Before we look at the text, I have a question for you. Are you a collector? Is there anything you collect? I might be talking to some people who collect tons of things, lots of things. I'm not necessarily talking about hoarders.
That's not where I want to go with this. I'm talking about things of worth. Ladies, women, it might be something that throughout the years, maybe even as a younger person, you received jewelry from a loved one, from heirlooms that were sort of passed down, and that sort of sparked something in you. And what you started to do was then collect. And now you might have a collection of things that are worth something. It might be things like coin collecting.
It might be stamp collecting. For those of us back in the 80s when we were young, it might have been baseball cards. Oh, man, you're just holding your breath, hoping that you get the one card that you need to complete the set.
And of course, it never came, man. But you just, you know, you kind of long for that. And so you would go to malls when collectors would take over malls, and you would go and seek out the card that you wanted. One of the things that I have continued to collect throughout these years, although the sets have become a little bit more complex, is Legos.
Please don't judge me. But I still collect some Legos. Not all of them. But one of the things that I really like, because I can't afford the originals, are the cars that they've come out with. And they have come out with a whole bunch of really neat cars from old classic Chargers and Aston Martins to modern day Lamborghinis and Ferraris. And I can't get in them and drive them, so I build them.
And this gets a little bit closer to the metaphor that we're going to look at tonight. The neat thing about Legos, in a sense, that maybe the people that come over to my house and see my collection all sort of over the place. My wife is very gracious and allows me to put Legos up in the house. You might see the car and really like it and enjoy it. Wow, that's a neat one.
Or you might even have a memory of one. You know, maybe a Mustang back in the day and your dad owned one or something along those lines. Wow, that's a neat car. But what's really kind of neat about the cars when I get to build them is that built in to the car, the pieces that you'll never see. Boy oh boy, some of the intricate engineering that some of these Lego guys come up with is really pretty astounding. And then another thing that's kind of neat is they use all kinds of weird colors. You'll be building the engine and all of a sudden you'll put the engine in with some weird like teal pieces and yellow and red that don't match the car at all. But when the car is all done, nobody even knows it's there. And so it's really been just kind of this fun thing to meticulously sort of, and I understand it's not rocket science putting together Legos. But sort of putting together these cars and then when they're done, there is this sense where I take a little bit of pride in knowing the car through and through. And then I put it in a place in my house where I don't forget about it, where I know it is and it serves somewhat of a purpose for me. That is a bad metaphor for what we're going to look at tonight.
But it does help us a little bit. Look at these verses in verse 25 and 26. They go like this, 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, 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. This chapter, you probably, hopefully, you know Isaiah 40 rather well. It's one of the most popular chapters in Isaiah. It might not be the most.
53 would probably take that. But 40 is a pretty popular chapter, especially when you get down into verses 28 through the end. But this is a chapter that talks about the greatness of God, how big our God is, how powerful and strong our God is. To the point where, very honestly, when we start talking about some of the attributes of God, they make you go, wow.
But after that, frankly, some of the things are so hard to get your head around that in a practical, everyday, how do I apply this, it becomes sort of hard. And so can we look at two attributes very quickly that are found in these verses before we move on because it is important that we do at least think a bit about first God's power and second about God's knowledge. We learn in these verses very clearly that God is all powerful. The words that are used is greatness of his might and he is strong in power. God is what we call all powerful. And we find here in this metaphor, and this is a literal, these verses are very literal, but we're going to use this as a metaphor today. We'll get there in a second. But in this metaphor, in this word picture of God creating the stars, which he actually did, there is some power in our God.
Can I throw out some things that will just make you go, wow, for a second? And hopefully one of you maybe can help me understand this afterwards. Scientists agree on an estimate of a total of stars to be somewhere around 100 billion in number in our galaxy. I don't begin to understand what that number looks like. But if that gets you confused, they come together and they say, I don't even know how they estimate this, but they say that there is somewhere around 200 billion trillion stars in the universe. What?
I don't even know what that means. But I do know this, it's a two with 23 zeros after it. That is a very big number. And what the text is telling us is that our creator God, our eternal God that spoke with his mouth, they all came into being in our universe. 200 billion trillion stars. The text asks a question, who created these? He who brings out their host by number.
And what a number. As creator, he brings them into being. And in such a neat way, I am probably, we won't get into this, but I tend to be more of a young earth guy. And one of the interesting thing about stars, if you happen to Google stars, is that when you talk about the lifespan of a star, you're talking about millions and millions of years, which I don't begin to comprehend either. Which means this to me, that God, even in his creation, as he creates these millions and billions and trillions of stars, that he creates them even in their maturity, where he places them in life. If that makes any sense. And then he creates them in their kind.
The many different kind of stars that are out there. I'm hoping, at least a little bit, that this just makes you go, what? Wow. Our God is big. He is powerful. But the fact that he creates with his word, and these are just now out there, believe it or not, the text says, or we can at least infer, that every star that is out in the universe is placed in a very specific location for a purpose. It has a purpose.
Each one in its place. And God knows exactly where that is. He keeps it there. The word we would use is that he sustains it.
And he sustains it immediately. Which means every moment of every day of every set that the star will be in existence, he is sustaining it in its existence. That's power. That's power. Let's move on from power.
Not only is God all powerful in creating all these stars, but he's all knowing. I have joked before, even here at this pulpit, about a term I probably shouldn't use for this, but we, for shorthand, use the idea of being OCD. There is some point in our life, some thing in our life, that we just love to feel in control over. And so what do we do?
We do our best to keep order in it. It might be your home. It might be your backyard.
It might be the way you present yourself in your dress. It could be a lot of different things. For me, it has always been just sort of my surroundings. My house, my office. In fact, you know what was funny? I was sharing this with congregations some time ago, and I walked into my office after a sermon. And you know what I found? Some teenagers that go to the church rearranging my office.
As a joke. I literally caught them with books in hand, just placing them all different places. Because what I communicated was that things have to be in their place.
I know where they are. My books are in a certain order. And the things that I have in my office are in a certain order. Everything needs to be in its place. And I know when it's not right. And of course, my teams now, they'll never leave me alone with that one.
They'll be putting things all over the place. What the text here says is that he calls each one by name. He has named every star in our universe.
Again, that should make you go, wow. I disagree with Shakespeare's Hamlet. I believe that a name is much more than a convention. Names can be important because they give people a sense of who they are, where they belong, a place in this world.
They give a person worth and purpose. Names can also, and you know this, they're rooted in family, in culture, in religion. Parents, you know that when you have a child, what you do is you painstakingly work over a name, right?
You talk it over, usually for quite some time. Why? Because the name has meaning. It has expectation. There's knowledge behind it. You do not go to a website where you hit a random generator button and a name just pops up and you just, well, this is what we're going to name our kid.
It typically doesn't work that way. God knows every single star that he has placed in the galaxies that he has created and then he has named every one of them. And that I think brings out a really neat point and that is this idea that worth is found only in being known by God.
You know why? Because there are probably trillions of stars that will never be seen by anyone else. They were created purely for his joy, purely so that he would know them and would be able to name them. And again, this is another tangent I can't get off on right now, but if you really just want to get sort of, whoa, wow, about God and his knowledge, of course he created the stars, right? But when it comes to all knowledge, there is not one thing that he has ever had to learn. Knowledge actually comes from him.
All knowledge. And so all the knowledge that he intimately knows about each of the trillion billion stars actually comes from himself. God is an all-powerful God. God is a God that knows all things. So the third thing that we see that is vitally important about this passage, about these stars, that turns this whole passage into, or these verses anyway, into a beautiful metaphor, is the idea of God's faithfulness, God's love, God's covenant faithfulness. You see, the effect of his power and knowledge means something.
It's relevant for you and me in our daily life. And it's this. The text says that not only did God create the stars, and not only does he intimately know them and name them, but catch the ending of these verses.
What does it say? Not one is missing. I know I'm getting ahead of myself, but that is gospel truth right there. Not one is missing. One in 200 billion trillion stars will never go missing. Nothing will ever happen to them without his direct intervention. He makes sure of it.
He will make sure of it. And so if we could say, and I don't mean to be crass in any way, but if we could say that the stars, these stars that God made, is a collection that God has, that he collects in a sense. I made these.
Look at these. Look how brilliant and beautiful they are. I believe truly that what they do is they actually point to a more valuable collection that we can glean all kinds of beautiful truth from.
And I hope even as we talk about the stars, you just see it laid out. God is building a collection that is eternally precious to him. It's the bride of Christ. The church.
He promises to Abraham way back in Genesis 15, 5. Do you remember? Abram's hanging out with his wife in his tent. And I don't know if they're prepping for dinner.
I don't know what they're doing. But it turns dark. And he hears God speak. And he invites Abram to go out.
Do you remember what he tells him to do? Look up. Count the stars. And I don't know if Abram's sitting there going, seriously?
Are you crazy? I can't count these. There's so many of them. Look at them all.
I'm sure the light pollution was much less than it is right now in Concord. So he could see tons of stars. But that's exactly what God asks him to do.
And then look how he puts it together. It says that he brought, this is Genesis 15, 5, and he brought him outside and said, look toward heaven and number the stars. If you are able to number them, then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. And so we learn through the scriptures when we get to Revelation and even passages that come before, we learn that the church, the assembly before God, God's family will be this group, this multitude from every tribe, nation, language, tongue that will be, you won't be able to number it.
It will be like the stars in the sky. Know that we can put now God's power, God's creative power and God's knowledge and God's covenant faithfulness. We can direct those things to his most pressured, his most pleasured, his most valuable collection and that is his church. So he's the creator of the church. Listen to Ephesians 2. It says, remember, Paul's talking to the church at Ephesus, the bunch of churches in Ephesus actually, mostly to Gentiles. And so he's talking about how he is going to create, how God creates the church by bringing Gentile and Jew together. Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenant of promise.
Having no hope and without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh, in Christ's flesh, the dividing wall of hostility, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two.
So making peace. God is building up his church. Now what's neat is that when we talk about the universe, we talk about the stars in general.
We can talk individually as well. And so what's neat is that God also gives us this re-creative power individually. As he builds the church, what he does is he calls individual effectively through the blood of Christ and in the power of the spirit, the answer. And we have a verse, I think, that pulls all this together that's really neat in 2 Corinthians 4-6.
It's one of my favorites. It says for God, and listen to the creative power here, it reverts back to the seven days of creation to show his re-creative power. Let light shine out of darkness, it says. He who said let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. It's the power of God that is putting together his church, Christ's bride. And that is individually as he calls and saves and what it is doing is building the collection of the church.
Second, it's this idea that God knows his bride. And what's so neat about this is we can get very specific. If God knows and named 200 trillion billion stars, or billion trillion, the number means nothing to me. But if he can name that many stars, it's pretty amazing, it's pretty neat.
I think it would almost be pretty easy for him to name each one of his children. He knows us. 2 Timothy says in chapter 2 verse 19, but God's firm foundation stands bearing this seal, the Lord knows who are his. And then he talks as the good shepherd, Jesus does, and he says, I am the good shepherd, I know my own, and my own know me.
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. He calls you by name. I love this verse in Revelation, and this idea of calling I think is twofold. First, it is the idea that he actually gives you a name, he doesn't just know what your parents were going to call you, and then calls you, oh, Ben, yeah, I know him, I know him. The text actually tells us in Revelation that he doesn't just know our name, but he actually will name us.
Listen to this. It says the one who conquers, in Revelation 3.12, I will make him a pillar in the temple of God, never shall he go out of it. And I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and I will give him my own new name. God will name every one of his children.
That is intimate knowledge. But there's another way to look at this naming process, and we have it in the New Testament in a couple different places, and it is this idea that through the work of Christ, God is free now to create his family, and so what does he do? He finds homeless children, and he adopts them. You and I are those homeless children.
He again calls and says, I have a name that I am going to give you. You can take my last name, and gives us identity and purpose in that. Brothers and sisters, tonight, the thing that I just want to sort of, the climax, I believe, of this passage, the real encouraging point, where really the power of God and the knowledge of God come together in such beautiful fireworks, is that in the reality of our everyday, most of us, yeah, it might be okay. God, thank you for knowing us. Thank you for being all powerful.
Thank you for the ideas that you can do all things. Do you know where Israel takes all of this knowledge? If you have it open, if not, I'll just read it to you, but verse 27, God, after all of this, after all of the experiences, after this massive chapter of how great God is, this is what Israel says. This is what Jacob says.
Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel? My way is hidden from the Lord. That's you and I, right? That's you and me. We go around in our daily, everyday life, woe is me. This is a rough day. This is not what I was expecting. These are curve balls. Why am I dealing with these things?
Why are these trials? They're killing me. God, where are you?
I am alone in all of this. It goes even farther than that. My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by God.
Of course, then God gets into it in the next verse, almost says, how dare you? I know the stars by name. I sustain them. How hard it is for me to walk with you. I love you so much more. Do you know this? My only son that I gave up for you?
In fact, that's what Paul says in Romans, right? God gave up Christ. What else is there? You have it all. You have everything.
Everything you need. So the climax here that we find in verse 26 is the idea that you will never go missing. No one will pull you out of His hand.
No one. Maybe just being the good Presbyterian I am, I say that I can't even do that for myself. God has me to the point where I can't even screw up my own life. God is with me. He fights for me. Christ's blood has been shed for me.
I belong to Him, and I have His name. And I can't even take that away. Paul puts it this way. For I am sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything in all creation.
And Paul's probably sitting there going, is there anything I left out? Because there is nothing, there's nothing that will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Do you understand the attributes of God, the power of God, the knowledge of God, the truth that you can never go missing, the truth that God has you for all eternity is grounded. It's founded in who He is in His attributes. So it is vitally important that God made all those stars. It's vitally important that God is the one that holds all power and knows all things.
Because if He did not have those things, then maybe we should be worried. But because of the fact that He created the stars, we're able to smile tonight and be encouraged. And then, what's even neater about this, and actually I didn't know this was happening so I'm actually very excited, but what's even neater is that then in very tangible, very everyday, even if I may say mundane kind of ways, God reminds us by giving us the table where we are able to eat and drink together at the family table with our Father, the one who has named us. Just a wonderful, beautiful reminder that we are His. We consume Him. Christ is ours. And we are His. And we're encouraged, I hope. So even as we go to prayer and as we go to the table, just be encouraged. Be encouraged with the complex truth of God's immensity, His power and His knowledge, His love. But then the simplicity of the fact that you belong to Him, that He will never let you go. . . . . .
