Community Bible Study -- Isaiah

Text of Presentation, Lesson 12, Isa 40:1-31

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The Servant’s Lord
“A Hope that Never Tires”

Tonight begins the third major division of Isaiah: chapters 40-55. All events that occurred during Isaiah’s lifetime came to an end with chapter 39; from this point on the book addresses events that occurred after Isaiah had died. Therefore, scholars who do deny the bible contains predictive prophesy believe Isaiah’s writing ended in chapter 39 . . . that chapter 40 and beyond were written as history by someone else. Nevertheless, since Hezekiah reigned until ~687 BC, Isaiah had at least 14 years to write 17 chapters after the Assyrians fled Jerusalem in 701 BC. It’s quite possible he indeed wrote the last chapters as prophesy – and that’s the approach we take here.

The first 39 chapters focus on the LORD's trustworthiness, and – with the story of Hezekiah – conclude with examples of how God rewards trust . . . yet even the best of men seem unable to trust God completely. Hence the question remains: What can motivate God’s people to really trust him? And if they do, how can sinful Israel become servants of the holy, sinless God?

For answers, Isaiah projects himself ~100 years into the future. Judah and Jerusalem have been conquered by the Babylonians – as he prophesied in chapter 39 – and the people carried to Babylon in captivity. Isaiah realizes this exile will raise important questions:

1. Hasn’t God been defeated by the gods of Babylon?

2. Hasn’t our sin separated us from God forever?
   
   

Isaiah’s approach reminds us of the TV game show, “Jeopardy”: Isaiah repeats answers, and the people are challenged to guess the questions. The first answer is: "I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me" (46:9, etc). The second is: "Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God" (41:10, etc). God has not been defeated by the Babylonian gods. And as for His people's sin . . . they have indeed not been cast off, but will become His witnesses in His case against idols.

Therefore, the balance of the book addresses the following issues:

1. To be the redeemed servants of the Lord, the Jews need to worship God in Israel, the land of God’s promises; so chapters 41-48 address God's desire – and His capacity – to free His people and return them to Jerusalem.

2. To be the redeemed servants of the Lord, the Jews need to address the sin that brought their problems in the first place; so chapters 49-55 address this.
   
   

Chapter 40 opens by addressing in 40:1-11 whether God has cast his people away with the exile. Echoing chapter 12, God speaks comfort, not judgment. He will deliver them, so they can tell the world about it. 40:12-26 then address His ability to deliver them. He is the incomparable God; the nations of earth are nothing compared to him. God’s people need not fear they have been abandoned; they should confidently wait for deliverance (40:27-31).

Building on chapter 12, Isaiah says the undeserved grace of God will motivate the people to trust God. When God delivers his people – who do not deserve it – they will finally be willing to trust Him without reservation. In other words, if the message in chapters 7-39 was trusting God as the basis for servanthood, the message in chapters 40-55 is grace as the motive for and means of servanthood.

40:1-11 extends and expands Isaiah’s call in chapter 6. God’s message of judgment will be confirmed in the fires of the Exile . . . and now God’s message is hope. The people have withered and fallen like dried grass, but God's word through Isaiah will not fail. He said judgment would come, and it did; now He says restoration will come, and it will!

The words translated "comfort" in 40:1 and "speak tenderly" in 40:2 convey the idea to “encourage." Isaiah foresees a day when God's servants will be crushed to the ground under their burden of sin; they will feel sure all is lost and God’s promises nullified by their rebellion. But the message is: the exile will not destroy them, only punish them; and when punishment is complete ("double"), God has a word of hope!

In 40:3-5 Isaiah resumes the highway motif. Earlier the "highway" was to bring people to God (11:16, 19:23, 35:8), but now the highway is for "our God." The people are helpless; deliverance must come from God. So God comes to set them free. Nothing can impede Him . . . not mountains nor valleys. The highway will be level and straight.

This is emphasized in 40:6-8: "All men [Heb flesh] are like grass." The Jews are like grass. Consumed by their sins, they are captives in Babylon; they can do nothing to help themselves. But the Babylonians are also like grass. If God decides to deliver the Jews, the Babylonians can do nothing to prevent it. There is no permanence in anything human, but if God speaks a promise, that "word" will stand; nothing can alter it.

And God is about to intervene in the world in a dramatic fashion. He "comes" to break the power of evil with his strong "arm" (40:10) . . . yet he comes "like a shepherd," to gather up the broken in his gentle “arms” (40:10).

Can God do this? He seemed unable to prevent the Babylonians from capturing Judah and Jerusalem . . . and throughout human history up to Isaiah’s time, no people taken into exile in captivity – as the Jews were taken to Babylon – ever returned home. God’s claim seems impossible! But Isaiah says God can deliver because He is not just greater than the Babylonian gods . . . He is the only God!

40:12-26 can be divided into two parallel sections: 40:12-20 and 40:21-26, each developing a claim of God’s absolute superiority over idols (40:18b-20) and the heavenly host (40:26), respectively. Each includes rhetorical questions asserting the LORD is Creator (40:12-14, 21), affirmation the LORD rules all nations and all rulers (40:15-17, 22-24), and an invitation to compare God with anything else (40:18a, 25).

The rhetorical questions in 40:12-14 affirm YHWH as Creator. Isaiah insists God is not the mountains or the oceans or the heavens; He is other than creation. He originated the world, but he is not the world.

40:13-14 seem aimed at polytheistic religions which believed a counselor among the gods advised and assisted other gods. Isaiah rejects this; “knowledge” and "understanding" originated with the Creator-God. To think otherwise is to deny God’s transcendence.

God cannot be manipulated . . . not even by a sacrifice as large as all the animals of Lebanon with all its forests set on fire (40:16)! Compared to God, the nations of the earth are "nothing" (40:17); Babylon and Assyria and Egypt may seem great in man’s eyes, but not in the eyes of the One True God.

If the LORD is the Creator and Lord of all nations, how can an idol be compared to Him?! 40:18b-20 is Isaiah’s first diatribe against idols in this part of the book (cf 41:6-7; 42:17; 44:9-20; 46:5-7; 48:5). Representing God in the forms of this world makes Him identical with the world . . . but how can something made by humans be their maker?

The second cycle begins in 40:21: God is not only other than the world, He is other than the heavens; He stretched them out "like a tent" (40:22). He is not awed by "rulers" (40:23) of this earth; like Sennacherib, their destiny is in His hands (cf Dan 4:34-35). Just as “all men” are “grass” (40:6) . . . so are kings; they “wither” when God “blows on them” (40:24). No tender plant of humanity is a match for the eternal judgments of God!

God Himself then asks if anything compares with him (40:25-26). If not gorgeous idols of craftsmen . . . is it the stars of heaven, which pagans believed represented gods (cf 2 Kn 17:16; 21:3)? No! God "created" them and brings them out "by name" every night, like a shepherd calls his flock. The sheep is no more comparable to the shepherd than the product to the maker! The stars exist only because of the "mighty strength” of God.

Isaiah concludes chapter 40 by anticipating the attitude of Jewish exiles in Babylon . . . wondering if their sorry state puts them outside God's vision (“my way is hidden”) or if God has given up on them (“my cause is disregarded") (40:27). For a second time (cf 40:21) the prophet asks a rhetorical question with mock incredulity – “Do you not know? Have you not heard?” (40:28) – challenging God’s people to trust His word in the bible. They know perfectly well who God is and what He is like! He is the Creator-God, with endless power and wisdom, yet a desire to share that power with the “weak” and “weary" (40:28-29). He knows their situation; He can and will do something about it.

Isaiah emphasizes the theme of trust with the Hebrew word often translated to “wait” on God, which has appeared three times already (8:17; 25:9; 33:2) and will appear twice more (49:23; 64:4). To “wait" on God is not to mark time doing nothing. It is to live active lives in confidence God will act on our behalf, refusing to run ahead of God and try and solve our problems ourselves. Just as Isaiah called the people of his day to trust their problems to God, he calls on the exiles 150 years later to do the same. Even the most vigorous things in creation (“young men”) are dependent on outside sources for their strength. Only God is self-generating, with abundant strength to give to those who “hope in” (or wait for) Him. If they are weary and doubtful of their future, he assures them He will give them what they need at the right time, to “soar,” “run,” or “walk.”

The doctrine of God’s transcendence and immanence has been debated by scholars, but both are critical to us. Since God is "outside" creation, he must be “transcendent” and can enter creation; otherwise, how can He change our circumstances? . . . and why should we try to change those circumstances if we are on a wheel of existence with neither beginning nor end. Yet if God is only transcendent, he neither knows nor cares what happens in our lives; He brought us into existence and provides the energy to power the cosmos, but He is untouched by the movements of the world. However, the Bible teaches both the absolute otherness of God and His ability to be present with His creation.

God "sits above the circle of the earth" (40:22), outside time and space. He is not to be identified with the sun, moon, stars, or any process of earth. He can intervene at will to change any of them to suit his grand design . . . and He has a grand design toward which creation is moving. God is intimately involved with the life of his creation. He is able to come to us: to share our joy and accomplishments and deliver us from our distress and captivity. He is great enough to help, and near enough to want to help. But nevertheless, He is above and beyond any expression of our life.

All this is summed up in Jesus the Messiah . . . as the gospel writers realized by saying John the Baptist is the voice in 40:3 who prepares the way for God's coming in the desert (Mt 3:3, Mk 1:3, Lk 3:4, Jn 1:23). And the Apostle John emphasizes the central importance of the Messiah when he quotes John the Baptist regarding him: "He must become greater; I must become less" (John 3:30).

All four Gospels insist Jesus is God and man at the same time. His humanity is assumed, but his deity is both implied and asserted (cf Mt 16:16; Mk 14:62; Lk 22:70; Jn 10:30, 14:9). Jesus the Messiah links the transcendent God with the immanent God: God comes to us in humility yet power; He knows our condition and is moved by it, because he has entered into that condition! Paul sums this up in Philippians 2:6-11:

(Jesus), being in very nature God, . . . made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, . . . made in human likeness. . . . He humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Closely related to the doctrine of transcendence is the doctrine of creation. Isaiah assumes this doctrine and builds upon it as an important argument, because in many ways, all biblical faith stands or falls on the doctrine of creation: God, who is spirit, existed before matter; time and space were created and the cosmos came into existence at God’s command; creation was both orderly and progressive, directed by God in every phase and according to God’s plan; and humanity is the apex of creation. It misses the point to argue details of the Biblical creation story; what’s important is that it’s unique, radically different from all other ancient stories of the origin of the cosmos.

If the Bible's doctrine of creation is wrong, the beautiful hopes of the Bible are just soap bubbles in the air. If the cosmos happened by chance and evolved through mindless forces, life is without meaning or purpose and there is no "salvation." That makes it significant that only the Biblical creation story – not any other ancient legends – is consistent with modern scientific data.

A new book by Newt Gingrich being released this week – Winning the Future – urges Americans to reaffirm our founders’ ideal that all rights come from a Creator-God. That someone would write such a book exposes just how self-contradictory our society has become: we take some of the Bible’s premises and reject others. For example, we believe in individual worth and are willing to fight for the right of human choice – ideas from the Bible, where humans are called to voluntarily enter into a relationship with the eternal God. But by refusing to acknowledge that those rights come from God, we have no foundation upon which to judge between right choices and wrong choices.

The American ideal that people are not locked in present circumstances – that we can unlock our potential and "better ourselves" – also comes from the Bible. God had a plan whereby Abraham, Moses, David, and others were transformed and left their past behind them. Many world cultures had no concept of progress until the bible was preached to them. For instance, Hawaiians tell stories of how Polynesian islanders eagerly watched and waited for Christian missionaries to tell them about the God of the bible.

But although we retain some biblical ideas in modern society, we’ve lost its central idea of a transformed life. We fight for our rights, yet deny our responsibilities, claiming the choices we make are actually dictated by society, our upbringing, some tragedy, or our genes. We keep the Bible's conclusion but deny its premises. We accept deterministic evolution, yet maintain belief in human worth . . . an oxymoron.

If we are the end product of mindless forces, without real choices of our own, we have no freedom and no worth. If a killer has no choice but to kill, it is unjust to punish him. Yet if society believes his behavior is not conducive to the progress of evolution, we ought to just eliminate him without moralistic rhetoric . . . like the Nazis did. Principles like justice and right and wrong do not exist in a world without a Creator-God.

We cry for "progress," but have thrown away the only basis for progress: the transcendent God who can break in from outside and change us. Without a Creator able to do new things, we are doomed to do the same things over and over in a different way . . . with a frenzy of activity, but no progress.

Isaiah speaks into a setting like this. The ]ews in captivity had seen their nation fall and their temple destroyed. They thought they had no future; they were beyond God’s compassion ("he has forgotten me") and His power (“my way is hidden from him"). They did not believe God could transform them or their circumstances.

Isaiah says to us as he said to them, " There is nothing beyond God’s compassion or his power. Have you not known? Have you not heard?" There is nothing a caring Creator cannot change. We are persons of worth to God; we really can choose to be and act differently. Our chains of conditioning may be as real as the the ]udeans’ chains of captivity . . . but the Creator can break all such chains. To be sure, how God acts is His choice, not ours. Later chapters deal with the discomfort the people have with how God chooses to act; yet we can have confidence he will act. We can believe God can change our circumstances for the better; but so much depends on our faith.

During the Babylonian exile, the Jews do not believe God can deliver them, so they needed to hear the Word of God in a way that changed how they thought. We, too, need lives of faith shaped by the Word of God. Unless I “believe" God and “hope” in him by surrendering my life to him, His power cannot transform me. But if I really believe His Word, there are no limits to what he can do for me, my family, and my society.