Wednesday
Wednesday
The Double Identity of God
The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
Isaiah 40:28
Isaiah 40 focuses on verse 27, in which God confronts his people with awkward questions: “Why do you say, O Jacob … ‘My way is hidden from the LORD; my cause is disregarded by my God’?” The God they think has forgotten them (during their Babylonian exile) has overheard their complaint, listened to their conversation, and read their thoughts. They are in a terrible plight, and God does nothing about it. Either he is blind and cannot see, or he is unjust and cannot bother, or he is impotent and cannot rescue them. Such a complaint is familiar to our modern ears.
God’s response is to throw their question back to them. They are asking, “Why doesn’t God do something?” He replies, “Why do you ask why?” Then he lifts their minds above their sufferings, to him and the kind of God he is. For nothing is more important when we are in trouble than a fresh vision of God. In particular, two complementary truths about him need to be emphasized. Firstly, “the LORD is the everlasting God.” Yahweh, their own covenant God, is also “the Creator of the ends of the earth.” It is absurd, therefore, to imagine that the Creator is lacking in knowledge, justice, or power (v. 28).
The second truth complements the first. It is that the Creator is also the LORD (Yahweh), the God of Israel, who has bound himself to them by a solemn covenant and will never go back on his steadfast love for them. This chapter is full of affirmations that he is our God forever.
The key question, then, that God himself asks twice is, “To whom, then, will you compare God?” (v. 18; see v. 25). The answer is that he is both the Creator God and the Covenant God. As God of the creation we cannot doubt his power; as God of the covenant we cannot doubt his love. Unless we hold fast to this, his double identity, then “our God is too small,” as J. B. Phillips wrote.
For further reading: Isaiah 40:18–31