In Isaiah 40 we have heard the call to “behold your God” – to pay attention to God. Reading Isaiah 40 is a great way to do this because it isn’t content with giving us the simple statement “God is powerful”. It isn’t content to unpack that in three clear distinct ways that tell us more intellectually about God’s power. Instead it gives us wave after wave of powerful imagery about our great God and what he is like.
Here is the next section of the chapter: as you read it pay attention to the images.
12 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand,
or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?
Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket,
or weighed the mountains on the scales
and the hills in a balance?
13 Who can fathom the Spirit[a] of the Lord,
or instruct the Lord as his counselor?
14 Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten him,
and who taught him the right way?
Who was it that taught him knowledge,
or showed him the path of understanding?15 Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket;
they are regarded as dust on the scales;
he weighs the islands as though they were fine dust.
16 Lebanon is not sufficient for altar fires,
nor its animals enough for burnt offerings.
17 Before him all the nations are as nothing;
they are regarded by him as worthless
and less than nothing.18 With whom, then, will you compare God?
To what image will you liken him?
19 As for an idol, a metalworker casts it,
and a goldsmith overlays it with gold
and fashions silver chains for it.
20 A person too poor to present such an offering
selects wood that will not rot;
they look for a skilled worker
to set up an idol that will not topple.21 Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood since the earth was founded?
22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,
and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
23 He brings princes to naught
and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.
24 No sooner are they planted,
no sooner are they sown,
no sooner do they take root in the ground,
than he blows on them and they wither,
and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.25 “To whom will you compare me?
Isaiah 40:12-26
Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One.
26 Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one
and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
not one of them is missing.
We are asked to look at our hands. What can you hold in your hands? What can you measure with your hands cupped together. About half a cup of water, for a minute before it trickles away?
God can hold the oceans in his hands. With the span of his hand he measures the heavens.
When you get your scales out to bake a cake, how much fits on those? A few kilograms of flour? When God gets his scales out, he can put the mountains in them. He can hold all the dust of the earth.
Pause on that. As I typed this, I am sitting at the foot of the first mountain I ever went up in the Lake District, Heron’s Pike. I saw the path which we must have walked up to get on to the mountain. I remembered the sense of joy and wonder that my 10 year old self had at this scenery and at this mountain. I love the sense of size and perspective that a mountain gives, the beauty of all that you can see.
In God’s scale that mountain is tiny. It is as small as a speck of dust I brush off a surface.
We have to be taught and instructed, we have to learn and grow – but no one has measured out God’s Spirit. No one has taught God anything.
Compared to him all the nations are as a drop of water from a bucket, the dust we wipe off the scales before measuring.
Our scale compared to his is tiny. Lebanon – the source of cedar wood in the bible cannot provide the fuel he needs. No nuclear reactor could make a dent compared to God’s power. Instead we are nothing – and our human glory compared to is less than nothing. Our glory is empty and fading.
So how do we think of God? Do we make an idol? Do we try to compare him to something or someone? Idols are human creations, that have to be placed securely so that they will not fall (see the comic story of the ark and Dagon in 1 Samuel 4-5) – and we can think of our frantic efforts right now to control how our nations and communities respond to covid’s latest twists and turns.
Instead we have to realise that God is beyond compare, and beyond our understanding, and his understanding no-one can fathom.
I wonder if we really believe that, and what difference it should make if we do. It isn’t saying that we can never say anything about God – there is a school of thought that argues we can only say what God is not, never what he is. The Bible though doesn’t seem to follow that logic. Here there is a paradox – we are told we can never compare God to anything – and yet we are giving a lot of comparisons to make that point.
The fundamental reality is that while we can say something about God, everything we say has limitations. We are assured that what God says about himself is true – but it is never enough to give us the total picture – there is always more of God to discover – God is always powerful, and always good – but there are always new ways to discover how that power and goodness work together and how they manifest themselves.
God is the one who sits on high above the earth – and to him we are the size of grasshoppers. To him making the universe is as easy as putting up a tent. He is the one who can bring down princes to nothing and rulers to emptiness. They wither and are blown away like stubble – there is no comparing this God to anything else or anyone else.
He is the one who created all the stars in the sky and knows them each by name – and none of them are missing because he is mighty and he is powerful. He is the God who keeps this universe running – yes, in a regular way that we can measure and come to increasing understanding of – but understanding the mechanisms by which God orders the cosmos should never be confused with becoming masters of that cosmos.
Before the might and power and majesty of our creator God – and particularly before the God who is above and beyond our understanding, who does not need our counsel or advice, our first response must be humility. Humility to recognise that we need to learn and grow and change.
I’m struck by the way in which pride can so easily become a part of our human life, even our church life. Pride in our tradition. Pride in the impressive photographs of the last 10 vicars who have all been leading lights of our way of doing things, so that everyone recognises us. Pride in the way that our organisation does things better than others, pride that we know the right answer and the right way of doing things. Pride that we are not like ‘them’.
But before our God we need to lean humbleness and gentleness and that we might be wrong and that we need to listen and learn from others. A big view of God’s power and ability to act should lead to a humble view of our own ability. If I truly believe that nothing can stop God’s work, and that no-one can advise God on how to work then other things follow.
I should be a person of integrity, who is willing to be honest and vulnerable even when it might hurt. Sometimes that might mean uncomfortable truths need to be heard, and not hidden. It should mean that I can trust that God will look after the organisation or church that I am particularly proud of – I can trust that his power will let what is best happen, and I can allow truth to make things messy for a while.
It is hard to trust God that much, yet surely if we take Isaiah 40’s soaring rhetoric with the seriousness it deserves, then it demands that we take those steps, that we allow God to be God, and don’t try to manipulate events or people to preserve our status and power and control.
I’m coming to the end of reading Lord of the Rings for the third time aloud – our second child loves it so much I’ve had to do a second time. The plot centres around a powerful ring that destroys all who attempt to use it, but whose lure is almost impossible to resist. The ring could represent many things in our lives, but one thing it can represent is the desire to control events and manage our image and reputation, and especially the desire to be on the inside of the circle of those controlling events – as Tolkien’s friend Lewis put it, the ‘inner ring’.
Sadly that lure is all too strong in the world of Christian leadership – and it is every bit as potent and powerful as the ring of power in Tolkien’s world. Part of the remedy to the lure of the ring is to be found in coming to realise our own lack of power, and acknowledging that our utterly good God is the one with all power and wisdom and understanding. Our part is not to manipulate or to control, but to trust and to do what we know is right, even if we do not understand how that can possibly work out.
It might mean being open about that disagreement amongst leaders in a church. It might mean being open about that fact that we can’t run all the things we used to run, because people have stopped having the time and energy to help. It might mean being open about the fact that cover-ups have happened in the past and that we need to be repentant and seek forgiveness.
It might simply be that those in leadership need to say “I’m exhausted, and I can’t do this – let’s seek God together”. It might be that this advent we need to remember that it is God’s power and strength that we need, and that our first step is to admit our need for God.
As I apply this to myself I need to realise that I can’t control how life works the whole time. That I live in the midst of immense disorientation as a family as we work out what another new house and new town looks like – and that disorientation is an OK thing to feel. It happens in the midst of trying to cope with the disorientation of life in a world of pandemic, where no plans seem to last.
The chaos around and about is not all down to me and I cannot live through it by assuming that what I can do can fix things. What I need to do is to come back to this God of Isaiah 40 and see his power. See his might. Life right now might feel somewhat like walking in this cloud did:
There is no destination visible, no end in sight – yet the next steps for the next minute of travelling were clear enough. In such moments, in such times the God of Isaiah 40 is still real. He is still the one who stretched out the heavens like a tent, and to whom we are as small as grasshoppers. He is still the one who knows each star by name, and holds them each in place.
And we will see in the next section how that God who knows each star by name has individual and personal care for each of his people. It is in this God that we can trust. It is to this God that we look. So let us this advent look up to this God and see his power afresh in these words from Isaiah 40.
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