SOARING LIKE EAGLES

Text: Isaiah 40

Introduction: Several weeks ago, Gloria and I were in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, to visit our daughters and their families. While there I had lunch with my friend Rick, who is an architect by profession but was downsized by his firm about 2 years ago. His life had been a struggle in those “wilderness” months. He tried to launch a new company, battled financial stress, and was diagnosed with a brain tumor—a heavy load for someone in his 40s. Surgery for the tumor was successful, but recovery was slow and depression swept into his life. He felt disconnected from God and his prayer life was almost nonexistent. But eventually he did recover from those “dark days.” I asked him how he did it. His answer: “I heard a sermon from Isaiah 40.” I came home with a desire to reexamine this chapter and to take a fresh look. This is what I found.

Key Question: In Isaiah 40:18, this question is raised by the prophet: “To whom then will you liken God?” The writer seems to be searching for a larger scale to weigh the greatness of God and a longer measuring rod to handle the awesomeness of the Almighty. William Pape expressed it this way: “Handel’s magnificent music of ‘The Messiah’ has made us more familiar with the opening words of the chapter than with the great truth it contains. In the middle of the chapter is the remarkable question, ‘To whom then will ye liken God?’ (v.18), to which the first half (vv.1-11) gives a well-known answer, and the second half (vv.12-31) a forgotten reply” (The Lordship of Jesus Christ, pp. 94-95). This question led me to six discoveries about God.

Six Discoveries of Isaiah

1. God is greater than all of creation. He holds the world in His hands, yet His greatness cannot be measured (40:12-14).

• Our Creator God holds all the waters of the oceans and seas and lakes and ponds in “the hollow of His hand” (v.12). Yet when we you or I cup our hand, the hollow forms a cup about 2 inches in diameter—a pitiful amount of water!
• Our great God measured the immense expanse of the heavens with his span. The “span” is a measure often used in the Bible. If you measure your outstretched hand from your thumb to your little finger, the average is 6 inches. This is a span.
• Our immensely wise God has calculated the “dust of the earth.”
• Our amazing God made the mountains and can weigh them all—from Mt. Everest in Nepal to Mt. McKinley in Alaska!

Finally, Isaiah asks: Where did God receive his counsel and instruction to design such a magnificent creation (vv.13-14)? The psalmist answered: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork” (Ps. 19:1).

2. He is greater than the nations (40:15-17). How do we measure the greatness of the nations? The size of their military might? The total of their GNP (Gross National Product)? Let’s take the GNP (in 2000) of the two top nations in the world:

• USA—$10,533,000,000 annual GNP or $38,000/person
• Japan—$4,852,000,000 annual GNP or $38,000/person

These figures are impressive until we read about how the nations are measured by Isaiah. Compared to the greatness of our God, the nations are:

• a drop in a bucket (40:15)
• a particle of dust on a scale (v.15)

And, as verses 16-17 tell us, if we wanted to consider making an offering to God and went to Lebanon and cut down every magnificent cedar of Lebanon, and then searched the land for every animal, slaughtered them, and then somehow placed them on the altar of burning cedars, it would an insufficient offering for our great God. The nations, in comparison with God, just don’t have it—they are worthless, less than nothing.

3. He is greater than the folly of idolatry (40:18-20).

“Looking about him for further comparisons that are ranked great, the author comes to a field where the whole world of that time thought that the greatest powers of all were to be found—the field of idols. As has been suggested, this section is not primarily a polemic against idols; it is a positive setting forth of the omnipotence of God by way of contrast. . . . We have here a practical exposition of the commandment: ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image’ (Exod. 2:4). It as though the author said: There simply is no being that can in any wise even remotely compete with God.” (H. C. Leupold, Exposition of Isaiah, p.33).

4. He is greater than the rulers of this world (40:21-24). This passage continues to build comparisons. God, who sits on the circle of the earth, is so great that the inhabitants of earth are like grasshoppers; and princes who have ruled with pride and boastful swagger are no sooner in office than their time is up! History is full of builders of empires who were brought to nothing (40:23-24). We think of Ancient Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar, Medo-Persia and Cyrus, Greece and Alexander the Great, and Rome and the Caesars—all gone. God blew upon them! In more recent history, we think of rulers with dreams of annihilation and domination: Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, Hirohito in Japan, Khrushchev in the Soviet Union—all gone. And today we can name many who generate fear: the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al-Qaeda. Our Sovereign God brings princes to nothing. He will “blow on them, and they will wither” (40:24).

5. He is greater than the stars in the heavens (40:26): “Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things, who brings out their host by number; He calls them all by name, by the greatness of His might and the strength of His power; not one is missing.”“As telescopes and cameras increase in power, astronomers find it necessary to adjust their estimates of the size of the universe. The constellation named after the beautiful Andromeda has a dim spot of light near her right elbow. This is the most distant object visible to the unaided eye. That blurry speck in the night sky is a nebula of one hundred billion stars whose light takes two million light-years to reach us. No man knows for sure the total number of stars, but there are at least 100 million galaxies each containing approximately 5 billion stars” (The Lordship of Jesus Christ, p. 101).

Yet Isaiah wrote that God, the Creator of the universe, calls them all by name!But now we arrive at the practical application of Isaiah 40. Some readers might conclude that with such a big universe to take care of God must be too busy to give attention to His people. “Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel: My way is hidden from the Lord, and my just claim is passed over by my God?” (v.27).

6. He is greater than our weaknesses and weariness (40:27-31). Earlier I mentioned my friend Rick in Ft. Wayne. At a low point in his life, he turned to this great chapter. Here he found, as can we, the answer for weakness and weariness. It is in the promise of our awesome God. God doesn’t faint or grow weary (v.28), His strength and power are limitless!“It is easy, when distress or suffering becomes prolonged, to think that God has forgotten or is indifferent to what one is going through. But this is always wrong. He is ever concerned about His people, and in His own time will give deliverance. . . . ‘He giveth power to the faint.’ It was this that enabled Paul to glory in his infirmities, that the ‘power of Christ might rest upon’ him” (H. A. Ironside, Isaiah, p. 243).

Isaiah has amply explained God’s strength and power. Now His strength and power is available to us, His followers. The story from Paul in 2 Corinthians 12 encourages us: “And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (vv.7-9).“To pursue the common track of daily duty—not faltering or growing weary—to do so when novelty has worn off, when the elasticity of youth has vanished . . . this is the greatest achievement of the Christian life. For this earthly and human strength will not avail. But God is all-sufficient. Never faint or weary Himself, He is able to infuse such resistless energy into the soul that waits on Him, that if it mounts, it shall be on eagle-wing; if it runs, it will not weary; if it walks it will not faint” (F. B. Meyer, Christ in Isaiah, p. 27).

• In a sermon entitled “Mounting Up Like Eagles,” Joe Wheeler reminds us that only eagles and hawks soar. Other birds can flap their wings or glide. But taking advantage of air currents, they can soar. This is God’s gift to us when weary and weak. If we wait on Him, He will teach us to soar.