A sermon on Isaiah 40:12-31 by Rev Richard Keith on Sunday 26 April, 2026
Isaiah chapter 40 is a wonderful passage, full of picture perfect quotes. None are better than its closing words:
Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
From beginning to end, the passage shows not only how powerful God is, but the power he gives to his weary, faithful people.
On the surface, it all looks lovely. But at the heart of Isaiah chapter 40 there lies a wound, a wound in the soul of the people of Israel that the prophet’s words try to heal. And that wound is laid bare by the Lord’s question to his people in verse 27:
Why, O Israel, do you complain, “My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God”?
They feel invisible. They feel that their way is hidden, like the Lord can’t see what they’re going through. They feel abandoned, disregarded, like their God has left them and moved on.
And they have good reasons for feeling that way. The people of Israel are lost in their exile. They’ve been overwhelmed by the armies of Babylon. The walls of their city Jerusalem have been broken. Their beautiful temple has been burnt to the ground. Many of their people have been taken away into slavery. It was an experience that shook them to their foundations. It made them feel that either the Lord didn’t care, or that he was powerless to help them. Some thought to themselves, if I were God, this would never have happened. Some of them dared to go further and say, There is no God.
Our modern problems don’t really compare, and yet they cause us just as much pain. We too can feel lost in our suffering. We too can feel invisible and abandoned. Speak to many atheists today and you’ll find that they actually do believe in God. They are just very, very angry with him. They feel let down, like they were robbed of the happy ending they thought life had promised them. And these feelings are like wounds to the soul.
Isaiah’s prophecy in chapter 40 was written to heal that wound. But before he applies the medicine of his wonderful promise, the Lord must strip off Israel’s band aid with the challenging question, Who?
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance?
Was it you? No it wasn’t.
The oceans of the world are estimated to contain 1.3 billion cubic kilometres of water, a volume so vast it defies human comprehension. And yet, the Lord measures them in the hollow of his hand.
The Milky Way galaxy stretches an estimated 150,000 light years in diameter, so immense that light itself, travelling at 300,000 kilometres per second, would take more than a thousand human lifetimes to cross it. And yet, the Lord measures it by the breadth of his hand.
The combined mass of our planet weighs in at approximately 6 billion trillion tonnes. And yet, the Lord has scales big enough to weigh it.
With these comparisons, Isaiah is showing us that our conceptions of God and his power are often far too small. God does not live in churches. He is not confined to the small sacred moments of our time. He does not simply exist to explain the inexplicable. He is not just our imaginary friend who helps us cope with our doubts and fears. He is almighty God. The one, true living God who made all things, whom the universe is too small to contain. He is Lord of all times, of all places, of all peoples and of all nations. Human beings live and breathe for a moment, but our God is eternal and unchanging. And all creation sings a song to his glory.
Who has understood the mind of the Lord, or instructed him as his counselor? Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten him, and who taught him the right way? Who was it that taught him knowledge or showed him the path of understanding?
Was it you? Does the Lord need your advice? Have you got a better plan for how our history should unfold than he has? Do you presume to lecture God on what he should do?
It’s a confronting diagnosis that the root cause of our disappointment with God is that we have plans for our life, where we will go and what we will do, and they don’t match with what actually happens, and we think that our plans were better than God’s. Isaiah reminds us that the Lord is the creator whose wisdom and power can be seen in the world around us. His knowledge is perfect, while ours is limited and fragmentary. And his plans for us are better than our own.
The Lord puts that same thought in different words in Isaiah chapter 55:
My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways.
It is not just that God’s plan can’t be understood or be predicted. His plan included the birth and life and death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus, the Son of the God of heaven, came in the weakness of human birth and of the cross. And the great almighty God showed his power not in conquest but in resurrection. What the world would call defeat, God calls victory.
“To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One.
This is the heart of the Lord’s answer to his people’s complaint. This is the first dose of the medicine he provides to heal the wound in his people. They are lost in their exile. They feel alone and surrounded by many dangers that threaten their existence. But through his prophet, the Lord reminds them that only he is God. Nothing can be compared to him in size or power or in majesty or wisdom or in goodness and holiness. And neither the things we fear or the other things we love are god like him in any way.
This one idea led Isaiah to the first of two obvious conclusions.
Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded as dust on the scales.
They are expressions we use to describe how small things are. A drop of water compared to a bucket of water is so small that if that one drop was added or taken away it wouldn’t be missed. Dust on the scales is so small that if we wanted to measure something else accurately we wouldn’t bother sweeping it away. This, says Isaiah, is what the nations, the empires, the world superpowers are compared to God. Babylon is not God, although its armies came to Jerusalem and laid it waste. Persia is not God, although they not only defeated Babylon but all their neighbours. Rome is not God, although their empire stretched around the entire Mediterranean Sea for centuries.
Only God is God. These empires come and go. While they rule they think they oppose God, but really they only serve him. Eventually they are brought to nothing and forgotten. But God remains the same.
It reminds us that Russia isn’t God, although they threaten eastern Europe. The president of the United States isn’t God, although his policies determine our fuel prices. Neither the Liberal or the Labor party are God, although they take turns to control our lives. Whatever power we fear, whatever danger alarms us in our nightmares, they are nothing compared to the power and faithfulness of God.
This truth led Isaiah to the second obvious conclusion.
To whom, then, will you compare God? To what image will you compare him?
Rich people, Isaiah observes, make an idol to worship out of gold. They make chains for it out of precious silver to tie it down so it doesn’t fall over. Poorer people make their idols out of wood. They get a woodworker to make it perfectly balanced so it doesn’t topple.
It reminds us that everything we worship that isn’t God is a figment of our own imagination, made in our own image. All our idols, whatever they are, whether it is fame or fortune, whether it is a sporting hero or a political leader, they will all eventually fall over and let us down.
In sharp contrast, the Lord made us in his image. He is the creator of all things, the gold, the silver, the wood, and ourselves. He made the universe as the perfect home for us to live in. And all the political figures that we either worship or fear are only puppets who dance to his strings. He made them, he rules over them, and at the right time he brings them down to nothing.
Through Isaiah, the Lord wants his wounded people, he wants us, to broaden our vision of who God is and of who he is for us.
Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.
Since prehistoric times, human beings have looked up in awe at the wonder of the skies. The arc of the sun from morning to evening. The waxing and waning of the moon through the month. The cycle of the stars through the year. Human beings have seen their beauty and their order and been led to worship. Sadly, they have often worshiped the powers of the sky and believed that the sun and moon and stars hold power over our destiny.
But God says, “You see them? I made them. They serve me. They have no power over you, but I hold power over them. They move to my music. I call them by name and they come out one by one. Only by my great power and strength is not one of them missing.”
We may laugh at the superstitions of ancient people who believed in astrology and in the power of the stars. But we are still captivated by the mysteries of the universe, and we study them to get an idea of how big and how old the universe is. We search for extraterrestrial life in the hope that it will make sense of our own life. But God is bigger and older than the universe. He made each part of it and he made all of it. And although ET so far is silent, God still speaks to us through his Word.
Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.
The people of Israel felt lost in their exile, like God didn’t care or like he was powerless to help. With his challenging questions, the Lord has diagnosed their problem. Their view of God has been too small. They have given too much credit to the power of other nations and of other gods, and in their disappointment they have imagined that they know better than God.
And it is time for God, through his prophet, to deliver the cure for what ails them. He is much, much bigger than they believed. And he makes his mighty power available to his weak and weary people. He is, as he said to Moses,
I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: “I AM has sent me to you.”
What a beautiful name, I am. He is the God who was and is and always will be. He is the one, true, living God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who said to his disciples,
I am the good shepherd. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Our God is our creator and our saviour. He has no equal and he acknowledges no rival. All other powers, everything we fear, everything else that we love, is nothing compared to him.
And that incomparable power that he holds in his hands, he makes available to us. For,
He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
We all have our strengths that we can be proud of, and we all have our weaknesses that we don’t have to be ashamed of. Some of us are weak physically. Some of us are challenged intellectually or morally. Some of us lack experience or have been denied opportunities or lacked the courage to use the resources we’ve been given. Some of us don’t know what we are meant to do next. Some of us know but don’t want to do it. Some of us are limited by illness or fear or doubt.
But nothing limits God. He sees what we cannot see. He knows what we do not know. He holds what we cannot hold. He gives what we could never find in ourselves.
The people of Israel felt invisible, that their way was hidden from the Lord, that their cause was disregarded by their God. But God had not forgotten them. He had not been overpowered by Babylon. He had not been caught off guard by the fall of Jerusalem. He was not wringing his hands wondering what to do next. He was working. Quietly, invisibly, but powerfully, the way he always works.
And the promise he made to them he makes to us. Not that life will be easy. Not that the road ahead will be smooth. Not that we will always feel strong or certain or unafraid. But that those who hope in the Lord will find that they are not alone. That underneath their weakness is a strength that is not their own. That the God who measures oceans in his hand and calls each star by name has not forgotten your name. He sees your way. He has not disregarded your cause. He knows where you are and he knows what you need and he is willing and able, able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us. More than we dare to pray for. More than we have the faith to believe. More than our best hopes on our best days. The one, true living God shared our suffering in the life and death of Jesus, and he supplies us his power in our suffering through the work of his Spirit.
So lift up your eyes. See the glory and majesty of the heavens and think of him who measures them with the span of his hand. This powerful God offers his power to his weary people.
And wait on him. Not passively as though nothing was required of you, but actively, with the kind of hope that keeps walking when it cannot run. That keeps running when it cannot fly. And sometimes, by the grace and power of this incomparable God, takes to the air on wings like eagles.
Because God is God. He is all we need. And there is no one else like him.