Music Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, Pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. We make a grave mistake when we put our hope and trust in anything other than our sovereign Creator. In this message from Isaiah 41, Pastor Rich points to a God who is the Lord of history and yet deeply and intimately involved. May our hearts be drawn to him as we look into his character today. Please take your copy of the scriptures once again and have them open to Isaiah 41 for today's exposition. Behold your God as we continue in that series, Isaiah chapter 41. In honor of the Lord and his word, would you please stand with me as we seek his aid to hear and heed his word. Eternal Father and Imminent God, we thank you that you have revealed yourself, you have made yourself known to us so that we can know you and walk with you and serve you with delight. Father, we thank you for the high privilege and the calling that is ours to come together and fellowship with each other as we commune with you, as we open your word and your truth. And Father, I pray that you would open our hearts and our minds, speak to us in your word by your spirit, Father. Manifest yourself to us. Challenge us this morning, Father, for we know that your word is given to us not just for information but for our transformation. And we thank you who have shared it. And we thank you for the work that you are accomplishing in us and among us, oh God. Open your word to us, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.
Please be seated. Everyone has an object of trust. Everyone has a religion because faith is trust. Faith means to entrust yourself to a trustworthy object. Faith is not just wishful thinking, hoping that something's true.
Faith is entrusting yourself, therefore everyone has some kind of faith because everyone has some object of trust, even if that object of trust is yourself ultimately. In this chapter of Isaiah, the 41st chapter, the prophet, God through the prophet, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is challenging us to be brutally honest about what our object of faith is. And in that, he gives us an invitation. And the invitation is this, which is the nutshell of the entire chapter. This is what Isaiah 41 is about. The invitation is, let your object of trust be the transcendent, sovereign creator who is the Lord of history and personally involved. Every one of those words is important.
Trust, to entrust yourself. The transcendent, sovereign creator who is not just Lord in history, but Lord of history and is personally involved. That's who God is.
That is the God of the Bible. Now, as we consider this, let's step back for a moment and let's get the setting of what Isaiah is talking about in this chapter. This prophecy was written somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 BC. And God is telling to the people of Israel, he's saying, the empire of Babylon, King Nebuchadnezzar is going to come and, of course, Nebuchadnezzar wasn't ruling at the time, but Babylon is going to come and they are going to take you captive. So Jehovah is speaking to Judah and saying, about a hundred years from now, you're going to be taken captive. But I've already planned it out that you're going to be brought back to your land. And you're going to be brought back into the land under the command of a specific king who is going to conquer the Babylonian empire that's going to take you captive. And it's my doing.
I'm orchestrating all that. That's what he says in verse two, who raised up one from the east. Right now, God is introducing this king who is going to come from the east, who is king from the east of where Jerusalem, where Israel, where Judah is.
He alludes to him here and in chapter 45, he names him and it's King Cyrus. Why does he do that? Because God is saying to the people of Judah, he says, you are my people. You are here for my purpose and I am orchestrating your history. He says, I am your object of trust, or at least I should be your object of trust. And so he contrasts himself, the God of the universe contrasts himself with all the pagan gods that surround in the nations. They're objects of trust. You see, because these pagan nations, even the ones that are going to take you captive, even the one that is going to bring you back to the land, they have their objects of trust. These are pagan nations. They don't know me, but they are going to fulfill my purpose.
And here's the kicker. These pagan nations that surround you, they have their objects of trust, but you know what? Before they can trust them, they have to make them. Not only do they have to make them, but they have to secure them so that they stay upright and don't totter. You see that in verses 6 and 7.
They comfort each other. Why? Because Cyrus is going to come and he's going to have victory over the unshakable Babylonian kingdom in one night, just like that. And then he is going to come and he's going to conquer other kings, and he is the one who's going to bring the people of Judah back into their land. And these people, as they see this mighty king conquering other kingdoms, they are going to be freed and they are going to appeal to their objects of trust, and they're going to encourage themselves in these objects of trust. God says to the people of Judah, I am your object of trust because I am the transcendent, sovereign creator. I am the lord of history and I am personally involved.
I should be your object of trust. To understand this and the idolatry of false objects of trust, we need to understand the pagan concept of existence, and therefore the objects of trust that follow. And it simply goes like this, because when I am my own self-reference point, then I end up creating whatever deity exists.
Right? So the pagan concept of existence simply looks like this. What has been always will be. What is is what always has been, and what has been always will be.
You can call this systems of the cosmos, systems. It is called the continuity of things. In other words, what has been is what always will be, what is is what always has been. Things just continue over and over again. They just keep going on the same way. The sun comes up in the morning, the sun goes down at night.
We get up in the morning, we go to work, we come home, we eat, we rest, we go to bed, we get back up in the morning. Everything just keeps going around and around, and things just continue as they always have been. And from a limited, human perspective, those systems become the things that we trust. That is the pagan concept of existence, these systems.
The eternality of the cosmos, because we don't think of where it all came from and what its meaning is. And what then happens in these pagan systems and the pagan concept of existence is that nature and humanity and deity are all one unified whole. They're all inseparable. And so then it becomes true, which is said much today, particularly in intelligent and circles of academia, is that any faith system or any concept of God is just simply a human creation.
Why would that be true? Because of the principle of continuity, everything just will always be as it always has been. Humanity and nature and deity are all inseparable. Peter says something to this in 2 Peter chapter 3 verse 4, where he is encouraging the believers to look forward to the return of Christ. And he's quoting what people are saying to them. What they're saying is, where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.
What is he saying? Oh, people are saying, hey, you know, things haven't changed. Things are always the same. Things will always be the same. You know, the cosmos is eternal. Things aren't going to change. You can talk us all about the stuff about Christ coming.
Nah, things are always going to be the same. And what happens then as these pagan systems develop objects of trust, their idols, these false gods become systems personified. You can see it in these pictures, can't you? There is humanity, there is nature, and there is deity. Deity is ascribed to these, like those on the left. There are over three hundred million of those in the Hindu religion in India. And it's a unity of nature, humanity, and deity.
Why? Because as things are is how they have always been, and how things are is how they will always be. And I thought, it puzzled me so long, why would somebody fashion something and create it and then bow down to it and worship it as if that's what they trust? You see, we're no different from people who do that, and it goes on in so many places around. And we might think, well, we're Westerners, we're logical, we're intellectual, yes, but we still have our own gods. And we can be pagan, too, by creating our own systems of trust and trusting our systems. 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 10am.
