Behold Your God, Isaiah 50, Part 1

Welcome to Delight in Grace.

The teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. In Ephesians 1, Paul prays that the eyes of God's people would be opened to the immeasurable greatness of God's power toward us who believe. Today, let us consider from Isaiah 50 the power and omnipotence of our great God. He has the authority and power over all creation, and He has chosen to use that power for our benefit through His Son Jesus.

Let's listen in. Our focus today is upon the omnipotence of God. I think maybe we will be considering it in a way that's a bit different than how we usually contemplate the omnipotence of God. He is the Mighty One of Jacob. That is His name in chapter 49, verse 26. Your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob. Let us pray this morning that God will reveal Himself to us and that we will understand Him as He truly is.

For I believe that the more we know God as He truly is, the more our lives will be radically transformed. In honor of the Lord and His word, would you stand with me please as we ask Him to help us hear and heed this word this morning. It is with great delight, Father, that we stand before You, acknowledging Your majesty, but also that we bow our heads before You, acknowledging our humility before You. We acknowledge, Father, Your sovereignty over us. We thank You that You are a good God. We thank You that You are compassionate. We thank You that You are omnipotent. And as we engage Your word this morning, Father, I pray that You would open it up to us by the guidance of Your Holy Spirit.

Find us coming to Your word expectantly. Open our hearts and our minds, Father, that we may know You as You truly are. And do that work in us and among us, Father, that will bring glory to You alone. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Please be seated. I have a question for you. Who was it that asked, is anything too hard for the Lord? God did. He asked it Himself.

There are several places. Two of them I mentioned. Genesis chapter 18, remember, He was talking to Abraham and Sarah. They were old, well beyond childbearing years. And the Lord appears to them and He says, is anything too hard for the Lord? At any point in time, I will return to you according to the time of life and Sarah shall have a son. Is anything too hard for the Lord? The Lord asked that. Here He is again in Jeremiah 32, 27, behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for me?

And of course, the applied answer is no. There is nothing too hard for me. He is the mighty one of Jacob. He is the omnipotent God.

There is nothing too hard for him. We're in hurricane season right now and my wife is very honored that the first one was named after her. And I keep telling her, you just made a mess. But no, there was another hurricane back in 2004, his name was Charlie. And a lot of billboards along the highways just can't withstand 100 mile an hour winds that come through. There was one billboard, however, that was still standing. And the advertisement that was there when Hurricane Charlie hit was peeled away and it revealed an earlier message underneath. And when the sun rose the next morning on Sand Lake Road in Orlando, the words on the billboard clearly read, we need to talk God. He does have a way of getting people's attention, doesn't he? But he is the mighty one of Jacob. And all of these things are simply manifestations, tiny glimpses of his majestic, awesome omnipotence.

But chapter 50 is pretty interesting because the way the chapter begins, the Lord is overruling a couple of Israel's objections. Look what it says. Where is the certificate of your mother's divorce whom I have put away?

Of which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? What on earth is he saying? You know, one of the chief objections, one of the chief intellectual objections or obstacles to the idea of God today, to theism. In the context of evil, in hurricanes, they throw hurricanes into the big pot of evil, things that aren't the way they ought to be. Whether it's natural disasters or people going on mass shootings like just this last week in Santa Monica.

And they seem to be becoming more and more common, don't they? All of that is into this big mixing pot of what we call evil. Things are not as they ought to be. And when we look around at that, we consider that the evidence and then you posit this good and all powerful God. There's a lot of people who say and they think it's an intellectual objection, I don't want to believe in a God like that. If there is a God, he's either not a good God or he's not a powerful God.

He's either too weak or doesn't care to do anything about what's going on. God overrules both of those objections in the first verse. He is speaking to his people Israel. It's like he's saying, do you not find favor in my eyes, which makes you think that I have divorced you completely? And when he speaks of your mother, he's speaking of Jerusalem, which is their place of origin. And he's basing this on Deuteronomy chapter 24, verse 1 in the Mosaic law, which is when a man would divorce a woman who's betrothed to him in whom he found no favor.

Because there was some impurity there. And God is saying, do you think I don't want you? Do you think I don't care? And God says, I passionately want to rescue you.

I do care. And that's what we studied last time, that God is a compassionate God. He is a God who is touched and moved by the plight of our sinfulness and the oppression that it has put us in. And so God says, I do, I passionately want to rescue you.

And now Israel then is saying, he may want to, but does he have the power to? And then later on in verse 1, is there a competitor stronger than I to whom I must pay up? What is he saying? He says, I can powerfully rescue you.

Not only do I passionately want to rescue you, but I can powerfully, I can powerfully rescue you. And this is what God is teaching his people. And they need to understand this, and yet we might find it interesting with all of the history of Israel, we might think, why is it that God needs to say this to them? And you know what, that's exactly what God is saying. Look what he says at the beginning of verse 2. Why, when I came, was there no man?

Why, when I called, was there none to answer? What is the Lord saying here? It's like the Lord is calling Judah to himself and he says, look in my eyes here, explain to me your lack of trust. Explain your lack of trust. It's like an anthropomorphic statement here of God. God is baffled, he can't understand why his people wouldn't trust him. Is there something lacking in me?

Is there something I can't do? Is there some way I've let you down in history? Israel is not so different from us. In his book, Words from the Fire, Al Mohler writes this. Several years ago in Britain, researchers went door to door asking persons about their belief in God. One of their questions was, do you believe in a God who intervenes in human history, who changes the course of affairs, who performs miracles?

When this study was published, it took the title from the response of one man who was typical of those who responded. And his answer was, no, I don't believe in that God. I believe in the ordinary God. What does an ordinary God look like?

What does he do? And God is asking the people of Israel here, with all of their history they have together, he's like, explain to me your lack of trust. You treat me like I'm a common God just among all the others, an ordinary God who's no better than any other of your gods that you created and you put your trust in and none of them can rescue you. And so he says in verse 2, is my hand shortened at all that I cannot redeem or have I no power to deliver? He uses an eastern idiom here, a shortened hand. Is my hand shortened at all that it cannot redeem or have I no power to deliver? That word short is synonymous with weak. Has my hand become weak or is my hand weak?

Meaning, is it still young and underdeveloped yet? Let me give you an illustration here of what that might mean. Yesterday, some of us from our family went to the YMCA.

We have a membership there for exercise purposes so that we can be getting in good shape. Okay, so I'm in the pool swimming a half a lap and then my two younger girls start to harass me because that's what girls do to dad in the pool, right? And Anna was coming up to me, swimming to me underwater and she's going for my skin like that. And so I put my hand out on her head underwater and there she stays. She can't reach me.

Why? Because my arm's longer than hers. Her hand was shortened. And this is what God is asking.

Is my hand shortened that I can't redeem you? Thanks for joining us here at Delight in Grace. You've been listening to Rich Powell, the lead pastor at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. The Delight in Grace mission is to help you know that God designed you to realize your highest good and your deepest satisfaction in Him, the one who is infinitely good. We hope you'll join us again on weekdays at 10 a.m.