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November 30, 2013 |
| How Great is Our God | ||
"When you think of God, what comes to mind? Often, people view Him in the way that best fits their particular need or situation. For example, a person who struggles with guilt might focus on the Lord's forgiveness or holiness. And someone with a thirst for justice might dwell on the Almighty's righteousness.
"The truth is, His character encompasses far more than we could ever comprehend or try to explain. […] At the same time, however, it is important to look at scripture in order to gain an accurate a picture of the One we worship.
"Today we will focus on one attribute: His greatness."1
In many books of the Bible the authors of the books make references to the greatness of God. But the best and most thorough of these comes from Isaiah 40 and 41. In these chapters God, through the prophet Isaiah, is reasoning with the people of Israel about the foolishness of their idolatry. Israel has wandered away from worshipping God and has started worshipping many other kinds of Gods, gods they have made of wood, stone, silver and gold, god's of nature and others.
So the bigger point that God is making is "how do these false gods compare to me? Are they in any way like me?" But in the process God describes his greatness and that is our focus here. God describes his greatness in these areas
12 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?
These verses depict a God for whom the land and sea of the earth is like a backyard garden. God is depicted as measuring out the volume of the waters of the sea in the greatness of his hands and using those hands to measure off the sky. He is depicted as carrying around the dust of the earth in nothing more than a basket. And he is shown weighing out the mountains and hills.
Of course Isaiah is speaking in poetic terms here. God probably didn't literally weigh out the mountains on a mountain sized weigh scale. The intent is to show that God is much, much greater than the earth.
13 Who can fathom the Spirit of the Lord, or instruct the Lord as his counselor? 14 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?
Isaiah now asks the question, who is greater than God that he should be God's counselor, advisor and teacher. The answer is obviously no one. By that we understand that God has all knowledge and understanding in himself. This also makes him the source of all knowledge and understanding.
15 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. […] 17 Before him all the nations are as nothing; they are regarded by him as worthless and less than nothing. […]
When Isaiah says "nations" here it appears that he must be referring to the organizations of the nations and their boundaries. That would be the only way to mix the idea of nation and island together as this verse has. Therefore the intent is to show that islands, continents, national boundaries and the nations themselves are of no importance to God. They are too small to be of consequence to him.
21 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? 22 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.
Isaiah now considers the throne of God - the place where God rules from. He describes it as being above the earth such that the people of the earth look like no more than grasshoppers. Isaiah is speaking poetically again as he is in this whole chapter and generally does in all chapters. He doesn't mean to imply that Heaven, the place of God, is literally just above the earth's atmosphere.
The message here is that God is not of this earth and its people are insignificant in comparison to him. The heavens with their stars and planets are no more to him than a canopy and that spreading them out is no more to him than a man spreading out a tent covering.
Isaiah will come back to the topic of the heavens again.
23 He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing. 24 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. […]
God, through Isaiah, now says that he rules over the people of the earth. Their great men he raises up and takes down as suites his purpose. They too are only tools in his plan.
This is very much in-line with what Paul says in Romans 13
1 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.
This idea that God establishes all leaders runs counter to what we think about our system of government. In a democratic system we believe that we choose our own leaders. But God says that he does. So knowing that God is always right and we are only right when we agree with him, it's worthwhile to understand how God does this.
God controls everything and yet we have free will. This may seem impossible at first thought. God presents choices to all people while knowing the decisions they will make. By choosing the choices that will be available to people God directs the outcome of everything. In this way God determines the outcome of elections by determining what facts will become known when, what speeches will be made, and all the other events that make up the election process. This determines the outcome of the election.
God's hand is on everything all the time. This world is his and moves to his purpose. And the finest details are under his control. We see this same idea expressed by Jesus in Matthew 10
29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father's care. 30 And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
26 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.
Again Isaiah speaks of the heavens but this time in terms of God as their creator. And not just that God is their creator but that they were created to be exactly the way they were meant to be, each one in its place and serving its function. All this came about by God's great power and mighty strength.
This is often difficult for people to accept. We don't know exactly how much of the universe Isaiah was given to understand by God. But in our day we understand the vastness of the universe. We know that there are not only stars in the sky but that these stars have planets. And there are also galaxies in the sky which are separate systems of stars that are even farther away than the stars we see.
With all that overwhelming vastness it can be hard to accept that there is a being who created it all and put it all in motion. But the problem there is not the vastness of the universe; it is the limits of our understanding of what it means to be God. If you can't imagine how a God could do all that, your imagination is too small.
In Genesis 18:14 the messengers sent by God express essentially the same idea when they say
14 Is anything too hard for the Lord?
And again in Jeremiah 32:26
26 Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: 27 "I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?
28 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.
Here Isaiah shows that God is not like man or like other gods. He is everlasting, without beginning or end. He does not grow faint because the work is too hard and does not become weary because it goes on and on. His understanding is beyond ours. This echoes what Isaiah will say later in Isaiah 55:8-9
8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. 9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
God's point is that you cannot understand the greatness of his ways or his thoughts - not even close. God is not like a man but with superior abilities like Superman, X-Men, or the gods of the Greeks and Romans. God is an entirely different kind of being.
We now move into Isaiah 41. With that we see a change in the text from third person to first person. Where in chapter 40 Isaiah was saying "The Lord" did this and "The Lord" did that, he now starts saying "I have" done this and, speaking to the idols he detests, saying "You are."
In these verses God lays down the true test of a god - knowledge of the past and the future.
22 "Tell us, you idols, what is going to happen. Tell us what the former things were, so that we may consider them and know their final outcome.
Or declare to us the things to come, 23 tell us what the future holds, so we may know that you are gods. Do something, whether good or bad, so that we will be dismayed and filled with fear.
24 But you are less than nothing and your works are utterly worthless; whoever chooses you is detestable.
25 "I have stirred up one from the north, and he comes - one from the rising sun who calls on my name. He treads on rulers as if they were mortar, as if he were a potter treading the clay.
26 Who told of this from the beginning, so we could know, or beforehand, so we could say, 'He was right'? No one told of this, no one foretold it, no one heard any words from you. 27 I was the first to tell Zion, 'Look, here they are!' I gave to Jerusalem a messenger of good news.
28 I look but there is no one - no one among the gods to give counsel, no one to give answer when I ask them.
God is in fact mocking these false gods here. It is quite reminiscent of Elijah and his encounter with the priests of Baal2. God says do something. It doesn't matter if it is something good or something bad. Just do something.
Then God sets about to prove himself according to the standard he has just laid down. But where we, as humans, might look to the past and say I foretold that and it came true, God does not. The problem with looking back on prophecy is that someone can always claim document forgery - that the prediction was written after the event. So what God does is lay down a new stake in the ground, a new prophecy.
He begins here to lay down a prophecy that he will expand on in future chapters. He is describing the leader of the Medo-Persian Empire who will conquer the Babylonians in about 150 years. In later chapters he will even provide the name of that leader - Cyrus. And with that he will include a message for Cyrus so that Cyrus may know the greatness of God.
We haven't mentioned one of the greatest things about God - the greatness of his love for grasshoppers such as us. Really, given the vastness of the universe, Isaiah may have given us too much credit by comparing us to grasshoppers.
Despite our behavior as disrespectful, disobedient, self-centered children God loves us with a love that is also beyond our ability to understand. This is truly a mystery, that so great a God should love something so insignificant with the love of a father.
1 http://www.intouch.org/magazine/content.aspx?topic=The_Greatness_of_God_devotional#.UpoTkmd3uCg
2 1 Kings 18:27