Isaiah 40, 41: Comfort in the Wilderness: Chapter 5: The Power of the New Covenant God

About the great and sovereign Creator, Isaiah 40:18-20 says,

¹⁸ To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare with Him? ¹⁹ As for the idol, a craftsman casts it, a goldsmith plates it with gold, and a silversmith fashions chains of silver. ²⁰ He who is too impoverished for such an offering selects a tree that does not rot; he seeks out for himself a skilled craftsman to prepare an idol that will not totter.

The prophet tells the people that God cannot be likened to any idol that men may fashion. Though craftsmen may be skilled in their art, nothing that is man-made can begin to express the nature and character of the Creator of the Universe. Men create gods in their own image, but God’s purpose is to create men in His image.

The rich hire craftsmen to fashion gods plated with gold in a vain attempt to portray the beauty and perfection of their gods. Poor people who cannot afford such expensive gods may select “a tree that does not rot,” such as cedar wood, to suggest the immortality of their gods. But these all fall far short of the glory of God. Not only are such gods made of material things but more importantly, they are made in the image (imagination) of men who themselves are like grass.

Grass cannot comprehend the nature of God. God is unimaginable. His ways are “unfathomable” (Rom. 11:33).

Worshiping Lesser Gods

Men emulate the gods that they worship, even as they copy those men and women that they admire. When they set up imperfect gods and heroes to emulate, they cannot help but fall short of the glory of God. For this reason, God commanded us to make no “idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the water under the earth” (Exodus 20:4). This command was not meant to restrict artists but to keep men from setting their goals too low.

Men in their lesser state (“grass”) cannot conceive of anything greater than themselves or even another form of “grass.” For this reason, they tend to worship their understanding of God, rather than God Himself. That is heart idolatry (Ezek. 14:3), worshiping our own limited opinions of God which are man-made. The flesh (“old man”) cannot comprehend the things of the Spirit and cannot transcend its limitations (1 Cor. 2:14). Only the “new man,” that is, “he who is spiritual” (1 Cor. 2:15), which is begotten by the heavenly Father, knows spiritual things.

The Beginning

Isaiah 40:21 says,

²¹ Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?

The people had forgotten the revelation declared “from the beginning.” The Hebrew word translated “beginning” is rosh, “head, summit, top.” The prophet paints a many-layered word picture in a single word. God declared Himself and His nature “from the top,” as we often say in English. It means “from the start,” but on another layer it refers to the voice of God declaring His nature from the summit of Mount Sinai in Exodus 20. The law is an expression of His nature.

Yet again, “the beginning” also seems to be used as a title of God, for Rev. 22:13 says,

¹³ I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.

Alpha and omega were the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet and were the equivalent of the Hebrew letters, alef and tav. These Hebrew letters were first used in Gen. 1:1, where they remain untranslated. If we were to translate them, Gen. 1:1 would read,

¹ In the beginning God alef-tav created the heavens and the earth.

We may paraphrase this to read,

¹ In the beginning God, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, created the heavens and the earth.

How did He create? He spoke the word (logos) and this brought things into existence. Hence, the revelation of God was “declared to you from the beginning,” and it will endure to the end. But the beginning has no real beginning, nor is there really an end, for God is timeless. For this reason, the darkened fleshly mind (“grass”) cannot comprehend the light and revelation of the word that expresses His nature (John 1:5).

Therefore, “there is none who understands” (Rom. 3:11). Paul was speaking of the carnal mind of the soul, or the “natural” man. There is, perhaps, no greater illustration of the limitations of the soulish mind than the scholars’ inability to translate alef-tav in Gen. 1:1.

The Majesty of God

Isaiah 40:22, 23 says,

²² It is He who sits above the circle [chuwg, “arch, vault in the sky”] of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. ²³ He it is who reduces rulers to nothing, Who makes the judges of the earth meaningless [tohu, “formless”].

The sky is like a vault that covers the earth “like a curtain” and “like a tent” over us. Men are very small indeed, like grasshoppers (or locusts). Scripture compares men to grasshoppers when emphasizing the smallness of men in comparison to the greatness of the God of heaven. (See Num. 13:33.)

So God is very big and man very small, and He “reduces rulers to nothing,” even if they think of themselves as great and powerful. The judges in the earth, who are appointed to judge the people with justice, are reduced to formlessness. Isaiah uses the term tohu, which is found in Gen. 1:2, telling us that the earth became “formless.”

His point is to show that even as God makes the rulers of the earth irrelevant, so also does He make the verdicts of the judges meaningless. Their decisions, dictates, and verdicts have no power to withstand the will of God. It is a statement of the sovereignty of God that overrules the “free will” that men suppose themselves to have.

Isaiah 40:24 continues,

²⁴ Scarcely have they been planted, scarcely have they been sown, scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth, but He merely blows on them, and they wither. And the storm carries them away like stubble.

This is probably an allusion to man’s short lifespan during which time he thinks he has power. All too soon he withers like the “grass” and is blown away by the wind and the storm.

Isaiah 40:25, 26 says,

²⁵ “To whom then will you liken Me, that I would be his equal?” says the Holy One. ²⁶ Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these stars, the One who leads forth their host by number, He calls them all by name; because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, not one of them is missing.

There is no equality between God and man. No man can fashion an idol and then claim that it is equal to the Creator. God has not only created all of the stars but has also named them all. Here the prophet was quoting Psalm 147:4,

⁴ He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them.

The gospel was written in the stars long before the first book of the Bible was written. God named the stars and constellations to tell the story of the coming of Christ through a virgin (Virgo), His two-fold character as the Son of God and the Son of Man (Centaurus), His work as the Lamb of God (Aries), His work of pouring out the Holy Spirit (Aquarius), His coming in judgment (Taurus), and His rule as the Lion of the tribe of Judah (Leo).

The names of these constellations, along with the individual stars, were given by God Himself, not by any man. It was one of the original revelations, which, of course, men perverted when they ceased to know God.

Knowing God

Isaiah 40:27, 28, 29 says,

²⁷ Why do you say, O Jacob, and assert, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and the justice due me escapes the notice [alam, “to hide”] of my God”? ²⁸ Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Everlasting [olam, “hidden, unknown”] God, the Lord [Yahweh], the Creator of the ends of the earth does not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable. ²⁹ He gives strength to the weary, and to him who lacks might, He increases power.

While lawbreakers may escape the notice of earthly judges, nothing “escapes the notice of my God.” Heb. 4:13 says, “all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.”

The Hebrew word alam (“to hide”) is the root of olam (“hidden”). Though men may not know God, who is olam, “hidden,” God knows everyone by name and knows their heart. It is not wearisome for Him to keep track of every man and every deed. It does not wear Him out. In fact, He is the One who “gives strength to the weary.” He is our Source of strength and power.

Isaiah 40:30, 31 concludes,

³⁰ Though youths grow weary and tired, and vigorous young men stumble badly, ³¹ yet those who wait for the Lord will gain [halaph, “change for the better”] new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary.

The same God who is never weary imparts His strength to us when we “wait for the Lord.” This expression describes a servant of the king who “waits” or stands ready to do the king’s bidding. Today we have “waiters” who serve customers in a restaurant. God’s “waiters” are empowered to carry out His commands without becoming tired or weary, for they have entered into His rest. All that they do is a rest work, for they have ceased to do their own works or to speak their own words.

So we see how Isaiah establishes the sovereignty of God in the first chapter of his second section. He puts the salvation of Israel (and the whole world) on the foundation of the New Covenant, which is based upon the will of God, rather than the will of man. With such a sovereign and mighty God, there is no chance that the word of the Lord can fail. He has named all men, along with the stars, and because He knows them, they are all important to Him. It is His will and desire (thelema) to save all men that they may “come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4).