Greater Than All
Isaiah 40:10-15,
Isaiah 40:21-26,
This is a chapter to comfort God's people, to remind them that there is no God like Him. And He is pictured both as great and gentle.
I think every Christian is aware that you can suffer from what you might call a perverse tendency to shrink or dwarf God. There was a book written by J.B. Phillips back in the 1950s titled, Your God Is Too Small. And Dr. Packer in the book, Knowing God, wrote in that book 50 years ago,
“Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and His arm rules for Him; behold, His reward is with Him and His recompense before Him. He will tend His flock like a shepherd; He will gather the lambs in His arms; He will carry them in His bosom, and gently lead those that are with young. 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 dust on the scales; behold, He takes up the coastlands like fine dust.”
Isaiah 40:21-26,
“Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations 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 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, when 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? He 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 is missing.”
This is a chapter to comfort God's people, to remind them that there is no God like Him. And He is pictured both as great and gentle.
I think every Christian is aware that you can suffer from what you might call a perverse tendency to shrink or dwarf God. There was a book written by J.B. Phillips back in the 1950s titled, Your God Is Too Small. And Dr. Packer in the book, Knowing God, wrote in that book 50 years ago,
"We are in the age of the God shrinkers."
And again, that was 50 years ago. Ed Welch, a more modern writer, wrote a book titled When People Are Big and God Is Small. So every generation, every Christian, I think to some degree, will suffer from time to time of a small God mentality. In Psalm 50, God rebukes His people and says, “You thought that I was like you.” And I believe that all of us would say that a large percentage or maybe some percentage of our anxieties and fears can be traced back to a small God mentality. And the best way, the best way to fight (we obviously need to increase our faith so we can get a sense of how great God is, but we have to fight against a small God mentality), means we have to behold God through the perfect lens of our Bibles.
And that's really what Isaiah the prophet is doing here in chapter 40 of Isaiah. He calls upon them to behold your God, verse 9, and then he unfolds God's greatness, power, wisdom, sovereignty, holiness, and strength. And then Isaiah, you probably know this, more than any other prophet picks up on the theme of God's holiness. I think he uses that word holy some 35 times. And when we think of holiness, we tend to think more of God's purity, which is right. God is blameless, He is perfectly holy. But that word holy really has this idea of separation. Separation, God is far above us and beyond us. And you even see that with Isaiah. Remember, he has that close encounter with God back in chapter six. He sees the thrice holy God, and then he responds by acknowledging God's greatness. Isaiah 6:5, “My eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
And what Isaiah is doing when he's writing this letter, he's also prophesying, he's telling these folk that there's a coming captivity. They are going to be taken captive by the Babylonians. So there's a very bleak future in front of them, dark, scary. And so he's trying to get them prepared and essentially he tells them, “Make good use of your faith, get your eyes on God.”
And to help them, if you read the whole chapter, he makes a contrast and a comparison between God and all the big things that make us feel small and we could say afraid or inadequate. He paints a number of pictures; big oceans, verse 12; powerful nations, verse 15 and 17; great rulers, verse 23. And then he also talks about giant stars in the heavens, a number that no one can number, verse 26. So those are things that when we think about them, they make us feel extremely small, puny, and weak and insignificant. But compared to God, they are dwarfed, they are minuscule. He even uses the word nothing, nothing before Him.
But you could ask the question, “But how does that help us? How does that help us with our problems when it comes to anxiety and fear about the future?” Well, our tendency is to look at newspaper headlines and present circumstances, like Peter. Remember Peter looked at the waves and began to sink? We are like those disciples in the boat in the midst of that storm. They weren't looking to Christ, they were looking at the waves and the wind, and they became afraid. And here's what we often do, we forget how gloriously big our God is and how gloriously good He is.
But if we're going to pray with a level of competence, boldness and faith, and successfully fight our anxiety, and everybody to some degree struggles with anxiety and fear, we can't forget who God is. John Newton once said,
And that's really what Isaiah the prophet is doing here in chapter 40 of Isaiah. He calls upon them to behold your God, verse 9, and then he unfolds God's greatness, power, wisdom, sovereignty, holiness, and strength. And then Isaiah, you probably know this, more than any other prophet picks up on the theme of God's holiness. I think he uses that word holy some 35 times. And when we think of holiness, we tend to think more of God's purity, which is right. God is blameless, He is perfectly holy. But that word holy really has this idea of separation. Separation, God is far above us and beyond us. And you even see that with Isaiah. Remember, he has that close encounter with God back in chapter six. He sees the thrice holy God, and then he responds by acknowledging God's greatness. Isaiah 6:5, “My eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
And what Isaiah is doing when he's writing this letter, he's also prophesying, he's telling these folk that there's a coming captivity. They are going to be taken captive by the Babylonians. So there's a very bleak future in front of them, dark, scary. And so he's trying to get them prepared and essentially he tells them, “Make good use of your faith, get your eyes on God.”
And to help them, if you read the whole chapter, he makes a contrast and a comparison between God and all the big things that make us feel small and we could say afraid or inadequate. He paints a number of pictures; big oceans, verse 12; powerful nations, verse 15 and 17; great rulers, verse 23. And then he also talks about giant stars in the heavens, a number that no one can number, verse 26. So those are things that when we think about them, they make us feel extremely small, puny, and weak and insignificant. But compared to God, they are dwarfed, they are minuscule. He even uses the word nothing, nothing before Him.
But you could ask the question, “But how does that help us? How does that help us with our problems when it comes to anxiety and fear about the future?” Well, our tendency is to look at newspaper headlines and present circumstances, like Peter. Remember Peter looked at the waves and began to sink? We are like those disciples in the boat in the midst of that storm. They weren't looking to Christ, they were looking at the waves and the wind, and they became afraid. And here's what we often do, we forget how gloriously big our God is and how gloriously good He is.
But if we're going to pray with a level of competence, boldness and faith, and successfully fight our anxiety, and everybody to some degree struggles with anxiety and fear, we can't forget who God is. John Newton once said,
"Faith takes truth to its logical conclusion."
So here's what we have to say,
Right? There's no loss that He cannot compensate, there's no trial that He cannot work out for our good. One man puts it this way, “He has the Midas touch.” Remember, Midas was a king, but everything he touched turned to gold. God has the Midas touch, He can turn all our problems into gold; and not the gold that we think of in terms of actual literal gold. I would add the gold of sanctification or the gold of Christ likeness.
So that's what we need to pray as we live the Christian life, that we would experience a growing knowledge of God as we face our struggles, difficulties, and sufferings in life. Remember Job. He went through massive trials and came through with a greater faith, you could say, in a greater God. God hadn't changed, but his faith grew. So that's why he could say at the back end, “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see You.” Now, remember, he was at one point pretty negative. He was struggling with some level of bitterness. But at the back end, he sees God in a way he hadn't seen God before. He was more humble and more aware of how good and great God is and able to sing and pray, “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.” So that's something we should pray. When we go through trials, we'll all go through trials, our vision of God should become greater and not smaller.
“If we believe that our God possesses omnipresence, that means He's everywhere present; if we believe that God is omnipotent, all powerful; if we believe that God is omniscient, that He sees everything, He knows everything; and if we believe that God's grace is all sufficient to sustain us and deliver us; here's what that means, there's no problem that He cannot remedy."
Right? There's no loss that He cannot compensate, there's no trial that He cannot work out for our good. One man puts it this way, “He has the Midas touch.” Remember, Midas was a king, but everything he touched turned to gold. God has the Midas touch, He can turn all our problems into gold; and not the gold that we think of in terms of actual literal gold. I would add the gold of sanctification or the gold of Christ likeness.
So that's what we need to pray as we live the Christian life, that we would experience a growing knowledge of God as we face our struggles, difficulties, and sufferings in life. Remember Job. He went through massive trials and came through with a greater faith, you could say, in a greater God. God hadn't changed, but his faith grew. So that's why he could say at the back end, “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see You.” Now, remember, he was at one point pretty negative. He was struggling with some level of bitterness. But at the back end, he sees God in a way he hadn't seen God before. He was more humble and more aware of how good and great God is and able to sing and pray, “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.” So that's something we should pray. When we go through trials, we'll all go through trials, our vision of God should become greater and not smaller.
Posted in Pastor Devotional