Who Compares?

Isaiah 40:25-26 “To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One. 26 Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.

Have you ever forgotten who you were speaking to? Maybe you forgot their name right in the middle of the conversation. Or you let your guard down and let something slip forgetting the position that person held. Or you recognized the face, but couldn’t put a name and context to the the person.

This happens to me all the time, but I have ADHD. I have a convenient excuse, and I’m going to use it! But it happens to all of us from time to time. Some people are naturally good at names and faces. Others of us struggle to keep it all straight. Some have cultivated a talent of remembering. Oh, how I wish I had figured this out about 50 years ago!

There is one thing for sure, the LORD is not someone you want to forget. And yet sometimes we downplay the LORD’s power, might, influence, or involvement in human affairs. Sometimes we relegate Him to one small corner of human existence, hoping He won’t stick His nose into our business.

This seems to be exactly what Isaiah catches the leaders of Israel doing. They find themselves in exile, far away from their homeland. They began to question whether the LORD really was as powerful as they were told. Maybe the stories passed along by their ancestors weren’t really true. If the LORD was really that powerful, then how did they end up in exile?

But these people had selective deafness. They didn’t hear all the warnings about sin and non-repentance that lead to the LORD sending them into exile. They had begun to believe the propaganda of their captors, their boasting about the power of the gods. They began to hear the stories and believe them. And the exile was lasting a long time!

So the LORD through Isaiah’s voice sets the record straight. There is no equal to the LORD. He is the Creator of all that can be seen and can’t be seen. None of the gods of their captors is this. They are created things, fashioned by human hands. You can’t even compare the LORD to their gods. He is in a totally different league.

I can be easy in this time of confinement, ordered by our government, to begin to believe the propaganda that the government will solve this problem. Just wear a mask and everything will be OK! Deplete your savings and don’t go to work, and we will send you money every month to keep you alive. Give up your old way of life and adjust to it. We will make sure the future is secure.

But where is the Creator and His power in all this? Shouldn’t He be showing up right now in a very powerful way and making a big splash? Shouldn’t He use this opportunity to advertise just how great He is? But why the silence?

Just as in Isaiah’s time, the LORD works on His own timetable. The prophecies about the coming exile were almost a hundred years before the exile took place. A hundred years! So we can’t rush the LORD. He doesn’t work on our timetable.

But that doesn’t mean we sit back and wait for Him to act. NO! We get out there and be the hands and feet of Jesus. We obey and show the world just how great our God really is. And we do it when being prompted by the Holy Spirit. He stirs something in us, and we obey that prompting.