Let us turn once again to Isaiah
chapter 40. The title of the message this
evening is Behold Your God. The prophet Isaiah was commanded
in these first two verses to comfort God's people, to comfort
them with this truth, your warfare is accomplished, your iniquity
is pardoned. Then in verses three through
11, we read of the coming and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. First, his forerunner, John the
Baptist, the voice, of him crying in the wilderness. And then the
coming, as we read in verse 10, the Lord God will come. Behold,
the Lord God will come with strong hand. In the incarnation, that is when
Jesus Christ was born now over 2,000 years ago, that's exactly
what happened. The Lord, our God, came. He came into this world as a
man and the scripture says the word, the eternal word of God,
the eternal son of God was made flesh and dwelt among us. And
the apostle Paul in Colossians tells us that in him, that is
in the man, Christ Jesus dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead
bodily. He would and did come. He came
in power. And yet at the same time, we
saw that he came with the tenderness of a shepherd. He would gather
the lambs to his bosom and carry them in his arms. He was given
his people as his sheep and he is charged to come and save them
and not to lose one of them. Now the next verse is beginning
tonight with verse 12. speak about God who came. The scripture says that God shall
come, the Lord God shall come, but these verses tell us about
our God who did come. Some might ask this question,
is he competent? Is he competent for the work
which he came to do? This one, is he competent for
this work? For instance, in Daniel chapter
9 and verse 24, we are told these three things about the work which
he came to do. He came to make an end of sins.
Is that an easy job? To make an end of sins? To take
the sins of his people away? He came to make reconciliation
for iniquity. That is, he came into this world
to reconcile us unto God. We were enmity with God by nature,
and he came to reconcile us unto God. God was in Christ reconciling
the world unto himself. We have peace with God. Romans
8 in verse 1, therefore being justified by faith, Romans 5
in verse 1, therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with
God. We who were enmity with God,
we have peace. He came to do that, to reconcile
us unto God, and also he came to bring in an everlasting righteousness,
a righteousness that God will accept, a righteousness which
is imputed unto everyone who believes, and in that righteousness,
we may approach and stand before the thrice holy God and be accepted
in the beloved. Is he competent, this God who
should come? Well, the next verses we read
about this God who came. Behold your God. First, and I
have three divisions to my message, First, these facts about God
who came. First of all, his power, his
power. Notice in verse 12. Who hath
measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, meted out heaven
with a span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure,
and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? His power, in showing His power,
God who came, in showing His power, we have these, they're
called anthropomorphisms. That is, attributing to God these
characteristics of men. We read about His hand, His arm,
His fingers. Now, God doesn't have a hand
like We think of a bodily hand because God is spirit, but yet
he uses these symbols that we're all familiar with, our hand and
our arm, the span of an arm, and also the fingers. He uses these to show us the
power of God who came. First of all, his hand. How much water could you hold
in the hollow of your hand? How many ounces? Not many. Not many. But you see, God who
came, He holds all the waters of the oceans, the salt water,
the fresh water, all the waters. His hand is sufficient to hold
all the waters in His hand. And then his arm. You know, they
use the arm as a measurement. The arm span. They use the hand. That was one means of measurement.
But the arm. And God's arm. How long is his
arm? How powerful is his arm? Well, the scripture here says
he stretched out. He meted out to heaven with a
span. Just like you might measure out,
if you were ladies making a dress, I've seen my wife and my mother
do this, but when they were sewing, they would measure out a yard. They'd go to the store and ask
for a yard of this material, and they'd run it through that
machine, you know, and measure out a yard. We think about God. How strong is he? How much power
does he have? It is declared unto us here that
He has an arm to measure the span of heaven itself, the universe,
everything that is created. God has created all things that
are. Nothing was here. or nothing existed, I should
say, except God. Now, I use the word time because
that's the only thing I can think of, but there was a time, if
we can use that word, an eternity when nothing existed. No man,
no world, no universe, nothing but God. He dwelt in solitary
And he needed nothing. And we'll see that again in just
a moment. And then his fingers. If you have a marginal reading
in your Bible, you notice it says, and comprehended the dust
of the earth in a measure. And in the margin, it says a
trice. And from what I've read, literally,
as you could pick up with your thumb and two fingers, how much
dirt could you pick up? How much? Not very much, right?
All the earth, all the dirt in the universe, God can pick up
with his two fingers and a thumb, his thumb. This is all just showing
the power of God, the one who came. Is he sufficient for this
work to make an end of sin? The power And he might move mountains
as easy, mountains and hills as easy as a person. You go to
the store to buy something, you get some produce and put it in
a bag and put it over there on the scale and see if it's a pound
or pound and a half. God can measure, he can weigh
all the mountains, all the hills that exist. Just as easy as you
could weigh an apple in the scale. His power. And then his wisdom
in verses 13 and 14. Who hath directed the spirit
of the Lord, or being his counselor, hath taught him? With whom took
he counsel, and who instructed him and taught him in the path
of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and showed to him the way of
understanding? When God created the heavens
and the earth and all things therein, He not only had the
power, which he exerted, the power to create, but he has the
wisdom to do so. And on each day of creation,
you read in Genesis chapter one, on each day of creation, God
saw his work. No one helped him. No one advised
him. He didn't have a counselor. He
saw his work, and he pronounced everything that he created good. Good. Only good could come from
a good God, right? Everything good. Matthew Henry made this comment.
He said, and I quote, As none can do what God has done and
does, so none can assist him in doing of it or suggest anything
to him which he thought not of. The earth was placed, and we've
all heard this and we're familiar with this, but the earth is placed
at the exact distance from the sun. Any closer, we would burn
up. Life could not exist on this
planet. Any farther from the sun, we
would freeze. Who did that? Who had the wisdom
to do that? Well, we know that God did. And people asked us to believe
in a big bang. I like what I heard this one
man say recently. He said, I don't have enough
faith to be an atheist or to believe in evolution. He said,
I don't have enough faith to believe that. I say amen, don't
you? To believe that God's perfect
creation, even after it has fallen under His curse, yet we see the
wisdom of God in creating all things that He has created and
people want us and expect us to believe that all of this just
happened because sometime in the past there was a collision
evidently among the planets and this big bang You heard what
they used to say about that. That's like saying that a dictionary,
Webster's dictionary, came out of an explosion in a print shop. There was an explosion in a print
shop and all those words and the meanings, they just came
flying out into a dictionary. Oh no. I don't have enough faith
to be an atheist or to believe in evolution. we say God's wisdom. This is the God who came. Number
three, his greatness. His greatness in verses 15 through
18. Behold, the nations are as a
drop of a bucket and are counted as a small dust of the balance. Behold, he taketh up the isles
as a very little thing and Lebanon is not sufficient to burn nor
the beast thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. All nations
before Him are as nothing, and they are counted to Him less
than nothing, and vanity." Yes, my friends, His greatness, the
greatness of God is set forth by declaring that nothing, nothing
in His creation adds anything to Him, nothing. You notice in verse 16, and Lebanon. When Solomon built the temple,
Haram, I believe his name was, was the king of Lebanon. And
Solomon and he agreed on transporting cedar trees from Lebanon for
the building of the temple in Jerusalem, that magnificent temple. Lebanon was known for a place
of forest, place of forest. Great giant trees, like we think
of out in the northwest part of our country, California and
Oregon and Washington State, all those big trees out there.
Lebanon was a place, a country like that. If you could, what
the writer's saying here, if you could cut down all the trees,
many, I don't know, hundreds, thousands of trees, and build
one big fire and take all the beast all the animals of that
forest and offer them upon that fire as a sacrifice, it could
not take away one sin. It could not remove one sin,
as the apostle Paul says in Hebrews 10, for it's not possible that
the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins. It is
only through the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ that
we may call God my God, my God. We can bow our heads, those of
us who know him tonight, and we can pray and we can say, my
God, my God and Father. And that's only true through
the person and work of Jesus Christ. After his resurrection,
on the day of his resurrection, he appeared under Mary Magdalene.
You know, the scripture says that he cast seven devils out
of Mary Magdalene. Aren't you thankful he came to
save sinners? He appeared unto her first before
any of his disciples on the day of his resurrection. And he sent
her to his disciples. And he told her, I ascend unto
my father and your father, Mary. Amen? Your father. To my God and your God. This is the God who came, his
power, his wisdom, his greatness. Men, we do not have the ability
to even speak as he is worthy to be spoken of. It is only through him, through
Jesus Christ, that our sins are put away. For by one offering,
He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. He'll never
come into this world, never need to come into this world, and
die again, shed his blood again. Why? Because by that one sacrifice,
he has put away the sins of his people. Now, the second part
of my message, The next verses, we see some facts about idolatry. At first division there, some
facts about God who came. His power, His wisdom, His greatness. This is God who came. Now, you
say, well, I thought the Son came. The Son is God. The Son
of God, He did come. God came. The Son of God came. He is God. And he didn't cease
to be God when he came into this world. The only thing that he
did, he took unto himself a body and veiled, he veiled his glory
by that body, which was prepared him by the Holy Spirit of the
Virgin Mary. But on the Mount of Transfiguration,
remember, That glory started shining through. What did it
say? His face did shine as the sun in its noonday strength. The glory. That's who came. All
right, some facts now about idolatry. In the next nine verses, in the next nine verses here,
the Lord God asked two times the same question. In verse 18,
he asked this question. To whom, then, will you liken
God? And then again, in verse 25,
he repeats the same question. To whom, then, will you liken
me, or shall I be equal, saith the Holy One? Two times the same
question. To whom, then, will you liken
God? Somebody asked, why bring in
at this point this matter of idolatry? Well, Matthew Henry
gave this answer, and I quote, to possess, and I put this to
explain what I think he meant by to possess, that is to give
all those who receive the glad tidings of redemption by Christ
with a holy awe and reverence of God. To those of us who receive
the glad tidings, that is the gospel, receive the Lord Jesus
Christ, the glad tidings of redemption by Christ, that we might have
a holy awe of God. Yes, my friends, we have boldness.
We have boldness to enter in to the throne room of God. because
we have a great high priest upon that throne of grace. But boldness
doesn't mean that we do not come with reverence. We still remember
to whom we're coming and who we are, that he is God and we
are his creatures. Now, I want to point three things
out in these verses. First of all, the absurdity of
idolatry in verses 19 and 20. The absurdity of idolatry. The workman melteth a graven
image, and the goldsmith spreadeth it over with gold, casteth silver
chains. Here's a person who is wealthy. And so he melts some kind of
of metal down and fashions it into an image, and then he overlays
that image with gold, and then he uses chains of silver. Now, the chains, when you think
about the chains of silver, they may be to decorate his idol,
but most people believe that because it is a dumb idol, Because
it is just an object, these chains are used to make him stay in
place. If you put him up like this and
chain him to the wall, he might fall over. Chain him up, someone
might steal him. He's not going to live on his
own. It's just a dumb idol. And then here's a man, he doesn't
have the wealth to melt metal down and make an image and overlay
it with gold and use silver chains. But even he, he's so impoverished,
verse 20, that he hath no oblation choosing, he chooseth a tree
that will not rot. We will give him credit for that.
He goes out and gets the best tree he can find. He doesn't
want one that's gonna rot in a few days, a few months, a few
years. Can you imagine that, worshiping
a God that rots? No, no, he's going to find a
tree, a tree that won't rot. He's poor, but he's going to
do the best that he can to have a God. He can't afford to have
one like the rich man, but he's going to get a good tree. He's
going to find him a tree. He seeketh unto him a cunning
workman. He hires a a carpenter, a man
that was skilled to shave off the tree and make it, the wood
rather, and make it into an image that shall not be moved. Those who are poor must settle
for a wooden god. They choose a tree which will
not rot. But think about this, a God he
must have. A God he must have. The absurdity
of men believing that they can fashion anything with the wealth
of a nation or the poverty, either rich or poor, that anyone can
fashion anything, Ivan, that could be compared to God who
is a spirit, the God who has this power that we've read about
and this wisdom and this greatness that somehow we could make an
image and liken God to that image or that image unto God, the absurdity. We see the foolishness of men,
do we not? We see what sin has done to man
to make him so foolish to do something like that. And then
the second thing here, we see the tendency to idolatry from
verse 21. Have you not known? Have you
not heard? Hath it not been told you from
the beginning? Have you not understood from
the foundations of the earth? And the answer to each one of
these questions is yes. Yes, we have heard. Yes, we have
heard. that idolatry is wicked, that
we cannot make anything and liken it, and it be likened to God. But yet man still has that tendency
to idolatry. He will have him a God. He will. You remember what one man said? He said, this mind that we have
is a God factory. It's a God factory. A man in
his mind, he just starts imagining what God is like, how he thinks
God is, how he thinks God should be. I want you to look back to
Exodus with me just a moment, Exodus chapter 32. I said the
tendency to idolatry. In Exodus chapter 32, men have, as that question is,
have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not
been told you? Yes, absolutely, many times. And yet man desires a God He
wants a God that he can see with these eyes, a God that he can
touch with these hands, and more than anything else, he wants
himself to have a God that he can control. He can put him over
there in the corner, stay there. I'll call you when I need you. That's not the God of the Bible.
That's the God of modern day Christianity. A God that can
be manipulated. And somehow we can manipulate
God to do what we want Him to do. Our Lord taught us to pray,
not my will, but thy will be done. Here in Exodus chapter
32, now think about this, these people, The Israelites at this
place, they had just come out of Egypt. They had just seen
God and all those 10 plagues that he brought upon the Egyptians
and how that God put a difference between the Egyptians and his
people. How there was darkness in the
land of Egypt, so dark that you could feel it. So we say, cut
it with a knife. And yet in the houses of the
Israelites, there was light. how that the waters were turned
to blood. And then they'd seen how that
God killed the firstborn in every house of the Egyptians and spared
the Israelites because upon their house, the doorway into their
house was that blood, the blood of the Passover lamb. When I
see the blood, I will pass over thee. They had witnessed this,
and then they came out there to the Red Sea, and the mountains
on one side, and on the other side, here comes Pharaoh's army,
his chariots after them, and they are scared to death. And
they tell Moses, I wish you'd just left us back there in Egypt.
Why in the world did you bring us out here? God told Moses, started to pray,
and God said, don't pray. Hold forth your staff." And they
watched that Red Sea open up. You say, do you believe that?
Absolutely. Absolutely. If I can't believe
that, I don't know why I could believe anything else in the
scripture. Thank God I believe the sea opened up and those people
walked through. There's water on this side, water
on that side. And the walls stayed until every
last one of them got safe on the other side. And when the
armies of Pharaoh assailed to do the same thing, God let the
waters come back and destroyed every one of them. What a picture
that is. What a picture that is. Every
soldier, every Egyptian soldier destroyed on the banks of that
ocean, the sea, what a picture that is, my friends, of all of
every believer's sins destroyed in the Red Sea of Christ's blood. But here they are, they've seen
all that. But now notice, when the people saw that Moses delayed
to come down out of the mount, The people gathered themselves
together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods. The tendency to idolatry. The tendency. Up, make us gods,
which shall go before us. For as for this Moses, the man
that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we want not what
is become of him. And Aaron said unto them, break
off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives
and of your sons and of your daughters and bring them unto
me. And all the people break off the golden earrings which
were in their ears, brought them unto Aaron. And he received them
at their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool after he
had made it a molten calf. And they said, These be thy gods,
O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. Now they did not believe that
that calf, or calves, they did not believe that that calf that
Aaron had fashioned out of gold had actually delivered them,
brought them out of Egypt, but that it was a representation. And you see, that's what we see
here in Isaiah 40, to whom will you liken me? They tried to liken
God Almighty to a calf, a bull, for strength, yes. What a travesty,
my friends. Idolatry, what a wicked, evil
sin it is. And remember this, the seed to
idolatry is in every one of us here tonight, but by the grace
of God. But by the grace of God, we're
not in some place tonight bowing down to some idol. All right, let's go back to Isaiah
40. Just a few minutes more. Some facts about God's watch
care over his own. Some facts about the God who
came, some facts about idolatry, and third, some facts about God's
watch care over his own. Beginning in verse 27. Why sayest
thou, O Jacob, and speakest thou Israel? My way is hid from the
Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God. God's providential
dealings with his children is mysterious, isn't it? To say
the least. It is mysterious. How one of
God's children prospers and another doesn't prosper. His providence is mysterious
and it's dark. And when we go through these
dark times, We're all tempted to think like we read here, my
judgment is passed over from my God. He's not aware of what
I'm going through. He's forgotten about me. I'm
going through this difficult time and he's not aware of my
situation. We become like the psalmist in
Psalm 73 in verses one and two when he said, truly, God is good
to Israel. Oh, he really is. But as for
me, as for me, that's different. We become depressed, discouraged,
cast down, and we're made ready to stumble. What does God say? Have you not
heard? Don't you know that you're God,
the everlasting God who brings the stars out by number and knows
them all by name? that his eye is continually upon
you. Even the very hairs of your head
are all numbered. Not a sparrow falls to the ground
without your heavenly father. Hast thou not known, hast thou
not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of
the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There's
no searching of his understanding. You don't understand why? You're
going through what you're going through right now. You don't
need to understand it. I know we all want to. We all
do. We don't need to understand it.
We just need to know that he's in charge. And this hasn't happened
by accident. It didn't just spring up out
of the ground. This is part of God's purpose and plan for each
and every one of us. He knows what is best. We've become weary. The way seems
hard. The creator of the ends of the
earth fainteth not, neither is weary. There's no searching of
his understanding. Look, he giveth power to the
faint. To them that have no might, he
increaseth strength. Even the youth shall faint and
be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait
upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up
with wings as eagles, They shall run and not be weary. They shall
walk and not faint. To wait upon the Lord does not
mean inactivity. It simply means, now sometimes
it does, but to wait upon the Lord doesn't necessarily mean
you just sit down and do nothing. But it does mean that we expect
help. We expect help and aid. to come to us in our time of
need and to come to us from this God who rules over all things,
the everlasting one. I want you to turn to one other
verse. We'll look at two verses, but this was a blessing to me
this past week. Jeremiah, chapter 23. Jeremiah,
chapter 23. You know, we usually think of
of God's omnipresence, and we see the greatness of God. But
I thought about this in a different way this past week. Jeremiah
23, in verse 23, when God said, Am I a God at hand, saith the
Lord, and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret
places that I shall not see him, saith the Lord? You, my brother,
my sister, are never out of God's sight. Never. That's an impossibility. Remember
what the psalmist said. If I send up into the heavens,
thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, thou
art there. No, no one can hide himself. Now this may cause unbelievers
fear to know the truth that God always sees me. Even in the dark,
God always sees me. But for a child of God, what
a blessing it is to be reminded he always sees us, his eyes always
upon us. Do not I fill heaven and earth,
saith the Lord. We never are out of his presence,
never. For he fills both heaven and
earth with his presence. I pray that the Lord will bless
these words to all of us here tonight.