Pastor Tim Brown, Calvary Chapel Fremont, Wednesday July 1, 2009

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Isaiah 40:12-26   p2

In vv1-11 Isaiah spoke to Israel of a great reversal that was to come in their national existence – from calamity to comfort/ruin to redemption/corruption to cleansing/brokenness to wholeness.  The Bab. captivity would be over/temple rebuilt/Jerusalem inhabited.  God would bring Israel to the place where they were in love w/ God/consumed by the majesty of God.  V9  Here is your God!  Reversal in their circumstances and in their hearts.

What God did for Israel He has done for you.  There is life after sin!  Your future isn’t determined by your past, but by the will of God.  We have come to see that God is bigger than anything that can be against us.  Paul put it this way - 

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 8:38-39

This has created in us a passion for Christ and a conviction of the truth and a love for God.  Israel’s release from captivity had the same affect in them.  Cf. v9

I wants to see the people retain this passion for God and maintain this experience and their vision of the God who rescues.  It is easy for passion to drain off.  He is concerned that the people see God for all that He is and in all that He does.  When we see God only in the immediacy of our lives’ situations, there may be times when we don’t see or experience Him.  I wants the people to have a big vision of a big God.  So often, our problem is that we have a small vision of a big God.  Looking at sun through keyhole – small vision of a large object.  Isaiah wants the people to see all of God.  It is so easy to only see God as the God who delivers/ loves/cares for me.  And when we don’t see God loving/delivering/caring 4 me – we lose sight of God.  

    * How big is God?  12  Immensity
          o Bigger than the oceans.  There are about 342,543,511 cubic miles of water in the oceans of the world.  Each cubic mile of seawater weighs approximately 4.7 billion tons.  This equals  1,609,954,501,700,000,000 tons of water.  God is strong!!
          o Bigger than the heavens.  Our earth is just one little speck of dust down here in a corner of the Milky Way Galaxy, revolving around a medium sized star, that we call the sun. The earth is twenty five thousand miles in circumference, eight thousand miles in diameter. The sun is one million, two hundred thousand times larger than the earth. You could take one million, two hundred thousand of our Earths, and put them inside of the sun! It is eight hundred and sixty five thousand miles in diameter. Which means, if you would hollow out the sun, leaving a crust a hundred thousand miles thick, you could put the earth in the center of the sun, and the moon could rotate around it, and have a hundred thousand miles to spare!   There’s Betelgeuse out there in the constellation Orion. It is much, much bigger than the sun! In fact, if you would hollow out Betelgeuse, you could put the sun in the center, and let the earth rotate around it, and still have room inside! csmith

          o Bigger than the earth.  Earth weighs 6,585,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons OR 120,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 120 Septillion Pounds

    * How wise is God?  13-14  Omniscience
          o In the Canaanite creation myths, god had to consult w/ and overcome the opposition of hostile forces.
          o God didn’t have to negotiate w/ other beings and take them into consideration when He created the world.

    * How powerful is God?  15-17  Omnipotence
          o Nations are a drop of water/speck of dust.  Nations that concern us – flood over us/bury us – to God they are nothing.
          o When it comes to creation and history – none like Him
          o Since God is omnipotent/omniscient/immense/independent from man – to who/what can He be compared?
          o Read 18-26 - shows the folly of trying to find/create an image for God – to search for a likeness

    * GOD’S QUESTION:  to whom will you liken Me?  18
    * How can gold/silver/wood portray the size/wisdom/power of God – His immensity/omniscience/omnipotence?
          o In trying to get a grip on God, man has downsized Him.  Any image downsizes God - diminishes Him.  An image doesn’t downsize God in the same way that viewing a movie on a big screen and then watching the same movie on a 29” TV does.  All the elements are there, only smaller.  In idolatry, all the essential attributes of God are removed.  An image is not immense/omnipotent/omniscience.  How can an idol remind you of God when all the attributes of God have been removed?
          o Picture of me and 3 friends - remove essential characteristics, I’ll be left w/ nothing.  Remove personality – blank faces.  Remove humanness – stick figure.  Remove physicality – blank screen.  This is what idolatry is left with – a black screen that they call God.

    * In stripping God of His essential attributes, man has stripped man
          o Evolution has removed God from creation.  V22 speaks of God in His creative capacity.  Evolution has removed the power/plan of God and stripped man down to a cosmic accident w/ no purpose/meaning in life except to survive.  (There are forms of evolutionary doctrine that do not teach materialistic naturalism, but evolution, popularly understood, removes God.)
                + By embracing evolution, modern society aims to do away w/ morality, responsibility, and guilt.  Society has embraced evolution w/ such enthusiasm because people imagine that it eliminates the Judge and leaves them free to do whatever they want w/o guilt and w/o consequences.  jmacarthur
          o Philosophy has removed God from history.  Vv23-24 speak of God as governing history providentially.  Hegelianism, Marxism has removed the hand of God from history.  History unfolds according to its own internal logic and is not guided by an outside hand.  Philosophy has removed man from having a significant place in history.  It doesn’t matter if you live/die/or ever existed.  History is indifferent to you/you are expendable.
          o In removing God from creation and history, man is removed from having any meaning or dignity.  Man is stripped of his God-given glory – cf. Ps. 8:4  Man is crowned w/ glory. Man is a mere animal fighting for his place along w/ every other creature on the planet.  20th century stats of murder due to evolution made to serve a philosophy of history.  When God is diminished, man is diminished.  Here’s why – Ps. 115:4-8.  If you make nothing and call it something, you become nothing though you consider yourself something.
          o Isaiah is intent upon Israel keeping her passion for God and so he is pointing out the greatness of God and those things that strip God of His greatness and drain man of his passion for God.  We’ll continue this theme in our next study.