Behold No.4 The Creator of the Ends of the Earth

Good morning to you all, it's lovely to have you here. Let's have a few boys and girls sing a hymn to praise this great God in whom we put our trust. I raise my maker while breath, and my voice is lost in death.

Praise employ my nobler powers. My days of praise will never be past. While life and thought being lost, immortality endures.

Fifty-two. Thank you. We begin to hold the cross of life.

This glorious hymn says to the living God, strength of the living, bless the living. Good, do sit down please. The reading is taken from Isaiah chapter 40 starting at verse 12.

The chapter heading in my Bible is Comfort for God's people. Isaiah chapter 40, verse 12 to the end of the chapter. 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? Who has understood the spirit of the Lord or instructed him as his counselor? Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten him and who taught him the right way? Who was that taught him knowledge or showed him the path of understanding? Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket.

They are regarded as dust on the hills. He heaths the islands as though they were fine dust. Lenin is not sufficient for water fires nor is to animals enough for burnt offerings.

Before him all the nations are as nothing. They are regarded by him as worthless and less than nothing. To whom then in women bear God, what image will you commit to? As for an idol, a craftsman casts it and then a goldsmith overlays it with gold and fashions silver chains for it.

A man too poor to bend such an offering selects wood that will not rot. He looks for a skilled craftsman to set an idol that will not topple. 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? It's peace enthroned above the soul of the earth and its people are like grasshoppers.

He stretches out the heavens like a canopy. He spreads them out like a tent to live in. He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.

No sooner are they planted, no sooner are they sown. No sooner they take root in the ground than he blows on them and they wither and whirlwinds sweep away like chaff. To who will you compare me or who is my equal, says the Holy One? Lift your eyes and look up heavens who created all these? He who brings out the story cast one by one and calls them each by name because of his great power and mighty strength not one of them is missing.

What do you say, O Jacob and Cain, O Israel? My way is his hidden from the Lord. My cause is discarded by my God. Do not know, have you not heard that Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth? He will not grow tired or weary and his understanding no one can fathom.

He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. In you things grow tired and weary and young men stumble and fall. But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint.

In the year of 598 BC the Babylonians had invaded their land and deported 20,000 of the top people like Daniel from Judea, from Israel. But then in 87 BC, 12 years later they went back and they just flattened Jerusalem knocked it to the ground and the frog marched the rest of men, women, kids off across the burning desert to Babylon and many of the children didn't make it. There they were exiled and they were enslaved and put to work on the Babylonian building sites because the Babylonians were great, great builders and they had their canals and they had their escapers, the ziggurats and they had their hanging gardens of world renown.

And the Jews and other peoples helped them to build this great city of Babylon. It's described for us in verse 2 of chapter 40 as a period of hard labor. A hard service.

This was really God's judgment, you see and God's just judgment for the victims of his own people. Years where they had lived in relative prosperity and yet there had been years of immorality and years of arrogance and years of corruption and years when they worshipped all kind of pagan and deity goddesses and they moved into exile and into slavery. Their conditions weren't too bad in Nebuchadnezzar but then there was another man who followed him who rejoiced in the name of evil, Merak.

Then after him another man named Nehinedab and it was now getting on for about 50 years since they had been in exile and in Nehinedab's day he tightened the screw and worked longer hours for less pay and worse conditions and the new generation who had not actually been implicated in the sins of their fathers would grow up and they'd hit rock bottom and they were suffering for the sins of others. But as George Adamson Smith, the Old World's commentator, says very beautifully throughout the exile the true Jew lived inwardly. He was inhabitant not so much of a foreign prison but of his own broken heart.

Surely that describes some here today as it may describe you. You're a prisoner of your own broken heart. And Isaiah knew because the Lord knew that the answer for people like you is not psychology.

It's not a therapist. But it is verse 9 of chapter 40 which gives the title to our whole series over these weeks. Behold your God.

Turn up your eyes and look at him because this is your God. If you think God can't get you out of this particular one then your God is too small. You've got to look at him.

You've got to see him for who he really is and his true vastness and greatness. It's our aim this morning that we should have a true view of God, each one of us. You see, you may have massive problems and you may tell them to me or to your friends.

But let me tell you this. The big God does solve your problems because actually it's all a matter of scale. Yes, your problems may on a human level be massive but compared to God they are pure.

They are absolutely nothing. It's all a question of proportion. And that is why we, just as much as the suffering Israelites, have to look at our God and to take stock of him once again and just take in who he really is.

And so we turn to verse 12 of this chapter. Verses 1 to 11 are really an overture to chapters 40 to 66. It's a shame we haven't got time to work through those verses this morning.

But we'll start at verse 12 where Isaiah gets on with his message to the people. The first thing he says about your God, about their God is you cannot advise the Creator. Verses 12 to 17.

You cannot advise the Creator. In these verses we have a whole series of rhetorical questions. Who has measured the waters in the heart of his hand with the breadth of his span and cut off the heavens to tell the dust of the earth in a basket or weighed the mountains or the hills in a basket? Who has understood my mind or the spirit of the Lord or instructed him? Who has done this? Who has ever told the Lord anything that he does not know? Well, the answer is obvious for words invented.

Nobody, nobody has ever told God a thing that he knows it. Verses 12 to 15. We have him weigh out the mountains and then the islands and then the nation, the pair of skulls.

He has outmatched the world, the vast mountain ranges as easily as that cabcail that Tesco's weighs out your bananas. It's just as easy for him. And the nations, well, well, they're just dropping up and knocking back to him.

The nations on the globe are just a drop in the bucket. Those nations of the Middle East which will be meeting this week for their peace conference so-called in Madrid. Well, they're just a drop in the bucket.

Those nations of Europe are trying to get things together. Well, they're nothing to God. He doesn't take them seriously because he's already turned in the shape of the political map of the future world and what the nations do make no difference to him.

He's that big. We read of the power of his hand. We also read of the power of his mind in these verses and truly this is more extraordinary still.

Who has understood the spirit of the Lord? The question that's put for us. You see, even in the Old Testament days where the spirit of the Lord stood really, the wonder-working power of our God, no one could understand that kind of power. But just as in the Old Testament they realized that the spirit of the Lord was powerful, so we in the days of the new covenant know that the spirit of the Lord would wonderfully be personal too.

And that gives man so much greater dimension because surely persons are the most complex of beings and the greatest people are the most complex of people. And if God is personal and his spirit is personal, well, what can we say about him? We cannot begin to understand or his person or his ways. No one knows the thoughts of God except the spirit of God.

Right, Paul? And those to whom the spirit of God reveals something of God, just a little bit here, just a little bit there, true knowledge of God which will help us in our lives, but just a tiny little bit of the vastness and the love and power of our God. Who has instructed him? Is his counselor? Who was it that taught him knowledge or showed him the path of understanding? You know, when you and I came into the world, we knew how to do two things, basically. We knew how to hang on and we knew how to suck.

We've forgotten how to do the former. We can't hang on now as we would when we were babies, newborn. The other latter, we've had to relearn because at some stage we've forgotten and we've relearned and everything else we've had to learn from scratch.

But not so with God. No one has ever told him the difference between right and wrong. No one has ever taught him a thing.

He doesn't need to learn anything from us. We pray when giving him information. It is opening up our lives, situations to him in order that he might cooperate and we might cooperate with him more to the point.

There is an Argyle minister who I'm reliably informed often used to pray on Sundays. Oh Lord, as the world has read in the last 30 years, all bad times. Well, it's a rather touching thought, isn't it, of reading in a newspaper to find out information.

No, no, no. He knows already. Can't give him any advice though often enough we try to.

I was praying with a brother earlier this week and we were a bit grim. We just had to say, Oh Lord, we have suggestions as to how you might answer this prayer. Sometimes that's the best place to be, isn't it? He doesn't need our suggestions.

We can't tell anything. And what's more, you can't do a deal with this God either, says Isaiah. You can't butter him up with sacrifices.

When all the seed is leavened and there are not sufficient fortifiers. No, no. If all the trees were one tree, that wouldn't be a massive tree, but it would be his little altar.

It's going to be a smaller sacrifice to make any impression on God. And he can never offer any adequate sacrifice. Only God can do this himself.

And he has done so. And the only adequate sacrifice that was offered was his own and only God's. And certainly no one ever advised God that he should do that.

It would be just unthinkable. How could an angel in heaven ever tell God that he should do this to rescue lost men and women, to rescue those by their evil were destined for hell. But God has done it.

God planned it. And God has executed it. That's the God we have.

Can't advise the Creator. Secondly, we can't analyze the Creator. This is 1826.

To whom then will you compare God? There's the incomparable God. The technical is transcendent. And that really means that God is just top of the league.

But he is in an entirely different league altogether. Right out there on his own. He is like no one that you or I have ever met.

He cannot be fitted into a personality type. He is not contrary to the way in which sometimes we seem to think an Englishman. He is different.

He is perfect. And surely that takes him way out of our experience, doesn't it? And all we do is have to say during all is I worship you, I worship God. There is none like you.

There's no one like him and nothing like him either. What image will you compare him to? Any man made to God is totally inadequate as a means of representing him. You won't get an idea at all of the greatness of God that a human being can make no matter if he is a master craftsman.

On Thursday this week I was in London. I was reminded of the little inscription plaque to Sir Christopher Wren in that building. If you see his monument, look around you.

Yes, only the vice and the grandeur of St Paul's Cathedral could give you any idea about the capability of that man, Sir Christopher Wren. It's more true about our God, isn't it? You don't get any idea of his greatness. You've got to look at the stars and mountains and the oceans and the ocean ridges and the depths of the seas and the little tiny microbes which he has made.

Those things will give you some idea of how big, how vast he is. Nothing that you will ever make. We're surrounded by idols just as these people were so many hundreds of years ago.

Verse 19, Isaiah, talks about the rich man's idol, the day. Those dazzling idols overlaid with gold and fashioned by those craftsmen. The Babylonian idols, they must have been absolutely dazzling to the Jews of Isaiah's day who had nothing to look at as far as their worship is concerned.

And it's still true, isn't it, that the idols of the rich can still dazzle us with their big houses and fast cars and expensive holidays. But they're nothing, let alone the poor man's idols. Verse 20, people who are too poor to just select a bit of wood that isn't rotten and they look for somebody to just shape it into some sort of god for them.

Some of us on Wednesday evening were hearing about the god orphanages in the provinces of Taiwan where one of the tabulated admissions for Christmas heart works is in the red light district. Apparently what the poor people in Taiwan do is they buy a god in their Hindu ruins. Well, they will keep it on a shelf for some time and if there's no change of fortune and if things don't up for them well, the real god is no use and so they'll chuck it out and then the street cleaners will come along, the dustman men and they will collect up these gods and they'll take them off and they'll sell them.

This is how some people in this world even today really live. No comment is needed. And yet, you know, many people do live for material things don't they? Many people do live for these things in which they can handle and touch and see and quantify.

Many people do live for their age packet and for their promotion. Many people are just living for the next luxury good and the next generation double glazed. Oh, more all that.

More awful all that. And yet, surely they're to be pitied aren't they? Because it's pathetic isn't it? It is absolutely pathetic to live for the things of this world which God has made. So we move on to verse 21.

Don't you know? Had you heard? You know, many of us would like to know how many of us in our homes how many of us here were actually brought up in a Christian family who learned the scriptures? This is just a quick indication. Yeah, well, that's perhaps not as you might expect which is something that it's not just something that's handed on. A number of us have heard these things since we were in our 50s.

You know, and we've sung to remember that, don't we? Haven't you heard this? Don't you know it? There are things that he cannot do. He is God above all. Verse 22.

He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth. It's incredible Isaiah knew that the world was round, isn't it? The longest man ever did. And from his throne he looks down and there's a bus and you can go up to the tour of South Arlington and look down over Long Furlong that lovely road where it winds through the gap from Finnerden and there you can look down on the cars on that road and they're overtaking and it's just like they're toy cars and there's no danger they'll ever crash.

They're all perfectly under control. Don't you know if you're down on that road and you're the driver it's a very different matter isn't it? And the pulse quickens and the foot goes down and you think well I may at least you do if you drive a car like mine. How different it is from 300 feet and how different still the view from heaven must be as it looks down on the things which panic us and the things which are so big to us.

Oh how little are seen to him and somehow what needs to be beat. Oh yes we spend so much nervous energy on the affairs of life but for God well they're no big deal for him. He can alter our situation with no trouble.

He cares for us and his as his people. Just wishes we didn't get one of his questions up so much so also all. Well he's such a great God isn't he.

The princes of the world even the rulers of the world even the citizens of the world they come to nothing. That neheneb who's giving you such a hard time may now be his turn next says the good God through Isaiah. In Babylon so often would come a strong hot death wind and no matter how lovely your garden before this wind blew you wouldn't have anything in your garden apart from a lot of brown shriveled up leaves afterwards.

And I suppose if Isaiah were writing for us he'd remind us of that frost we had back in February. He would say what that frost did to your geraniums and did to my passion flower. God will do to the leaders of this world.

He is great. So we come back to the question verses 25 to him will you care for me. And then I tell people to do something else to lift up their eyes.

You know one of the hardest things for a Jew in Babylon was that Babylon the plain of sugar as it was known earlier on in biblical history is just as flat as the proverbial pancake. You cannot see a hill or a bump anywhere. And back at HoH the Jew could lift up his eyes to the hills and know that his help came from the Lord.

But Isaiah says you're still to look up. We are the only animals made to look up aren't we. We are erect as Sir Calvin said and we are meant to turn our eyes upwards.

And we are meant to look at the stars. When we were up with students one young man was full of his own problems and we were out at a house party. It was a clear evening in the middle of country because our problem is we can only see the moon and Venus and the X and that can't we.

But there we could see all the stars and the heavens that God had put there. And he wanted to talk about his problems and I said okay I'll talk about your problems. First of all you go out for 15 minutes and you just spend your time gazing at those stars.

And after he'd done that it didn't seem quite the same as it's done. And yet our gazing is not quite enough is it. A lot of people have gazes but we have to go on and ask the question well who made the stars.

We come back to wonderful throwaway line where God was reminding us of stars they mourned with the prancing. He made the stars also. It's as easy as that.

He numbers them. How many stars are there? Well no one knows except God. The last count the astronomers reckon there are about 500 billion.

It's quite a number isn't it? That's about 100 for every man woman and child on the planet. There's quite a lot of stars. Lord numbers them and he names them.

And he brings them down by one. Of the 5,000 or so that are visible to the naked eye. So he lights them up every evening.

It's a bit like going to a jazz concert where the band lead announces each instrumentalist and they come in in turn and they show their virtuosity on the instruments. And God calls them out to shine one by one. He says, look at that one.

Isn't that beautiful? Look at that one. He names them. You see, if God knows all the stars, he has no difficulty knowing your name, does he? If he knows all about the stars and there are 100 stars for your person, then he has no difficulty knowing all about you, does he? And that is the wonder of God, isn't it? He has the big, big picture and yet he gives attention to the image or the minute detail of your life.

They're always all there. They're always present and correct because God all brings them out and he detects the stars. You know, Venus was very lovely on a Tuesday morning as I walked down to our staff meeting.

The morning star shining in all its glory, about as high as you'll ever see in the sky. So Wednesday morning when I was getting up at seven o'clock it was there again. That's full, isn't it? There again.

Because God had made sure it was there again and was there again and it was there again and it was there again and it was there again and it was there again and it was there again there again and it was there again and it was there again and again and it was again it was there and time to time. Sometimes we just feel bewildered and absolutely lost. And we think, well what's going on, I'm not aware of anything that I've done to bring this down on me, why has this happened to me, I really don't understand it Lord.

But you know, whenever God puts your life on the bank burner, He never goes away and just forgets about you. Sometimes He knows that we need a little slow heat in the crucible to accomplish His purpose for us, purpose of love. And we must never make the mistake of thinking just because we can't see Him, He can't see us.

Oh no, He always sees us, He is the Lord who sees me. As that slick girl found out, take the cross, you see a crowd around the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, they expected God to do something didn't they, something very dramatic to happen. But as that long dark day drew on, nothing happened that they could see, there was no sign of God.

And the people and the disciples, they drew the conclusion from their own experience that God was not there at the cross, that He had abandoned His Son. And yet, God obviously was there. He was there in a hidden presence.

And it was St. Martin Luther who said to us, you know it's the resurrection that shows just how misleading and unreliable the faith of human experience really is. If you are saying God is not here with me now, then that is a very predictive and unreliable human experience. And just as wrong as those people around the cross.

And instead of relying on our fallible human experience, we must put our faith always in God's infallible promises that He will never leave us, He will never forsake those who belong to Him. That's faith. That's faith that these people are called to exercise.

That is faith that maybe many of us are called to exercise now and if not, we shall be in the future. And Jesus, He knows what we need. And He does come to His people in time of need because He is this sort of God.

And so Isaiah continues, He gives strength to the weary. Are you weary? Had enough? It's life to just worn you down, to just feel absolutely that you can't take anymore. Or maybe it's because you're carrying heavy weights around with you and you have done for some time the weight of worry or of responsibility.

Maybe even the weight of guilt. What about Jesus offers again. Come to me, He says, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Rest? Yes, that's what He holds out to you this morning. Should I give an invitation to refuse? Does it not? Go to Him. Pour out your heart to Him.

Listen to Him. Learn of Him. Spend time with Him before His words.

You've poured out your heart to Him before when you became a Christian. Oh, do it again now you've gotten new cares. The old ones have built up again.

Go to Him for rest. You will renew your strength. Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.

That word renew in verse 31 literally means to make a change. It's just like taking out the old flat battery in your car and fixing in a new fully charged one. And off you go changing your spent energy for His full power in your life.

And that is what the Lord does for all of those of His children who are shattered, weary. He will give them renewed strength. And the result is that they will soar.

That they will run. That they will walk. You feel chained to the ground.

Something in your life means you just can't get off the ground. Well, when the Lord comes and breathes His strength into your life, you will just soar. I went to a Hawkingstown holiday in Wales.

I wonder if you've ever seen an eagle soar. Magnificent, isn't it? It's just so effortless. And that's what it looks like when the Spirit of God just comes down and He blows and we just lift off.

But then we learn to run. And then walk. Strange all this, isn't it? People soar, they will run, they will walk.

I believe I learned to walk before I could run. One day I shall fly when I meet the Lord Jesus. It's in the air, but I haven't yet.

Why did I learn to soar and then to run and then to walk? Well, I have this reason. That those Christians who have a true experience of the Spirit of God don't just have an emotional high followed by a crash landing to Earth. Those Christians who have a true experience of the Lord, they fly high.

But then when Christian life settles down, they run. Then they learn to walk and they keep on going and they keep on going on and on and on with the Lord. And that is just as much the power of the Holy Spirit as flying high spiritual ecstasy is.

It's the power of the dynamo, perhaps, as opposed to the power of dynamite. But it's just as real. And dynamo can be much more useful than dynamite.

The power of the Spirit of God. And that's what each of us needs as we go through this tiring world. You know, tire is human, isn't it? But God never tires.

And He wants to give His strength for your own attainment. God hasn't changed. He is still the same in God.

The Father Almighty. The Maker of Heaven and Earth. And He's your God.

Most of you here this morning, He is your God. He is the everlasting God. He's lost none of His old power.

Create a God. You can control a God. The God who got the Jews out of Babylon and back to their land.

God who in more recent days, very, very recent days, got His people back to their homeland again. Oh yes, He hasn't lost any of His touch. He's lost none of His power.

Only now, of course, He's got a lot of people who are His national people. Truly worldwide. And since Isaiah's day, He's spread His power in the supreme way.

By raising Jesus Christ's Son from the dead. And this, my brother, my sister, is your God. He gives strength to the weary.

Increases the power of the weak. Those who hope in this God will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, will run and grow weary.

They will walk and not be faint. Father God, if we do cut down the lies, which we confess to do so very, very often, it's because we ourselves are so little, so puny. We have no power either of mind or really of strength.

And so we're just so glad to come to you. Father God, we come even into the throne room, your own throne room, because what the Lord Jesus has done for us. You sit enthroned on the circle of the earth, and yet we praise you in that there is a sense in which we too sit in heavenly places.

And we pray that we will occupy these. And that we will have communion with our God. Oh, Father God, you are so great.

We worship you. We adore you. We have seen your power, Lord God, even as we've been so forcefully minded, even by this service today.

Father, once again, we praise you for your power in bringing health to your people. Thank you again for little Annie. Thank you for the miraculous recovery for Erica.

Lord, we bless you for the power that you make available to us as your people. Father, we pray for others who need this power in their own lives. Father, we praise you for the power that brought this evening to know you and into a living experience of you.

Oh, Lord God, you are so powerful that you should make yourself known to people like us. Lord God, we praise you. May we forever be praising you.

For Jesus' sake, amen. And to sing a hymn that's two to one life in hymns of faith. The Lord is king.

Who then shall dare resist his will, distrust his care, or murmur at his wife's decrees, or doubt his royal promises? One Lord, one empire, all secure. He reigns. And life and death are yours.

Two and five.