00:00
00:00
00:01
Transcript
1/0
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.
Rethinking God
For more Radford Fellowship media, visit our Vimeo page:
http://www.vimeo.com/radfell/videos
| Sermon ID | 425121421375 |
| Duration | 44:54 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Isaiah 40 |
| Language | English |
© Copyright
2026 SermonAudio.