Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter - Isa 40:25-31

 

   Easter 4

                                                                                                Isa 40:25-31

                                                                                                5/11/25

 

            “I am the greatest.” The boxer Muhammed Ali – then known as Cassius Clay – made this declaration in 1964 as he was about to fight Sonny Liston for the world heavyweight championship.  At the time, Ali was just a challenger.  But this wasn’t the first time he had expressed the claim. The previous year he had made a record with lyrics that he helped write. The title of the album: “I am the greatest.”

            Ali defeated Liston to become heavyweight champion.  During the 1960’s and 1970’s he held the title three different times – something no one else has ever done. Ali has been widely known by the epithet “The Greatest,” and many consider him to be the greatest heavy weight boxer of all time.

            Sports fans engage all the time in arguing about who is the GOAT in each sport – the greatest of all time.  Is the greatest basketball player Michael Jordan? Is the greatest quarterback Tom Brady? But these are conversations that others have about an athlete.  Few athletes have ever come out and said this about themselves – certainly not in a way as memorable as Ali.  He declared that he was the greatest – that there was no one who could compare with him.

            In our text from Isaiah this morning God declares that there is no one who can compare with him.  He is the greatest. He is the Creator of all things. There is no end to his strength and understanding. Because this is so, his people can trust him to give them strength and salvation.

            Isaiah wrote in the eighth century B.C. He lived at a time when God brought judgment upon the northern kingdom of Israel because of their sin and unfaithfulness as they were taken into exile by the Assyrians. Yahweh’s dramatic intervention spared Judah. Yet while God had given the southern kingdom the opportunity to repent, it seemed very unlikely that they would do so. Judah continued on the same path of sin and idolatry.

            Yahweh brought judgment upon Judah in 587 B.C. when the temple was destroyed and the nation was taken into exile in Babylon. But in his prophecy, Isaiah looks beyond this to the restoration that God is going to provide.  He speaks of how God will bring the people back from exile.

            Isaiah begins this chapter by saying, “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the LORD's hand double for all her sins.” God’s punishment was over and he was going to bring the people back from exile. He was coming and Isaiah declared, “And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

            Yahweh was going to act for his people. He – the almighty One – was going to deliver them. Before our text Isaiah declares, “Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, ‘Behold your God!’ Behold, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.”

            God is the almighty One and there is no one who can be compared with him.  Just before our text Isaiah says, “To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him? An idol! A craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts for it silver chains.”

The idols made by man are nothing. By contrast, God is the Creator.  Isaiah says, “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? 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.”

In our text, God again declares through Isaiah that there is no one who can be compared with him.  He says, “To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power not one is missing.” God created the heavenly bodies, and by his power they continue to exist.

Judah would bring the judgment of exile upon themselves. But Isaiah describes how as the years passed by in Babylon they would feel that they had been abandoned by God. They would feel like he was not caring for them. We hear, “Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, ‘My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God’?”

It is not only Judah in the sixth century B.C. that feels this way.  There are times when we do as well.  We want to say, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God.” Like Judah, sometimes our sins have contributed to the situation as we have made decisions and done things that are against God’s will. At other times, the hardships and difficulties that we experience have been completely out of our control. We get sick. We lose a job.

The life of faith is always a struggle against unbelief. The presence of doubt is unbelief seeking to gurgle up and quench out faith.  Doubt and feelings of despair – feelings that we have been abandoned and wronged by God – are unbelief gnawing away at our faith in God. They are the presence of the old Adam that causes us to break the First Commandment as we fail to fear, love, and trust in God above all things.

In our text, God responds to this by saying, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.” When we struggle with doubt and feelings of despair, God calls us back to himself. He reminds us that he is the Creator who has all power. He is the One who acts in ways that we cannot understand.

But he is also the One who acts for us.  Isaiah says in our text, “He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they 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.”

Yahweh did act for Judah in the sixth century B.C. In an unexpected development he used the Persians to defeat the Babylonians. The Persian king Cyrus issued a decree that the people of Judah could return to the land and rebuild the temple. He renewed their strength as they saw that their way was not hidden from the LORD, and their right had not been disregarded by their God.

God’s act of deliverance and salvation in the sixth century B.C. for Judah pointed forward to an even greater action that he would carry out. He worked through Israel, for Israel and for all people.  He sent forth his Son into the world as he was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born of the virgin Mary. Jesus was born as the Christ – the descendant of King David promised in Isaiah’ prophecy. As the Christ, he was Israel reduced to One.  He was the fulfillment of what the nation was meant to be. 

Jesus was the Servant of the Lord. Anointed with the Spirit at his baptism he went forth to provide deliverance from our sin. In obedience to the Father, he walked the way of service that led to the cross to give us forgiveness for the ways that we doubt and fail to trust in God.

Jesus Christ died on the cross as the suffering Servant.  God laid upon him the iniquity of us all and judged our sin in Christ. Jesus received God’s wrath that we deserved as he cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and died.

A little later God says in Isaiah, “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” God’s action for Judah pointed to the new thing that he has done in Christ – the beginning of the new creation.

On Easter, God raised Jesus from the dead. He defeated death in Christ as the age to come broke into our world. God did the new thing as Jesus Christ was raised with a body that can never die again. Paul told the Romans, “We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.” And his resurrection is the beginning. It is the beginning of the life of the world to come. It is the resurrection that will be ours when Jesus returns on the Last Day, for as Paul told the Corinthians, “Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.”

A little later in Isaiah God says, “For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.” Israel lived with the expectation that the end time salvation of God would see him pour out his Spirit.

Forty days after Easter, Jesus ascended into heaven. And then on the fiftieth day – on Pentecost – Christ poured forth the Spirit upon his people. Peter declared, “This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.”

And now, you have received the Spirit. In baptism you received the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.  Your baptism continues to be source of the Spirit’s work in your life.  And through the God’s word – the word inspired by the Spirit – you continue to receive the work of the Spirit.

Isaiah says in our text, “He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.” The Spirit of Christ gives us strength to believe and trust in God.  He works through the Means of Grace to strengthen our trust as we reject doubt and despair.

There is no denying that at times we feel faint and weary.  But God who has called us as his own promises to give us strength to walk in faith. He says through Isaiah, “Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they 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.”

Like the people of Judah, there are times when we want to say, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God?” In response, God says, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.”

The almighty God has acted to give us deliverance and salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Through faith in Christ our doubt and failure to trust God is forgiven. The Spirit poured out by the risen and ascended Lord gives us strength to continue to walk in faith. Certainly, we do not understand many of the things that God does. But we do understand what God has done for us through Jesus Christ. And through this knowledge, the Spirit gives us strength to trust in the Lord.