It is safe to say if there were an album titled, “The Best of Isaiah” this chapter would be included. It would be in “The Best of the Old Testament” and even “The Best of All Literature.” While many, if not most, of us recognize it from singing or hearing it performed every Christmas as one of the high points in Handel’s “Messiah” it also contains some of the most quoted and memorable verses in all of Scripture.
This is why I am reluctant even to address it this morning in the usual way. What can anyone say about the incomprehensible – especially the incomprehensible that became flesh and dwelt among us? What can anyone say about the incomparable who can only be grasped by weakly comparing him to other gods? What can anyone say about the unimaginable by using words that have already been imagined and and overused and are therefore totally inadequate?
So, this morning I would like us to simply read parts of the passage together, pausing along the way to absorb a little of what Isaiah has been inspired to say.
Not only to say but to shout out.
After that, I want to read a few passages from a book that helped me many years ago when I was struggling with a god I had either been given or had built myself that was little more than an idol but certainly not the God of Isaiah 40. As Anne Lamott said, “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
Does this passage from Job 38 sound familiar?
“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?
“Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’?
“Have you ever given orders to the morning,
or shown the dawn its place,
that it might take the earth by the edges
and shake the wicked out of it?
“Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
Have the gates of death been shown to you?
Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?
Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
Tell me, if you know all this.
“What is the way to the abode of light?
And where does darkness reside?
Can you take them to their places?
Do you know the paths to their dwellings?
Surely you know, for you were already born!
You have lived so many years!
And we, in comparison are but a breath, a flower that fades, a moment in time. We are here and then gone:
“All people are like grass,
and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
because the breath of the Lord blows on them.
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of our God endures forever.”
Psalm 103
For He knows our frame;
He is mindful that we are dust.
As for man, his days are like grass—
he blooms like a flower of the field;
when the wind passes over, it vanishes,
and its place remembers it no more.
William Shakespeare in Macbeth
“Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
But, between those two poles – the brief candle and the God who endures forever is the glory of the passage this morning. It is the tension filled relationship between the incomparable and ever faithful and comforting Creator and the poor players who are still, in spite of their corruption, a little lower than the angels. Steven Garber says it right: “At our best and our worst, we are glorious ruins. When we miss that, imagining ourselves to be only one or the other, all good or all bad, we miss something crucial to the truth about what it means to be human.” And when we try to make God into one or the other in the same way we miss what it means to be God. He will not be contained.
Isaiah 40
A voice says, “Cry out.”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”
You who bring good news to Zion,
go up on a high mountain.
You who bring good news to Jerusalem,
lift up your voice with a shout,
lift it up, do not be afraid;
say to the towns of Judah,
“Here is your God!”
(Compare that to John 19:14 – Pilate brought Jesus out to the Jews and says, “Behold your king” but they shouted “We have no king but Caesar.”)
See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power,
and he rules with a mighty arm.
See, his reward is with him,
and his recompense accompanies him.
He tends his flock like a shepherd:
He gathers the lambs in his arms
and carries them close to his heart;
he gently leads those that have young.
(Look at the blending of those two images – a powerful and mighty arm and one who gently leads)
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand,
or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?
Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket,
or weighed the mountains on the scales
and the hills in a balance?
Who can fathom the Spirit of the Lord,
or instruct the Lord as his counselor?
Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten him,
and who taught him the right way?
Who was it that taught him knowledge,
or showed him the path of understanding?
(Colossians 1:15 “For by him all things were created; things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket;
they are regarded as dust on the scales;
he weighs the islands as though they were fine dust.
Before him all the nations are as nothing;
they are regarded by him as worthless
and less than nothing.
With whom, then, will you compare God?
To what image will you liken him?
As for an idol, a metalworker casts it,
and a goldsmith overlays it with gold
and fashions silver chains for it.
(Colossians 1:15. “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.”
Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood since the earth was founded?
He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,
and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
He brings princes to naught
and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.
No sooner are they planted,
no sooner are they sown,
no sooner do they take root in the ground,
than he blows on them and they wither,
and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.
“To whom will you compare me?
Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One.
Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one
and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
not one of them is missing.
(Psalm 19. “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.”
Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.
(2 Corinthians 4:8. “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.)
Now, for the book I mentioned. It is “Your God Is Too Small” by J.B Phillips. Let me read from the introduction and the snippets from the ways he describes some of our inadequate and too-small-gods.
No one is ever really at ease in facing what we call “life” and “death” without a religious faith. The trouble with many people today is that they have not found a God big enough for modern needs. While their experience of life has grown in a score of directions, and their mental horizons have been expanded to the point of bewilderment by world events and by scientific discoveries, their ideas of God have remained largely static…If it is true that there is Someone in charge of the whole mystery of life and death, we can hardly expect to escape a sense of futility and frustration until we begin to see what He is like and what His purposes are.
- The Resident Policeman: To many people, conscience is almost all that they have by way of knowledge of God. This still, small voice which makes them feel guilty and unhappy before, during, or after doing something wrong, is God speaking to them. It is this which, to some extent at least, controls their conduct. It is this which impels them to shoulder the irksome duty and choose the harder path.
- The Parental Hangover: But if the child is afraid (or, worse still, afraid and feeling guilty because he IS afraid) of his own father, the chances are that his Father in Heaven will appear to him a fearful Being. Again, if he is lucky, he will outgrow this conception, and indeed differentiate between his early “fearful” idea and his later mature conception. But many are not able to outgrow the sense of guilt and fear, and in adult years are still obsessed with it, although it has actually nothing to do with their real relationship with the living God. It is nothing more than a parental hangover.
- The Grand Old Man: In order to test whether this “old-fashioned” concept was persisting in modern young people, a simple psychological test was recently applied to a mixed group of older adolescents. They were asked to answer, without reflection, the question: “Do you think God understands radar?” In nearly every case the reply was “No,” followed of course by a laugh, as the conscious mind realized the absurdity of the answer. But, simple as this test was, it was quite enough to show that at the back of their minds these youngsters held an idea of God quite inadequate for modern days. Subsequent discussion showed plainly that while “they had not really thought much about it,” they had freely to admit that the idea of God, absorbed some years before, existed in quite a separate compartment from their modern experience, knowledge, and outlook. It was as though they were revering the memory of a Grand Old Man, who was a great power in His day, but who could not possibly be expected to keep pace with modern progress!
- Meek and Mild: It is a thousand pities that the word “child” has so few words that rhyme with it appropriate for a hymn. But for this paucity of language we might have been spared the couplet that hundreds of thousands must have learned in their childhood: Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, Look upon a little child. Yet it is this fatal combination of “meek and mild” which has been so often, and is even now, applied to Him. We can hardly be surprised if children feel fairly soon that they have outgrown the “tender Shepherd” and find their heroes elsewhere.
- Absolute Perfection: Of all the false gods there is probably no greater nuisance in the spiritual world than the “god of one hundred per cent.” For he is plausible. It can so easily be argued that since God is Perfection, and since He asks the complete loyalty of His creatures, then the best way of serving, pleasing, and worshipping Him is to set up absolute one-hundred-per-cent standards and see to it that we obey them.
- Heavenly Bosom: Sheer escapism, a deliberate desire to be hidden safe away until the storm and stress of life is over.
- God In A Box: The man who is outside all organized Christianity may have, and often does have, a certain reverence for God, and a certain genuine respect for Jesus Christ (though he has probably rarely considered Him and His claims with his adult mind). But what sticks in his throat about the Christianity of the Churches is not merely their differences in denomination, but the spirit of “churchiness” which seems to pervade them all. They seem to him to have captured and tamed and trained to their own liking Something that is really far too big ever to be forced into little man-made boxes with neat labels upon them. He may never think of putting it into words, but this is what he thinks and feels.
- Managing Director: It is to think that the God who is responsible for the terrifying vastnesses of the Universe cannot possibly be interested in the lives of the minute specks of consciousness which exist on this insignificant planet.
- Second Hand God: We envisage “God” very largely from the way in which He appears to deal with (or not to deal with) His creatures. If, therefore, our knowledge of life is (unknown to us in all probability) faulty or biased or sentimental, we are quite likely to find ourselves with a second-hand god who is quite different from the real one.
- Pale Galilean: Compared with their non-Christian contemporaries, their lives seem to have less life and colour, less spontaneity and less confidence. Their god surrounds them with prohibitions but he does not supply them with vitality and courage. They may live under the shadow of his hand but it makes them stunted, pale and weak.
You may have other inadequate gods in your life but these were at one time or another and in one way or another mine – and still want to be. The question is obvious this morning. Are we stuck with a picture of God that is too small or are we open to coming to know and love the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Isaiah – the Everlasting God who reigns forever and ever. Hallelujah. Amen.