God is Great

I want to thank Pastor Keith and the other deacons for letting me come and share tonight. So, as he said, our passage is Isaiah 40, if you want to turn there. I'm really excited to share from this passage this evening. God has worked a number of circumstances in just the last couple of weeks to really prime me to say a couple of words about this, about this passage. I was recently challenged in my work over the issue of creation. And I won't go into all the sordid details right now, but it really caused me to wrestle and grapple with an issue that I've often kind of set on the shelf. I've taken Keith's advice from this morning and said, there are bigger fish to fry in terms of issues to grapple with. And I was challenged to look more closely recently. I'm also wrestling, along with other homeschooling fathers, with what kind of science curriculum to put in front of our children as they get older. Most of the secular curriculum available today is completely steeped in naturalistic, evolutionistic explanations for creation. And finally, we're all being taught just now about the creation story by Keith in the book of Genesis. So it's a really great preparation. This passage in Isaiah 40 is incredibly rich. It's got many different nuggets, many different places where we could just stop and chew for a long time. But I just want to quickly kind of hop along the high points at the beginning of the passage and then pause in verses 21 and 22 and 26, which would specifically direct our attention to to the God who created the heavens above. So before I begin, let's pray for just a moment. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your Holy Spirit who has inspired the authors of scripture to record it. so that we could gather together and enjoy studying it and learning more about you. Help this passage that we dwell on tonight to have its intended purpose. Help it to cause us to realize that we are indeed very small and you are indeed very big. Help it to cause us to worship you more and with greater clarity. And keep me from saying anything erroneous tonight. In Jesus name. Amen. So the way I want to start is to quickly scan through this whole passage inductively. And so I'm going to bounce along and cause you to direct your eyes to specific verses. And we'll answer these kind of questions. By whom was the passage written? To whom was it written? When was it written? What is the context? What is this passage all about? And then we're going to sit for a while on verses 21, 22, and 26. Well, the introductory verses 1 and 2 state And you can read along with me, comfort, comfort my people, says your God, speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned. So so the message, if we stop right there, it's a message originally spoken by Isaiah. Clearly is to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and we'll learn later in the passages to the rest of Judah as well. You can see that in verse nine, but we can also conclude from these verses that this passage is foretelling great comfort. peace and forgiveness to the people of Judah at a time when they are under great pressure from, first of all, the Assyrians, who, in fact, have conquered much of Judah and in fact besieged Jerusalem at moments and their impending threat of the Babylonians. In fact, the exile in Babylon is foreshadowed by the prophet throughout throughout much of this book, and as the prophet warns the people that their idolatries are not going unnoticed by God and that he's going to bring judgment. However, in the midst of their captivity, these verses that we're going to see tonight, these promising passages are going to are going to serve as a great comfort to the people. Verse three famously states, a voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. This verse is quoted by or in reference to John the Baptist by five books in a row. Malachi, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It reminds us that ultimately our comfort, peace and forgiveness is only going to come through the promised Messiah, who is heralded by many of the prophets up through John the Baptist. So what is the rest of the chapter about? Verse eight gives it gives us a hint, it says the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. So in summary, the rest of the whole chapter is going to be an encouragement that the God who is promising comfort, peace and forgiveness is faithful. He is mighty and he's able to make good on his promises. So, verse 9 begins to set the stage. It says, Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news. Lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news. Behold your God. Now, getting up to a high place is good for having a commanding presence. You can proclaim a message loudly, but I'm also going to suggest that the messenger himself, herself, themselves from a high point are going to be able to appreciate the message that they're proclaiming to Jerusalem and all of Judah. So let's pick up the proclamation in verse 12. Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with his fan and closed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains and scales or the hills in a balance? The obvious rhetorical answer to this question is no one but God alone has done these things, and who can better appreciate these facts than someone standing on top of a mountain? At the top of a mountain, you can behold a great swath of creation in a glance and the promise that the prophet has been instructed to proclaim has come from a truly great God, one who is greater than the greatest things on earth. You know, when he says he can hold all the waters in the palm of his hand, realize that oceans cover almost three quarters of the planet. Realize that almost half of that area is about a thousand feet deep or more. That's a lot of water. Yet God can hold all of that in the palm of his hand. The most massive landforms are much less than he is. There is dust and he is higher than the highest mountain. So as the proclaimer stands at the top of the mountain, he's he's challenged to consider God could weigh all the mass of this mountain and all the others in a scale. Verses 13 and 14 sound a great deal like God's challenge to Job. In fact, they may be quoting the message from the book of Job. Who has measured the spirit of the Lord or what man shows him his counsel? Whom did he consult and who made him understand? As Job was forced to realize, we must admit that God needs counsel from none of us. With these humbling thoughts as a backdrop, let's zoom in on the focal point of our meditation tonight. Let's pause for a little bit longer on verses 21, 22 and 26. Let's read. 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. And jumping down to verse 26, lift up your eyes on high and see who created these. he who brought 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. So the first question we might ask is, what is our role in this passage? And the answer is we are the grasshoppers. In today's idioms, we might say if we were asked to write a passage like this by God, we might have been asked to write it in the following way. We might say the earth is filled with viruses or bacteria, very small things. They're numerous, but individually very small. So the Bible offers humanity great comfort, but it does not appeal to some kind of feel good message of modern psychology, trying to salve your self esteems and let you know that you're significant rather. The Bible calls upon us to have a realistic view of ourselves. In Romans 12, 3, the apostle states, For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, you ought not to think of yourself more highly than you ought, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. In Isaiah 40, we're reminded that we are individually insignificant in the grand scheme of things. We're grasshoppers. Our comfort is not derived from some kind of inflated view of ourselves, but from a correct view of the greatness of God and the assurance that he is able to bring to pass all of the wonderful promises that he has made to us. So let's dig into the specific content now that we know who we are, let's let's focus on the content of these on these verses. and come to appreciate some of the deep scientific and historical ramifications of these things. Ultimately, I hope we'll come to appreciate the greatness of our God. So historically, fully, I think it's approximately 2300 years, 2300 years before the time of Christopher Columbus, Isaiah stated, God sits above the circle of the earth. The Bible here speaks of a round earth. Commentators suggest maybe Isaiah was speaking of the rounded horizon that one sees when you look over a great expanse of water. Or perhaps he was referring to the fact that the heavens appear to form a hemisphere above the earth. The fact remains, the Bible says the earth is a round object. We could debate when humanity actually comes to approve of the fact that the earth is round. I've recently been reminded that a surprisingly large minority of Americans believed the earth was flat in the 1920s. It was not that long ago for some of us. Maybe Americans are just thick-skulled. But this does make me wonder why European monarchs who were nominally in a Christian culture, a Christianized culture, we'll say, were unwilling to invest in Christopher Columbus's venture when he sought a new path to the east by going west. So let us worship our great God, whose Holy Spirit inspired the authors of scripture to proclaim the truth of the matter more than 2700 years ago. That's not all. Only just recently, I think, is humanity able to fully appreciate the astronomical comments made throughout the rest of these verses. For one thing, the author writes that the creator stretched out the heavens like a curtain. That he spread them like a tent. And only recently have scientists realized kind of how powerfully accurate this imagery is. Not only that, but this is the same kind of language used by King David in Psalm 104, written hundreds of years prior to that, and in the book of Job, recorded perhaps thousands of years before that. So the Holy Spirit inspired the authors of scripture to declare that the heavens are like a curtain. They're like a tent. a long, long time ago. In other words, they're a surface that the universe is a surface. We can agree that that the heavens do appear to form when you look up into the sky. They do appear to form kind of a curtain in front of our eyes, a screen on which to view all of all of all of the universe. But scientists now claim that the universe is a hypersurface stretched out in a multidimensional space. In our church, I think the only one who could fully appreciate the implications of this are newly minted PhD mathematician Diana Morris. Her thesis was about eight dimensional stuff. But I still think it's worth our time to just think about this for a moment. Scientists now hold that a full description of the universe requires at least 10 dimensions. One, two, three is easy for most of us to get our hands around. That's the space in which we move. Four is time. And six more are required to make all the math work out. And scientists state that all of the contents of the universe, the galaxies, everything, are stretched out on an expanding hypersurface in this multidimensional space. And there's a big empty spot in the middle. And that's very much like a tent. So God, in his word, thousands of years ago, has proclaimed that he's built the cosmos like a tent. Who but an all powerful sovereign God could inspire the authors of scripture to communicate such deep truths in such simple ways? Moving on, verse 26, this has a staring up into the heavens and wondering how many stars are there? This passage is very reminiscent of God's covenant with Abram, Abraham later recorded in Genesis 15, five, their states, and he, God brought Abram outside and said, Look toward heaven and number the stars if you are able to number them. And then he said to him, so show your offspring be. Well, there certainly are a lot of stars that are visible if you look up and particularly if you can get away from the city lights and look up, you see a lot of stars up there. If you use a telescope, you can see even more stars. However, there seems to be an implication that there are similar numbers of stars as grains of sand on the seashore. If you go to Genesis 22, it says, I will surely bless you, Abraham. And I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. I'm just trying to submit to you that if you look in the sky and you see all those stars, they don't quite look as numerous as grains of sand on the seashore. But maybe if we think a moment longer. we might realize there are. Recently, using advanced scientific tools such as the Hubble Space Telescope, which is outside of our atmosphere and able to see the universe much more clearly, scientists have been able to discover there are hundreds of billions of galaxies. That within each of those galaxies, there are typically hundreds of billions of stars. So we can do a rough lower bound estimate and say that there might be 10 raised to the 22nd power stars in the universe. That's one with 22 zeros after it. That's a lot. That's a lot of stars. Not only does God say in this verse that he knows precisely how many there are, but he brought them into being and he has names for each of them. Read the verse again. It says he brings out their host by number, calling them all by name. I have six kids and I mess them up. Oh, I mess up their names all the time. The guy in the yellow shirt right up here, he is Silas Thomas. I can write. It always comes out that way anyway. But God, on the other hand, knows all the names of all the stars. And just in case you fail to fully appreciate the gravity of this statement, the Holy Spirit kindly provides in his word and interpretation as God does all this by the greatness of his might. And because he is strong in power, not one is missing. I would argue that we can appreciate the implications of this verse more than the Jews of Isaiah's time could. They could certainly see more stars in the sky than we can with the naked eye because they didn't have all these electric lights obscuring them. But modern science has made us aware that the universe is a far bigger place than they could have ever imagined From an earthly perspective the earth and moon look the Sun and moon look about the same size But we know that the Sun is a vast entity 109 times the diameter of the earth 330,000 times the mass of the earth And our sun is just a normal star. It's nothing special about it, nothing exceptional in its size. Though astronomers are still struggling to find one that's exactly the same size and mass and luminosity because that has implications for supporting life. Anyway, the point is stars are vast and there are lots of them. And so let's stop and summarize and recap and make some applications. First of all, The Jews are being reminded that unlike other Near Eastern cultures with which they're familiar, they do not worship a God within creation. They worship a transcendent God, one who is beyond, who does not simply reside within creation, but he's beyond having created it, and he sustains it by his power. We like to find Christ in everything we read throughout the Bible here. I'll refer your attention to Colossians 117, which speaks of Christ as being before all things and in whom all things hold together. He is infinite in his power and scope. He can hold all the waters of the earth in his palm. He can weigh the mountains in a scale. He calls forth the stars into existence by name. So let's make an application. Take what I'm about to say in proper context, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but when I read this, when I read in particular verse nine, I say, this is my kind of God. Our God encourages hiking. Get you up to a high mountain and behold your God. And in Genesis 15, he said to Abraham, get outside, look up, look toward heaven and number the stars if you're able. So number one, first application is go for a hike. Or if you're unable to go for a hike, do what my great grandmother loved to do. And that's go for a scenic drive. Why do so many people like hiking? Well, if you're a believer and you go about hiking or a scenic drive with the right frame of mind, the vistas that await us remind us of the God that we worship, not that we worship the creation itself. Rather, I must offer an amen from last week's to last week's sermon when Pastor Goad said that the Lord has written two books of revelation. The whole scriptures are his specific revelation, but his general revelation is written on the canvas of creation. And this is explicitly stated in Romans one, 19 and 20, for what can be known about God is plain to them. Because God has shown it to them for his invisible. This is fascinating to me. Read this verse carefully. Hear this verse carefully for his invisible attributes. Namely, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived. That's really baffling. But but he says it's so and I trust him ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. And Paul is echoing what we've just read in Isaiah, who first said, has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the very foundations of the earth? How else could humanity have all heard it if it wasn't written on creation? So that's the first application. Get out there, observe God's creation, and behold what a great God that we worship. The second the second application is to remind yourself and those immediately within your sphere, maybe that's your family, your housemates, your close friends of the teachings that we've that we've just reviewed, that God has promised peace, comfort and forgiveness. And secondly, that God is the creator of all and able to make good on his promises. Um, so that's intimately become and where do I come up with that application? If you look, if you look at verse nine, it tells us who the herald is, who is the messenger to proclaim this gospel to the world. The messenger is Zion. The messenger is Jerusalem. So that's our our close, intimate, intimate relationships. And then our third application is to go and tell others, those around us. Again, in verse nine, it said to say to the cities of Judah, behold, your God. So we intimate, close relationships should be proclaiming to all the people. This message that God has promised deliverance for those sinners in the world, even though we don't deserve it, and that he is a great God, greater than anything that we can behold in nature because he created it and that he and he, in fact, sustains it by his power. And that is all I had to share with you tonight. I hope it's been a blessing to you. Let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, again, we thank you for your word. We thank you that it puts us in a proper perspective, Lord, that we are not allowed to develop an inflated view of ourselves. But, Lord, you beseech us to think of ourselves properly, in a proper perspective and according to the measure of faith that you've given each of us individually. Lord, in a proper perspective and in the context of what we've heard tonight is that we are grasshoppers in comparison to you. That we're just little tiny and insignificant things. Not that you don't care for us, not that you don't love us, but Lord, that our hope and our comfort and any peace or hope for forgiveness that we have comes through you. And Lord, we thank you that you are great. That you are powerful that you created everything that we can see and hear smell and touch and those things we can't even see You created and you hold together by your power Lord. We thank you and we praise you You are truly a great God Amen