Wings

Wings

Isaiah 40:21-31

    Our text today is a study in contrasts:  God versus the starry host of the heavens,  God versus the rulers of this world, and God versus us.  In describing the greatness of our Creator, Isaiah starts off comparing us to the small leaf-hoppers who are more prey than predator.

    Grasshoppers have gotten a bad rap to my way of thinking. In Aesop’s fables they are the lazy, playful bug that has nothing saved for the winter and must beg the industrious ant for food and shelter. This carries over in the movie “Bugs Life” where the grasshoppers torment the ants like a street gang. Humans generally have a negative view of the grasshopper as a pest that can eat us out of our spot on the food chain.  Most of the time they are mentioned in the Bible, grasshoppers are considered a plague or pestilence.

    And so, we don't give grasshoppers a whole lot of thought as we read through this part of Isaiah.  If you're like a lot of believers, you'd rather skip down, past the grasshopper part to where the prophet writes about having wings of eagles.  After all, being likened to an eagle seems a whole lot better than being called a grasshopper.  Doesn't it?

      But hey, before we get too wrapped up in whether we are called to be a grasshopper or an eagle, let's not forget that today's text is mostly about God.  Let's look together in Isaiah 40: 21-31, as the prophet reminds us of our God, whom he describes as … 

The Eternal Ruler  (vv. 21-24)

The Mighty Creator  (vv. 25-26)   and…   

The Compassionate Lord  (vv. 27-31)

1. Body
1. The Eternal Ruler  (vv. 21-24)
1. Don't forget who God is  
1. The Word on God has been out for a while now, grasshopper  (Doesn't that sound like Master Po, from the 70's TV series, Kung Fu?)
1. From the world's foundation, mankind has know about God
2. From God's abode, we are like grasshoppers
1. Grasshoppers can get a bad rap.
2. They have wings too, just like eagles. While they can not soar like eagles, they can leap 20 times more than their own body length. For a human such a feat would be a flying leap of 40 yards, which would revolutionize football, basketball and baseball if only we could land with the same grace as a grasshopper. Grasshoppers are one of the most successful species on the planet, coming in 18,000 different varieties (who counts this stuff?) and a variety of colors. Apparently the brighter colors of grasshoppers warn birds that they are not good to eat.
3. Grasshoppers not only have wings, though they are much less endowed than eagles, they also have 5 eyes. Part of their adaptability and survival comes from their ability to see everything around them in a great panorama.
4. Could it be that the prophet intentionally chose this insect here?  To encourage us to have a wide-angle, panoramic perspective on things?  Much as God has, from His above high above this Earth?
2. He created everything
1. It's all spread out by His hand
2. It's His "tent."  He's got it under control
3. He is above all powers and authorities
1. God lifts them up and brings them down
2. Compared with His rule, these princes are nothing.
   The Mighty Creator  (vv. 25-26)
3. Don't confuse your God for some substitute
4. How do we even begin to talk about God?
1. With whom do we compare God?
1. nothing in creation is His equal
2. no prince or earthly ruler
3. We end up using descriptive phrases that begin with.... "like..." and "similar to..."
4. Nothing we can say or imagine even begins to compare with the TRUTH of who God is.
5. He created those things that others worship (stars)
1. The Babylonians worshipped the stars
2. They had names and legends
3. But God created these
4. brings out - the image is of a commander reviewing the troops
6. By His great strength and mighty power they are kept safe
1. God numbers them, as if they are prone to getting lost
2. He keeps them 
7. In 1962 Hertz was the clear leader in the car rental business, with Avis as one of the brands in the following pack. The Avis 'We try harder' campaign repositioned Hertz: creating a relative, believable, and compelling strength for Avis. The market dominance of Hertz became a weakness and Avis became the 'right choice' in the minds of consumers. The results were dramatic…  In 1962, just before the first 'We try harder' ads launched, Avis was an unprofitable company with 11% of the car rental business in the USA. Within a year of launching the campaign Avis was making a profit, and by 1966 Avis had tripled its market share to 35%
1. But when it comes to matters of Who you order your life around, why would anyone ever settle for #2, given that #1 is so available and accessible.
2. I mean think about it.  Why would anyone ever chose someone or something else to take God's place in their life, if they knew how mighty and powerful is God and just how much God loves and desires them.
3. But then, that's a problem for some folks, isn't it?
4. They either don't believe in a God who is there, or believing, perhaps, in God, they discount His concern and care for them.
5. Which brings us to our third point...The Compassionate Lord  (vv. 27-31)
6. Don't discount His love for you.
8. The All-Powerful God is concerned for His people
9. He knows you by name - Jacob, Israel
10. This Creator-God is untiring and mysterious
11. Wait 
1. a confident hope that God will now abandon you
2. faith
12. We may pride ourselves in our ability to take care of ourselves. We in America, have such a pride in our freedom and independence that we hate having to admit that we need help from anyone, including God.
1. But this scriptures tell us that no matter how strong or independent we may be, we cannot do it alone. God often has to bring us to the place where we have to stop trying, turn to Him and say, “God, that’s all I can do, now it’s up to you.” God is waiting for those words but they often aren’t said until we have exhausted our own ideas with no results.
2. The longer I live, the more I realize that everything is in God’s hands. When I was younger I was more inclined to solve everything with my own ability. Now, after many years of trials, tests and troubles, I am just beginning to get a real glimpse of what living by faith really means. 
3. Faith says that everything will work out when it seems that everything is crumbling around me. 
4. Faith says that my bills will be paid when I can’t see how they will in the natural sense. Faith says that God will take care of me and that I must force myself to stop being overly concerned with the future. 
5. Faith says that I know, that I know, that I know, that somehow, God will work it all out and that when He does, I will be so greatly blessed for having faced all that is happening right now.
6. But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint."
2. Conclusion 
1. The people of Israel needed to be reminded that they called upon a big God.  You see, truth is, they had forgotten.  They had gotten discouraged.  The people are tempted to desert their faith in God.  They felt like their strength was sapped and they had no hope. Like us, they had concerns about the national news.  The news for them was not too good.  They were captives in a foreign land.  Their homeland was a wreck.  They were loosing hope of ever returning home.  They were overcome by the gravity of it all. 
2. And they were saying things too. Isaiah actually quotes them. They were saying “My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God.” In other words “God doesn’t really care about me!” “How can he?” Look at all this bad and difficult stuff that is happening all around us.” “He’s not really in charge of things!”
   
   You see what was happening here? They began to see their problems as being bigger than God himself. It didn’t even cross their minds that the Lord of all might have something to say about their problems. They had made a subtle exchange over the years. They exchanged their faith in God for their own knowledge of the ways of the world. And we do the exact same thing! We have this tendency to take different areas of our lives and exclude the possibility that God has something to say about it. “Let’s see, my work, hmm, no that’s not God’s area, business no he has nothing to say about that. Finances, naw. My love life, no God doesn’t know anything about that, that’s my area.” We systematically exclude God from different aspects of our lives. We imagine ourselves in complete control of these things. And it works okay for a time. But then we begin to feel the weight. Our blood pressure rises. We toss and turn. We get sick. Our hearts get heavy. Our lives are embittered. And we come to the realization that if we are truly in charge of all this stuff that we are in a world of hurt.
   
   That’s where Israel was at the time that Isaiah wrote. And then they had the gall to say that God wasn’t there for them; that he didn’t care about them; that he was irrelevant to their situation. My word they were a piece of work. They had systematically made him irrelevant with their faithless behavior and attitudes and now they accuse him of not carrying? Has there been a little bit of that going on in you? Are you systematically making God irrelevant in your life? Have you been shutting him out? Are you trying to be your own Lord? Not very easy is it? That’s because it is something that you were never meant be.
   
   To Israel and to us, the Prophet says “Do you now know? Have you not heard? ....