I want us to spend some time together this morning and this evening on the same theme. So really it's a two part sermon. All right. I want us to consider the task that's so so critical for a young church. But it's not just critical for a young church. It's critical for a young believer. And some of you may be young believers. But it's also critical for the older believer, as I was looking at the passage again this week, coming up, looking forward to this morning, how much I feel my own soul is needy. And I've looked at this theme so many times, we're here sweeping through up to the New England area to work on a project on the attributes of God and filming and Locations where ministers were used in an extraordinary way, particularly in connection with preaching on the majesty of God. So, Timothy Dwight in the Second Great Awakening at Yale, George Whitefield in the First Great Awakening, his last place he preached and is buried in America, Jonathan Edwards, of course. So, men who were gripped by this big biblical portrait of God and whose lives then were influential. But it doesn't matter how many times we look at passage like this, I feel my own need. I want to talk about rethinking God and refashioning everything based upon what we find of him in this book. Now that's a common theme today. It's a common activity. in parts, in the last 10 years in particular. Now, I'm 43 now, right? And I have lived long enough now to see some of the trends in American religion. When I was your age, for those of you that are in college, rethinking God, rethinking church, rethinking families was not a very common idea. Brand loyalty was firm. I grew up a Southern Baptist, even in Columbus, Ohio. Southern Baptist, that meant everybody I knew that was a Christian had a West Virginian accent. I went down south, I'm a Southern Baptist. My father's a Southern Baptist minister, and so it never occurred to me to be anything but Southern Baptist. Everybody else was dodgy, you know, and suspicious, until I met some wonderful Presbyterians. But that's not really the way it is now, is it? I mean, it's open now. There is a real opportunity to rethink what is church and what is worship and what is evangelism and what is it to live a Godward life? And those old categories have faded to a certain degree. And really, it frees you up. And this church plant here is an expression of that. But while it's common today to rethink church and family and manhood and evangelism, it's also very important that we do it correctly. Western evangelicalism, which we're a part of, is awash in a sea of confusion. The United States is leading the way through her enormous influence. in religion, and she is staggering American evangelicals from one empty idea to the next empty idea, hoping that the gimmick on the horizon will fix our churches and bring back some weight and effectiveness. And all the world is following us. I spent three years in the little country of Wales working on a Ph.D. in Welsh revivals. I was always grieved to hear that an American team had arrived in a little Welsh mining village to do ministry. Because I've been on both ends. I've been at home when the team returns and says, do you know we had a hundred conversions this week? One hundred children asked Jesus into their heart. And you rejoice. And you think it's worth all the money of sending the youth puppet team overseas. But then I've been in Britain. And I talked to the pastors the next year and I said, this town of a thousand, which sees perhaps two or three conversions a year, very difficult area to work in, they said that a hundred were converted last year. How many are even still attending any church in the town? Two, three. It is imperative that we as American evangelicals who are concerned about more than just us four and no more, that when we come to the Scripture that we're willing to rethink some of the traditions that we've been handed. And generally I would say that while it's very common today to rethink church and to rethink family, it's not going in the right direction as a whole. Much of the refashioning of Christianity in the evangelical scene Particularly that which is done among the younger people is done in such a way that in 10 years we will be worse off than we were yesterday. If you read church history, you see that this is not new to us. There are cycles where God brings his church to a position of alarm and she begins to rethink things. And usually it is the younger people that have the courage to cry out to God and say, what do you want from us? But there are times in history where the young people have cried out. And it's been a group of young people led by older wise Christians and they've really laid hold of the great answer, God Himself. And then there are periods in history where young people have cried out and they've not found the right answer and they've gone earnestly in the wrong direction. When you look at the rethinking and you read the new books about, you know, missional churches, etc. I'm not particularly encouraged because it's not because it's a lack of zeal. It's not that we're not being radical or extreme. I mean, really, let's face it. The words passionate, extreme and radical are so popular today in church planting books that I think they're going to replace faith, hope and love. It's not that we're not being radical and extreme, it's that we're not being nearly radical enough. And whoever you can think of as the most cutting edge kind of radical and extreme church planter is not being nearly extreme enough. The problem is that we're not going deeply enough. So you can rethink things. You can rethink how to reach the inner city. And you can rethink how to do church. And you can rethink how to do family and how to educate your children. But none of these things. is deep enough. We're so quick to go to the question, how? And that's the wrong starting place. But the right starting place is another question. Who? Who is He? Does He have the right to define Himself in this book? And will we really rethink Him according to what He says? Well, before we look at our passage this morning, just three more introductory things, and then you'll find out the introduction is about half the sermon, alright? So if you're getting nervous, don't be too nervous. There are three things I think we have to set on our minds before we go any further and look at Isaiah 40, because it's a wonderful passage, and I don't want us to waste our time. The first thing is this, that this is not a job for spiritual cowards. Have you ever considered that the Bible lists spiritual cowardice and spiritual cowards in those lists that describe who will populate hell. It is not easy to rethink family. I have three children. I know to some people that's a very small family. In my church, that's a small family. And we're looked at with some suspicion. But I grew up with just one other sibling. So I thought we had a massive family. And so does my wife's parents. So we have three children. We homeschool. When our oldest child was four and someone mentioned homeschool, I said, no way, no way, no way, no way. And now here we are, we homeschool and I'm on the board of a little cooperative effort. You know, homeschooling is not easy. And rethinking church is not easy. And rethinking what a Christian man is, is not easy. And rethinking evangelism is not easy. And rethinking Christian finances These are not easy things, but they're child's play compared to rethinking God's. Because I can become a homeschooler and I can have 20 children and I can be a church where we have long prayer meetings and we only sing from the old hymns or maybe we only sing from the new choruses and I can make all those choices, but deep down it hasn't touched the root that John Snyder is still the ruler. I think that many of our New church plants that claim to be reformed have gone into the bedroom and found the church in bed with the world covered over with a big Arminian blanket. And the newly reformed preacher screams, Ah! Arminianism! And he runs in and he rips the Arminian blanket off and throws a Calvinistic blanket over him and then leaves. But the church is still in bed with the world. We're still intact with our self-determination. Rethinking God is costly. It's not for cowards. The second thing. Rethinking God is not a boring thing. Now, I preach boring sermons at times. I know. I get bored. But rethinking God is not boring. You, if you're a believer, are called into fellowship with Him. And He opens Himself up. He has displayed Himself to you. And He has commanded you to know Him. and to embrace Him. And it's the beginning. And I don't care how old you are as a Christian. You are at the ABCs of Christianity. One time we did a series of sermons on the character of God, the attributes of God. I expected it to last 12 weeks. It lasted 3 years. But at the end of 3 years, not one person, especially not me, not one of us had gone in more than a few inches into this boundless, shoreless ocean of God. I've been a Christian longer than I've been a rebel against God, but I feel like I'm a little kid walking up to the seaside and He is calling me in. It's not boring to know God other than by hearsay. Third thing, and then we'll look at the passage, it is not impossible. He is incomprehensible. He is infinite. So we're not going to get our little minds wrapped around God and be able to figure Him out. But it is not impossible to know God. The Bible is not custom designed for a number of things that we're trying to use it for. The Bible does not have a book on courtship. The Bible does not have a book on biblical manhood. The Bible does not have a book on educating your children, or having a Christian business, or reaching the inner city. Now certainly the principles for all those areas are in the Scripture. But there's no one book. that you can go to when people call this the owner manual owner's manual for life. I don't know. I don't like that phrase. What is the Bible? It is only custom designed for one great purpose. Everything else is the byproduct. It is custom designed to unveil God to people like us. So even though God is incomprehensibly glorious and transcendent, he has stooped down to explain himself to us. And you can know Him. Well, we're going to look at two passages that illustrate that, I hope. The first this morning is Isaiah 40, when Judah is facing the sunset. Israel is looking at the beginning of a very dark, deep night. She's going to enter into judgment soon. And we find that chapter 40 is the promise of a dawn after the judgment. Then tonight we're going to look at a man who was very religious, very respectable in church. Then he met Christ and that got all turned on its head. Now he's in prison. And we want to ask him, well, now what do you say about the glory of Christ? And we're going to look at Colossians chapter 1 tonight. So Isaiah 40 right now. Well, what's the context? Very quickly, because we have so much to look at. Hezekiah is the king. And I want you to imagine living at the end of the reign of Hezekiah. So we're all Jewish people, younger and older. Judah has been morally bankrupt for generations. She has added the emptiness of idolatry to the externals of Jehovah worship. God has withdrawn his gracious presence. The compromised religious leaders don't mention it. The periods of national repentance and stirring, like Hezekiah's reign, which, if you know your Old Testament, is a wonderful, gracious time. But even that is inadequate. Israel has times where she seems to turn back to God, but then she goes back on the old course. Proud Hezekiah is visited by some delegates from a distant country, the Chaldeans or the Babylonians. At this time, Babylon is not a world dominating power. She soon will be. She's not a threat. She seems very small, very far away. And Hezekiah, like many of us would be, is flattered. Oh, you've come to see me? Yes, yes. Oh, you ought to. I mean, I'm a pretty impressive king. Look at what's happened. Hezekiah brings them into the temple and shows them all the gold and silver. Hezekiah brings them into the palace and shows them all of his treasure. they leave. God sends Isaiah the prophet to Hezekiah and he says to him, you're a fool. The men that came and flattered you today, their grandchildren will come and carry off your grandchildren into slavery. And Hezekiah is so self-centered that as long, he says, as it doesn't happen in my day, I won't worry about it. Now, if you're a Jew and that's your king, that's what you're looking forward to raising children in, and that's what you're looking forward to in the future. Is there any real hope? Now, let's be honest, because American optimism is destroying the church. We're waking up Sunday after Sunday telling us that the next book that we buy will fix us, and it doesn't. So we want to be very sure that our hope is built on a solid, substantial foundation, and it is in verses 1 through 11. We move from the very insignificant palace of Hezekiah and the secret thoughts of his selfish hearts. Now we're moving to the royal messenger from God to hear from the heavenly throne. And he speaks in verses 1 and 2 of comforts. In the Hebrew it's so beautiful. Lay words tenderly alongside the hearts of my people. What words? That the warfare is over. It's an amazing grace here. Israel sins against God for generations. Now Israel's offended God himself will come to rescue them. In verses 3-5 the messenger is heard, prepare a road for this salvation. But be very careful, while God will bring the Israelites back, and later in Isaiah we have a lot of that reference to coming back out of Babylon. The road in Isaiah 40 is not for exiles returning. It's not for men. The good news is not that there's going to be a road open between Babylon and Jerusalem and you can come back. The best news is, in the big picture of things, there's going to be a road open where God will travel, not us, and He will come to us. It's a wonderful picture of Christ. Prepare a road. For whom? For the King. Another voice is heard. There's no hope. Verses 6 through 8. No hope at all in mankind. Man is like a flower. You pick it. It wilts. Man is like grass. You cut it, it withers. I was out walking around this morning. Picked this little flower, you know, already. It's kind of disappointing. Alright? If I try to take it back to my wife, she's not going to be impressed. Is she? Because that's us. The great preachers. The newest book. We don't last. There's no hope in us. Then God's coming is described in verses 9 through 11. He comes. How does God come? This is a description of God coming in the person of the Son. This is a picture of Christ. He will come as a mighty warrior, a hero in battle with ample strength to do whatever it takes. He will also come as a shepherd, tender, especially toward the weak and the young. Now the messenger passes away from the scene in verse 11. And now the focus of the prophet turns to the king himself. The king enters. And this incomprehensibly great God stoops down to our childlike faith and he gives us four very simple pictures of himself. And this is what we want to look at this morning. We want to see the incomparable Lord. And at the end of each of these sections, each of these four pictures, The message is the same. There is no one but God. And there is no one like God. The first picture, we have the contrast between God and creation in verses 12 through 14. And here is that wonderful little phrase, who has? Verse 13, 12, verse 13. Who has? I mean, that's the wrestling match here in our hearts. Who? measured the waters. Who marked off the heavens? Who calculated the dust of the earth? Who weighed the mountains? Look at the wonderful pictures here. Very poetic. Very concrete to help us. The oceans of planet earth fit in the palm of God's hands. Very simple picture, isn't it? He scoops up the water. That's enough for the Atlantic. That's enough for the Pacific. The galaxies, as we look out at night, God does the span of His hands from His thumb to His finger. That's enough for the Milky Way. The earth, all the earth, all the dust that makes up planet earth, its mantle, its core, It seems so big to us, but the Hebrew uses a special word here that ladies in Isaiah's day would have understood. If you're in the kitchen and you have all the measuring cups, you know, ours are all in like the junk drawer, which I can never find the right measuring cup. But maybe you're organized and you have them hanging in the right order. The word here is, go get the... No, not that measuring cup. No, no, no, the little one. No, that. No, the little one. God measures out all the planet Earth in a measuring cup. Not the big one. The little one. God weighs the mountains in the small scales. Now this brings a question. Did any one of us advise God on this? Did any one of us teach God the right way, the just way of doing things? Now you think that's a silly question. Not when Babylon is on the horizon. The Babylonians worshipped an idol named Marduk. Marduk was the creator god in the empty Babylonian worship system. But Marduk was not the only god. They had a whole slew of gods. When Marduk was attributed with creation, here's how he did it. He called together all the lesser gods, and he asked their advice, and they all counseled Marduk on the best way to create, and then he created. And Isaiah is pointing this out. Babylon's on the horizon. She will come. She'll trample you under her foot because of your sin against your gods. But don't be mistaken. Do not mistake Marduk as the Creator, the real Creator. He took counsel from no one. There is none but God. And there is no one like our God. It's the second picture. Not God in creation, but God in the great nations of the world. Note the contrast here. The nations are what? A drop in the bucket. God holds oceans in the hollow of his hand. Do you see the contrast? Do you ever pay attention to drops? Well, I don't mean like drippy faucets, they drive me crazy. You ever go camping and like you're the little guy, I was always the little guy, but I was the young guy and my dad said, go get water from the stream. We need water for cooking and whatever, cleaning pots. So I'd go down, and my father owned a donut shop, so we had these five-gallon big buckets. I couldn't carry a five-gallon bucket of water, so I'd go down the stream and I'd fill it up, and I don't want to make a lot of trips back up the hill, so I'd try to take it, but I can't get this five gallons of water, so I'd pour a little out, and I'd go up a little further, I'd pour a little more out. By the time I get up, it's not very impressive. Now, if my dad would have said to me, oh, oh, oh, John, there's a drop on the side of the bucket. It's running down the edge. Catch it. Well, I wouldn't have cared about a drop. Nobody cares about drops. The picture here is insignificant. The world-dominating empires are adrift on the edge of a bucket that nobody pays attention to. They are a speck of dust on the scales. Now, some of us are worried about our weight. And I found out when I tried to lose weight that you can weigh a lot different from one time of the day to another, before the meals, after the meals, before a run, after a run. But none of us, no matter how narcissistic we are, no matter how many times we stand on the scales in front of a mirror and think light thoughts, nobody gets down with a brush and gets the speck of dust off the scale. But the world ruling empires are a speck of dust. Babylon is a speck of dust. Rome is a speck of dust. The USSR is a speck of dust. America is a speck of dust. And the next great power is a speck of dust. So let's contrast the real God in the world's nations and the greats. They're nothing. He describes them as worthless and empty. And the word there is for vanity. It's just emptiness. There's just nothing there. Now, be careful. Don't forget that that applies to the religious significance of the great world powers, the great world religions. He talks about Lebanon here, that if you read your Old Testament, Lebanon's the place with all the big trees and the great forests. And so what he says is this. All the nations are nothing before God. They're dust and drips. Lebanon, if you went and cut down all the great forests of Lebanon and all those old growth forests were thrown into a great pile, then you took all the animals that lived in those forests and you piled them up as a great burnt offering and you lit this enormous pile, this hundreds of acres of bonfire and it rose up in this mighty bonfire to God, it wouldn't be enough to get His attention. We're impressed by numbers, aren't we? Especially when it comes to religion. And we have people that say, how can a church of 20,000 be wrong? Well, that's easy. It happens all the time. Churches of 75 can be wrong too. Our largest religious endeavors in human history are nothing to God if they are not His. A million Mormons are a drop. that God doesn't notice. A billion Hindus are a speck of dust. And 300 million Americans who reinvent Jesus to fit our Western lifestyles are emptiness. There is none but God. There's nobody like God. The third picture is the picture of idolatry in verse 18-20. Look over a page at chapter 41, verse 24. And then verse 29. In verse 24 we have a description of idols. In verse 29 we have a description of people who hope in idols and talk on behalf of idols. Verse 24, God says to idols, Behold, you are of no account, and your work amounts to nothing. He who chooses you is an abomination. Now verse 29 of Isaiah 41, Behold, all of them, that's the people that talk for idols, they're false. Their works are worthless. Their molten images are wind and emptiness. It's the same word here. They're empty. Allah does not exist as the deity that Muslims claim He is. And He will not intercede for the Muslim soul on the Judgment Day. And the Hindus who have 250 million options for deities, The 250 million gods of the Hindus do not exist. The Mormon Jesus does not exist. And again, the Americanized Baptist, Presbyterian, and Methodist Jesus does not exist. We want to be very careful. We can fashion God in our image, and it can be a gold one. Or we may not be good enough at that, so we make a silver one. We may not be good enough at that. We may just hope to have a God in our imagination that's made out of wood that doesn't rot and He won't tip over and embarrass us. But whatever you choose, whatever image you fashion God in, it's not God. The thing we so desperately need to do is constantly bring ourselves back again and again to this book and allow God to really rattle the dust off of our ideas of Him. Look at the fourth picture. The great rulers and judges of the earth in verse 21 and following. Do you not know? Have you not heard? The prophets amazed. Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the vault of the earth and its inhabitants are grasshoppers. It's he who stretches out the heavens like a curtain. He reduces the rulers to nothing. He makes judges meaningless. Now, the contrast between God and the great world rulers is seen in the frailty of the world rulers. There is always a succession. That's why we have boring history classes, right? Because if there were no succession of world rulers, we'd have a handful of world rulers from the beginning. We'd only have five or six to memorize. But you don't get that. So you have Western Civ. And I like history. And you study all these names. But to us, they're just names for a test. They once were names that held men and women and children in fear. And they ruled the lives of thousands and millions. But now they're dead. And nobody remembers them except scholars who bend over their books with their bifocals trying to figure out tomorrow's lessons. Not too long ago I heard on public radio, that's my confession for today, alright? Alright, so I heard on public radio. that Germany was in an uproar because there was a movie that had come out that painted Hitler in a comical way. Now, not that Hitler was funny, but it painted him as a comic figure, an idiot to laugh at. And so half the country was okay with that. Let's make fun of Hitler. The other half of the country said, Hitler's not a thing to laugh at, right? Whatever you think of the movie and how to respond to the memory of Hitler, there was a day when that man was not laughed at. And millions hated him and feared him. But now he's died. And we, we're next. And man, dad and mom, king and queen, friends and family, children, they go the way that everyone else has gone. And there's this march of time in front of our face. And we die. And at first people were ruffled, and then after a while, nobody remembers what the fuss was about us. No mortal can be compared to God, no matter how influential. There is none like God. Now, these are the four pictures. How are we going to live on these pictures? Well, there is a wrong application in this passage that God has to straighten out in verse 27 to the end. And for the sake of time, this is basically what it is. If God is so big, Isaiah, He must have forgotten us, because here we are in trouble. You've told us that terrible things are coming. We look around and all around us there's idolatry. And so the genuine believer in the day of Isaiah could say, I believe that God is big, but I don't believe that He cares much about us any longer. Look at the predicament we're in. If you are determined to rethink God biblically and to gain the highest and clearest views of God, and in your prayer meetings, and in the songs that you sing, and the books you study in your small groups, and the things you read in your free time, if you want to pursue that noble end, you must be ready for what I would call the enemy's plan B. Plan A is God's no big deal. You can take him or leave him. Plan B is this. Okay, well now you're at this church. And now you're hearing about all this big God stuff. And you're reading these big God books. And you're trying to return to a biblical view of God. And well, it is very noble. But you know that a God that big, I don't think He has time for people as little as you. There is the temptation to believe that transcendent majesty is equal to aloofness. That God doesn't really care. That's a lie. And that your insignificance is equal to being unknown and unloved. It's a lie. But it is a lie that every believer will face unless you give time to the cure. Let's just be very practical. Most Americans, and Mr. Richard Roberts will be here next week and may use this illustration because I stole it from him. Most Americans have a God that's about three quarters of an inch taller than them. So how big of a cross, how big a redemption do you need with a God that big? about a three quarters of an inch Jesus, right? And so for most of us, we grew up in churches where after a sinner's prayer, knowing the basic Sunday school facts, Jesus came, born in Bethlehem, et cetera, et cetera, died, rose on the third day, loves us, and has a wonderful plan for us. And that's about all the gospel you need to make it with a God that's three quarters of an inch bigger than you. But as your understanding of God becomes more accurate, the gap between you and God will become painfully greater. And if you care about God, you're going to be plagued by thoughts, like the Israelites were, that a God that great and that pure, I don't know why He would know me or love me at all. The only way to correct that is not to think, I am significant. The only way to correct it is to think, Christ is that enormous. The work of redemption is that big and much bigger. So there must be, as you labor for a higher view of God, an ongoing bending of all the energy of your soul to know God in Christ. So that as the gap between you and God becomes painfully bigger, so the work of Christ is seen more clearly. Now you don't have to believe me, you can do it to yourself, but you'll be miserable if you don't. Now that's a wrong application, the idea that God probably is so big He doesn't know us, doesn't love us. Let me give you some good applications and then we're finished. One of the helpful applications that we can have is this. Beginning with who God is in our rethinking, instead of beginning with the question of how to reach the lost or how to have a right kind of family or etc. Beginning with God helps you get the right measures of things in Christianity and right measures in Christianity are not easy to get. We are surrounded by pygmy gods and it is easy to embrace a pygmy religion. If you visit your local Christian bookstore and walk down the theology aisle, if you walk down the, don't do it, but if you were to walk down the fiction aisle and the romance aisle, you've got to come away with the impression that God is a mighty small person. Our biggest Bible word, that we offer the world. New birth. That's a shocking reality. Everlasting life. Adoption into the family of God. These, our biggest words in the gospel, are paperweights to the world. They're weightless styrofoam props. In the Bible, they look like giant boulders. But as soon as church service is over and Anthony prays and says, the end, apart from the grace of God at work in us, we'll be the same way. You have this big scene. Here's the boulders. Anthony prays. Cut. Church is over. And you pick up the boulders like they weigh nothing because they're made out of styrofoam. You go pack them away for next week. Is that your Christianity? It may be. The only cure to that is to go back to who God is. And as we grow in the awareness of God, these words become wavy in significance again. Our words are weightless. Our lives are weightless. We're having trouble getting the right measures. The cure is God. You know what a Tonka truck is? Do they even have Tonka trucks? Do you have them on your iPads? Tonka trucks? Tonka apps? Tonka trucks are a little like dump trucks. Not this big bright yellow. I played with Tonka trucks. I was in the dentist's office one time and I was flipping through a magazine board, you know, and there was a picture of a thing that looked just like a Tonka truck. How do I know it's not a Tonka truck? Because in the corner by the back wheel is a man, probably a six foot tall man. He comes up one third the way up the back tire. So I understand this is not a Tonka truck. You look at Christianity, how do you know it's not a weightless, small thing? Because you bring it into the picture with God, and it's enormous. It's extraordinary. It is easier to become a member of an average evangelical church. than it is to join a homosexual club in California. I was reading years ago about a man who was being disciplined and kicked out of the homosexual club because he didn't pay his dues. I don't know anybody kicked out of a Baptist church for ignoring the responsibility of giving to God. We have to bring our religion back into the picture of God. Now, in line with that, how can you benefit yourself in your own Christianity? You can enlarge every word of this Bible by beginning with who God is. If you get individual truths correctly, alright, so like the truth about the new birth, and the truth about atonement, and the truth about holiness, each of them carry a certain impact in the life that belongs to them. But if you begin with God, it's like a train. If you begin with God, And these things are attached to God. When these words are read in the Scripture, when they're heard in the sermon, and they crash into your life, they don't have the weight of one individual truth, like you ought to be holy, but they have the weight of a whole string of truths, like this is who God is. And it comes crashing into the life, and suddenly the Scripture is enormously beneficial and significantly enlarged. If you just do a little exercise, if you read from Isaiah 40, verse 12 to 26, the descriptions, the four pictures of God there, and then you go and read some New Testament passages that have become familiar to you, and you use that God as the measure of that passage, how very different it affects us. Think of things like this. Isaiah 53. Let's turn there. Isaiah 53. Look at verse 3. All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each one of us has turned to his own way. But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. Now the little word, Him, is the great word there. And so we go back to Isaiah 40. And the hope is coming. But the hope comes through Isaiah 53. All my wretched lust and greed and pride and strutting is cast on another person. Who is this other person? It's Isaiah 40. And suddenly the cross is expanded in front of me. And sin becomes serious. John chapter 1. We don't have to turn there. He turns to Andrew when they John and Andrew come up to Jesus and He turns and says to Him, what do you seek? Now, if I ask you, if you come to me and I turn and I say, what are you really looking for in life? It doesn't mean much, does it? I can't give you much. But if Isaiah 40, that God takes flesh and turns to you and says, what do you seek? I mean, what do you really want right now? It doesn't matter how long you've known Him. Today, what are you longing for? Or another wonderful statement. Follow me. How different that becomes when Isaiah 40 is the launch pad. Matthew 11 verse 28, Come unto me all who are weary and heavy laden. I will give you rest. Who's the I? It's Isaiah 40. And suddenly it's wonderful. Matthew 28, Go and tell the world, make disciples, baptize them. I will go with you. So very different when Isaiah 40 is the God that's going with me. What about the pattern for self-denial? We're not so good at that. And so we say, well, I shouldn't have to give up my rights because so and so is sinning, and I shouldn't have to pay the price when he's the one sinning, when she's the one sinning. This happens all the time in relationships. And then Romans 15, verse 3 says, even Christ did not please himself. Now, when Christ there is Isaiah 40, and that person takes on humanity, and he does not please himself. Then when Paul turns to you and says, in your marriage, in your family, at your school, with your roommate in the dorm, do not live for your own pleasure. Live for their good, because even Christ didn't please himself. What a different weight that carries. Or judgment. Depart from me, I never knew you. Isaiah 40. He never knew me. Revelation 22. Behold, I am coming quickly. My reward is with me to render to everyone according to what He has done. When it's Isaiah 40, then what hope do we have of slipping under the radar? He is here. He searches our present thoughts. He enters into those inner chambers of our motives. He has weighed you and sifted you. It's Isaiah 40's God that you're going to be standing in front of. Well, let me give you one more. Ephesians 3. Paul prays for this new church, probably a whole circuit of churches, and he says, I'm praying that you might be filled with all the fullness of God. that he would do this for his glory in the church through Christ. And if you have a little Jesus, that's not much. But if you look at Isaiah 40 and then you say, Paul, do you really mean it? Do you really mean that you want me to be filled with fullness that comes from that person? What a different thing. Who is willing to be satisfied with this shriveled up, anemic Christianity when Isaiah 40 is the God? What we need today is not to rethink how to reach lost people or how to have a family. Primarily, what we need to rethink is who is God. And then there's this Copernican revolution, as one author said, and where we used to say, I think that God, like the sun, orbits planet John. You think that's silly, but it made a lot of sense to me. And you think he orbits you. And marriage is all about me. And my children are about me. And my church is about me. And my money and my time. It's about me until I see God. And then there's a revolution. All of me begins to orbit Him. It's not because of legalism. It's because there is a gravity to Him that pulls all the little areas of my life into this united stream, into this one element. that circles Him. Is that the God we know? Let's pray. Our Father, we ask that You would divorce us from those low and inadequate and unworthy views of You that find such easy resting place in us. God, things that we don't plan, but by our carelessness, Lord, they come. And we ask that You would open our eyes to see You as You really are. And Lord, we pray, that you would come in and run the false lovers out of our heart, that you would be the one that our life orbits gladly, that the glory and weight of our Savior would pull all things to Him. Father, we ask this for His honor and in His name, Amen.