Behold Your God - [Isaiah 40:12-31]

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I don't know about you all, but I find myself... You're not supposed to do this.
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I find myself looking up medical information on the Internet. You are really not supposed to do that.
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That's what my doctor tells me all the time. And then he can't answer my questions, so I go to the Internet. So I looked up the other day, what do doctors suggest that I do about anger?
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How do I manage my anger? What are some things that would be helpful in managing my anger? And I thought, well, the
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Mayo Clinic is a good source of medical information. Went to their website. Here are some of their tips here.
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Ten tips to tame your temper. Now that sounds like it could be a sermon at a lot of churches.
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Let me give you these ten tips to tame your temper. In fact, that's probably a three -part series. Ten tips.
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It's a lot. Number one. Think before you speak. Now, is there anything wrong with that?
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I tell people to do that all the time. And it doesn't just have to do with temper. It has to do with if you want to live peaceably with your wife or your husband, think before you speak, right?
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Number two. I like this one. Once you're calm, express your anger.
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I don't get that. Number three is helpful. Get some exercise. I mean, there's motivation for you.
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One more set, because I'm mad. Number four. Take a time out. It's not just for kids anymore.
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Give yourself a time out. Go stand in the corner. I don't know how you do that exactly. Number five.
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Identify possible solutions. Okay. Number six.
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Stick with I statements. You don't want to criticize or place blame, which might only increase tension.
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So you say things like, I'm upset that you left the table without offering to help with the dishes, instead of, you never do any housework.
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I don't know if that helps. Number seven. Don't hold a grudge. I think that's also helpful.
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I mean, I'm thinking about Ephesians 4 .32, right? You want to forgive, even as God and Christ Jesus has forgiven you.
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Number eight. Use humor to release tension.
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Number nine. Practice relaxation skills. I'm mad, so I'm going to meditate or something.
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I don't know. Number ten. Know when to seek help. Well, that's why I came here in the first place.
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A lot of help you guys are. We're going to be looking, though, at this topic in a different respect.
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You know, what happens? Have you ever heard this? And we'll get to the sermon proper in a moment.
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But if you ever heard something like this, I'm angry with God. I've heard that from Christians.
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I mean, when I hear from unbelievers, I'm not surprised because I'm like, well, if you only knew how angry he is with you, you wouldn't really worry about how angry you are with him.
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Believers say that sometimes. Pastor, can you help me? I'm angry with God.
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Oh, I can help you. And we're going to get some help this morning, I hope. Isaiah chapter 40, verses 12 to 31.
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Long passage. Long sermon. Buckle in.
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That's all I can say. Isaiah 40, verses 12 to 31. 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?
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Who has measured the spirit of the Lord or what man shows his counsel?
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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?
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Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are accounted as the dust on the scales.
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Behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust. Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.
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All the nations are as nothing before him. They are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.
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To whom then will you liken God or what likeness compare with him?
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An idol? A craftsman casts it and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts for it silver chains.
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He who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will not rot.
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He seeks out a skillful craftsman to set up an idol that will not move. Do you not know?
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Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
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It is he who sits above the circle of the earth and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to dwell in, who brings princes to nothing and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.
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Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth when he blows on them and they wither and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
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To whom then will you compare me? That I should be like him, says the
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Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see. Who created these?
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Who brings out their hosts by number, calling them all by name? By the greatness of his might, because he is strong in power, not one is missing.
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Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, my way is hidden from the
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Lord and my right is disregarded by my God? Have you not known?
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Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth.
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He does not faint or grow weary. His understanding is unsearchable.
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He gives power to the faint and to him who has no might, he increases strength.
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Even youths shall faint and be weary and young men shall fall exhausted.
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But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.
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They shall mound up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary.
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They shall walk and not faint. Several weeks ago, we looked at the first 11 verses of chapter 40.
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And then we had a COVID intermission. The first 11 verses answer this question.
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Does God care enough about his people to act on their behalf? Of course the answer is yes.
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We saw that because of King Hezekiah's disobedience, because he showed all of his treasures, opened up the vault, as it were, to the representatives of the king of Babylon, the prophet
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Isaiah in chapter 40 is told to write by God of comfort. Comfort my people.
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Why? Things were going great in Israel except for this little thing here in Judah, I should say.
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Why do they need comfort? Because this talks about a future time when Judah would be carried away, would be conquered and then taken off into captivity by Babylon.
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It's called the Babylonian captivity. If you recall, we broke it up this way.
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The first two verses, the promise of forgiveness. Verses three to five, the promise of redemption to be ultimately redeemed by Christ.
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Verses six to eight, the power behind the promises. We talked about the transitory nature of mankind and the eternal nature of God.
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And then finally nine through 11, the person behind the promises. Again, does
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God care enough about his people to act on their behalf? The answer is emphatically yes.
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Verses 12 to 31 answer this question. If he cares enough about his people and he does to act on their behalf, the second question is, is
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God able to act on their behalf? Does God have the capacity to act on their behalf?
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So this morning we have four truths from our text that will help us focus on Christ in times of anxiousness and stress, in times of even anger at our circumstances.
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Just as Yahweh is presented in this passage, the way he's presented in this passage would run against the understanding of what
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God was in the ancient world or what a God was in the ancient world. So what does today?
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What do people think about Jesus when they think about him? He is only loving and kind and nice and all these kinds of things, but he's not powerful.
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This passage shows the power of the eternal God. Our first truth,
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Yahweh is sovereign, the covenant -keeping God of Israel. That's what
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Yahweh is, Yod -Heh -Vav -Heh, the Tetragrammaton, which is the four letters in Hebrew that represent the name of God, Yahweh.
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Yahweh is sovereign over the cosmos. He's sovereign over the universe.
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He's sovereign over space, in other words. And we have a few omnis here. In fact, if I had a word,
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I don't have one for justice, I'd have four omnis here, but we have three omnis.
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They're kind of sub -points. First, he's omnipresent, omnipresent.
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Verse 12, Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span?
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Isaiah wants us to understand here if we consider the vastness of the ocean, if we consider the vastness of space, what is that to God?
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God literally measures the oceans. He measures the heavens.
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How do we know that? It says that right there. It says he measures the waters in the hollow of his hand.
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How much water can you put in the hollow of your hand? Not very much.
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I mean, the hollow of your hand is just, when you cup it, what's there? And I don't know, what is that, an ounce? Two ounces, three ounces?
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It isn't very much, but the question here is, who has measured the waters, the seas, the oceans, all of it, in his hand?
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That's God. What is a span? A span is from the tip of your small finger here, your pinky finger, to the tip of your thumb.
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So it's, you know, I mean, if you're, who is like Dr. J, somebody like that, it's probably like 15 inches.
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I mean, for me, you know, for most of us, it's probably seven or eight inches, or a little bit less.
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How would you measure off the universe by the span of your hand? Well, for God, that's easy.
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He's vast. He's beyond measure. And he's able to do that with ease.
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There is nothing so vast or great as to exceed the presence of Yahweh.
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He knows it intimately because he created it all. He set it out there, and he fills all of space.
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There's no place that we can go to free, or, to free, to flee from the presence of God.
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There is nowhere you can be, and here's the comforting part, there's nowhere you can be that God cannot help you.
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He's everywhere. He's also omnipotent. Again, look at verse 12.
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Who has enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?
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The impression we have here is of his strength, of his power, of his omnipotence, as I say here.
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The idea that he can gather all the dirt of the earth, put it all together and weigh it.
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That he can put all the mountains or the hills on a scale and weigh them. I mean,
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I'm mindful when I read this, of the New Testament where it says, if God is for us, who can be against us?
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That kind of power. But it doesn't stop there. Isaiah goes on, says he's omniscient.
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He knows everything. And these truths just overlap. They're all true, and they sort of play upon one another.
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How can he do this if he doesn't do this? He has to know everything. He has to be all -powerful to know everything. He has to be, etc.
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He has to be everywhere so that he can know everything, so that he can... But listen to verse 13.
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Who has measured the spirit of the Lord, or what man shows him his counsel?
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In other words, this gets into who can know the mind of God, right? This is 1
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Corinthians 12 territory. Who knows the mind of God other than the spirit of God?
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And the answer is no one. Who can plumb the depths of the knowledge of God?
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And the answer is no one. And I love this part. Or what man shows him counsel? Who shows up and teaches
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God? The answer is no one. And obviously, these are rhetorical questions, questions that are asked, and then the response is just no.
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We know the answer to this. Who can do these things? Well, only God can. And if I had a word for it, and I'm sure there is one.
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Somebody will send me an email and tell me about it. But the fourth one would be, he's all just.
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He's omnijust. Look at verse 14. Whom did he consult?
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And who made him understand? Who taught him the path of justice? And taught him knowledge?
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And showed him the way of understanding? Again, more rhetorical questions.
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But I mean, I like that idea of maybe even of God hiring consultants.
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You know, church consultants are a big deal these days. You pay consultants to tell you what to do. But like Judah, we often find ourselves thinking that life isn't fair.
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And for us, maybe we haven't been captured, hauled off to Babylon.
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But that doesn't stop us from time to time from feeling sorry for ourselves. And the core of this verse is this.
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God brings about justice. It may not be in a time frame that we like.
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It may not be delivered to us in a way that we like. It may not be up to our standard. It may not give us satisfaction in this lifetime.
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But Yahweh will give his people justice. It says that right there. Who's taught him the path of justice?
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In other words, who was it that instructed God about what is right and what is wrong?
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And the answer is nobody. Now, there are a lot of discussions these days about justice, particularly about social justice.
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Well, who sets the standards for that? Who decides what is fair? And I can promise you this.
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It won't resemble anything like divine justice. It won't be colorblind.
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It won't be impartial. It won't be apolitical. In other words, it won't be justice.
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But we can trust God. God always does exactly what is right and exactly what is right at the right time.
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So, first of all, Yahweh is sovereign over the cosmos. He's sovereign over the entire universe.
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He has the knowledge, the power, and he'll do what's right.
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Secondly, second truth, Yahweh is sovereign over the nations. Sovereign over the nations.
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Because all the nations of the world, their power is insignificant. Look at verse 15.
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Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are accounted as the dust on the scales.
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Behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust. Now, if you're carrying a bucket of water, you've just gone to a well and you threw that bucket down in there and you hauled it up.
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And you're taking it back to the house. You know, like back in the old days. Now we just turn on the tap. But you're carrying that bucket.
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And as you're walking, a drop comes out. One drop. Do you go, oh,
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I've got to go back to the well? You probably don't even notice it. And that's the picture here.
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The nations are like a drop from a bucket. God's got all the nations in a bucket. And as it were, actually, he's got everything in a bucket.
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But a drop comes out. That is like the nations. In other words, they're insignificant to him.
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If all the armies of all the nations were lined up against God, and they might be one day, it would be as much of a threat to him.
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It would be as much of a concern to him as if you were carrying that bucket and a drop of water fell out.
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God is able to pick up entire nations, entire continents with ease.
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In fact, that's what the text says here. It says, are accounted as dust on the scales. In other words, that's just the leftover after you measure something.
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But look what it says there. Behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust.
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That is to say, the coastlands, which would, the picture here is he can go from the center of a continent to the very edge of the continent and just pick it up like it's nothing.
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Again, talking about his power, his sovereignty. We look at the world situation sometimes, and I do too.
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We fret about it. God is sovereign over the nations.
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He's completely in control. He sets up kings. He takes them down. He installs presidents.
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He takes them down. Talking about the nations, their resources are insignificant.
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Look at verse 16. Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.
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We read that and we go, what in the world? What does that mean? Unless you have some of the authorized notes or you have the
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Reformation Study Bible, either one. And you would understand this, that Lebanon was renowned for its trees.
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So if you were to light all of Lebanon on fire, that's the picture.
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And it says, would not suffice for fuel. Wouldn't be enough of an offering.
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Nor are its beasts. If you could take all the animals throughout Lebanon and sacrifice them, that wouldn't be a sufficient burnt offering for God.
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In other words, it would be insignificant to Him. The picture is this, that God's sense of justice,
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His wrath could not be appeased by burning all the cedars of Lebanon or offering all its animals.
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No religious offering by pagan nations or by false religions can ever please the
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Holy One. One commentator, Mottyer says this, he says, there is no way in which the earth can provide the kind of worship
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Yahweh truly deserves. If He is to be appeased for the sins of men, in other words, if His wrath is to be assuaged,
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He Himself will have to provide the means. That's a foreshadowing. All the things of the earth, all the things of creation are not enough to pay for sin.
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The only thing that can is God Himself. Back to the nations.
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Their existence is insignificant. Verse 17, all the nations are as nothing before Him.
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You get the idea that they're not very important. They are accounted by Him as less than nothing and emptiness.
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That goes back to the kind of emptiness and void creation language of Genesis 1.
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The earth was formless and void. That's the same kind of idea here. Compared to the eternal
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Creator, compared to Yahweh, compared to the Lord Jesus Christ, they are null and void.
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He is able to destroy them. Our hope cannot be in our nation even.
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Our hope cannot be in our leaders. This idea back then was very radical.
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Why? Because it wasn't just... It's hard for us to completely wrap our heads around it.
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We see it a little bit more in the Middle East where Islam has such a hold. But all the nations had their own gods.
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And so you prove the might of your God by doing what? By conquering other nations.
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That's how you show that your God was greater than their God. Think about it this way if we just put it in modern terms.
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How many religions are there today? I looked it up because it's fun to look things up. There are more than 4 ,000 religions.
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And if you just take Hinduism into account, there's a lot more than 4 ,000 gods.
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It means there are 3 ,999 plus false religions and one true religion.
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And there are probably tens of thousands, if not more, of false gods.
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And I hate it. I don't know about you, but I hate it when people, it's usually politicians, when they get together and they start talking about the great religions of the world.
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Right? There are several great religions of the world. The Bible is, from front to back, a refutation of the idea that there are great religions.
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There is one true religion and many, many false religions. But you can't really say that.
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Greetings today. I'm here to talk about the true religion and all the false religions. If a politician said that, he'd be smoked.
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I'm talking about the nations and how God is sovereign over them. And he's also sovereign over their gods.
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Look at verses 18 to 20. Ultimately, there is no other god.
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And that's the point he's making here. Listen to 18 through 20. He seeks out a skillful craftsman to set up an idol that will not move.
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What Scott was reading earlier, he read about Ashtaroth. And I don't care if it's Baal or Ashtaroth or Buddha or any idol, including any image, listen, of God, of Jesus, of Mary, of Joseph, or any so -called...
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I like this term because if you've ever taken a class with me and I get up on the whiteboard, I like to draw something and then
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I just go artist rendering because I can't draw a lick. People make these renderings of gods and then they worship them.
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And I don't care what it is. We ought not to do it. Let me just read.
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I mean, let me just read from the Ten Commandments here. God says this in Exodus 20, verses 3 and 4.
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You shall have no other gods before me. What does that mean? It means don't worship any other god.
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Verse 4, you shall not make for yourself. I mean, listen to this and then think about the passage we're studying.
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A carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.
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You shall not bow down to them or serve them for I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous
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God. In Romans 1, what does he say? He says they worship the creation rather than their creator.
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This is what mankind does sadly. People say, well, you know what? I just want that picture or that little statue to remind me to pray to God.
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Okay. Over and over again. Don't do that. Don't do that.
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Don't do that. Well, why not? Because that's not who God is. But back in our text, it would be funny if it weren't blasphemous.
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He talks, Isaiah talks about this whole process of making a god. If you've got some kind of money, then you go to a craftsman and you say, make me something out of metal and then you take it to another craftsman, you know, an image of some god and then you go to another craftsman and he overlays it with gold.
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So you've got a fine gold statue and for some reason I keep thinking of Indiana Jones and wanting to, you know, grab it and take it off the thing.
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But if you don't have that much money, what do you do? You pick out a really nice piece of wood for yourself, something that won't rot.
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I don't know what that would be right off the top of my head because I don't know that much about wood. But pick yourself a really nice piece of wood and then you go to a carpenter and you say, you know, craft me such and such an image.
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But it's interesting right here in verse 20, he says, he who is too impoverished, if you're too poor to get a really nice one, then you seek up a skilled craftsman to set up an idol that will not move.
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And the idea is not just will not move, but will not fall over, right?
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You can't have a god that's really powerful and everything and then just falls over all the time.
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It's got to be rightly balanced. So maybe even fix chains on it to keep it upright. I mean, that was the big shame for the
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Philistines when Dagon, their god, just winds up face down and then he gets his limbs and everything cut off.
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The first sign of weakness was falling down. The point is, how can any god, anything made out of stone or metal or wood, be equal to the god who has no beginning and no end?
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It's absurd. Here, take this piece of wood that the eternal god created and make me a god to worship out of it.
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Here, take this stone and carve out a god for me to worship. Take this piece of metal and fashion it into a god.
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It's bizarre. You know, in sports there's this idea, you know, people like to talk trash in sports.
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I don't know if you know that. And here in New England, sometimes we do that. At least we used to until Brady moved.
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But, you know, people could say whatever they wanted about the
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Patriots, right? And what do we say? Scoreboard. Check out the championships, right?
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That's all that counts. Scoreboard. I've been thinking about this and I think, you know, some people, the big buzzword now is,
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I love those, I hate those bumper stickers, they say co -exist. And I'm like, here,
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I have one that I'd like to see. How about this one? Self -exist. Right? What god self -exists?
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There's one. There's one god who has always existed. All the others are creations.
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It's like Romans 1, again. We make these things that represent creation and then we fall down and worship them.
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It's folly. Self -exist.
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Yahweh is sovereign over the cosmos. Secondly, He's sovereign over the nations. Thirdly, Yahweh is the sovereign creator.
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I mean, that truth runs throughout all this. But He's the sovereign creator. God is universally known, at least to all the
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Jews, all the Judahites. That's hard to say. I want to say all the
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Israelites, but it's just the southern half of the kingdom. But God is universally known. Look at verse 21.
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Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning?
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Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? As a Jew, what's the answer to all these questions?
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It's yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. Yes, they know all these things. From the time of Moses, everyone's been taught about Adam.
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Everyone's been taught about how God created everything and then breathed life into Adam.
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But when trials come, when the pressure's on, do they turn to Him?
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Do you turn to Him? What's the way that we handle things? Is it Christ -reliance, or is it self -reliance, or self -pity?
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Is it complaining? Everybody knows about God. We all know about God.
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Do we turn to Him? God is also transcendent.
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Verses 22 to 24, it is. He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like, listen to the way
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He describes this, like grasshoppers. We are tiny, little, insignificant beings down here.
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Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain. Space, all of space.
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Imagine just that, those curtains right there. God just goes, yeah, I'll close that, I'll open that. That's the picture.
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Spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. Who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.
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Scarcely are they planted. Scarcely sown. Scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth when
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He blows on them and they wither. This is like Psalm 1 language. Stubble, just blown away.
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These rulers of the earth, they seem impressive. But they're like plants. They just have a short lifespan.
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They're planted, they're sown, and they just barely take root when He, God, blows on them.
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They wither, they dry up, they die, and they blow away. The contrast between God who treats the heavens as a fabric to be arranged as He desires, and even the most powerful men is stark.
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Our lives are a vapor, a mist, a puff of smoke compared to God who has no end and no beginning.
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God is also, I call it the shepherd of the stars, because this is a fascinating picture here in verses 25 and 26.
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To whom then will you compare me? Again, there's no one like God. To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like Him, says the
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Holy One. I mean Holy One, constant theme throughout
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Isaiah. But look at verse 26. Lift your eyes on high and see who created these.
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He says, look up at the stars. Look up at those things. Look up at those glorious stars up in the heavens.
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He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of His might, and because He is strong in power, not one is missing.
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Listen, in the ancient world, and by the way, some today worship the stars. Isaiah says the stars are created by God, right?
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This is always the case. Worship the creation, not the creator.
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Everybody's got it backwards. But he mocks that idea of worshiping them.
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It's like the way he talks about these stars, they're like, I mean, I want to say a pack of dogs because I like dogs.
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But it really is more like a herd of sheep. He knows them intimately.
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He names them. And maybe more like dogs than sheep. He can put them in place and keep them in place.
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I don't know if sheep would really do that. I just like dogs. But stars are not powerful.
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The shepherd of the stars, the keeper of the stars, He is powerful. They depend on Him.
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He depends on nothing. Yahweh is sovereign over the cosmos. Yahweh is sovereign over the nations.
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Third, Yahweh is the sovereign creator. And fourth, Yahweh is the sovereign deliverer.
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The sovereign deliverer. And in verse 27 to 31,
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Isaiah anticipates the complaints of Judah. They're in Babylon. They're not happy about it.
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They want delivery. And the prophet refutes their complaint. Their first complaint is that Yahweh does not care.
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Verse 27. Now, the tenses of say and speak indicate that Judah's accusations are not a one -time sin, but that they are uttering over and over and over again these complaints.
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Again, in the text, it says, Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak,
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O Israel? Well, this is Judah that's captured the southern kingdom. So why does he use those terms? It's to remind.
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This is the prophet speaking to people and really chastising them. It's to remind them of the covenant relationship they have with Yahweh.
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Right? The covenant was made with Abram, Abraham, and through him to Jacob and through him to all of Israel.
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So why do my covenant people speak about me this way?
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And they make some very specific accusations. Number one, just a couple of them.
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My way is hidden. My way, you know, I thought, I used to think this way, that it referred to the path or whatever, and it has nothing to do with that.
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It's just that God is not noticing their plight. He's not noticing the difficulty that they're in, as if he's indifferent to it.
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So that's charge number one. Charge number two, my right is being disregarded and noticed also by my
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God. In other words, he's blaming the covenant -keeping God for not delivering him, them.
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The people of Judah are charging Yahweh with failing to live up to his promises, which is a little bit ironic because why are they in Babylon in the first place?
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Because they didn't keep their end of the bargain. And again, you know, as I said in the beginning, if we think about,
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I just, I have to like, I probably have extra wrinkles when
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I hear people say, I'm angry with God, or even I'm a little bit angry with God right now.
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Pastor, can you help me? In light of what you deserve, right?
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In light of what we all deserve, we deserve hell. And when we run into difficulty in this life, we go,
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I've been thinking a lot about this life here lately. And I think if we understood fully,
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I said this at the service, the graveside service the other day, if we understood how temporary, how momentary this life is, there are a lot of verses that give us the idea of, the idea that we are already in some sense in heaven.
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Well, why is that? Because when scripture says this life is a vapor, it means this, what we think is just interminable.
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It just goes on forever. I can remember being a kid in school years, just seemed like they lasted like 30 years, right?
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In light of eternity, this is the snap of a finger. This is nothing.
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And look at how the prophet addresses them. They're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness when they complain about God.
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Verse 28, have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting
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God, right? No end to him, no beginning to him.
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He's outside of time altogether. The creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary.
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His understanding is unsearchable. And here's the idea. We talk about the self existence.
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Well, what does that mean? We're going to see more of this here in a second. The idea is that he lacks for nothing.
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He cannot have less energy than he has. He can't grow tired. He can't run out of energy again,
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I'll just say. But the Judaites knew this. They knew that he was eternal, self existing, the creator, just like we know it.
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Does that stop us from complaining? No. Why is that?
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Because blame shifting comes naturally to us, right? We inherited it, we could say.
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It's not our fault that we complain. Thank you for understanding that.
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It's Adam's fault, right? He blamed Eve. It's Eve's fault. She blamed the serpent. The serpent didn't blame anybody.
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It's pretty hard to wallow in self pity when you're focused on the almighty
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God. When you're thinking about what Christ has done for you, it's hard to wallow in self pity. Because you'll immediately know that you deserve worse than the situation that you're in.
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I'm sure that somebody was in Babylon saying, well, it could be worse. And it could have been.
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We need to acknowledge our reliance on the God who saves. Again, back to the text.
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Verse 29. He gives power to the faint. And to him who has no might, he increases strength.
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Even youth shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted.
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But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles.
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They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not be faint. What does that mean?
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What does that mean? How about this? How about if you acknowledge your weakness, if you come to him in humility, he will give you the grace that you need.
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He will give you the strength. If you just say to him, I am weak and you are strong.
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I'm a sinner. Help me. It reminds me of Matthew 11, verses 28 to 30.
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I could think of no better verse here to really exemplify that in terms of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Come to me, all who are heavy or who labor and are heavy laden.
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And I will give you what? 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.
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For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Jesus is sufficient.
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And I think the closer that we get to death, the more we realize the truths of this.
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You know, do our lives, I mean, when I say it goes like that, do our lives matter? Absolutely. Because we have to believe in this lifetime.
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But more than that, we have God -given responsibilities to carry out. But as we get close to glory, those responsibilities are lifted from us and heaven beckons.
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When our physical frame gives out, our spiritual shape will be better than ever. Just thinking about, you know,
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Pastor Bob in that hospital bed, and I can promise you, just like all the people that I've been near when they were near death, if they left the
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Lord Jesus Christ, the anticipation, you know, they could have been in pain, and I'm sure many of them were, certainly discomfort.
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They knew their bodies were giving out. If I could ask
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Pastor Bob, how are you doing, Bob? And he might have said, not as good as I will be tomorrow.
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What does it mean to wait for the Lord? It means complete dependence on him, complete trust in him.
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We can't be swept up in the emotions of the moment or during a trial complain.
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But we need to think about it and just understand, even embrace it. Knowing that Jesus loves us and is working through this for our good and for his glory.
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It's often hard for us to see that, right? If you are tempted to say, my way is hidden from the
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Lord. The justice, do me, is not happening right now.
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My suggestion is, think before you speak. Take your time out.
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Don't use humor. But if you're angry with God, if you're upset over your circumstances, if you're disappointed by your circumstances, here's what we need to always keep in mind.
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For today, for tomorrow, for every single moment of our lives, our greatest problem is sin.
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And that's been dealt with in Jesus Christ. Because he, being the second person of the
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Trinity, took on a body of flesh, fully obeyed the law, went to the cross an innocent sin bearer, paid the full price for sin of all believers, and then was raised on the third day.
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Every believer should have one response to their circumstances. I don't know why this is happening, but I trust the sovereign
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God of the universe, who, though I sin greatly against him, has forgiven me all my sins and trespasses and has promised me eternity with Christ.
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If we can think about that, the remaining troubles in this life, even though they're difficult, even though they're painful, they're really small.
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And friends, if you're here this morning and you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ, if you've not trusted in him alone for salvation,
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I would encourage you to talk to me, to talk to an elder, to talk to a deacon.
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Actually, just talk to anybody here, because anyone here who knows Christ should be able to tell you about him.
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Let's pray. Father in heaven, we are, as the songwriter said, prone to wander, prone to forget the blessings that are ours in Christ Jesus, prone to think more of ourselves than we ought to.
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Forgive us those things. Time and time again, let us go to passages like Isaiah chapter 40 and remind ourselves of who you are, of what you are capable of, of what you have promised us, what you have secured for us in Christ Jesus.
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Let us not veer to the left or the right, but let us look fully straight on to glory and to the glory that awaits us, not because of what we have done, but because of Christ alone.