I. Introduction
A. We’ve been talking about the prophecies of the prophet Isaiah, who’s mentioned 21 times in NT, & whose writings are cited or alluded to ~600 times in the NT, far more than any other OT prophet.
1. Specifically, we’ve been working through Isaiah 40, about the coming of the Lord.
2. Many people today don’t think of Isaiah 40 when it comes to prophecies of Christ’s coming.
3. And you rarely hear about Isaiah 40 in the context of Christmas. Perhaps that’s why we’re here.
B. Isaiah 40:12-17 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 in scales and the hills in a balance? 13 Who has measured the Spirit of the LORD, or what man shows him his counsel? 14 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? 15 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. 16 Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering. 17 All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.
C. Review
1. The main point of the first 11 verses is that the Lord is coming and His glory will be revealed to all flesh.
2. The second biggest point is that this promised coming of the Lord is absolutely guaranteed, for it has come from the mouth of the Lord, and God’s word shall never fail.
D. But now all of a sudden Isaiah is talking about how big God is compared to the nations of the earth. Has Isaiah suddenly changed the subject? Not at all.
1. The first 11 verses were about the Lord coming. These verses are about who this coming Lord is.
II. So, let’s take a brief tour of Isaiah 40:12-17, this description of who the promised coming Lord is.
A. It begins with a riddle in v.12: “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 in scales and the hills in a balance?”
1. Four images here:
a. Measuring the waters of the earth in His hand
b. Measuring the heavens with a yard stick
c. Measuring the dust of the earth in a cup
d. Putting the mountains of the earth unto a scale to weigh them
2. And the riddle is: Who does this? And the obvious answer is: Only God can operate on this level.
3. Isaiah is reminding us of who God is. The waters are so wild and so scary and so forbidding to us, and yet they are like a little puddle in the hand of God.
4. Is this an exaggeration? Can all the oceans and lakes and rivers be contained in the palm of God’s hand? Actually, it is an exaggeration. In truth, the whole universe could fit in His hand.
5. — This section bears a strong resemblance to God's words to Job. Job 38:5 “Who determined the measurements of the earth, Job? Or who stretched the measuring line upon it?” Apparently, it wasn’t just Job who needed to be asked these questions, it’s all of us!
B. Then there’s a second riddle in v.13a: “Who has measured the Spirit of the LORD?”
1. And the obvious answer is: No one. Proverbs 16:2 tell us that “The LORD weighs the spirit of man” but no man can weigh or measure the Spirit of the Lord. He’s just too big, and too weighty.
2. He is unlimited; He is beyond measuring. We can’t figure Him out.
3. The depth of the riches, wisdom & knowledge of God are unsearchable & inscrutable! -Rm.11:33
4. His ways and thoughts are as much higher than our ways and thoughts as the heavens are above the earth. (Isaiah 55:8-9)
C. A third riddle is found in v.13b-14. It is a series of six basically synonymous questions: What man shows Him his counsel? Whom did he consult? Who made him understand? Who taught him the path of justice (better translated “Who taught Him the right way to do things,” NRSV)? Who taught him knowledge? Who showed him the way of understanding?
1. Again, the obvious answer is no one. God doesn’t get His wisdom from anyone. He is absolutely wise. He knows everything Himself! Nobody teaches Him anything. He never had to go to school; He doesn’t need to read books or pick people’s brains. (Cf. Romans 11:34.)
2. Now people complain about God all this time, and people act like they know better than He does.
3. The arrogance necessary to conclude that God has messed up or doesn’t know what He’s doing is immense. But sadly, we are all guilty of it. Even the very righteous Job did.
a. That’s why God confronted Job: “Will you condemn me that you may be in the right?” (Job 40:8)
4. Likewise sometimes we think we know better than God. We don’t humbly accept what He tells us; we think He’s wrong. We trust ourselves more than we trust God.
5. That’s why it’s so important that we read and ponder passages like Job 38-41 and Isaiah 40:12-26 which put us in our place.
6. “Who are you, O man, to answer back to God? He is the potter and we are the clay. Will the pot say to the potter, “Why have you made me like this?” – Romans 9:20–21; Isaiah 64:8
D. Then Isaiah shifts from riddles to declarations which answer the riddles: v.15, 17 “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...17 All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.”
1. In v.15 & 17 Isaiah contrasts the greatness of God compared to the nations of mankind.
2. There is a reason why Isaiah talks about nations here.
a. For many years the bane of the Jews was living under the oppressive thumb of foreign nations.
b. At the time of Isaiah, foreign nations were definitely the big threat, especially Assyria and then Babylon. It was an age of empires, and Isaiah 1-39 is largely about the threat of the expanding empire of Assyria and the looming threat to Israel and Judah.
c. Just before Isaiah 40 is the story of Sennacherib, when God dramatically delivered Jerusalem from the Assyrians (37:36–37). And following that is the story of Hezekiah showing off the royal treasures, and God’s declaration that Jerusalem would fall to the Babylonians (39:6), who, after Assyria fell, became the next big threat to Judah.
d. But it wasn’t just the threat of nations which God wanted to minimize, it was the help of nations too. You see, throughout the book of Isaiah, Israel and Judah are constantly tempted, when faced with the threat of a rising empire, to turn to other nations for their help instead of turning to the Lord (e.g. Isaiah 30). And so God was eager to expose the smallness of nations as providing help to God’s people – in comparison to Him.
3. In order to illustrate the relative smallness of nations compared to God, Isaiah uses metaphors. In v.15 the nations are: 1) a drop of water, 2) dust on the scales, 3) fine dust, and in v.17, 4) nothing.
a. God wants us to know that even the most powerful nations are no match for God.
b. They are no threat at all. God can blow them away with one breath.
4. Then, in v.16, he illustrates this point with the example of the smallness of one nation...
E. 16 Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.
1. Lebanon was a small nation, but what was big about Lebanon was its vast forests full of cedar trees and abundant wildlife.
2. So Isaiah seems to be saying that God is so great that even the forests of Lebanon could not provide enough wood for a sacrifice worthy of God, nor could the plentiful numbers of animals in those forests provide enough flesh.
III. So, the basic message of this section of Isaiah 40 is that God is far greater even than the great nations of mankind.
A. And this is one of the chief themes of Isaiah’s prophecies.
1. Isaiah 52:7 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” This is the message: He reigns! Your God reigns!
2. It doesn't always look like it, but appearances can be deceiving.
3. The nations of the earth are as nothing compared to God.
B. This is also one of the great themes in Christ’s birth narrative.
1. You can sense it even in the words of Mary’s song in Luke 1:52 “He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.”
a. You see, Mary knows what the coming of the Messiah means. She knows the prophecy of Daniel, that the kingdoms of Babylon and Assyria and Greece and Rome would be followed by the coming of the Son of Man who would crush the other kingdoms and rule forever.
2. And then there’s Caesar Augustus, the most powerful man in the world at the time, but before God he is nothing but a servant.
a. The prophet Micah (5:2) said the messiah was to be born in Bethlehem. But Joseph and Mary were from Nazareth. And so God had to somehow get them to Bethlehem for the birth.
b. And the way He did so was through Caesar Augustus decreeing that everyone should return to the place of his family’s origin, so Jesus is born in the little town of Bethlehem.
c. “The king's heart is...in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He will.” – Proverbs 21:1
3. We can also see it in the involvement of evil, brutal Herod, who was so determined to kill Jesus that he had all the young children of the town killed.
a. But no one can stand against the hand of the Almighty. God sent the holy family to Egypt.
4. But God doesn’t always rescue His people like this, does He? There ARE times when God’s children are given over into the hands of the wicked! Jesus Himself was given over.
5. Yes! And when it finally WAS time to do so, He made it clear that He was willingly giving Himself over to their mistreatment.
a. “I lay down my life...No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” John10:17-18
b. “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” – Matthew 26:53
c. And then Peter prayed in Acts 4:27, “Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus...28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.”
6. And when God’s children suffer, it’s only with His permission and always for good reasons.
IV. Truly the nations are as nothing before Him. But this doesn’t just apply to nations.
A. If the nations are so small compared to God, what about our enemies, our problems, our troubles, our threats and dangers? If the nations are like a drop in the bucket, how large is my house, my problems, my health, my career or even my family?
B. Few of us have lived in the fear of being conquered by a foreign nation our land. Few of us have tasted of their danger, their malicious threats, their dominating power, their vicious cruelty. But all of us face dangers and fears and failures and weaknesses. If the nations are dust on the scales, how little must these things be?
C. I don’t want to minimize our problems: they’re real, they’re painful, they’re often overwhelming. It reminds me of the moon at night, which seems so bright in the dark sky. But when the sun comes up, you can hardly even see the moon anymore. So it is that some things in our lives seem fearsome and intimidating – UNTIL God comes into the picture. Then, all a sudden, they dim in comparison.
D. Imagine that you are surrounded by a violent, angry mob, focusing all their wrath on you. How would you feel? Probably terrified, right? But Jesus is so big that when a man named Stephen was surrounded by an angry mob of Christ’s enemies in Acts 7:54-60, he wasn’t terrified. In fact, he wasn’t even paying attention to his danger or to the angry mob who eventually stoned him. His attention was riveted on Jesus, whom He saw in heaven standing at the Father’s right hand. He said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”
E. When we see God, we need fear no man; we need fear no threat.
V. But there is another big point here we must not miss.
A. I said near the beginning that Isaiah is not changing the subject here, he’s just telling us about the Lord who He just promised is coming.
B. And what He says about this coming Lord is that He is so big that He holds all the waters on earth in the palm of His hand, and makes the nations look like nothing in comparison.
C. And He proved to be what Isaiah promised. He stilled storms, He ordered demons, He healed the sick, He raised people from the dead, He multiplied food, He shriveled trees, He guided great schools of fish into a net, He walked on water.
D. But perhaps the most startling this is this: that when this bigger-than-the-whole-world Lord God eventually did come, He came packaged into the form of a little baby! (And before that, a microscopic organism invisible to the human eye.)
E. I wonder if CS Lewis had been reading Isaiah 40 when he wrote in The Last Battle, the final Narnia book: “Once in our world, a Stable had something in it that was bigger than our whole world.”
F. In the world, people try to make themselves look big and powerful and important: like the wizard in The Wizard of Oz. But he wasn’t really so great and powerful. He was just an ordinary person.
G. Jesus, on the other hand, looked so small and insignificant – even though He was bigger than the whole world. He did not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street (Isaiah 42:1-3).
H. He never wrote a book, He had no real possessions, nor even a home. He never traveled more than 200 miles from the place where he was born. He did none of the things usually associated with greatness. He made Himself a servant of others. He died the death of a lowly criminal. And yet twenty centuries later, He is still bigger than the whole world. And all the armies that have ever marched, all the navies that have ever sailed, all the legislatures which have ever sat, all the kings who have ever reigned put together have not affected the life of mankind on earth as powerfully as He has. (One Solitary Life, Dr. James Allan © 1926.)
I. And He is just as real, and just as relevant, and just as large as when He lived on earth.
J. The world just doesn’t understand Christmas.
1. They don’t mind the special foods, the gift-giving, the gatherings or even much of the music.
2. But they hate the One born bigger than the whole world part.
K. The world loves it when Christ looks small and insignificant.
L. But it really doesn’t matter how things look. What matters is that what God says is always true. What matters is that Jesus, the Son of God, is bigger than all His enemies, demonic and human. What matters is that “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” (1John 4:4) What matters is that in this tumultuous world, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. (Heb.13:8) What matters is that there is nothing more certain than that the work Christ began, He will complete! What matters is that one day every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess that He is Lord! (Phil.2:9-11) What matters is that “The kingdom of the world will soon become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.” (Revelation 11:15)
M. The people of God need not fear the powerful of this world. The people of God AND the powerful of this world need to fear God, before whom we are all as nothing.