God’s Character

Scripture:  Isaiah 40 (NRSV)

1 Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. 2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her…  Read more…

Sermon Notes: God’s Character

(There is no recording for this week’s sermon. You will find the text of the sermon below.)

The title for the sermon series I’m preaching over the next three weeks is God’s New Thing. This title comes from Isaiah 43:19, where God says “I am doing a new thing.” I was reading and thinking about the big poem in Isaiah 40-55 as Elaine preached about the Kingdom of God this summer, and I saw connections between the language of the Poet writing to God’s people in exile and the Kingdom of God. When the opportunity to preach for three weeks came up, I knew pretty quickly which passages I wanted to preach on. For those of you who were around for the Kingdom of God series, you may notice that I’m following up on some ideas from those sermons. If you want to revisit the Kingdom of God series, sermon recordings can be found on the Walmer website.

The passages that I’ll be preaching on today and on the next two Sundays are all poetry. They are part of a big poem that begins with Isaiah 40, which we heard read just now, and runs through Isaiah 55. Poetry can be difficult to read well. Poems are dense with images and ideas, expressed in as few words as possible. Poems are not written as logical arguments like essays or sermons are. This does not mean poetry is random – great poetry is carefully structured, and the arrangement and rhythm of the words adds depth to the meaning. I’m not a natural poetry reader, and am consciously trying to learn how to read poetry better. To add to the difficulty, the poetry in the Bible is poetry in translation from an ancient language, poetry written millennia ago, and it needs a bit more work and care to read well. During the next three weeks I’ll be noting some technicalities of Hebrew poetry to help us understand what we’re reading.

You might want to have your Bible open to Isaiah 40 as we look at this passage together.

Isaiah 40 gives us a glimpse of who the God who speaks through the Poet is. In this first part of the poem we are introduced to God, the God who proclaims comfort to God’s people, the God who will do a New Thing.

This section of Isaiah addressed God’s people, the nation of Israel, in exile. Chapters 36-39 predict the fall of Jerusalem to the army from Babylon because of the way God’s people have rejected God’s covenant with them. Chapter 40 addresses God’s people in exile in Babylon, and proclaims to them that their exile is coming to an end.

1 Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.
2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.

It is clear that the words that follow are meant to be words of comfort. I think it might be hard to always hear comfort in these words if we focus on what is said about people – that people are like grass, and the grass withers when God’s breath blows on it, for example, in verses 6-7. But the focus of comfort is not on people, but on God.

God’s people can take comfort in who God is revealed to be in this poem.

God’s people can take comfort in who God is revealed to be, in God’s character.

Two or possibly three voices proclaim that God is coming in Glory (verses 3-5), that God’s word is everlasting (verses 6-8), and that God comes in power (verses 9-11). Listen to these voices speak:

The first voice, God will come in Glory:

3 A voice cries out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.
5 Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

I’m just going to pause for a second to talk about a key feature of Hebrew Poetry called parallelism. I’ve heard this referred to as rhyming ideas instead of rhyming sounds. There are two kinds of parallelism demonstrated in the verses I’ve just read:

First, synonymous or positive parallelism:

In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Here the idea of the first line is strengthened and extended by restating it in the second. The “way” in the wilderness is extended to become a straight highway in the desert.  The LORD, the name of God given to Moses at the Burning Bush, YHWH, is “our God.” Synonymous parallelism extends and strengthens an idea.

Second, antithetical or negative parallelism, where the opposite or negation of the first line is used to emphasize the idea:

Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;

Valleys are lifted up and in the second line mountains and hills made low – but the effect of these two opposites is the same, rough places are smoothed to make the way for God.

Keep an eye out for these two kinds of parallelism, synonymous and antithetical, as we continue reading this chapter.

Lets move to the second voice heard in this chapter.

The second voice reminds us that God’s word endures forever:

6 A voice says, “Cry out!”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”
All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field.
7 The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.

The third voice (a female voice, possibly the personified city of Jerusalem) tells us God comes with power and care for God’s people:

9 Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings;
lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,
lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,  “Here is your God!”
10 See, the Lord God comes with might, and His arm rules for Him;
His reward is with Him, and His recompense before Him.

11 He will feed His flock like a shepherd; He will gather the lambs in His arms, and carry them in His bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.

The third voice says to the cities of Judah “Behold! Your God.” Look at God! Look at the Lord!! God comes with power, but also care for God’s people. God is the Shepherd King, who both rules in power, and cares for God’s people as a shepherd cares for the flock.

Behold your God! There is your comfort, in the Glory, enduring word, and powerful rule of God.

This focus on God, the call to Look! Your God!! continues through the rest of Isaiah 40. There are two more major characteristics of God on display in verses 12-31.

First, God is Holy – which means completely set apart and incomparable to anything known to humans. This is demonstrated first by a series of rhetorical questions starting at verse 12, then stated explicitly in verse 25.

Listen to the way the poet declares God’s holiness:
12 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand
and marked off the heavens with a span,
enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure,
and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?
13 Who has directed the spirit of the Lord,
or as His counselor has instructed Him?
14 Whom did He consult for His enlightenment,
and who taught Him the path of justice?
Who taught Him knowledge, and showed Him the way of understanding?
15 Even the nations are like a drop from a bucket,
and are accounted as dust on the scales;
see, He takes up the isles like fine dust.
16 Lebanon would not provide fuel enough,
nor are its animals enough for a burnt offering.
17 All the nations are as nothing before Him;
they are accounted by Him as less than nothing and emptiness.
18 To whom then will you liken God,
or what likeness compare with Him?
19 An idol? —A workman casts it,
and a goldsmith overlays it with gold,
and casts for it silver chains.
20 As a gift one chooses mulberry wood
—wood that will not rot—
then seeks out a skilled artisan
to set up an image that will not topple.
21 Have you not known? Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
22 It is God who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
and spreads them like a tent to live in;
23 who brings princes to naught,
and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
24 Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when He blows upon them, and they wither,
and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
25 To whom then will you compare me,
or who is my equal? says the Holy One.

God cannot be properly compared to an idol – which is the construction of human hands. Nor can God be compared with national rulers – they are like plants which wither and fade before God. God is the Holy One, completely separate from the created world, and incomparable to that world.

The Holy God is also the creator of the universe. God cannot be compared to anything in the world because it was God who made the world. God created the heavens and the earth, and everything in them, and that is what brings comfort and strength to God’s people. This is the focus of the last section of this chapter, verses 25-31. Notice that verse 25 serves as a bridge between the attempts to compare God to idols or human kings and the section of the poem that focuses more on God as creator. Listen again to the words of the poet in Isaiah 40:25-31.

25 To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One.
26 Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these?
He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name;
because He is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.
27 Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”?
28 Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
His understanding is unsearchable.
29 He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.
30 Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;
31 but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.

The Creator God does not grow faint or weary. The Creator God has the ability to strengthen those who are weak and exhausted. The Creator God knows and sees all aspects of creation – nothing is invisible to Him.

Who is the God who comforts God’s people?

God is a glorious and powerful Shepherd King whose word endures forever.

God is the Holy One.

God is the Creator of the ends of the earth.

As a message of comfort to God’s people in exile in Babylon, the characteristics of God found in Isaiah 40 addressed some of their very real fears.

The people of God may have feared they were forgotten by God. But, God their Creator and the Creator of the ends of the earth could still see them, even if they were living in Babylon and not Jerusalem. They were not forgotten.

The people of God may have feared that their God was inferior to the gods of the nations who had defeated them. But God the Holy One could not be compared to idols or the gods of other nations. Their God was not inferior, but completely beyond comparison with idols, or gods. God was worthy of their continued worship and trust.

The people of God may have feared that an end to the exile was not possible, that the nations were too powerful to overcome. God the glorious and powerful Shepherd King whose word endures forever is able to defeat rulers and nations and bring God’s people home to Jerusalem, out of their exile. All barriers to a return to Jerusalem, their beloved city would be overcome.

How does this message of comfort, this message that describes God as the glorious, powerful Shepherd King, that reminds us that God is Holy, that reminds us that God is the Creator of the universe, how does this message resonate with us today? How does it help us to see the new thing God might be doing right now, in our lives?

Compared with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile of the people of God, our current public health situation & precautionary restrictions on how we can meet and interact with other people are relatively minor inconveniences. I don’t want to diminish the challenges this time presents for us – we’re experiencing real loss and grief over our lost personal connections, over our restricted movements, and for some over loss of health and life. So how do we respond in a time of heightened worry and potential danger?

Do we worry or fear that God has forgotten us or somehow cannot see us because we are not meeting in person at a church building?  Can God be present in our virtual gathering?

Do we worry that possibly God does not compare favourably to the things we put our trust in for our safety and security? Do we wonder if God actually is more trustworthy than public health measures, money, our own resourcefulness, governments, social cohesion, or anything else that gives us a sense of safety?

Do we wonder or worry if God is powerful enough to change world events? Or is a pandemic just too big for God to handle?

The words of comfort written millennia ago to the people of God in exile in Babylon still speak into our doubts, our worries, our fears about our present situation.

God is still the glorious and powerful Shepherd King who can change world events. Pandemics are not too much for God to handle. We can trust that our Shepherd King will care for us, feed us, and, if needed, carry us.

God the Holy One, who is completely above and incomparable to anything inside the universe is worthy of our worship and our trust. God is the one who makes us secure, not the modern idols we think of as providing for our safety and security.

God our creator has not forgotten us, even as we meet virtually instead of in person. God sees each of us and continues to care for us.

We are not forgotten by God our Creator

We are kept safe by God, the Holy one.

We are cared for by God our glorious, powerful Shepherd King.

I am not sure exactly what your fears or concerns or worries or other feelings are at this time. For me, it is hard to walk out into the new normal every day without some concern for health and safety. I am learning to talk to God about masks and viruses and super-spreading events as I walk to my job on a re-opening university campus. Prayer is part of what it means to be remembered by God, to be made secure by God, to be cared for by God.

Another way God cares for us is through other people. We can participate in God’s care and remembrance of us all by caring for and remembering each other. I don’t just talk to God, I also talk with my Christian friends about masks and viruses and social circles and how to cope with the ways our “new normal” works in each of our particular circumstances.

I’m not sure how the people of God in exile experienced the Poet’s words of comfort. It is possible to hear these words and not take comfort from them. You can chose to do this as well. Yeah, yeah, same old, God is all powerful but I don’t experience that, you might be thinking. If that is your initial response, maybe you are willing to take on some homework this week – re-read Isaiah 40 and look for some detail or image about the character of God that resonates with you. Then go looking for God as portrayed in that image this week. Where is God at work? What new thing is God doing?

It is also possible to over-spiritualize the comfort found in Isaiah 40. We think that God’s comfort belongs to our inner lives, our spiritual lives, not out in our every-day lives at work and home. But God is present with us everywhere. God made all of the world, not just our inner spiritual lives. God’s kingdom has come we’ve been reminded over the summer. Look around outside yourself for evidence of God’s kingdom this week. What new thing is God doing? How is God’s kingdom coming on earth as in heaven?

Together let’s keep in mind the comfort of Isaiah 40 this week:

Let’s pray:

Holy God thank-you that you see us, that you remember us, that you are present with each of us and comfort us through your Holy Spirit. Give us eyes to see your work in our world, and willingness to participate in that work. Amen.

Looking to Sunday

by Elaine Poproski

More than 2,500 years ago, Israel’s ancestors fell under the sweeping power of Babylon. They lost their land, their people were dispersed and exiled across the empire, and their Temple was utterly destroyed. They grieved all they’d lost and wondered at God’s apparent forgetfulness. It was into this landscape of despair that God raised and called Isaiah to be His prophet to His people. Isaiah 40 opens with these words:

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.
A voice cries out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

We know from history that Israel’s exile did not last forever. The day eventually came when they were permitted to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple. Whatever they felt in the moment, the truth was that God never forgot and never abandoned His people. Through Isaiah God spoke hope. He promised a new thing.

I wonder how many of us feel grief and despair like the exiled Israelites felt? We may not have lost our land, but we’ve certainly lost a lot that was familiar and comfortable. And as students and teachers return to school, some of us are anxious, some of us are waiting with bated breath to discover the impact that return to school will have, and some of us have given up hope that things will ever return to ‘normal’. But maybe there’s a new ‘normal’ in the making. Maybe God is doing a new thing and maybe that new thing is better than the old.

Over the next three Sundays, Heather will be preaching from Isaiah 40 – 43. Considering the “new thing” God promised through Isaiah, particularly in Isaiah 43:19, she’ll be asking us the question: How do we recognize what God’s new thing is now?

As you prepare for Sunday, I invite you to read Isaiah 40 in its entirety. Read it out loud. I expect that some parts of this chapter are familiar to you. How do those familiar parts fit with the less familiar parts? The whole chapter is written as a poem; perhaps re-write it in your own words, as though it were a letter written to us, today, in our current reality. What is it that God would speak through this ancient prophet, to us in Toronto in 2020? Do you hear a message of hope?