‘You’re just lucky,’ a young woman said to a friend who had announced her engagement to a young, macho, Wall Street success. How many people think that so much in our lives is due to luck? The English historian, A.J.P. Taylor in his Politics in Wartime observed that a question that was often used to assess a man’s practical value was, ‘Has he luck?’
‘Luck’ becomes a form of fatalism that says things happen in life as the result of ‘the random play of chance in human affairs’. If you get caught in an earthquake in LA, a shooting in Mexico, or floods in India, it’s simply bad luck. Fatalism springs from a sense of helplessness. As the song, Que sera, sera, put it,Whatever will be, will be.
Two and a half millennia ago the Jewish people, captive in ancient Babylon, could have been drawn to the idea of fate. Their captors were the inventors of astrology. They had developed all kinds of divination including the occult. The exiled Jewish people might well have asked, ‘Where is the power of the God of Israel compared with the power and scientific advances of the Babylonians?’ With the significant advances in science and technology around us today, we too may be tempted to ask, ‘Where is God’s power?’
We can draw strength from Isaiah’s response to an implied question: The Lord, your Redeemer and Creator, says: “I am the Lord, who made all things. I alone stretched out the heavens. By myself I made the earth and everything in it. I am the one who exposes the false prophets as liars by causing events to happen that are contrary to their predictions. I cause wise people to give bad advice, thus proving them to be fools (Isaiah 44:24-25).
WHO’S IN CONTROL?
‘Who’s in control?’ Isaiah was asking. The Babylonians thought they could read their destiny in the stars. But Isaiah’s response is to ask a question, ‘Who made them? The Lord did.’ (It is often helpful to ask yourself this question in times of temptation or when someone challenges you about a matter of faith.)
Indeed, Isaiah continues, ‘God, the Lord who created everything, has power over the details of the universe. He can even say to the rivers, “Be dry!” – and they are. And don’t be impressed by the wisdom of the wise,’ Isaiah continues, ‘God foils and overturns their wisdom’.
‘Think,’ says Isaiah. ‘Rather than the academics at the university of Babylon, it is God’s servants, the prophets, who bring you the truth. You want to know what will happen, then listen: Cyrus — God’s shepherd shall surely carry out his purpose’(44:28).
It’s hard for us to imagine the impact that Isaiah’s words would have had on his readers, for he was writing two hundred years before Cyrus was born. Furthermore, Cyrus would begin life as an obscure prince in the far north of Babylon. It was humanly inconceivable that he could rise and conquer the Babylonian empire and then later, give orders for the return of the Jews to their homeland – something he did around 520BC.
For Isaiah to speak of some future unknown, insignificant prince as God’sshepherd would have invited not just ridicule, but anger. Cyrus was no relation of Abraham let alone King David. But Isaiah insisted: Cyrus would rise and wield great power, which he would use for the benefit of God’s people. It would happen because God had decreed it.
In 45:5-6 we read: “I am the Lord, and there is no other; besides me there is no god. I arm you, though you do not know me, so that they may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is no one besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other.”
God’s perspective of history is so different from ours. It’s worth thinking about Israel’s history. Archaeology tells us something of ancient Egypt’s history, but in God’s history book the most significant thing the Egyptians did was release a rabble of Semitic slaves. Or again, at the time of the Roman Empire, Pontius Pilate had a successful career in the Roman government; but in God’s book the significant thing for which he is known is his decision to crucify a man from Nazareth.
DIVINE INTERFERER
All this tells us something very significant about the stories of human affairs: God himself is involved, using human decisions to work out his greater purpose. C.S. Lewis spoke of God as the divine interferer. History is ultimately God’s story, for he is working out his plans in our fallen world.
Let’s always remember this – not least in times of social, political and economic turbulence!
Is what you believe about God important? Are you confident that God is infinitely wise as Article I of the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles says? ‘…There is but one living and true God, everlasting,…; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness;…’
It’s easy to doubt God’s power, wisdom and goodness because we hear of the injustices, the pain and suffering in the world. Indeed, we may doubt God because of the particular trials we are going through – an unhappy marriage or a sense of personal failure. We may feel that God is not answering our prayers and so we are tempted to wonder about him.
WHERE IS GOD?
The Israelites of whom Isaiah wrote, were in exile in Babylon. Their big question was, ‘Where is God?’ Prophets like Isaiah had warned them of God’s judgment unless they turned back to Him. However, they had listened to the popular preachers who had said all would be well. But the day did come (in 586BC) when the city and the temple were destroyed and the people were deported. Amazingly the Jewish people survived.
Isaiah 40 speaks not only of God’s power and wisdom but also of the comfort that his love and forgiveness bring when we repent. Isaiah 43:2 takes up the theme of God’s love with: When you pass through the waters I will be with you,…
GOD’S PRESENCE
God promised that he would be with his people even in the land of their exile. For us who live on the other side of Jesus’ death and resurrection, it’s an even richer promise, for we now have the evidence and reality of Emmanuel, God with us in the person of Jesus Christ.
The God of the Bible doesn’t promise to lift us out of our troubles with supernatural power. Faith is not a drug by which we escape the pain and suffering of a messed up world. The God of the Bible comes amongst us in our pain and shares in it.
This is the meaning of Bethlehem’s manger and Calvary’s cross. God doesn’t simply shout his condolences from the sky or tweet us sympathy notes. In his wisdom, God bore our grief and carried our sorrow. He descended to the lowest parts of the earth and experienced death for us.
There’s no other religion like this. There are scientists and philosophers, media commentators and gurus, but not one of them has scars in their hands. When you pass through the waters I’ll be with you… is the commitment of the all-mighty, all-wise God.
And that’s not all, for Isaiah also tells us of God’s protection: When you pass through the waters I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior (43:2ff).
King David had understood this when he penned the words of Psalm 23: When I pass through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no evil, … for you are with me.
FALLEN WORLD
This is how the only wise God works with a fallen world. He promises his people his presence and protection. He sets a limit on anything that may destroy us. It doesn’t mean we won’t encounter tough times and it doesn’t mean we won’t experience death.
We’re not promised immunity from the floods and the fires, but we are promised a definite limit to the harm that any such experience can do to us. In Job 1:9-12 we read of the limit God placed on the action of the power of evil in Job’s life.
Yes, God sometimes allows the powers of evil to act in frightening ways – as we see when Jesus was scourged and crucified. But with Jesus’ resurrection we are assured God didn’t abandon his Son to eternal death.
Paul the apostle, in 2 Corinthians 12 tells us that he felt the pain and frustration of unanswered prayer. He experienced what he calls a ‘thorn in the flesh.’ Three times he agonized in prayer, but the thorn was not removed. He came to understood God’s mind: My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Paul looked no further. If the thorn was needed to keep him from pride or success in his own strength, so be it. God could be trusted.
Do you have that kind of confidence in God? Pray then for his grace that you may know the reality of his presence and protection. Pray that God’s Spirit will take his promise deep into your heart so that you will know how precious you are to him. He has a purpose for his world, and for each one of us.
As we move into this New Year, many of God’s people are feeling like his people at the time of the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom Israel (721BC). In the words of Psalm 83 they feel encircled, even besieged by opposing forces – especially the anti-God forces of the secular West. So we need to ask one another, How big is your God?
FINDING TRUE GREATNESS
In the 1950s J.B. Philips wrote a book entitled, Your God is Too Small. It’s a good sub-title to Isaiah 40, a chapter worth reading and meditating on in tough times. Nowhere else does the Bible express so triumphantly the theme of the true greatness of God: To whom will you liken God? Isaiah asks (40:18). And more personally, he continues: To whom then will you compare me? (40:25)
In response to these ‘bookend’ questions, Isaiah asks a subset of questions – first, of the world of science: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? (40:12)
We like to think our knowledge of the universe is increasing. We can observe it and harness its resources. Isaiah asks, ‘Can you reposition the oceans or turn deserts into pastures at a word?’ God can. We don’t have God’s creative power.
Isaiah then asks the academies and professional worlds:Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or as his counselor has instructed him? 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? (40:13,14)
Today we consult experts in almost every area of life – legal, financial, design, career, travel. Isaiah asks, ‘What consultants does God use to create and control the world? What mathematicians? What scientists? None. He is all-knowing.
THE MORE WE KNOW, THE LESS WE KNOW
Many great scientists, Isaac Newton amongst them, have found that the more they know of the universe, the less they know. It is said that Newton once commented that ‘he felt like a little boy, standing on the edge of a huge ocean of truth, picking up the occasional pebble to admire, while the ocean lay undiscovered in front of him’.
The nations, Isaiah continues, are like a drop from a bucket (40:15). All the nations are as nothing before him… less than nothing and emptiness (40:17). As far as God is concerned, the wealth of all the nations could not enrich him.
‘What about other gods?’ people ask. Anticipating this, Isaiah responds: To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compares with him? The idol! – A workman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold, and casts for it silver chains… (40:18-19). There is irony here. It’s illogical to say that a work of art can represent the creator God. Idols, unlike God, are without life and cannot give life.
‘Very well, what about the rulers of the world?’ others ask. Some of them hold themselves out as gods – Augustus Caesar and before him for example, Nebuchadnezzar. Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? Isaiah asks. It is he 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 dwell in; who brings princes to nothing and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness… (40:21-23).
TRUE GREATNESS
No president, prime minister or earthly power can be compared with God’s greatness. His throne fills the universe. He needs no city, for heaven and earth are his dwelling-place. God only has to blow, and the seemingly powerful, arrogant rulers will whither away. It’s one reason we can pray with confidence for the rulers of the nations – not least in this election year – as Paul commands us to do (1 Timothy 2:1-7).
To whom then will you liken God? Isaiah persists. Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: who created them? he asks (40:26). ‘Day and night God controls the stars and the vast, complex cosmos in which we find ourselves. The whole of the universe is an arena for God’s artistry.’
We search the whole of the universe in vain for just one thing with which to compare the majesty, power and greatness of God. Nothing that we might worship, our science or technology, our giftedness or wisdom, our military or political power, or even the stars, can be compared with God. He is truly awesome.
If you are ever feeling discouraged and overwhelmed then consider again Isaiah’s picture of the awesome majesty of our God.
As we come to the end of one year and prepare for the next, the news media is alive with commentary from the past twelve months and predictions for the New Year. Indeed as one year closes and another opens there is an underlying fear amongst many.
As we think about the future a good question to ask is, ‘What on earth is God doing?’ The first sentence of one of the great chapters of the Bible, Isaiah 40, tells us: Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
Written more than two and a half millennia ago, there’s a timelessness about these words as they speak to people in every age. As a lover speaking tenderly to someone he loves, God says to his people: ‘Comfort.’ And the tenderness of his language continues in Isaiah 40:11: He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom…
SERVING A BIG GOD
At the start of a new year it’s good to ask who God is and what he is like. Only a big God can inspire us and keep going in challenging times. This is the God Isaiah speaks about.
Towards the end of this uplifting chapter that speaks of the uniqueness and the greatness of God, Isaiah points out that this God has power enough to sustain us in every situation in life. In Isaiah 40:29 we read: He gives power to the faint, and gives strength to the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; 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.
I wonder how we might have written the last two lines. Is not our natural inclination to think of walking, running and then moving to a climax, soaring higher and higher like eagles? But Isaiah’s order makes more sense for he has identified what life with God is really like. When we are faced with difficulties in life, what we need is not the soaring flight of an eagle but rather the determined endurance of a long-distance walker.
Flights of spiritual experience are of no use if they are followed immediately by plunges into dark depression. Walk and not faint. That’s what we need when we are faced with challenges and situations we don’t understand. We need the strength that only God can provide us.
WHEN THE NEW YEAR DOESN’T SEEM ‘NEW’
There may be some reading this who are privately weeping or who are bitter or resentful. You may be finding it hard to believe, hard to pray, hard to sing, even hard to read the Bible. Isaiah is telling us that God has not forgotten us.
We need to listen afresh to Isaiah’s words and fill our minds with the awesome majesty and love of God. The greatness of God’s power is matched by his love and compassion. This is why the opening words to Isaiah 40, ‘Comfort, comfort my people,’ are not empty or meaningless. Even in the midst of the worst situations in life, God provides us with the strength we need to endure.
GOD WITH US
Indeed, as we now read these words through the lens of the birth of Jesus Christ, his life, death and resurrection, we have even more reason to be assured by what Isaiah wrote. For as the Christmas season reminds us, we have the evidence of God at work in the world through the One who is called Emmanuel – God with us.
Here is the God worth knowing – the awesome and true God, who is Lord of all. Young men will grow weary. Their energy will pass and the fruit of all their successes will one day be nothing but dust for historians to record. But God’s people will never die out because of the coming of Jesus Christ, the one who supremely reveals the glory of God.
As we stand on the threshold of a new year, Isaiah’s words can inspire us. So important is the news of God’s love and forgiveness that it can’t be contained. God’s gospel must be shouted from the rooftops – not just in the cities of Judah, but to the nations of the world: Get you up on the high mountain, O Zion, heralds of good tidings, lift up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, ‘Here is your God!’
In the New Year let’s play our part in introducing our friends, family and colleagues to the God who is truly worth knowing.
Why the Shepherds? Why did the angel announce Jesus’ birth to shepherds? Given the resources of heaven they could have pulled off one very spectacular announcement in Bethlehem or, come to think of it, in Jerusalem.
We need to go back to the story of ancient Israel. Prophets such as Ezekiel spoke of the kings of Israel as shepherds. But Ezekiel knew what many of them were like: self-indulgent, exploiting people and plundering their property. In Ezekiel’s time Israel had been conquered by the Babylonians. Jerusalem was in ruins and its people were in exile. Ezekiel 34 tells us it was the fault of the shepherds.
Ezekiel’s good news was that God would raise up a new and perfect king – a shepherd-king – in the line of king David, but greater than David. So it was that the angel announced to the shepherds:“Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord”(Luke 2:10f).
It was the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s promise that God himself would raise up a ruler, a shepherd-king, who would do things that Israel’s kings hadn’t done— restore the weak and gather the lost. “Then they will know that I the Lord their God am with them” Ezekiel said (34:30). It was good news.
At the time of Jesus’ birth the shepherds were at the bottom of the social order. They were the lost, the outsiders. Yet it was to them the angel made the announcement.
And there is something significant about the place where Jesus was born. Dr Kenneth Bailey has recently raised questions about our culture’s Christmas story. Our story is that Jesus was born in a barn or a stable because there was no room in the local inn. But when we look more carefully at the Bible text another picture emerges.
NO ROOM AT THE INN?
In Luke 2:7 we read: And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.‘Inn’ is not really the best translation of the original word. The usual Greek word for ‘inn’ is found in the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:34). The word in Luke 2 is the word katalyma, literally meaning ‘a place to stay’ or ‘guest room’. We find this once more in Luke’s Gospel – the ‘guest room’ in a private house in Jerusalem where Jesus planned to celebrate the Passover with his disciples (22:11).
In Jesus’ day poorer families lived in homes with one large extended room. Sometimes there was a ‘guest room’ on the same level or on the roof. And there was always a small area at ground level under the same roof where the family animals were kept at night to keep them secure.
Luke is telling us that there was literally no room, ‘no place’ in the guest room of a private home. A member of the House of David, Joseph would have had a welcoming family in Bethlehem to take them both in. However the guest room was already occupied. Mary had to make do for the birth of Jesus in the living room. What’s more, she used the cattle feeding-trough or manger, set up at the end of the raised floor of the living room to lay the baby down.
The announcement of the birth of Jesus Christ to shepherds is very significant for it tells us that God has reached down from the glory of highest heaven to rescue and transform the lives of the lowliest, even the outcasts. Furthermore, if the angel had told the shepherds that they would find the baby in the home of a highly placed or wealthy official they would have hesitated to go and see him. Instead of asking if they were dreaming or discussing miracles, they said, “Let’s go and see this baby for ourselves.”
Their response sets us a challenge. We weren’t there that night, but we have the record of eyewitnesses. Like the shepherds we need to find out for ourselves whether this baby is as special as those eyewitnesses made out. It means carrying out our own investigation and encouraging everyone we know to do the same – perhaps by giving them a gift of one of the Gospels to read.
Too often we fail to find the joy and peace of Christmas because we have not truly found God’s shepherd-king ourselves. As circumstances have recently reminded me, we are all in need of a savior – someone to whom we need to apologize and whose forgiveness we need to ask. Only when we turn to Jesus and meet him personally in this way will we be able to say to one another and really mean it, ‘Merry Christmas’.
May you know the joy, peace and goodwill that the message of Christmas brings us – during this Christmas season and in the New Year.
