Isaiah 40:18-21 - With whom will you compare God?

40:18-20

The Israelites were guilty of wrong thinking, as we can often be. How can God be compared to an idol? What possible comparison is there? The idols are just stone, metal or gold. God is the creator of all things. It is no accident that the second commandment is a command not to make any images of God (Ex 20:4). For any idol would only lead to us having a wrong impression of God. God is far greater than anything we can imagine. We worship the unlimited God, and we need to ensure that our thinking does not forget this. There will be times when we do start to think of God improperly, limiting Him. When this happens we need to correct ourselves.

40:21

“Do you not know? Have you not heard?” Of course they had heard, but they certainly did not know the truth about God. They were looking at things from a purely worldly perspective, a perspective that omitted God from its considerations. We are all prone to doing the same, especially when things are difficult. We forget about God, or about who He truly is.

Ephesians 4:9,10 - Ascending and descending

4:9

Paul then muses on the quote from Psalm 68. If Jesus ascended, then He must first have descended. Note the implication that Jesus came from heaven in the first place. He was not a man who was selected by God who then ascended. Jesus is eternally the Son of God, and, as John says repeatedly, He was sent by the Father. So He descended to the earth. The “lower earthly regions” or “depths of the earth” does not mean He descended into hell. Paul was probably using the phrase to stress the amazing fact that Christ should come from heaven to earth, from glory to the earth.

4:10

This verse is possibly a counter to early Docetism which denied the incarnation. God became man! And He did this “in order to fill the whole universe”. Christ is truly Lord of All, and He is fully God and fully human.

Isaiah 40:15-17 - The nations are like a drop in the bucket

40:15

In Isaiah’s days it was the “nations” that were the problem. Yet compared to God they were but a drop in a bucket. In our day there many places where Christians are actively persecuted, but those who persecute them are but drops in a bucket. In the West the whole secular/LGBT agenda is the dominant force in society, yet they too are just drops in a bucket, dust on the scales. They are nothing at all. The nations were judged by God, the forces at work in our society will be judged by God.

40:16,17

Lebanon was a land with many forests, producing much excellent timber. The timber had been used in Solomon’s temple (now destroyed by the Babylonians). The Egyptians had used it for their own sacred purposes, and it was used for the ships of Tyre. Lebanon also had a rich animal life. Yet all this would be unable to provide a sufficient sacrifice. The nations raged against God, first Assyria, then Babylon, but in comparison to God the nations were as nothing at all. They were “less than nothing”. Now this does not mean God did not care about them, but the natural human position would be to regard Babylon as the all powerful nation, the one who decided the course of human history in the region. It did nothing of the sort. Today we need to look at the forces that mock God in the same way. They are absolutely nothing and will come to nothing.

Ephesians 4:7,8 - Grace has been given

4:7

As I have said on many occasions, we too often consider grace as purely passive, ie being forgiven for our sins. That, of course, is a vital part of it, but only part. In the following verses Paul is going to talk about various gifts and ministries within the church. Grace is about so much more that going to heaven rather than hell! God’s salvation is about enabling us to become the people we are meant to be, becoming people who minister the goodness of God. God gives grace to each one of us to enable us to do stuff.

4:8

As is his want, Paul quotes from Scripture, though it is possible he is just making a statement inspired by Scripture, rather than a direct quote. Psalm 68:18 speaks of the Lord receiving many gifts, here Paul speaks of the Lord giving many gifts. This could be a rabbinic interpretation. Regardless of the case, the Lord gives many gifts to His people, and these gifts are to enable us to build up the church and do the work of the kingdom. Prior to this Paul has been emphasising unity, but unity most definitely does not mean uniformity. God gives different gifts to different people, as He sees fit.

Isaiah 40:13,14 - Who can fathom the Spirit of the Lord?

40:13

Moreover, no one has advised God! Or at least God has never taken, nor needed to take, advice from men. Plenty of men and women think they know better than God, but none of us do. When we think we are hopelessly lost in some situation this assessment is based on our understanding of the situation, and based on this we imagine all sorts of scenarios. These scenarios that we play out in our minds are almost uniformly bad and are based on our lack of understanding. We need to keep God in mind!

40:14

The Lord did not consult anyone, no taught him the right way to do things. Yet if you look at all “liberal” Christians and all arguments against following the Bible they all assume that we know better than God. A moment’s thought should show the ridiculousness of this. We are created beings, God is the creator. This is a vast and fundamental difference and any proper thinking on our part needs to take full account of this.

Ephesians 4:5,6 - One, Lord, one faith

4:5

There is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism”. Things go awry and division creeps in (or bursts in) when we take our focus of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is only one Lord, but we so easily take our focus off Christ and start putting it on who we think He is, rather than who He says He is. And our faith is in Christ, in who He is and what He has done. And we are baptised into Christ.  When our focus comes off Christ we start worshipping ideas, rather than Christ, so we actually start making idols.

4:6

There is one God and father of us all. Everything revolves around Him and emanates from Him. The key question is whether our “religion” is God-centred or man-centred. When it is the former we can have true unity, when it is the latter divisions proliferate, and our religion quickly becomes worthless.

Isaiah 40:11,12 - He tends His flock like a shepherd

40:11

God comes with power and tenderness. Having talked about the power Isaiah then describes how God tends the flock with gentleness. He gathers the lambs in His arms, He holds them close to His heart, and “gently leads those who have young”. And we see the reality of all this in Jesus. He frequently referred to Himself as the good shepherd and used shepherding analogies to describe God and His mission.  In Matt 11:29 Jesus says that He is “gentle and humble in heart” and that we will find “rest for our souls” in Him. The power and the gentleness go together in perfect harmony in Jesus.

40:12

The Israelites were surrounded by great problems, either the aftermath of the Assyrian attack, or the captivity in Babylon. How could they possibly overcome this situation? We all go through situations where we feel it is hopeless, where humanly speaking there seems to be no way out or through. But these thoughts do not take account of who God is, and here Isaiah reminds them who God is. In the Psalms David often dwelt upon the greatness of God. We should do likewise, then we are better able to see our lives and our circumstances in proper perspective. God created everything, the seas, the universe. He is infinitely greater than we are.