Isaiah_40

Isaiah 40:1-11 (ESV)  –  God’s Glory, Our Comfort
¹  Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
²  Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.
³  A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
⁴  Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.
⁵  And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
⁶  A voice says, “Cry!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
⁷  The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the LORD blows on it; surely the people are grass.
⁸  The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.
⁹  Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!”
¹⁰  Behold, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.
¹¹  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.

Isaiah 40 begins a new section as Isaiah is no longer addressing Judah in his own day.  He is being projected by the Holy Spirit out into the future.  Your best days are ahead as God has a purpose of grace for you better than ever.

Chapters 1-39 deal with Isaiah’s own generation with a message primarily of confrontation.

Chapters 40-55 address the Jews of the Babylonian exile with a message of consolation.

Chapters 56-66 – seem to be omni-temporal, urging all readers to apply the truths of chapters 1-55 to their own times.

V.1&2 – the occasion of his comforting promise.  Showing that God’s deepest intention toward us is comfort.

V.3-5 –   The content where Isaiah hears a voice!  A message of comfort.  God will accomplish his purpose.  There will be an upheaval of true repentance with a new social landscape.   Depression to be relieved and pride flattened.  The troubled personalities will become placid along with difficult people becoming easy to get along with.

The glory of the Lord Jesus will be revealed to the whole world.

1. Piper’s assessment is:

In the church, our view of God is so small instead of huge, so marginal instead of crucial, so vague instead of clear, so impotent instead of all determining, and so uninspiring instead of ravishing that the responsibility to live to the glory of God is a thought without content. The words can come out of our mouths, but ask the average Christian to tell what they know about the glory of this God that they are going to live for, and the answer will not be long

What is the glory of the Lord?  (Ray Orland quote:

Ezekiel saw the glory of the Lord in the form of a supercharged war chariot coming down from Heaven to establish the rule of God on earth (Ezekiel 1:4–28). When Jesus was born, the glory of the Lord shone around the shepherds, and they were terrified (Luke 2:9). The Bible also says that Jesus himself is the ultimate display of the glory of God (John 1:14). His transfiguration unveiled his glory (Luke 9:28–36). But also—this is the irony of the gospel—when Jesus hung on the cross in shame, we were seeing the glory of God (John 13:31).

Our ideas of God’s glory have to adjust to his beautiful willingness to humble himself all the way to a wretched death for us. Paul taught us that in this arrogant world only a weak and foolish gospel can reveal “the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8). The cross of glory shames all human pride. But when Christ returns, how different it will be! He will appear in overwhelming glory (Titus 2:13). And God has called us to share in that glory of Christ (2 Thessalonians 2:14). Believers stand to inherit “an eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17). And throughout eternity the New Jerusalem will need no sun or moon, for “the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Revelation 21:23).

The glory of the Lord, therefore, is God himself becoming visible, God bringing his presence down to us, God displaying his beauty before us, the true answer to our deepest longings. And he promises to do this for us. It is the central promise of the gospel.

God kept his promise in the hidden glory of Christ’s first coming. He continues to keep his promise as the Holy Spirit awakens us to the glory of Christ in the gospel (2 Corinthians 3:18–4:6). He will consummate his promise at the second coming of Christ. All this is contained in seed form in Isaiah 40:5. Our part is to have the courage to welcome him with a bold restructuring of our lives. Nothing could be greater for us than to be wonderfully disrupted by the power of this hope. He’s worth the upheaval.^[1]

V.6-8 Certainty

We are unreliable, yet God’s promises is infallible.

V.9-11 – Christ comes and brings his presence and this presence is our joy.

C.S. Lewis quote: The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game—praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians and scholars.… Just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: “Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?” … I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.(3)

God’s purpose is not only that you and I enjoy the comfort of the gospel, but that we increase our enjoyment of it by spreading that joy to others, all to the glory of God.

Isaiah 40:12-26 (ESV)
¹²  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?
¹³  Who has measured the Spirit of the LORD, or what man shows him his counsel?
¹⁴  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?
¹⁵  Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales; behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust.
¹⁶  Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.
¹⁷  All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.
¹⁸  To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him?
¹⁹  An idol! A craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts for it silver chains.
²⁰  He who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will not rot; he seeks out a skillful craftsman to set up an idol that will not move.
²¹  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?
²²  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;
²³  who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.
²⁴  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.
²⁵  To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One.
²⁶  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.

According to Ray Orland there are two idols that dominate our world.

1. Secularism – Skepticism has been placed top in our social culture of today. It reduces God to an object of sentimental indulgence, if he has any place.  Today: the world is seeking opinions with aps that lets you ask ?s and people throughout the world give you their answer (opinion).
2. Superstition – an alternative spirituality – to replace naturalism –

Spirituality – the quality or condition of being spiritual – the property or revenue belonging to a church or church official religious beliefs

Naturalism =  in art or literature, a movement or school advocating factual or realistic description of life, including its less pleasant aspects.  a belief that all religious truth is derived from nature and natural causes, and not from revelation a system of thought that rejects all spiritual and supernatural explanations of the world and holds that science is the sole basis of what can be known.

We need to rediscover God!

Isaiah shows us God through God’s eyes.  We need to get self out of site and let God tells us who he is.

Outline:

A¹ God is the wise Creator (40:12–14)

B¹ God is the immense Lord over the nations (40:15–17)

C    God alone is God (40:18–20)

B² God is the active Lord over world leaders (40:21–24)

A² God is the watchful Creator (40:25, 26)

V.12 -14 – the wise Creator that created the earth without anything but his word.

V.15-17 – God is the immense Lord over the nations….   He has no problems!  Human opposition is no match to God or will affect his plans in any way.

V.18-20 – God alone is God – As a unique God it is hard to describe him but the Bible uses comparisons from creation.  Yet no analogy within the creation can say it all.

Idols are described for what they become even if they inspire awe and mystery they are still just an idol.  We need to never derive our sense of worth from anything within the creation.

V.21-24 – God is the active Lord over world leaders

V.25-26 – God is the watchful creator –  His holiness means he’s in a category all his own.  Look at the solar system with galaxies in galaxies.  Compare sizes as the sun is 109 times larger than the earth.  It creates a luminosity equal to four million trillion 100-watt lightbulbs.  Yet, the sun is just an average star.

Quote Ray Orland:

In this passage Isaiah is speaking to people whose mood is like that of many today. They may say the right things, but deep inside they don’t really believe anymore—not with a faith that overcomes the world. They’re looking at things through their own eyes. So the promises of God do not put a spring in their step and a sparkle in their eye and steel in their backbone. Why? God just doesn’t look big enough for the risk-taking audacity of true faith. But God is inviting us to turn our perceptions around and see everything from his point of view. He understands that the struggle of faith is won or lost in the way we perceive reality. Yes, we are dwarfed by the creation; but the creation is dwarfed by God. See it that way. See him that way. When you feel threatened by world events and overwhelmed by your own problems, there’s another way to perceive it all. God is opening up to you a prophetic vision. And the Biblical gospel is his way of calling to us, “Behold your God!” (Isaiah 40:9).

Will you repent of the sin of diminishing God in your thoughts? It is a hidden idolatry.

Let us beware lest we in our pride accept the erroneous notion that idolatry consists only in kneeling before visible objects of adoration, and that civilized peoples are therefore free from it. The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.

Will you dethrone your idols and rediscover God? Look at God, and everything else, through his eyes.^[2]

Isaiah 40:27-31 (ESV)   God’s Greatness, our Renewal
²⁷  Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God”?
²⁸  Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.
²⁹  He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.
³⁰  Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted;
³¹  but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

Man searches for meaning and hope.

Viktor Frankl, a leading psychiatrist who endured imprisonment in 1942-1945, saw what made the difference between those that survived the ordeal and the was ‘hope’.  From his book “Man’s Search for Meaning” he wrote:

The prisoner who had lost faith in the future—his future—was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay. Usually this happened quite suddenly, in the form of a crisis, the symptoms of which were familiar to the experienced camp inmate.… Usually it began with the prisoner refusing one morning to get dressed and wash or to go out on the parade grounds. No entreaties, no blows, no threats had any effect. He just lay there, hardly moving. If this crisis was brought about by an illness, he refused to be taken to the sick-bay or to do anything to help himself. He simply gave up. There he remained, lying in his own excreta, and nothing bothered him any more.^[3]

None of us can survive without something to live for beyond the barbed wire of this life.  We will just give up and wait it out.  YET – Isaiah 40:27-31 is telling us of God’s promises to rise us up.

Isaiah 40:27 (ESV)
²⁷  Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God”?

These words were first intended to the Jews exiled in Babylon with seemingly no hope of leaving and feeling abandoned by God.

In bad times we all can fall into this thinking.  Note quote from John Knox, the Scottish reformer that wrote:

By what means Satan first drew mankind from the obedience of God, the Scripture doth witness: To wit, by pouring into their hearts that poison, that God did not love them.

Martin Luther wrote to Philipp Melanchthon to help his faltering faith:

I pray for you very earnestly, and I am deeply pained that you keep sucking up cares like a leech and thus rendering my prayers vain. Christ knows whether it comes from stupidity or the Spirit, but I for my part am not very much troubled about our cause. Indeed, I am more hopeful than I expected to be. God who is able to raise the dead is also able to uphold his cause when it is falling or to raise it up again when it has fallen or to move it forward when it is standing. …(5)

One kind of doubt struggles to believe in view of “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” This kind of doubt is open to God’s answers. It’s willing to listen. The other kind of doubt resists belief.

The Jewish exiles have a struggling faith and a cynical defiance.   YET, what does God do?  Through Isaiah God reassures them that he there and do not grow weary.

What does the names “Jacob” and “Israel” invoke in their memories?  Above all is that they are his covenant people.  They, like their forefathers, need to be striving toward their God as their heritage showed.

It is like today:  we need to prevail against this world in line with the finished work of Christ on the cross.

V.28-God is a work then and now….  Don’t grow weary.

V.29 – God gives strength to the faint…

V.30-31 – If we try with only our human strength we will surely fail.  God is saying that those who draw strength from his promise will be able to do the impossible.

Isaiah 40:31 (ESV)
³¹  but they who wait (H9660) for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

Some translations use “hope in the Lord” instead of “wait upon the Lord”.  Neither is wrong, but ‘wait’ is telling us to ‘wait’ until God answers.  God give us promises, but we need to wait upon the Lord.  Thus, are we will to wait?  Does our heart prize him as worth to wait?  If so, then we will receive continual renewal strength each day.  If not, we are on our own.

V.31 – Wait (H6960) has the sense of “to hope” – so Hope is not wrong, but wait would be an action we might want to consider.

Strongs H6960.  קָוָה qâvâh, kaw-vaw´; a prim. root; to bind together (perh. by twisting), i.e. collect; (fig.) to expect:—gather (together), look, pa tiently, tarry, wait (for, on, upon).^[4]

Quote:  Ray Orland:

How can we experience more of what Isaiah is offering? We have to ask ourselves two questions. First: Do I believe that God can take a quitter like me and make him into a hero? We might gulp before we answer that question, but most of us would probably agree that Almighty God in Heaven can do even that. But then we need to ask the second question: Have I deliberately shifted the loyalty of my heart from the false glory of this world to the coming glory of the Lord? God has promised that Christ will bring us salvation with his overwhelming glory. Is that where I have staked my happiness?

We’re all weak. But we don’t have to be supermen. God simply calls us to believe what we believe and to set our hearts on things above. If we will, that longing for God is the channel through which his power will lift us and renew us and cheer us all the way there.^[5]

^[1] Ortlund, R. C., Jr., & Hughes, R. K. (2005). Isaiah: God saves sinners (p. 237). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

^[2] Ortlund, R. C., Jr., & Hughes, R. K. (2005). Isaiah: God saves sinners (pp. 247–248). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

^[3] Ortlund, R. C., Jr., & Hughes, R. K. (2005). Isaiah: God saves sinners (p. 249). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

^[4] Strong, J. (2009). A Concise Dictionary of the Words in the Greek Testament and The Hebrew Bible (Vol. 2, p. 102). Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.

^[5] Ortlund, R. C., Jr., & Hughes, R. K. (2005). Isaiah: God saves sinners (p. 256). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.