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Episode 673: In this episode, Chris and Jeff jump into Isaiah chapter 40. They discuss the context of this chapter, highlighting that it comes towards the end of Isaiah's ministry, where he reassures the people of Judah that despite their impending judgment and exile, God has not forgotten them. The hosts read and reflect on verses 12 through 31, emphasizing God's greatness and power. They explore the imagery used by Isaiah, such as God holding the oceans in His hands and the comparison of humanity to grasshoppers, illustrating the vastness of God's creation and His authority over it.
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You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Good morning morning, there you talk, dude. That's awesome. Heay, good morning everybody. We're Christian Jeff and we're the Bible Guys, and we are sitting here just waiting for the recording to start because we just want to be with you so badly today. So excited. And this is one of our favorite segments that we love. We love these. Now we have not read these, at least I have not. Have you read them? So desiree, our faithful assistant. She signed us of the boss. That's right. We just do what she tells us to do exactly. That's right. She hassigned us these five dad jokes since dad joke competition. Yes, so I have not read mine and you haven't read yours, but let's jump in. Okay, let's do it grouping. You go first. Number one, Here we go. I knew a guy who was arrested for stealing hay. Unfortunately he couldn't make bail. I like a good hay bail joke. That's great. I'm gonna laugh it that way. That's good. I like that. Oh okay, I'm a fan. Yeah. Did you ever do any Hay Bailey? No? Never, Oh boy, I did too much of it. Okay. My cell phone accidentally took a ten minute video of my shoes yesterday. It was some pretty good footage. Oh that's pretty good. Actually, that's funny. Have you ever done that? Yeah? Just walk around on your phone recording? Yes, yes, and I'm not sure about my feet, but yes, all right, here we go. You should always fear a pirate duck. He has the power to unleash the quacken. That is the strangest joke ever. A pirate duck, unleash the quacking. Unleash, unleash the kracking. There you go. What's the movie? Uh? I don't remember something about the kracking. It's a Clash of the Titans. Clash of the Titans. Yes, right. Why should you never take sides in an argument at the dinner table? Trick question? It's the perfect time to take sides because no one's paying attention. Bringked upperware? Oh my, oh my word, how random? I think it goes to find random dad. I like that one. That's a good one. Yeah, that's good. That's a good one. All right, here we go. Okay, who's winning so far? I think it's pretty tir. I don't know. Yeah, they're kind of tied. Okay, they're all kind of so random. All right. I went to the aquarium this weekend, but I didn't stay long. There's something fishy about that place. O. That one's rough, that's really rough. That was the roughest one. I just let's vote for the roughest one. That's it. I just went down underneath tie. My dad told me a joke about boxing. I guess I missed the punchline. That's rough too, that was rough. Man three. Number three for both of us was wow, boy. I gotta be honest with you, though. Mine's worse. Something about that place. Here we go. What do you call a sheep who can sing and dance? I don't know, lady baba. Oh no, that is worse than the punchline joke. Oh no, Hey, these were great at the beginning. First four, okay, first two, I thought the first yeah, yeah, year two and my two. You think swimming with sharks is expensive? Swinging swimming sharks cost me an arm on a leg. That's rough too. Man. We're four good ones, four bad ones. Yep, that's right. Okay, right, all right, okay, here we go. Whoever has the best of these because of the number number five, it's like ty ty ty tie okay, and then who ever wins this? Okay, okay, here we go. So you're number five against my number five. I'd like to shout out, wait, oh wow, Okay, here we go. I'd like to shout out sidewalks for keeping me off the streets. That's clever. I'd like to give a shout out to sidewalks taking me out, it. Says, I'd like to shout out sidewalk. Yeah, it'd be like i'd like to give Yeah, I just I just read it, like it. Okay, my number five is I like telling dad jokes sometimes, he laughs. Okay, I think yours. You like mine? Yeah, I was gonna like yours keeping off the streets. Okay, Well that's good. I like telling dad jokes. Okay. I feel like it just came to a full on tie today. Okay, Well let's do for that. All right, that's what we're gonna both say. Vote okay and desiree, thank you for that roller coaster of a journey, maybe on purpose. Yes, ties and lows and then bring us back to the middle. She's making it, you know, with somebody who knows. Maybe she's using Ai who knows. But here's what she's doing. She's like, Oh, this is gonna be hilariou these are going to be so bad. Yes, I want to see Jeff's reaction. Bad dad jokes. Great there, well, speaking of. Dads, yes, God the father is setting in motion something for his son. Wow. In Isaiah chapter. Forty, okay, actually, wait a minute, that's not today, that's fifty three. Yeah, Isaiah forty is not speaking of dads. My dad's better than your dad. The ultimate chapter is probably Isaiah forty. Oh yes, oh, there you go the hole my dad, your dad. My dad's better than your dad. My dad's tough and your dad. My dad's big and your dad. Yeah, well that's kind of what's happening here, just a little bit in Isaiah chapter forty. All right, so I got there. Let's pick up with Isaiah forty and we're going to go Isaiah forty twelve through thirty one. Now, at this point we're coming towards the end of Isaiah's life in his ministry, and uh, he's for telling the events of what it's going to be like after Judah is carried off by Assyria, and how God is going to begin because prior to this he's been talking, Hey, God's bringing judgment on you, and you're going to be hauled away. Assyrians are going to defeat you, and the Babylonians are going to wipe you out coming later. Right, That's what Micah tell us about. But then once that happens, Isaiah starts writing about the fact that God hasn't forgotten about you, right, right, And God's going to love you and take care of you. And so by the time you get to Isaiah chapter forty, in verse twelve, it says, who else has held the oceans in his hand? Who has measured off the heavens with his fingers? Who else knows the weight of the earth, or has weighed the mountains and hills on a scale? Who's able to advise the spirit of the Lord? Who knows enough to give him advice or teach him? Has the Lord ever needed anyone's advice? Does he need instruction about what is good? Does someone teach him what is right or show him the path of justice? No, For all the nations of the world are but a drop in the They are nothing more than dust on the scales. He picks up the whole earth as though it were a grain of sand. All the wood and Lebanon's forces, and all Lebanon's animals would not be enough to make a burnt offering worthy of our God. The nations of the world are nothing to him. In his eyes, They count for less than nothing, mere emptiness and froth. To whom can you compare God? What image can you find to resemble him? Can he be compared to an idol formed in a mold overlaid with gold and covered with silver chains? Or if the people were too poor for that, they might at least choose wood that won't decay and a skilled craftsman to carve an image that won't fall down. Haven't you heard? Don't you understand? Are you deaf to the words of God, the words he gave before the world began? Are you so ignorant? God sits above the circle of the earth. The people below seem like grasshoppers to him. He spreads out the heavens like a curtain and makes his tent from them. He judges the great people of the world and brings them all to nothing. They hardly get started, barely taking root. When he blows on them, they wither. The wind carries them off like chaff. To whom will you compare me? Who is my equal? Asks the Holy One? Look up into the heavens, who created all the stars. He brings them out like an army, one after another, calling each by its name. Because of his great power and incomparable strength, not a single one is missing. Oh Jacob, how can you say the Lord does not see your troubles? Oh Israel, how can you say God ignores your rights? Have you never heard? Have you never understood? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of all the earth. He never grows weak or weary. No one can measure the depths of his understanding. He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. Even the youths will become weak and tired, and young men will fall in exhaustion. But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary, and they will walk and not faint. Yeah, so, Isaiah forty thirty one. For many, many years was my verse. It wasn't my life verse, but it was like a verse that I always kept in. My little bookmark in my Bible. I had it on my keychain, I had it on a little card on my mirror. I just loved that verse, and still do obviously. But after a while, you know, you're like, Okay, come on, enough of Isaiah forty thirty one. Wow, you know so, yeah, sick of it? Yeah, I'm sick of that verse. Yeah. Wow, obviously, but God's left it in the Bible for twenty seven hundred years. Yeah it's important, yeah, a little bit. But anyway, Isaiah forty thirty one is obviously a very popular. Uh verse, but those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They were sore, high on wings like eagles. They were running oku weary they walk and not faint. Uh and uh those who trust in the Lord. Now another version would say those who wait on the Lord. Right. And the version that I learned was weight on the Lord. And what's interesting about that is that there were two interpretations or definitions of the word wait. Did you know this? The original language could be interpreted as weights as waiting and timing, but I could also be wait, as in a waiter waits on you, right. So it's so I thought I found that very interesting because those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. Uh it. You know, we don't really know how you know, the writer interpreted it. Maybe the writer wanted both meetings to be true. But you know, as you wait on the Lord and it's timing, the best thing to do is to serve the Lord, right, right, So so I think about that. With keep serving while you're waiting, Yes, keep waiting while you're waiting. Yes, wait wait while you wait, right because because it's like, you know, we we wonder about. God's timing so much of the time in our lives, and. We're waiting for him to, you know, whatever whatever it is that we're praying for, whatever it is that we're waiting for, you know, unfolding. There's a lot of people they questioned God's timing. They're like, God, what you know, this isn't the timing. My life right now is playing out in different timing than I wanted it to be played out. So what should I do? And so great advice is wait on the Lord. He's not going to let you down. He's going to bring about, you know, great things when he brings it about. So instead of just being impatient, just continue to serve him and wait on him as we wait on him. And what great advice. Yeah, that that idea of waiting and waiting, you know, the serving side of waiting and then the patient's side of waiting, I think is incredibly difficult for us. But there was this idea. I can remember. I had a professor who challenged me. I think it was in my I repeated my sophomore year in college because I left. I got kicked out of one school and had to go to another school. So I had to remake some classes that didn't transfer between the two schools. And it was a prank. I thought it was funny. They didn't but anyways cost me a lot, cost me a scholarship, all those things. I've told that story before. But so I was redoing some classes. I had a professor who challenged me, and he said, listen, there's two ways to look at your preparation. You can think that you are preparing to eventually go into ministry, or you can prepare while you're in ministry. And he said, I think that the best way for you to live your life is to start. Because you know you're tempted to think of yourself as a student, and as a student, then your free time, the way that you're doing your life, you're not taking your ministry seriously, and that might be, you know, part of your thing. So be in ministry while you're preparing for ministry, right, And which is great advice, right, be the man while you're trying to become the man is kind of the idea, right, act like the person you want to be, right someday. And so if you're practicing to be a chef, cook, yeah, that's right, just continue. To don't just read books about cooking, right whatever, don't just sit in classes about cooking. Become a cook, right, cook. And it's kind of the same here that if you want to serve the Lord someday, if you want God's blessing on your life someday, start living like you're serving the Lord today and living in God's blessing today. Right. That's that's kind of the flip side of those two things, because he said, hey, listen, in real life, how it works out. Even young people when they are hitting a wall emotionally or spiritually, they lose their strength. Even young people run out of gas at a certain point. And he said but you need to wait on the Lord. You need to be trusting the Lord, you need to be serving the Lord. And when you're doing those things, the both sides of that waiting on the Lord, he said, that's when God's going to give you the wings to soar. And so we tend to think, God, I need you to do a miracle and then I'll serve you. And God's like, do it, serve me and I'll do a miracle in you, right, and that's when you're going to really soar. Yeah, that's great. I love it. I love that whole thing. And by the way, hey, the way that Isaiah just spent the last twenty nine verses telling us how great God is. Yeah, he seems like he's worth serving, don't you think? Oh yeah, sure, big fan, big fan, big fan, big fan. So do you not think of Maybe you don't. But I can't get the song on my mind because my redeemer lives. Oh yeah, yeah yeah. So the verse twelve is where you started. Who else has held the ocean in his hands? That's one of the lines in the song. Right, no, my redeem. There you go. It's that song, right, People love it when you sing and well, I'm just saying that's the song, right, So and so the verses in there are just amazing, and they're just great verses. Who has held the oceans in his hands? In other words, what that chapter is saying is it's saying, go ahead, pick a god, Pick a god that exists among the earth that is greater than our because there is none. There's there's no offering that you can make. You can burn every tree on the planet and every nation, it won't be big enough. Right, He's held the oceans in his hands. He spoke before creation. Right, Are you deaf? Are you dumb? That's what it says. Have you not heard? And the picture is unbelievable. He calls the stars out like an army, and it's a vast army of infinity, and he knows every single one of them and calls them by name. It's like, who can do that? We are still not able to see all the stars? No? Right, right, We're still looking out trying to be able to yes, and God just marches them out like his army, naming them by name. Now, did I tell you? Did I ever tell you that? Luis Giglio gave me the perspective about life on other planets. I know it sounds random, but it's not. He gave me the perspective that forever changed my thinking. So what people always say is their life and other planets, and there's been no proof, even though the government, you know, had a couple of guys recently sit on some you know, testimony witnesses and said, yeah, there's evidence of something, and you know whatever, I don't know. Whatever do you. Watch so many YouTube videos? Well that was sort of a national thing. That was sort of a national thing, right anyway. So the point is is that whenever you consider life and other planets, I think the argument is is there room in the Bible for life and other planets? Now, it does say in Genesis chapter one that God created the planets and the hosts of them plural, So I think there's room for that. But until I see an alien, you know, in the flesh, I'm not going to believe it. I'm just not going to do it. So then people always. Say, well, wait a minute, there has to be you're sort of a fool if you think that this entire universe exists and life doesn't exist outside of this world, And it's sort of a big controversy, how can God create or how can it be created without life? It'd be so self centered to think we're the only things that exist. That's just ludicrous. And so Lui Gigli at one time addressed this entire argument by saying this, what if God created the universe to demonstrate his greatness, just to remind us of how big he is and how small we are? Because, after all, that's what God did. God in his creation, even on the planet, has demonstrated how big he is and how small we are. So what if God created the universe because how big can he have to create something to demonstrate his greatness? I mean, the universe still wouldn't be big enough to demonstrate his greatness, right, So what if it's one big billboard to show us that we are his prized creation and that He is just so vast and to remind us how much. We are in need of and are dependent upon him. And if you think of the creation that way, it makes sense, doesn't it. Well, yeah, Romans tells us that there there's multiple places in the Bible that say the heavens declare the glory of the Lord. That's literally, the heavens are and it was talking about the heavens is talking about space. It's not talking about the place heaven is talking about heavens. It's talking about space. All of creation is there as a billboard that God exists. That's right, That's that's what it's about. And did you did you also catch that it says the circle of the earth? Yes? Do you think that that's uh, that's a nod to science. Before well in in Columbus's day and a couple of those other scientists from that time. This was one of the passages they pointed to against the Catholic Church saying that they believe the world was round. Was this, There's there's another one, but. This is this is when the Catholic Church thought flat. I thought I thought it was flat at the Yeah, yep, so that was that I would push back on the on the use of the hosts of them? Oh yeah, yeah yeah. So so the Bible in the King James. So it's the King James that uses the word hosts. It also calls the God the lord of hosts. It's a military term, just like this one where it says he brings them out like an army, one after another. So he's not he's not talking about hosts on planets. He's talking about the armies of planets that are out there. That's the that's it's a military term. He's usually call my Old Testament. Nevertheless, we call my Old Testament professor and tell him that, but he died. Yeah, yeah, just tell your professor is wrong. So so yeah, it's a military term. The hosts of them. Remember the lord of hosts? I mentioned that. Whenever we read here, it says the lord of Heaven's armies. Remember, uh, the lord of Heaven's armies is the King James phrase the lord of hosts. It's the same. So that hosts of them is a military term. Yeah, we did say that a couple of podcasts. Yeah yeah, it's the same phrase. So anyways, Uh, what a great phrase. I love reading through these things and and just reminding myself God is beyond my comprehension. And clearly Isaiah is almost grasping for words, yes, like I can't think of a you're kind of a person who speaks in hyperbole. Yes, And Isaiah here is just trying to make it as big and as grand and as significant as possible. And then he's like, okay, even the star. God, God holds the earth in his fingers. It's like a spec to him, humanity is like dust. It just disappears when he blows on him, right, even the powerful people. And he just keeps going bigger and bigger and bigger. And then finally he comes down to haven't you ever heard? Don't you understand? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of all. He never grows weak or weary, and no one can measure the depths of understanding. And then it's that God that gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. Right, Right, So I don't know what you're going through, but it doesn't have to be your strength to get you through, right, it's your trust in that God that will give you strength when you're weak, and he'll give you power power when you're weak, and strength when you're powerless. And that when you trust in Him, that pure trust, that that willingness to say, God, I believe. It's an expectation. Trust. Here is that patient expectation that God's going to keep his promises. Yeah, when you have that patient expectation, He's going to keep your keep his promises. He'll give you new strength and then you'll soar on wings like eagles, and you'll run and not grow weird and walking not faint. Yeah yeah, sorry, think of how significant, uh the imagery would have been back before anybody experienced flight. Right, so you know they will soar on wings like eagles. Like it's just a beautiful word picture of something that people couldn't even imagine back then. Right, you know, we've flown in planes. Obviously we haven't flown ourselves. But but but you know a few times what do you mean flown? Yeah, you just jumped out of a plane, Superman. Well you fell, No, I fell, I fell, That's all I did. But but you know, and then he says, you'll you'll you'll run and not grow weary. Just the idea, I mean, just that's a whole sermon, right, I mean, can you imagine a runner that will run forever? Because back then walking was the most common form of transportation, right, so you know, to run or walk and not grow weary, to walk and not grow faint, to sort of like wings like equals this. This is the kind of strength that God gives us. And so it's just almost unimaginable, and so it to your point, it's that kind of God that gives these things to us. And Isaia even quotes God himself. He says, to whom will you compare me? Who is my equal? Asks the Holy One? So God even asks it, right, who is my equal? And I love that because he's not he's not saying this probably, you know, most certainly not with a sinful, boastful pride for kind of thing. It's just a matter of fact. It's a matter of fact. Right, As a matter of fact, Isaiah just compared to minygo what do you do? Go make an idol? Right? Right? Is that what you do? You carve something, and that that carving matches the matchless power and expanse and knowledge and strength of the creator. And then after he references those craftsmen, that's when he says, God's like, what compares to me? Right? Nobody? Nobody compares to me? Right? That's wonderful. Yeah, So I love that phrase that it will soar on wings like eagles. We have some nesting eagles not far from our home, and so i'd say once a week we see the eagles. Right now, they're flying around and it's amazing when they're soaring. Now, when they're taking off, you know, when they take off, there's a there's a lot of work the big animals, right, But it's not saying when you take off, it's the soaring high on wings like eagles. It looks effortless, right right, And that's what God does to us. God puts the wind underneath our wings. Yeah. God's the one that that that lifts us up. And then you know, when we're soaring like that, it won't be so much work, so difficult. So are you in a difficult time? Now? Do you feel weak and powerless? Now got to lift you up? And he's the one who keeps you promises be patient. That's awesome. By the way, I said beaches because that's the name of the movie. Yes, I know, midlearner. Okay, pretty good? All right, Well, hey, that is just about our time. What a what an unbelievable chapter. And we will continue in Isaiah tomorrow and hopefully we'll see you then on the Bible. Guys,