a mighty warrior, a hero in battle, with ample strength to do whatever it takes. He will also come as a shepherd, especially towards the weed and the young.

37:05 Please note he is making a lot of this about Christ. Now the New Testament writers may use some of this about Christ. We're gonna be very careful. He's he's quickly. We're saying, hey, these I mean comfort, comfort. But then all of this is not about these people. Hey comfort comfort, But you're all gonna be dead when when this comfort comes. This has nothing to do with you. This is about Christ. I mean, you're all gonna be dead. This is not gonna do you any good. But here is comfort. I got comfort for you. After you're all dead, good things are coming. I've got the greatest amount of comfort for you. You're all going to die. But long after you are dead, well, Christ is gonna come. Or maybe if we read this Isaiah forty sins it's in the section known as the Book of Comfort because Isaiah forty to Isaiah fifty five.

38:10 And we know that this person is identified as the one who seems to be very much doing these very things that are speaking of, and he's identified by name, and that name as Cyrus. Do we just ignore him? Do we ignore what literally happened? I don't know. We're gonna be working on this as we go through this chapter, but pastors just have a hard time staying here. We want to immediately jump to something else. And it's like, what about the original people? I don't understand why the original people never count? Now the messenger passes away from the scene in verse eleven, and now the focus of the prophet turns to the king himself. The King enters, and this incomprehensibly great God stoops down to our childlike faith, and he gives us four very simple pictures of himself.

39:07 He gives us, or he gives them. Wouldn't we have to understand why he did this for them before we say he did this for us? All right, Let's see what happens here, and this is what we want to look at this morning. We want to see the incomparable Lord. And at the end of each of these sections, each of these four pictures, the message is the same. There is no one but God, and there is no one like God. The first picture, we have the contrast between God and Creation in verses twelve through fourteen. And here is that wonderful phrase, who has verse thirteen twelve, verse thirteen, Who has? I mean, that's the wrestling match here in our hearts. Who measured the waters, who marked off the heavens, who calculated the dust of the earth, who weighed the mountains? Look at the wonderful pictures here, very poetic, very concrete, to help us.

40:24 The oceans of planet Earth fit in the palm of God's hands. Very simple picture, isn't it. He scoops up the water. That's enough for the Atlantic, that's enough for the Pacific, the galaxies. As we look out at night, God does the span of his hands from his thumb to his finger. That's enough for the Milky Way, the Earth, all the Earth, all the dust that makes up planet Earth. It's mantle, its core. It seems so big to us. But the Hebrew uses a special word here that ladies. In Isaiah's they would have understood. If you're in the kitchen and you have all the measuring cups, you know ours are all in like the junk drawer, which I can never find the right measuring cup. But maybe you're organized and you have him to hang him in the right order. The word here is go get the the No, not that measuring cup. No no, no, no, the little one.

41:17 Note that, No, the little one. God measures out all the planet Earth in a measuring cup, not the big one. The little one. God weighs the mountains in the small scales. Now this brings a question, did any one of us advise God on this? Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna expedite this a little bit. You see where he's gonna go. But immediately he sees he starts talking about us, us us us us us. If you if you want to look at this section and Isaiah Sa. Forty twelve to seventeen, you'll see that the text presents some pictures of God's sovereignty, his power, and his incomparability. There's nothing, there's nothing compares to him.

42:09 To borrow from a famous pop song. All right, these descriptions seems to serve to elevate God's majesty above all creation and all human comprehension. Now, for the original recipients, these verses would intend to challenge their view of God, restore their trust in him, and offer comfort during their exile and Babylon. Hey, guys, I know you're in babylon captivity. I know, but remember this section is comfort comfort my people, all right, So what do the people need to be comforted with? They're in captivity. There's no way to free themselves, there's no way to deliver themselves. So what can they do? Remember who God is? Because when you look at your circumstances, nothing you experience, nothing you see, nothing you feeling that's happening to you or happening around you changes the truth of whom God is. God is what he is, and He is not changed at all by what you see, experience, feel, or what is happening around you. So the people in Babylonian captivity, they see, they feel, they're experiencing. Well, what do they need to be reminded of who God is?

43:26 Because nothing of him has changed. So what happens in the section, Well, in verse twelve, God is seen as creator who has measured the waters and the hollow of his hands, and melted out heaven and meet it out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth and a measure, and weighed the mountains and scales and the hills and a balance. God measures the waters in the hollow of his hand, marks the heavens with the span, and weighs the mountains and hills. Why would he explain this to people in Babylonian captivity Because it's demonstration God's power and control over creation, showing that he is far greater than any earthly force. Hey, the Babylonians look insurmountable. They look like you're never going to get out, But God is greater than them. Verses thirteen through fourteen.

44:15 God has seen as all wise and self sufficient. Who has directed God's spirit or been his counselor well. This highlights God's incomparable wisdom and independence, emphasizing that he does not need advice or guidance from anyone Verses fifteen through seventeen. The insignificant of nations before God. The nations are like a drop in a bucket. They're like dust on the scales. This reveals the relative insignificance of human power and nations compared to God's greatness. So the Israelites in Babylonian exile needed these imagists to reshape their understanding of God. They were living as captives under the shadow of a powerful empire and may have felt abandoned or forgotten by God.

44:59 These verse directly address their doubts, fears, and misconceptions. It's about them. Now, what can we learn from it? Well, in a sense, we are in our own Babylonian captivity, right, because we're in a fallen world. We still have the flesh, we still have a sinful nature, we still have a body that's corruptible. We are still fallible, we still sin. There's pain, suffering, death, disease, There's all these horrible things around us and our Babylonian captivity. And what do we need to be reminded? These truths of God are still true no matter what we experience, no matter what we feel, no matter what we see, God is still there. And sometimes it's confusing because of God. If you're all powerful in your Creator, well you can fix all of this.

45:41 But God, well, he chooses to do what he chooses to do. Now, that's now drawing an application from the text. Now, let's see what he does. Did any one of us teach God the right way, the just way of doing things? Now, I think that's a stilly question, and not when Babylon is on the horizon. The Babylonians worshiped an idol named Marduke. Marduke was the creator god in the empty Babylonian worship system. But Marduke was not the only god. They had a whole slew of gods. When Marduke was attributed with creation. Here's how he did it. He called together all the lesser gods, and he asked their advice, and they all counsel Marduke on the best way to create, and then he created.

46:30 And Isaiah's pointing this out. Babylon's on the horizon. She will come. She'll trample you under her foot because of your sin against your gods. But don't be mistaken. Do not mistake Marduke as the creator. This is interesting. He's emphasizing that these words were to help the people before they went into captivity, and other commentaries and sermons have emphasized no, no, no. This was a message given to Isaiah, and then it was ultimately to be delivered to the people when they are in captivity. So were the words given to the people before they went into captivity and then they were reminded of them in captivity? Or was this like, Hey, I'm going to give you all these words of comfort before you get there.

47:19 And that's interesting on how preachers present it different ways. The real creator, he took counsel from no one. There is none but God, and there is no one like our God. The second picture, not God in creation, but God in the great nations of the world. Note the contrast here. The nations are what a drop in the bucket? God holds oceans in the hollow of Isaad. And do you see the contrast. Do you ever pay attention to drops? Well, and I don't mean like drippy falses. They drive me crazy. Do you ever go camping and you're the I was always a little guy, but I was a young guy, and my dad said, John, go get water from the stream.

48:06 We need water, you know, for cooking and whatever, you know, cleaning pots. And so I'd go down. And my father was a owned a donut shop, so we had these five gallons big buckets. I couldn't carry a five gallon bucket of water, so I'd go down the stream and I'd fill it up. Now, I don't want to make a lot of trips back up the hill, so I try to take it. But I can't get this five gallons of water. So I pour a little out and I go up a little further. I pour a little more. By the time I get up, it's not very impressive. Now, if my dad would have said to me, oh, John, there's a drop on the side of the bucket, it's running down the edge. Catch it, well, I wouldn't have cared about a drop. Nobody cares about drops. The picture here is insignificance. The world dominating empires are a drift on the edge of a bucket. Nobody pays attention. They are a speck of dust on the scales. Now, some of us are worried about our weight, And I found out when I tried to lose weight, that you can weigh a lot different from one time of the day to another, before the meals, after the meals, before a run, after a run. But none of us, no matter how narcisstic we are, no matter how many times we stand on the scales in front of a mirror and think light thoughts nobody gets down with the brush and gets the speck of dust off the scale. But the world ruling empires there are a speck of dust. Babylon is a speck of dust. Rome is a speck of dust,

49:36 the uss R is a speck of dust. America is a speck of dust. And the next great power is a speck of dust. So let's contrast the real God and the world's nations and the greats. They're nothing. He describes them as worthless and empty. And the word there is for vanity. It's just emptiness. There's just nothing there. Now, be careful, don't forget that that applies to the religious significance of the great world powers, the great world religions. He talks about levinon here that if. This is great, that he's breaking these pictures down. But he mentions Babylon here or there. But he's not really driving the message home for the original recipients. But he's not really explaining how it applies to us. Again, let me let me make it very clear. In our life, no matter what we're going through, no matter what we're suffering, no more the pain, because life is going to be a feel with pain, suffering confusion, doubt, It's just gonna be confused, It's gonna be filled with so many negative things because just that's just the way life is going to be. Oh, your life may be better than others, but it's gonna have a lot of negativity in it, right, And so what do you do? Well, you can focus on all the situation, all the pain, all the suffering, which will only create doubt, anxiety, and it will, and it's okay to acknowledge when it does. It's perfectly okay.

51:03 But philologically, none of that impacts who God is. God is still sovereign, He is still all powerful, He is still all wise, he is still sovereign. That remains true no matter what we encounter or what we experience. Israel Judah needed to be reminded of this because they would feel like, well, wait a minute, where how is this? How is all this going to happen? Well? Because God is still God, even though it doesn't look like it. And you may think God has abandoned you, or God has taken a vacation, or God has died. God is still God. These attributes have been true of God for eternity, and they are still true of God even if you're in Babylonian captivity no matter whatever. But again this is very important. You can't just assume then, and you cannot just teach then. Well, because God acted on Judah's behalf to remove them from Babylonia captivity, that he's going to engage in your situation and fix your situation. Ultimately, we'll be delivered from Babylonian captivity. That's when we are in heaven.

52:09 But right now, in this life, we have no idea God's ever going to do anything to help us or to assist us, and to teach otherwise as well as well malpractice theologically. All right, let's see where he goes. And I wanted to end at ten or about ten after so let's try to wrap this up in the next couple of minutes. If you read your Old Testament, Lebanon's the place with all the big trees and the great forests. And so what he says is this, all the nations are nothing before God. They're dust and drips Lebanon. If you went and cut down all the great forests of Lebanon, and all those old growth forests were thrown into a great pile, then you took all the animals that lived in those forests, and you pile them up as a great burnt offering, and you lit this enormous pile, this hundreds of acres of bonfire, and it rows up in this mighty bonfire.

52:59 To God, it wouldn't be enough to get his attention. We're impressed by numbers, aren't we, especially when it comes to religion. And we have people that say, how can a church of twenty thousand be wrong? Well, that's easy. It happens all the time. Churches of seventy five can be wrong too. Our largest religious endeavors in human history are nothing to God if they're not his. A million Mormons are a drop that God doesn't notice. A billion Hindus are a speck of dust, and three hundred million Americans who reinvent Jesus to fit our western lifestyles, our emptiness.

53:54 There is none but God. There's nobody like God. The third pictures that picture of idolatry in verse eighteen through twenty Look at a look over a page chapter forty one, verse twenty four, and then verse twenty nine. In verse twenty four, we have a description of idols. In verse twenty nine, we have a description a description of people who hope in idols and talk on behalf of idols. Verse twenty four. God says to idols, behold you are of no account, and your work amounts to nothing. He who chooses you is an abomination. Now verse twenty nine of Isaiah forty one, behold all of them. That's the people that talk for idols. They're falls, Their works are worthless.

54:41 Their molten images are wind and emptinesses it's the same word here, They're empty. Allah does not exist as the deity that Muslims claim he is so bizarre. Are like, You've got all of these passages and he's just Again, I don't understand. Why can't we speak the message and the context in which it's found. Now we're talking about Allah, what. Ey and he will not intercede for the Muslim soul on the judgment day and the Hindus who have two hundred and fifty million options for deities. The two hundred and fifty million gods of the Hindus do not exist.

55:37 The Mormon Jesus does not exist, and again the Americanized Baptist, Presbyterian, and Methodist Jesus does not exist. We want to be very careful. We can make our We can fashion God in our image, and it can be a gold one, or we may not be good enough at that, so we make a silver one. We may not be good enough at that. We may just hope to have a God in our imagination that's made out of wood, that doesn't rot, and he won't tip over and embarrass us. But whatever you choose, whatever image you fashion God in, it's not God. The thing we so desperately need to do is constantly bring ourselves back again and again to this book and allow God to really rattle the dust off of our ideas of him.

56:31 Do you see it's us us us us us us us us us us us us us. There's a way to get to us, But you got to get to us and the context of how this meant to them, and then see how we relate to that context. Look at the fourth picture, the Great Rulers and Judges of the Earth in verse twenty one and following, do you not know have you not heard the prophets amazed? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth, it is he who sits above the vaults of the earth, and it's inhabits, it's they're grasshoppers. It's he who stretches out the heavens like a curtain. He reduces the rulers to nothing. He makes judges meaningless. Now the contrast between God and the great world rulers is seen in the frailty of the world rulers. There is always a succession.

57:33 That's why we have boring history classes, right, because if there were no succession of world rulers, we'd have a handful of world rulers from the beginning. We'd only have five or six the memorize. But you don't get that. So you have Western sieve and I like history, and you study all these names. But to us, they're just names for a test. They once were names that hell men and women and children in fear, and they ruled the lives of thousands and millions. But now they're dead and nobody remembers them except scholars who bend over their books with their bipocals trying to figure out tomorrow's lessons.

58:19 Not too long ago, I heard on public radio. That's my confession for today, all right, So I heard on public radio that Germany was in an uproar because there was a movie that had come out that painted Hitler in a comical way. Now, not that Hitler was funny, but it painted him as a comic figure, an idiot to laugh at. And so half the country was okay with that, let's make fun of Hitler. The other half of the country said, Hitler's not a thing to laugh at all. Right, whatever you think of the movie and how to respond to the memory of Hitler, there was a day when that man was not laughed at, hated him and feared him. But now he's dying, and we we're next. And man, dad and mom, kids, you're.

59:17 Getting the idea. It's Isaiah forty. These are great pictures. He's doing a great job pulling out these beautiful pictures in the text and explaining them to some level. And I know his job here is not to do any full exegesis here at exegetical study here, but it just we just reach in, grab and then it becomes about us. Let's see if he can wrap us up, and then we'll be done. King and Queen, friends and family, children, they go the way that everyone else is gone. And there's this march of time in front of our face and we die.

59:59 And at first people are ruffled, and then after a while nobody remembers what the fuss was about us. No mortal can be compared to God, no matter how influential, There is none like God. Now these are the four pictures? How are we gonna live on these pictures? Well, there is a wrong application in this passage that God has to straighten out in verse twenty seven to the end. And for the sake of time. This is basically what it is. If God is so big, Isaiah, he must have forgotten us, because here we are in trouble. You've told us that terrible things are coming. We look around and all around us there's idolatry. And so the genuine believer in the day of Isaiah could say, I believe that God is big, but I don't believe that he cares much about us any longer. Look at the predicament we're in. If you are determined to rethink God biblically and to gain the highest and clearest views of God, and in your prayer meanings and in the songs that you sing, in the books you study, in your small groups, and the things you read in your free time, if you want to pursue that noble ends. You must be ready right for what I would call the enemy's plan B.

1:01:11 Plan A is God's no big deal, you can take him or leave him. Plan B is this Okay, Well, now you're at this church, and now you're hearing about all this big God's stuff, and you're reading these big God books, and you're trying to return to the biblical view of God. And well it is very noble. But you know that a God that big, I don't think he has time for people as little as you. Oh okay, I completely disagree with this approach. Here. Let me make it clear. I think the more you learn about God, the more you learn of his attributes, the more you learn of his power, his sovereignty, his knowledge, his wisdom, his presence. The more you learn about it, the more away you may become of the contradiction and the conflict between the truth of God and the reality you experience. I don't think that's satan. I don't think that's a plan B. I don't think I don't know.

1:02:15 I think it's the logical. I mean, if you're if you go, if you are experiencing all kinds of horrible things and everybody's like, well, right, here has the power to fix all of your problems. You just need it, And you're like, okay, I got it. Well how come my problems aren't getting any better? Well, then you're either going to be to begin to question do I really got the power? Is it my fault? What's the problem? Why isn't God doing anything? Those that I think. The more you understand the theology proper, which would be the study of the attributes of God, The more you understand the theology proper, the more likely you are going to be conflicted with questions about out well, then why doesn't God do anything? The more you understand God's power, the more your situation around you is going to become even more apparent. Every pain, suffering, cancer, disease, plague, starvation, murder, rape, children being sexually abused in churches, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Excel, it's going to be more glaring to you.

1:03:26 The more glorious God becomes, the more glaring all of the other stuff is. Therefore, that leads to spiritual screams of pain and confusion, which is a lament. The more you understand it, the more bothered you become by it. If you truly understand the greatness of God, the things around you are it's going to be like a slop in the face. Oh I just spent an hour studying the attributes of God and then you walked out and you saw the world, and it's a slap in the face. This great, powerful, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God. Yet boom, this just happened. This just happened. All these kids are being sex trafficked. In twenty twenty four, these kids have been kidnapped, abuse, sexual abuse, This this pain, disease, suffering, starvation, this this this war, war, death, genocide. I don't think that's the enemy.

1:04:30 I think that's reality. You are going to be confronted with two realities. The reality of who God is, and that reality is not impacted by this other reality. But you can't see the glory of God and not the same time pretend this other reality doesn't exist. A true theological growth is to see the truth of God and at the same time admit the truth of the world in which you live. If you're blinded to one of those, that's not spiritual growth. Spiritual growth is seeing the truth of God at the same time acknowledging the pain around us, which causes you to go, I don't get it. I don't understand. I don't think that's the work of the enemy.

1:05:14 I think that's the work of the way it's supposed to work. You're supposed to be confronted with that, You're supposed to be challenged by that. There is the temptation to believe that transcendent majesty is equal to aloofness, that God doesn't really care. That's a lie. I don't believe transcendence leads to the belief and transcendent aloofness. I think the idea is, once you see the transcendent greatness of God, you question where God is because that greatness is not being demonstrated in the resolving and fixing of the pain and suffering which you see and encounter twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

1:05:57 And that you're insignificance is equal to being unknown and unloved. It's a lie, but it is a lie that every believer will face unless you give time to the cure. Let's just be very practical. Most Americans, and mister Richard and Roberts will be here next week may use this illustration because I stole it from him. Most Americans have a God that's about three quarters of an inch taller than them. So how big of a cross, how big a redemption do you need? With a God that big? About a three quarters of an inch Jesus right? But I think the issue is if you truly get a God that's more than three and a half inches taller, you get a God in full glory, full power, a full majesty, full transcendence, You're going to be then confronted with this other reality. Now, I love the fact that he just led us to this conversation, and I'm going to leave you with it. How do you what do you do? The more you understand God's greatness, does not the things around you become more glaring, don't they be?

1:07:10 They kind of stab at you, right, They kind of stab at you. Like it's one thing to say there's no God, okay, well, then there's pain suffering in the world, all right. But if all of a sudden you say, well there's all this pain and suffering in the world, and you're like, yeah, but there's this God who's all powerful, all knowing, omniscient, omni present, he's all of these things. Yeah, and the pain and suffering. It's like, oh oh, it's like I'm being just a knife between my rib cage stabbing into my heart. Right, it's just like oh oh, over and over and over, and you're like, I don't get it. The more you grow in your knowledge of God, the more you're going to grow in your awareness of all the things around you that seems so contrary to that God existing. And with that, I'll stop because I've gone twenty six minutes over the time that I allotted for this. But that's good stuff right there. I Look, I'm so glad. Look, I may not have been. I've been a little frustrated with this is one of those times where, yeah, he could have done more with the context, but he just got us to a very very, very very very important point. I hope someone will write this point down in case I forget this. And this is the idea that the greatness of God amplifies. It turns the spotlight on all the things around us that seems

1:08:43 so contrary to that God existing. And I don't think that's the work of Satan. I think that's just the way it's going to work. Thanks for listening. Everyone, have a great night. God bless You.