Behold Our God! (Isaiah 40:1-31)
The sermon outline can be found in the ministry guide.
What do we do when our world falls apart? Many of us are well-aware of the pain of living in a broken and fallen world. We have experienced discouraging setbacks and losses. We may be disappointed by how school or work is going. We may be disappointed by the condition of our health. Family, friends, or the church may have let us down. Looking back, we may be disappointed with how our lives have turned out.
We may also feel like we have let ourselves and others down, perhaps with our words, actions, attitudes, or decisions. For example, we may have hurt a loved one and broken a relationship. Maybe, most of all, we feel like we’ve disappointed God. It may be that we have disobeyed Him in certain areas of our life. Perhaps we are drifting away from Him as our hearts have grown cold. We may have failed to fulfil promises or commitments we’ve made to God. Some of us may be labouring under a burden of guilt and shame. Can there be a way back to God for us? What do we do when our world falls apart?
Isaiah 40, our text for today, was written to people grappling with similar questions. If you recall, we concluded the first part of our sermon series in Isaiah in chapter 39. Judah’s king Hezekiah had foolishly allied with Babylon. At that time, Assyria was the dominant superpower. Having defeated the northern kingdom of Israel, Judah was now in its sights. In the meantime, Babylon was growing in power. Instead of trusting God, Hezekiah resorted to playing politics. He looked to Babylon to protect Judah from Assyria. But be careful who or what we trust. It could turn around and bite us. Isaiah 39 predicts how Babylon will turn from friend to foe and conquer Judah. Judah will go into exile in Babylon. What will Judah do when its world falls apart?
Isaiah 40 begins a new part of Isaiah. In the previous 39 chapters, the focus has been on God the holy King who judges the nations. In chapters 40-55, the spotlight moves from Assyria in the eighth century BC to Babylon in the sixth century BC. Isaiah looks more than 100 years into the future and envisions Judah in exile. The people are defeated, disappointed, disillusioned, and despondent. They are broken and shattered. Their own sin has brought this calamity on them.
What does God have to say to this people? In Isaiah 40, the focus of Isaiah’s message shifts from judgement to salvation. For this reason, Isaiah 40-55 have been called the Book of Comfort. Speaking to Judah before the exile, God prepares His people for the coming judgement by assuring them of his continued faithfulness. Although they will have to go through the fire and flood, they should know that salvation will come through judgement. Beyond the exile, there is hope of restoration and renewal. Isaiah 40-55 focuses on God the gracious King who will save sinners through His servant.
In exile, Judah would have been tempted to walk away from God, thinking He had abandoned them. They needed to hear God’s word of comfort, urging them to keep trusting in Him. We, too, need Isaiah’s message today. Amid our difficulties, we may be tempted to forsake God for false promises, false comforts, false hopes. We may be drawn away by the things of this world, thinking they can give satisfy or fulfil us. We may replace God with the idols of success, wealth, pleasure, and power. We may think salvation comes through self-effort, religion, morality, will power or hard work.
The incomparable God can and will save those who trust in Him.
These are symptoms of a deeper spiritual problem: Our view of God is too small. We do not believe He can or will save us. So, we try to live our way. But what we need is not better plans or programmes. What we truly need is a big view of God — to behold God as He truly is: glorious and good, holy and exalted, gracious and merciful. Setting the tone for what’s to come, Isaiah 40 shows us God’s greatness to persuade us to turn away from idols and to trust in the true and living God. This is the big idea: The incomparable God can and will save those who trust in Him. We’ll unpack this in three points:
The incomparable God promises to save
The incomparable God can save
The incomparable God will save.
The incomparable God promises to save (Isa 40:1-11)
Our passage opens with a word that troubled people most need to hear: “Comfort, comfort my people” (Isa 40:1). And God says it twice to emphasize the fullness and lavishness of His grace. The merciful God will remove His rod of discipline. As the prophet Micah says, “(God) does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love.” (Mic 7:18b) The exile is not God’s final word to His people. Redemption, restoration, and renewal will follow. “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning” (Ps 30:5b). Maybe some of us have grown sceptical and cynical. Why get our hopes up only to have them dashed? False comfort has left us disappointed and disillusioned. But God promises to comfort us. The comfort God promises us is not a fleeting happiness, a false sense of security, or a naïve optimism. It is real comfort founded on four truths about God’s salvation.
First, comfort comes from belonging to God. God says, “my people” (Isa 40:1). Despite Judah’s unfaithfulness, God remains faithful to them. Patient and longsuffering, He will not abandon His wayward people. If we belong to God through His Son, Jesus Christ, then He has promised to never leave or forsake us. Though we are faithless, He remains faithful. In Christ, God shall ever be our God and we shall be His people. Like the father welcoming his prodigal son home, God’s faithfulness encourages us to return to Him.
Second, comfort flows from sins forgiven. True comfort does not compromise God’s holiness and righteousness. In Isaiah 40:2, God calls Isaiah to proclaim these words, “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.” Isaiah is to announce the good news of sins forgiven. Yes, Judah’s sins are great, but God’s grace is greater. When someone we’ve offended forgives us, we feel like a weight has been lifted. How much greater the comfort when God declares us forgiven! He removes our burden of guilt and shame. “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity” (Ps 32:1-2a).
How can this be? Isaiah says it is because Judah has received from the LORD’s hand “double” or sufficient punishment. God is perfectly just. So, He cannot let sin go unpunished. Our sins must be paid for if we are to be truly forgiven. The exile is from the LORD’s hand — it is His judgement for Judah’s sins. God says it is enough. He will put an end to Judah’s warfare (or hardship) and pardon the sins of His people.
But can 70 years of exile really atone for sin? Isaiah 40 does not explain how God can be righteous to forgive His people’s sin, but the answer is found in Isaiah 53. God will send a suffering servant to bear God’s judgement in the place of the guilty: “He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed” (Isa 53:5).
We cannot experience God’s comfort unless our sins are forgiven. … Through the Saviour, we can experience the comfort of being fully forgiven.
Friends, we cannot experience God’s comfort unless our sins are forgiven. Will we humbly acknowledge our sins to God, and trust in the Saviour whom He has sent? But if we trust in Him, then we can be assured that God will no longer hold our sins against us. The Saviour has received from the LORD’s hand double for all our sins. The righteous God will not be unjust to punish the same sins twice. Through the Saviour, we can experience the comfort of being fully forgiven.
Who is this Saviour? Third, comfort is the result of the LORD Himself coming to save. Isaiah 40:5 says, “And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” The LORD Himself will come and manifest His glory to the world.
This is the heart of Isaiah’s good news: “Behold your God!” (Isa 40:9). God is coming to save sinners like us. Do we imagine God to be distant and indifferent? Isaiah 40 says otherwise. God is personally committed to His people’s good. Before we come to Him, He takes the initiative to first come to us. Look at Isaiah 40:10. God is the coming mighty King who rules in righteousness. He is also the Shepherd-King (Isaiah 40:11), who tenderly and compassionately seeks the lost. “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.”
God is the perfection of meekness and majesty. He is the lion and the lamb. If we come to God by faith, He will not turn us away. His power strengthens the weak. He gives courage to the fainthearted. He lifts up the downcast. He comforts the brokenhearted. A bruised reed He will not break, and a faintly burning wick He will not quench. Friends, will we run into the arms the Good Shepherd and find rest for our weary souls?
Fourth, God’s comfort is certain. It is sure because “the mouth of the LORD has spoken” (Isa 40:5). The reliability of the promise depends on the character of the One speaking it. God’s word is true because God is true. Therefore, we can bank our lives on His promise of salvation. It is impossible for God to lie. To comfort others, we sometimes try to say positive things like “every cloud has a silver lining”, or “there will be light at the end of the tunnel”. But we cannot guarantee these well-meaning wishes. True comfort needs rock solid certainty, which optimistic platitudes or inspirational sayings cannot offer. The only sure hope we have is found in God and his word. This is the point of Isaiah 40:6-9: “All flesh is grass… but the word of our God will stand forever.” Why seek comfort anywhere else? In times of trouble, listen to ourselves less; listen to God more.
By speaking comfort, God woos us with kindness. He invites us to come to Him. How should we respond? Isaiah 40:1-11 call us to look, to turn, and to speak. Behold our God! Look to Him, for there is salvation in no one else. There is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved. Trust in God and the suffering Servant He will send to save us. Turn back to God. Isaiah 40:3-4 speak of preparing the way of the LORD. Remove any obstacle that keeps us from Him. In other words, as John the Baptist says in the New Testament, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt 3:2). Speak: Do not be afraid. Lift up our voices and proclaim the good news of God’s coming (Isaiah 40:9).
Look-turn-speak.
The incomparable God can save (Isa 40:12-26)
Since God promises to save, then why don’t we trust Him more? So often, we tend to rely on ourselves or the things of this world. We may say we believe in God, but do we live as though He isn’t there? Are we functional atheists?
I have bad eyesight. Without glasses, I cannot make out your faces; all I see is a blur. Here, Isaiah deals with the problem of spiritual myopia that prevents Judah from trusting in God. He has to give them the right spiritual spectacles, so that they see truly and clearly. Their spiritual shorted-sightedness is caused by a wrong view of God. In other words, bad theology. We may think theology is intellectual or academic, disconnected from “real” life in the “real” world. Buttheology matters. We all have a theology, whether we’re aware of it or now. How we live reveals what we believe about God.
This is the problem: Judah’s view of God is too small. They have made a god in their own image. They let their experiences or circumstances define their view of what God is like. We also do the same, don’t we? In tough times, we may think our problems are beyond God’s help. So, we try to fix things ourselves. Our lack of prayer shows what we really think about God. When we suffer, we may get bitter and angry with God, because we imagine he has somehow failed us.
We need to hear what God says about Himself, to know God as He truly is, not what we make Him out to be. That is the main thrust of Isaiah 40:12-26. God says to us: See my greatness! God comforts us by humbling us and putting us in our place. We need to see ourselves in light of who He is. God is God; we are not.
Isaiah 40:12 uses figurative language to describe how the Creator-God holds the entire universe in His hand. The vast oceans of the world fit in His palm. The span from God’s thumb to little finger encompasses the limitless expanse of outer space. Isaiah 40:26 encourages us to lift up our eyes and see the One who made the stars and planets. In Old Testament times, people commonly worshiped the celestial bodies. But we should instead worship God, who made them all. He upholds the universe by the word of His power. According to astronomers, there are approximately 200 billion trillion stars in our observable universe. If God calls the stars by name, how much more will God know each of us whom He has made in His image?
Isaiah 40:13-14 speak of God’s infinite, incomparable wisdom. How can we pretend to know better than God? His thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are our ways His ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so His ways and thoughts are higher than ours (Isa 55:8). God is not obligated to explain Himself to us, but He has graciously made Himself known that we might worship Him. Quoting from Isaiah 40, Paul writes in Romans 11: “Oh the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways! …For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” (Rom 11:33, 35). So, trust in the only wise God with our all heart, do not lean on our own understanding. Faith does not mean we have all the answers; it means we trust in the One who does.
God is high and lifted up, sovereign over creation and over all the nations. Isaiah 40:15 says, “Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket.” And in Isaiah 40:22-23, it says, “It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers… who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.” World empires like Assyria and Babylon come and go. Governments are voted in and out with each new round of elections. But God reigns and remains forever. Why trust in worldly power when the sovereign God invites us to rest in Him? How might we struggle with the fear of man? Some of us are driven by performance and perfectionism. How much of that is fuelled by us wanting affirmation and approval from others? How many of us are tired and burnt out from trying to earn our boss’ favour? Beloved, we need to hear this precious truth: The God who is truly Lord over all already knows us and loves us. Why fear man when God accounts the nations as less than nothing and emptiness (Isa 40:17)? Fear God, who has true weight and substance.
Isaiah 40:25 recalls Isaiah 6, where the prophet sees an overwhelming vision of the LORD who is “holy, holy, holy”. God is “the Holy One”. He is on his throne, high and lifted up. To whom will we compare Him? Look at Isaiah 40:18-20: Will we liken God to an idol that sits still and does nothing?God is not like any idol. He is the sovereign Creator who is worthy of our complete confidence. Those trust in Him will not be disappointed.
The danger is not God’s inadequacy but our spiritual short-sightedness.
When our world falls apart, we so easily lose sight of God’s greatness. The danger is not God’s inadequacy but our spiritual short-sightedness. See Isaiah 40:21. It’s not as if Judah is ignorant about God. Isaiah challenges us with this question: “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?” God has indeed spoken to His people. So it is for us. We have known and we have heard, because God has revealed Himself to us in His word. So, strive to be in the word regularly because this is how we know who God is. The Bible is not a collection of abstract truths and wise sayings. It points us to a Person, that we might know Him, trust Him, and enjoy a relationship with Him. Beloved, walk with one another through trials by reminding each other of God’s greatness from His word. Isaiah exhorts us to look up and see the incomparable God. Behold our God! There is none like Him. Make much of God. Only He can save us.
The incomparable God will save (Isa 40:27-31)
The incomparable God promises to save. He can save. But will He save sinners? Isaiah 40 was originally written to those in exile. The exile was God’s judgement upon Judah’s idolatry and unfaithfulness. Now, they have lost hope. Look at Isaiah 40:27. They think God has abandoned them: “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God.” God does not know and he does not care. Some of us may think God has distanced Himself from us, given how we have failed Him time and again. Are we right to think about God this way?
God replies in Isaiah 40:28-29. Once again, we are urged to recall what God has already revealed in His word: “Have you not known? Have you not heard?” The LORD is the everlasting God and sovereign Creator. He makes and keeps covenant with His people. He is faithful and will not break His promises. Isaiah 40:27 recalls God’s promise in Genesis to Judah’s founding father when he changes his name from Jacob to Israel. God had promised then to raise up a nation from Jacob’s descendants and to give them a land. How do we know His promise is sure? It is because He is the everlasting, unchanging God. Our Maker has the power to accomplish His will. He is sovereign even over our sin. Our failures do not derail God’s plan. His wisdom is limitless. We may not understand all His ways, but we can trust Him to keep His word.
The incomparable God also delights to draw near to help the weak and lift up the downcast. Because he does not faint or grow weary, he can share his strength with those who do. “He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength” (Isa 40:29). This is good news for us, but only if we humbly acknowledge that we are faint and have no might. Why would we turn to God if we think we are strong enough or good enough? The proud, self-righteous or self-sufficient have no need for God. But He helps us if we confess our emptiness and brokenness to Him.
Though our sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Where our sin abounds, God’s grace abounds all the more. Our sins have not put us beyond the reach of God’s mercy. Are we weak and helpless? Come to the Lord and lean on Him. Cast your burdens on Him. Do not try to make yourself well enough before you go to Him. All God requires of us is that we confess our need of Him. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. God says in Isaiah 57:15, “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly,and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
Do not rely on human strength. It will fail. Even those in the prime of life — youths and young men — will be weary and fall exhausted (Isa 40:30). Instead, trust in the Lord. As we prepare to start a new week, ask Him for grace to live each day for His glory. This is what it means to “wait for the LORD” (Isa 40:31). Do not go at it alone, thinking we can do it on our own. Do not treat God like a stop gap, as merely someone we turn to from time to time. We need Him always. And, do not lose heart when the Lord seems to delay. Do not despair when our circumstances do not get any better. Be assured that God is always working, in His time and His way. He does not get tired. So, wait patiently for the Lord, knowing He is faithful and true. Trust and rest in Him. He is full of mercy and compassion. He can and will renew our strength, to supply us with the resources we need to keep going and not give up. He can and will enable us to run and not be weary, to walk and not faint (Isa 40:31). When we fear our faith will fail, God will hold us fast.
The mention of wings like eagles (Isa 40:31) recalls how God redeemed Israel from Egypt in the Exodus: “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself” (Exo 19:4). Isaiah encourages the people of Judah by reminding them of what God has done for them in the past. Beloved, we can look back on a far greater redemption. God’s promises to save have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
The glory of the LORD has been revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. He is God come in the flesh. John’s Gospel says this of Jesus, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Therefore, we behold God by looking to Jesus.
Jesus is the promised Servant who suffers to save His people. He is the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep. At the cross, Jesus died for the sins of all who would put their faith in Him. Jesus died the death we should have died. He was exiled, God-forsaken to pay the penalty for our sins, so that we can be fully forgiven and brought back to God. Jesus was raised to give us new life. His resurrection is proof that our sins have been fully atoned for. Our warfare is ended. In Christ, we have been made right with God.
So, look to Jesus and behold the glory of God. Jesus is the only answer to our deepest disappointment and discouragement. We wait on the Lord by trusting in Christ. God has drawn near to us in the person of His Son. Jesus invites us to turn to Him, and to keep trusting in Him, for grace and strength. Jesus says to us: “Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt 11:28-30).
Jesus is the only answer to our deepest disappointment and discouragement. We wait on the Lord by trusting in Christ. God has drawn near to us in the person of His Son. Jesus invites us to turn to Him, and to keep trusting in Him, for grace and strength.