Isaiah 40:12-26

b. PERCEIVE THE NATURE OF THE LORD

TEXT: Isaiah 40:12-26

12

Who hath measured the water in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?

13

Who hath directed the Spirit of Jehovah, or being his counsellor hath taught him?

14

With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed to him the way of understanding?

15

Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are accounted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing.

16

And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt-offering.

17

All the nations are as nothing before him; they are accounted by him as less than nothing, and vanity.

18

To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him?

19

The image, a workman hath cast it, and the goldsmith overlayeth it with gold, and casteth for it silver chains.

20

He that is too impoverished for such an oblation chooseth a tree that will not rot; he seeketh unto him a skilful workman to set up a graven image, that shall not be moved.

21

Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?

22

It is he that sitteth above the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out of the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in;

23

that bringeth princes to nothing; that maketh the judges of the earth as vanity.

24

Yea, they have not been planted; yea, they have not been sown; yea, their stock hath not taken root in the earth: moreover he bloweth upon them, and they wither, and the whirlwind taketh them away as stubble.

25

To whom then will ye liken me, that I should be equal to him? saith the Holy One.

26

Lift up your eyes on high, and see who hath created these, that bringeth out their host by number; he calleth them all by name; by the greatness of his might, and for that he is strong in power, not one is lacking.

QUERIES

a.

What is meant by the mountains being weighed?

b.

What is the circle of the earth?

c.

What does God call by name?

PARAPHRASE

Who else has measured all the oceans, lakes and rivers in the infinite palm of His hand and measured off the heavens with His yardstick? Who else is able to measure the land of the earth in its proper one-third portion? Who else is able to weigh accurately the mountains and hills in the proportion needed upon the earth? Who regulated the Spirit of the Lord with rules or directions according to which all this was to be done? With whom did He consult? Who instructed Him how to create all this and who taught Him what to do with it? Who gave Him this omniscient understanding? Indeed, the great masses of people over whom the Lord rules are no more burden to Him than a drop in a bucket is a burden to the man who carries it and no more than a tiny speck of dust would tip the balance of a scale. Indeed, the islands and continents may be carried by Him as if they were an infinitesimal atom. All the wood of Lebanon's forests is not enough to provide a sacrificial fire, nor all Lebanon's animals enough to provide a sacrifice sufficient to His majesty. Compared to His greatness, the masses of humanity and the power of man's empires are as nothingas if they did not even exist.
To whom then will you compare God? Who or what resembles Him? Will you be so foolish as to liken God to one of your man-made images? These are made by men, in the likeness of man, from earthen metals and with man-made ornamentations. Even your poor people, who cannot afford gold and silver, will not be outdone in foolishness. They select a tree they think will not rot and hire skilled artisans to carve them an idol they think will be permanent. Why do you continually refuse to acknowledge who the real God is? Why do you continually refuse to listen to His prophets tell you who the real God is? It is not because you have not had the truth about God preached to you, is it? It is not because you have not been able to understand what His creative works say about Him, is it? What you have heard and what you have seen should have taught you that it is Jehovah who is enthroned upon the zenith of the earth and upholds His creation by His almighty power. Men and their idols are as weak and powerless as grasshoppers when compared to Him. He stretches out the heavens as easily as man would a curtain and makes a tent of all the heavens for His own dwelling place. He is the One who deposes princely rulers from their thrones, and brings down high and mighty human judges to nothingness. In fact, many of these pretended potentates scarcely come to power before Jehovah sees fit to remove them. Rulers are one moment upon the throne; the next they are gone like stubble in a whirlwind.
So, there is no one to whom you may compare Me, is there? There is nothing that is equal to Me, is there? Look up into the heavens! Understand that Jehovah is Creator of all the universe. He brought every single star into being and knows exactly how many stars there are. He has named every one of them and calls the roll like a military commander. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.

COMMENTS

Isaiah 40:12-17 SOVEREIGN CREATOR: If God's covenant people are to be strengthened (comforted) in order to fulfill their messianic destiny they must prepare themselves to receive God's coming to them in the flesh. This is announced in Isaiah 40:1-11. But they are not prepared. They have made for themselves gods of wood and metal. They do not know the God who speaks to them through the prophets because they have rejected His word for that of the mediums and the wizards (Isaiah 8:19). They think they know him. But they have compared Him to their idols and pronounced Him impotent, unable to carry out His promises (cf. Isaiah 5:18-20; Isaiah 29:15-16; Isaiah 48:1-5; Jeremiah 17:15, etc.). In fact, Isaiah's contemporaries have already told him they do not want to know the Holy One of Israel! (Isaiah 30:9-11).

It is interesting that Isaiah, attempting to prepare the people for the messianic destiny, does not spend his time in elaborate plans for organization, entertainment, chicken-dinners, welfare programs, singing, or emotion-packed stories. He preached a logical, reasonable sermon on the nature and character of God. Mankind is not going to be saved by human programs but by perceiving the Person of God (see Special Study, The Faith Once Delivered For All Time, Isaiah, Vol. II, pg. 250-257, College Press).

Who is the God whose coming the prophet has predicted? He is the Sovereign Creator. He has created the earth and its physical features in perfect proportion necessary to maintain the intricate balance of life. The fundamental principle of geophysics known as isostasy (equal weights) is announced in Isaiah 40:12. The waters of the earth's surface, the land-mass and the atmosphere were created with the preciseness necessary to cause the proper gravitational and hydrological functions to sustain life on this planet. The Hebrew word shalish is translated measure referring to the dust of the earth. and means literally a third. The surface of the earth consists of land and water. Land, the solid part, covers about 57,584,000 square miles, or about three tenths (⅓) of the earth's surface! Amazing! How did Isaiah know that the dust of the earth was a third 2700 years ago? The only accounting for it is that it was divinely revealed to him!

The God who is coming is not only omnipotent, He is omniscient. The verb translated directed in Isaiah 40:13 is the Hebrew tikken and may also be translated measured. He who has measured the creation cannot be measured by the creation. He is unmeasurable and unsearchable (cf. Job 5:9; Psalms 145:3; Isaiah 55:8-9; Romans 11:33).

Creation required infinite, supernatural knowledge. Look wherever he willinto the vastness of outer space or into the minuteness of biological space or into the labyrinthine space of human personalityman reaches limits to his knowledge. But God knows. This was demonstrated once for all in Jesus Christ who calmed the seas, raised the dead, cast out demons, read the minds of His disciples and enemies, and predicted the future behavior of men and women. God knowsbut no one taught God this knowledge, for no creature possesses such knowledge.

How did Isaiah come to such a lofty concept of God? Not by human speculation. One has only to read ancient literature of the Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks and Romans to understand that the great thinkers of history never reached such sublime heights as these in their speculations about origins and gods. Isaiah's knowledge of God came by revelation (Isaiah 64:4; 1 Corinthians 2:1-13).

Not only is Jehovah infinitely supreme to individuals, He is sovereign to andindependent of nations. Powerful world empires consolidate human wisdom, human power and natural resources, and seem to be able to exercise and execute the will of man in opposition to the will of God. World empires appear at times to have the power to usurp the sovereignty of God upon the earth. But compared to the power and wisdom of God they are as infinitesimal as a drop in a bucket. It is not that God has no concern for the nations. The Bible is His love letter to the world. But as far as their opposition to the fulfilling of His purposes, it is less than nothingvanity. His Being and His Sovereignty is not dependent upon them. They do not create HimHe creates them. He does not need them. If all creation were a temple, Lebanon an altar, its lordly woods the fire-wood, and its countless beasts the sacrifice, it would not be an offering sufficient to make Jehovah dependent upon man. If God were hungry He would not need to depend upon man (Psalms 50:3-15). If He needed a house He would not need to depend upon man (Isaiah 66:1-2).

Perhaps Christians today need this sermon of Isaiah! Perhaps we sometimes flirt with the same arrogance of the Jews of Isaiah's daythat God could not do without us! God is not dependent upon our goodness, our offerings, our wisdom, our buildings. It is we who need His goodness. We need to make offerings to Him. The Jews were not ready for God to come to them until they perceived this. No man is ready to receive God, His Son or His Spirit, until he perceives the same thing.

Isaiah 40:18-20 STUPID CREATURES: Since God is infinitely powerful, infinitely wise and unsearchable, it is sheer stupidity for the creature to attempt, in his finite limitations, to carve a likeness in wood or stone and think he has reproduced the totality of God. It is also sheer stupidity for men to devise political, ethical and philosophical systems and assume they have reproduced the totality of God, Man is limited to the experienced. God is beyond the experienced. The only possibility of man reaching beyond the experienced is that the Unexperienceable One shall reveal Himself in man's experience. This He did in Jesus Christ. God can create man in His imagebut man cannot create God in his image. Edward J. Young says it succinctly, Isaiah's question (Isaiah 40:18) brings us to the heart of genuine theism. There can be no comparison between the living, eternal God (-el) and any man, for man is but a creature. Man is limited, finite, temporal; God is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in all His attributes and perfections. In our thinking about God the infinite distance between God and the creature must ever be kept in mind. To break down this distinction is to fall into the sin of idolatry.

The Hebrew word pesel is translated image or graven image and is the thing Israel was forbidden to have in the Decalogue (Exodus 20:4). Moses was warned that God cannot be represented by any form (Deuteronomy 4:12-24). Men seem to have an insatiable desire to see some form of God (John 14:8-11), yet no one has ever seen Him (John 1:18; John 6:46; Colossians 1:15; 1 Timothy 1:17; 1 Timothy 6:16; Matthew 11:27; 1 John 4:20). Christians are to be conformed to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Colossians 3:10), but this does not mean the flesh and blood body of Jesus (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:49-50). It is therefore a dangerous practice to make statues and pictures of Jesus and depend upon them for our concept of the Son of God (besides the fact no one actually knows today the precise physical features of Jesus). It is the thinking and acting of Jesus we are to adore and recreate in usnot His human body. Perhaps this is why God saw fit to obliterate from history any exact description of Jesus. Perhaps this is why God has seen fit to erase any precise location of Jesus-' birth, home, etc., lest men be more tempted than they are to worship things and places rather than the Person.

The silliness of attempting to fashion a Creator out of that which is created is best exemplified by Isaiah 44:9-20. There the idol-maker cuts down a tree and with half he builds a fire and cooks his food and with the other half he makes himself a god. How ridiculous! It is a fundamental principle of life that men take on the character of that which they worship (Psalms 115:3-8; Hosea 9:10; Romans 1:18-32). Idolatry produces stupidity, degradation and death. Carving images of men and animals from wood and stone to adore and worship is not the only form of idolatry. Disobedience and rebellion against God's commands (1 Samuel 15:23) and covetousness (Colossians 3:5) are both forms of idolatry.

Even the poor people of Isaiah's day refused to be deprived of indulging in idolatry. They could not afford gold and silver so they had a craftsman carve them an idol from hard wood. Making of idols was taken seriously by those who worshipped them. Only the best craftsmen fashioned them lest the production be an unworthy representation of the god or goddess. They must be made substantially of endurable materials. The larger they were and the longer lasting, the more prestige and power the idols supposedly retained.

Isaiah 40:21-26 SENSIBLE CONSIDERATION: There are two sources from which these stupid people should have perceived the sovereignty of Jehovah and prepared for His comingthe word of God and the world of God. Isaiah's questions are rhetorical. Only one answer is possibleyes! Over and over, through His spokesmen (the patriarchs and the prophets), the existence and nature of the Creator was proclaimed to Israel. Day by day Israel could see the Creator in nature and providence. Have they heard? have they known? Yes! There is no excuse for their stupidity. They could not plead ignorance as the cause for their idolatry. Their sin is deliberate and in spite of their knowledge (see Special Study, Unbelief is Deliberate, Isaiah Vol. II, pg. 99, College Press).

The prophet implores his people to come back to a sensible consideration of the sovereignty of Jehovah based on more evidence from creation and history. One thing is certain from man's experienceman is not supernatural and omnipotent. Compared to the eternal, sovereign Jehovah, who sits enthroned upon the circle (zenith) of the earth, men are like grasshoppers. Get all the millions and millions of grasshoppers together and they cannot hold the world in its course, All the men of the world are like that. Some interpreters see in the word hkoog (circle) an indication that ancient people knew the world was round. Others think it merely means the highest part of the horizon or the zenith. God is pictured as sitting over the highest part of the earth to watch over His creation. The emphasis of the context is on comparing the power of God and the weakness of man. God also stretched out the heavens as effortlessly and quickly as a man in Isaiah's day would stretch out a curtain. These vast, endless, majestic heavens are His dwelling place. Light travels at approximately 186,000 miles per second. The estimated distance to the extent of the known universe is 6,000,000 light years! Multiply the number of seconds in a year by six million and you get the estimate of the known universe. But there are areas beyond that!

Proud, haughty, presumptuous human potentates and rulers strut through history pretending they rule the earth. But it is Jehovah who gives and takes away (cf. Daniel 2:20-23; Jeremiah 27:5-11; Isaiah 45:1-7). God plants and sows and lets them take root only as long as He wishes. Some men scarcely are sown and hardly take root before He takes them away like the whirlwind takes chaff away. All flesh is like grass (1 Peter 1:24-25). -Our years are soon gone and we fly away (cf. Psalms 90:9-10; Matthew 6:27; James 4:13-17), but God is forever.

The prophet repeats his challenge. There is no being to whom one may liken Jehovah. No one in all His creation is His equal. He is the Incomparable One. He has created the stars and planets. He knows how many there are and has a name for each of them. Man cannot even count the stars, let alone create one. Someone has pointed out that while God formed other animals to look downwards for pasture and prey, he made man alone erect, and told him to look at what may be regarded as his own habitation, the starry heavens. When man seriously contemplates the heavens he is pointed to the Creator (Psalms 19:1-6). Charles A. Lindbergh was 25 years old when he took off from Roosevelt Field, New York, at 7:52 a.m. on May 20, 1927. After more than 3600 miles and 33½ hours, he landed at LeBourget Field near Paris, France. When he had flown his trusted plane, Spirit of St. Louis, midway on its transatlantic flight he began to think of the smallness of man and the deficiency of his devices, and the greatness and marvels of God's universe. He mused, It's hard to be an agnostic here in the -Spirit of St. Louis-' when so aware of the frailty of man's devices. If one dies, all God's creation goes on existing in a plan so perfectly balanced, so wondrously simple and yet so incredibly complex that it is beyond our comprehension. There's the infinite detail, and man's consciousness of it alla world audience to what, if not to God.

QUIZ

1.

Why must Isaiah's people know about the nature of God?

2.

How does Isaiah proceed to bring the people to this knowledge?

3.

What is interesting about Isaiah's statement about the dust of the earth having been measured by God?

4.

How did Isaiah come to such a lofty concept of God?

5.

What can Christians learn from this emphasis on the nature of God?

6.

Why is making graven images stupid?

7.

What other forms of idolatry are there?

8.

Why should the contemplation of the heavens point man to God?