Isaiah 40
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
Well, it is so good to be with you here at Third Avenue Baptist Church. My name is Ryan Kelly, as Greg said, and I send greetings to you from Desert Springs Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where your pastor, Greg, has preached more than once, Ryan Robertson as well, and I'm thankful for their friendship and so thankful for this church. Three out of our four kids are members at this church.
You know, as kids get older, those of you who are my age and older, you'll know that as kids get older, especially if they are heading off to college somewhere else, at some point you begin to wonder where they will go to church, what kind of church they will pick. And of course it is college, they're not fully adulting just yet. And so mom and dad do have a little bit of input on where they go to church, maybe a little bit more than a little.
But I assure you, our kids are here at Third Avenue of their own volition, and their parents are very thankful to the Lord that they are in good hands here. If you have a Bible with you this morning, would you turn with me to Isaiah chapter 40? Isaiah chapter 40. Isaiah is a big book just to the right of the middle of most Bibles. It's page 599 in the Pew Bibles if you're using one of those. Isaiah chapter 40.
And we're going to read the whole chapter together. 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, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. A voice cries, in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
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. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. 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. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it.
surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. 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. Behold the Lord 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 and 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 the dust on the scales. Behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust. Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering. All the nations are as nothing before him. They are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness. To whom then will you liken God or what likeness compare with him? In idol, a craftsman casts it and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts for it silver chains. 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. 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. 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.
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. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might, he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted. 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. There is strength for those who wait on the Lord. We all know that experience of waiting, don't we? Waiting for semester to end, perhaps, or waiting for graduation to come, or waiting for a promotion to finally arrive, finally to reach retirement, waiting for a future spouse, waiting for that scan to come back from the doctor's office. We wait. What do you do when you wait? When you wait at the doctor's office, when you wait at stoplights, when you wait at the checkout line, when you wait as your oil is changed, what do you do when you wait? Occupy yourself with distractions? Scroll
Get some emails done? Just make the most of it. Just get through it? Is waiting just the inevitable reality of being people who are bound by space in time? Is it just an inevitable, unfortunate experience? Or is God doing something in us, teaching us some things in the experience of waiting?
Does he have purposes for us in our waiting? Well, like any trial, small or great, the Christian can say that indeed God has purposes for our waiting. But we can say more than that. We can go further. We could ask whether we are even speaking about waiting in the biblical sense. When Isaiah says in chapter 40 toward the end, wait for the Lord, is that something more than just biding time?
Is it something more active than riding it out? Well, we'll come to that question. We'll come back to that question. what it means to wait for the Lord or to wait on the Lord. It's at the end of our chapter, and we've got a lot to cover to get there. The aim of this chapter as a whole is this. God's people can be comforted by what God promises to do and strengthened by God as they wait on him to do it.
God's people can be comforted by what God promises to do and strengthened by God as they wait on Him to do it. Now that is argued over three sections in this rather long chapter. Three C words will help us keep track of them. The first is comfort. The comfort of God coming to His people. Read verses 1 and 2 again with me.
Look down. Comfort, comfort, my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare, or literally her servitude, has ended. Her iniquity is pardoned. What servitude is ended? Well, that's where we need to understand something of the historical context of the book of Isaiah. When and to whom it was written.
Isaiah was a prophet in the 8th century B.C. God spoke through Isaiah to Judah, God's people, about their sin and about coming judgment. God's people had so persistently and blatantly disregarded their God that God was going to use the Babylonians to bring his people into a long season of captivity. Seventy years. Now while there were many stages of deportation from Jerusalem to Babylon, it was in 586 B.C. that the temple was destroyed and the city was razed to the ground.
So remember, Isaiah writes in the 8th century B.C., that's the 700s, but the destruction of the temple doesn't happen until 586, more than 100 years later. So Isaiah's ministry was to preach of warning to people about a judgment to come over 100 years later. And that warning is what occupies the first 39 chapters of Isaiah.
But at chapter 40, there's a turn. There's a message of hope now that occupies the rest of Isaiah. And it's as if by chapter 40, the prophet has been transported to a people who are already in that Babylonian captivity. It is to them that there is this word of comfort, comfort, your slavery has ended. There will be, according to verses 1 and 2, a restoration to the land and to their God.
Slavery will come to an end, and all this will include pardon and salvation. But then the message of comfort gets way more glorious, more lofty, more earth-shattering. Verse 3, a voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. In other words, prepare for God himself to come. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain and hill be made low. Isaiah pictures a global construction project. You know how our U.S. highways don't usually go in mere straight lines, other than through Texas? But in Albuquerque and in the bottom of Indiana, I know this from driving from Albuquerque to Louisville so many times, well, they have carved out paths through mountains, and they sometimes, you know, have the highway get around mountains.
Well, imagine preparation for a highway that is so massive and so important that all mountains are obliterated, flattened, and all valleys are lifted up, and all bumpy spots are completely smoothed out. And imagine that over all the earth. And who is coming on this unprecedented highway?
God himself. God is coming to earth, so get ready. And his glory will be revealed. His glory, his majesty, his beauty, his grandeur. His glory will be revealed and all flesh will see it. Now when does that take place? Think about it. Restoration to the land, that's one thing.
Slavery coming to an end, that's one thing. But global glory, that's something altogether different. So to answer the question of when, let me tell you about the Sandia mountain range in Albuquerque. From the city of Albuquerque to our east, there is a mountain with a peak at 11,000 feet above sea level. From the city, it looks like that mountain is just one sheet of mountain.
It looks like it is just one mountain range. But if you're atop Sandia Peak, you can take a tram up the front to get to there. If you are at the top of Sandia Peak and you look down, you actually see this thing has mountain ranges, a bunch of them. Now, you probably have heard this kind of illustration before to illustrate how the Old Testament prophets only saw one coming of Jesus, But now that the first coming has taken place, we can see that there must be a second coming of Jesus still to come.
Well, let me take that illustration and build upon it slightly. Because in Isaiah 40, we actually have three mountain ranges of fulfillment. We have the return from exile that happened in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. Their servitude had ended. But then there is that first coming of Jesus. This is why the four gospel accounts all quote Isaiah 40 verse 3 about John the Baptist who prepared the way for Christ.
And this is why Handel in his famous Messiah cantata took a lot of language from Isaiah 40 about Christ's birth. That's a second mountain range for us. But there is still one to come. There is still one out in front of us. The language of Isaiah 40 with global glory is too great and too large for Christ's first coming. And so we're still waiting for more of Isaiah 40 to come.
But whether we're in the shoes of those who were waiting for their slavery to end or those who are waiting for Messiah to first come or for us who are waiting for Jesus to return, here's the question. How do we know that this word of comfort and this lofty thing that God promises to do will come to pass? We have a word about the reliability of this word here.
In verse 8, The word of the Lord endures forever. And notice that that is contrasted with what came before. Verse 6 and 7 and the first half of verse 8, that's all about human frailty, our finiteness. The grass withers, the flower shrivels. This represents all creation and human beings especially. Like dandelions that disintegrate with only the slightest breeze or breath put to them.
That's us. But God's word is solid, dependable, unchanging, eternal. Because of him who speaks it, it is rock solid. it's not fading like we are it's not expiring it's it's not uncertain like we are it's it's it's not subject to anyone's approval it's not awaiting scientific validation or cultural acceptance so we should this morning feel our own frailty afresh as we also remember the surety and solidness and the unchangingness the eternality of god's word we can bank on what god says and as we bank on it we should spread it we should relay it verses 9 through 11 deal with this did
you notice there are different voices that speak in the earlier verses of chapter 40 In verse 3, a voice tells Isaiah that he should speak. Verse 6, rather. But then notice in verse 9, Now all of God's people are called on to spread the word. Lift up your voices with strength and with joy to announce that God is coming. Behold your God. He will shepherd, verse 11.
He will tend his flock like a shepherd, and he will gently lead them. Of course, this anticipates what we learn of Jesus in his first coming, that he is that great shepherd, the good shepherd, promised in passages like Ezekiel 34 and here, Isaiah 40. John 10, if you don't know, is a whole chapter where Jesus unpacks how he is the fulfillment of those divine shepherd promises of old.
He says in John 10, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays his life down for the sheep. And that's the good news. He laid his life down for the sheep. He not only goes after them and brings them in and cares for them, but he dies in their place. Which, by the way, means that God's coming to earth would not have been good news without him dealing with sin.
This is what the cross and resurrection is all about. This is what we've been singing about and praying about this morning already. This is what we're banking on as Christians. If you're not yet a Christian, this is the thing to which we would point you this morning, specifically the cross and resurrection of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins. There's no comfort, comfort to be had unless we understand why he came and how he shepherds and how he laid his life down for us.
And if we are already those who believe it, if we're his sheep, we're not just his sheep who enjoy his protection and care and provision but we are also his emissaries like judah who was called on to lift up their voices and say to the world behold our god that's what we say we have been given the ministry of reconciliation it's as if god is making his plea to the world through us to be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ.
So be bold with that this week. That's the comfort that we should have. A second C I have for us is the character of the God who comes. The character of the God who comes. If verses 1 through 11 laid out those promises of comfort, The question may still be asked, even though verse 8 already began to answer it, but the question may still be asked, can we really bank on those promises of comfort?
Promises which are so grand and earth-shattering as these, how do we know he will bring it to pass? And the answer in verses 12 and following is, consider who he is. Consider what kind of God we're talking about. And from there, the passage lays out God's ways, his character, his attributes. Verse 12 tells us that he's the God of creation who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span.
Verse 14, whom did he consult? result, the deities of Canaan and in Egypt and later in Babylon, they all had their origin stories. They all had their version of creation stories. But they all differ significantly from the Bible story of creation. In these false stories of creation, a God who seeks to create something must first conquer another god who's in the way or in other accounts a god needs to consult another god and get his help because creation is so hard but not the god of the bible not our god he alone is god he alone was around at creation he needs no one and he has no rivals
he's the god of creation he's the god of the nations verse 15 behold the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are accounted as the dust on the scales he'll return to this in a bit so we'll leave it at that notice he's the god of gods verses 18 to 20 to whom will you liken god Or what likeness will you compare with him? An idol? A craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold.
The fashioning of idols is explained here just matter-of-factly, but it drips with irony, if not mockery. Notice verse 20. He seeks out a skillful craftsman to set up an idol that will not move, that will not totter. A God that doesn't tip over. That's some God. Or there is the God of all.
Verses 21 and following, just unpack a summary. He's the God of all. Verse 22, he's the God who sits above it all, and the inhabitants of the world, all 7.8 billion of them, are like grasshoppers. That doesn't mean that humanity and history or any present moment is insignificant. It's not that God doesn't care or isn't involved.
It means that he's not subject to it all. like we are. We are like socks bouncing around the dryer or the washing machine with everything else. We are just like grasshoppers in this rough and tumble world. But God is sovereign over it all, not subject to it. He's above it. As for the movers and shakers of the world, The most powerful world leaders.
You might think, well, surely they're not grasshoppers. They're not socks in the dryer. They're the ones making things happen, right? Some people are in control of all this. Well, he brings princes to nothing, verse 23. He makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. Scarcely are they planted, and he just blows on them, and they're gone. the most powerful people of history. Pharaoh in Egypt, King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon, Alexander the Great in the mighty Roman Empire, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Marx, that German with the little mustache.
Where are they now? they are figures for the dustbin of history yes we we know of them but don't we usually pull them out and talk about them merely as cautionary tales of what not to do and how not to lead and that absolute power does corrupt absolutely god isn't threatened by any of them he raises them up. He uses them for a time, mysteriously, and then he takes them out and they're gone.
As for stars, those bright things in the sky, they're here too. Verse 26, lift up your eyes on high and see who created these, that these are stars. He who brings out their host by number, We're calling them all by name. Not one is missing. Do you know how many stars there are in the universe? I looked it up. We don't know.
It's estimated that there are one septillion stars in the universe. That's one with 24 zeros after it. The largest known star is 1,700 times larger than our sun, and 5 billion suns can fit in the largest star. As for the smallest known star, it's just 0.12 solar radii.
And I don't know what that means either. It's like 1.21 gigawatts. I don't know. But it's one-eighth the size of our star, our sun. So not very big. But that, one-eighth the size of our sun, is 20% larger than Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. He brings out the host of these nuclear power plants we call stars every night.
Not one is missing. And if he's sovereign over those things, those massive things far away, all over this creation, then he is sovereign and purposeful with people in Babylon and you. With whatever you're going through right now, he's in control. He's bringing it out day and night for reasons, with purpose. So you can bank on the promises of verses 1 through 11 because God's word is dependable.
and because of the God who spoke it. Thirdly, let's consider the consolation to those who wait. The consolation to those who wait. Let me set this up a little bit. Remember Isaiah's context and situation. Remember that the Isaiah of Isaiah 40 was, as it were, transported to speak a word of comfort and restoration to a people who would find themselves under Babylonian captivity for a couple of generations.
So what encouragement is there for them, for those who would find themselves smack dab in the middle of foreign servitude and exile from the promised land. And before we get to the answer to that, let's remember that we Christians today are in a very similar boat, not in slavery, not in Babylon, but we too are a waiting kind of people.
The New Testament calls us exiles and strangers. Like the saints of old, we're not yet to our homeland. There's still another mountain range to come, and it's the final one, the new heaven and the new earth, where Jesus makes all things new and all things right. So does the promise of comfort in Isaiah 40 have anything to say to us here who aren't all the way there yet? Yes, there is consolation for those who wait. Verse 29, look down in your Bibles.
He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might, he increases strength. Even youth shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted. But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles, and run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. Now notice I began reading verse 29 of this section, this third C in our outline.
And there are some verses that come before it in that section. Those verses are about a confrontation that is needed before it gets to the consolation in verse 29. Here's the confrontation that takes place. Verse 27, why do you say, O Jacob, my way is hidden from the Lord and my right is disregarded by my God? God's people had begun to say, and kept saying, according to the Hebrew, it's continual.
They kept saying, God doesn't see what we're going through here in Babylon. Apparently, he's forgotten us. Apparently, that which he promised is going to fall flat. That which is our right, what we deserve, it's disregarded by our God. He doesn't see. He doesn't care. In other words, they were not doing very well standing on the promises. They were a people who were walking by sight and not by faith.
And that was problematic enough that they needed this rebuke. Why do you say? In other words, you shouldn't. Have you not known? And notice it's put negatively. It's not, have you known? It's, have you not known? In other words, you do know this. Have you not known? Have you not heard what kind of God this is? They do know.
And so they don't need instruction. They don't need clarification. They don't need merely a pep talk. They need reminding, a stern reminding. Now, in some other parts of Scripture, doubt and lament are met with sympathy and compassion and patience. But here, it is direct, tough talk.
For those who know better, they knew better. We often need those comforting passages. But sometimes we do need the tough talk. I'm sure someone here today needs to hear me say, the way you've been talking about God lately, you know it's not right. You know better. Cut it out.
You know what kind of God he is. You know how he's proven himself faithful in your life. You know what the Bible says and that it's reliable. Rehearse that stuff to yourself, the stuff you know. You know to preach to yourself. Well, those who are in Babylon, and you here today, if you're a believer, you know, verse 28, that the Lord is the everlasting God.
He is eternal. think much on the implications of his eternality and his unchangeability and what it means for your trial and what it means for the future. You know this. You know he's the creator of the ends of the earth. He's self-existing. He's the God of aseity. He needs no one. He created everything. He sustains everything, all of it to the ends of the earth. There is nowhere you can go on planet earth where he is not in control. You know this, don't you? That our God doesn't faint. He doesn't grow weary. He's omnipotent, we say. And nothing else in this world is like that. Everything else is wearing down, wearing out. Entropy is what the scientists call it. But not God. He doesn't wear
out. He's not wearing down. You do know, don't you? His understanding is unsearchable. He's omniscient, all-knowing. Nothing catches God off guard. He never sets reminders. He never forgets. Our God never says, oh yeah, that's happening today. He never recalls anything.
He's never behind schedule. He is always right on time. He was right on time to bring the son Isaac to Abraham and Sarah after a hundred years of waiting. He was right on time when Messiah came. At the right time, he was born of a woman. His return to this earth, him making all things right and the ending of the trial that you're currently going through.
He's right on time. You can trust him. So there is comfort and strength for those who remember who God is as they also remember who they are. Notice verse 30. Even youth shall faint and be weary and young men shall fall exhausted. We're all fragile, fleeting, finite, not self-sustaining. That's true physically, but it's also true emotionally, spiritually, inwardly.
We all know it. We all feel it. And many of us here today feel weary and exhausted on the outside and the inside. But here is the consolation. The God who has infinite strength is not stingy with it. The God who has superfluous strength to run the world and have some left over, he gives strength. He gives strength.
He gives power to the fate and to him who has no might. He increases strength. He will renew their strength. He gives three word pictures in verse 31. They can mount up with wings like eagles. They can run and not be weary. They can walk and not faint. What curious, majestic imagery is this? And what a curious order these three images are in.
Flying, running, walking. I would have worded those differently. I would have put them in the opposite order. I would have talked about walking, then running, then flying. Doesn't that work? Right? But it doesn't say that. And I think it's meant to actually communicate significance in the order of these things here.
Isn't it true that when you're new to your walk with the Lord, man, you're flying. And then you're running. And some of you older saints, you've been around the block, and you know well what it means to just keep stepping. Just keep stepping. Just keep stepping. And God gives that. He gives all that. The walking, the running, the flying.
But you've got to wait on them. You've got to wait on them. Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. So here we come back to that definition of what it means to wait for the Lord or to wait on the Lord. What does that mean? It's actually a concept that's all over the Bible. And if you stack up the references to it elsewhere, you begin to get a picture of what this means. Three verses in the Psalms will help us.
Psalm 27, 14, wait for the Lord, be strong, and let your heart take courage, wait for the Lord. Psalm 37, verse 7, be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him, fret not. psalm 130 verse 5 i wait for the lord my soul waits and in his word i hope you hear those parallel statements that tell us what waiting means it means that this kind of waiting is not just biding time not feeling stuck or being on hold or waiting it out it is It's an active kind of waiting, not passive.
Waiting on the Lord like this is, it's anticipation. It's bated breath. It's trust. It's faith. It's rest. Being at ease, even while we feel restless. It's remembering, recounting, rehearsing. It is believing who God is and what he's like and what he's promised. And believing it will come to pass.
Ray Ortlund defines waiting so beautifully. He says, it means to live in confident, eager suspense. It means to live with the tension of promises revealed but not yet fulfilled. This waiting is not killing time. It isn't sitting around drumming your fingers. It is waiting on tiptoe, waiting with eager longing. So while you wait, whatever you're waiting for, big or small, while you wait, don't just wait, really wait.
Wait like this. Wait on the Lord. Wait for the Lord. and you shall mount up with wings like eagles. You shall run and not faint. You shall walk and not be weary. Which doesn't mean that you always feel like that. It doesn't mean you feel like it always, do you? Whether we're talking about the walking kind, the running kind, or the flying kind, sometimes it feels like there's little progress at all.
It doesn't feel like he gives strength. And that's why we read 2 Corinthians 4 earlier. We have this treasure of the gospel in these jars of clay. These fragile, weak, finite bodies that remind us that the surpassing power is not from us, but from him. Paul later said in 2 Corinthians 12, I will boast all the more of my weakness so that the power of Christ might rest upon me.
For when I am weak, then I am strong. It is actually when we feel our weakness that we are prime candidates to receive his limitless power. we can be comforted by what God promises to do and be strengthened by God as we wait on him to do it.
Let's pray. Oh Lord, we wait on you. We wait for you. help us to wait better. However long you take, Lord, to see us through the trouble we're in, however long you take to make all things new and all things right, help us to rest in you, to be comforted by you.
And Lord, we thank you for the hope that one day comfort, comfort will be all that we know. It will be the sum of our experience. We will no longer walk by faith, but even by sight. We long for that day and pray, Lord Jesus, you would come quickly. It's in your name we pray. Amen.