Go on up to a high mountain,
        O Zion, herald of good news;
    lift up your voice with strength,
        O Jerusalem, herald of good news;
        lift it up, fear not;
    say to the cities of Judah,
        “Behold your God!”
    Behold, the Lord GOD comes with might,
        and his arm rules for him;
    behold, his reward is with him,
        and his recompense before him.
    He will tend his flock like a shepherd;
        he will gather the lambs in his arms;
    he will carry them in his bosom,
        and gently lead those that are with young.
    
    Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand
        and marked off the heavens with a span,
    enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure
        and weighed the mountains in scales
        and the hills in a balance?
    Who has measured the Spirit of the LORD,
        or what man shows him his counsel?
    Whom did he consult,
        and who made him understand?
    Who taught him the path of justice,
        and taught him knowledge,
        and showed him the way of understanding?
    Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket,
        and are accounted as the dust on the scales;
        behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust.
    Lebanon would not suffice for fuel,
        nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.
    All the nations are as nothing before him,
        they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.
    
    To whom then will you liken God,
        or what likeness compare with him?
    An idol! A craftsman casts it,
        and a goldsmith overlays it with gold
        and casts for it silver chains.
    He who is too impoverished for an offering
        chooses wood that will not rot;
    he seeks out a skillful craftsman
        to set up an idol that will not move.
    
    Do you not know? Do you not hear?
        Has it not been told you from the beginning?
        Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
    It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
        and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
    who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
        and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;
    who brings princes to nothing,
        and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.
    
    Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
        scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
    when he blows on them, and they wither,
        and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
    
    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?
    He 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.—Isaiah 40:9–26

Last week’s sermon attempted to summarize the last five years and set the stage for the next ten years. If you missed it, I would really encourage you to go back and listen to it so that we can all be on the same page with where we have been and where we are going in our 25 by 25 vision. Here is one last piece of introduction. I want you to be able to picture the next decade of spreading with three concentric circles.

Fill These Cities—25 x 25: Three Concentric Circles

The 1st circle is the center circle, the core of who we are and what we do. The Lord led the leaders at Bethlehem to identify 14 priorities that make Bethlehem, Bethlehem. We believe that we will not be able to reach far unless we press these priorities down deep and strengthen the core of who we are. The exciting thing about this call to fulfill our mission is that it is not a call to be what we are not; but a call to become more of what we already are as we press our priorities into the warp and woof—even into the corners—of campus life.

How does this inner core find expression on each campus? This is a call to be a people who treasure God in Christ in upreach, inreach, and outreach. We treasure God in Christ through upreach: We herald him and declare his excellencies in preaching and corporate worship so that he can be corporately seen and savored.

We treasure God in Christ through inreach: We put Christ on display for the next generation so that they will adore him and boast in him all of their days. We make disciples who treasure Christ through the life on life discipleship of small groups and the intensive discipleship of biblical counseling. We are a people who treasure Christ so much that we have the compassion of Christ for the bruised and the broken among us in congregational care. We want the glory of Christ to be on display in ethnic harmony.

We treasure Christ in outreach. We have a great commission ambition because we are commanded by Christ to make disciples of Christ among all the nations—starting in these cities. There is a providential proximity that we take as a responsibility from the Lord. Rice Creek Commons is going up right across from the North Campus. The Downtown Minneapolis council has a ten year vision and plan to bring 35,000 more people into the Downtown area (East Town), right where our Downtown campus is. Lakeville is the fastest-growing local suburb west of the Mississippi, a community projecting substantial expansion of middle-income housing.

But this is not our only strategy for Fill These Cities. Our spreading strategy has two more concentric circles: Church planting (local, national, global—2nd concentric circle) and unengaged peoples (3rd concentric circle).

But what kind of church are we called to be at the core of this vision? What kind of churches are we called to plant? What is our message that we bring to engage the unengaged? We want to be the kind of church and plant the kind of church that brings the message: Behold Your God!

I am going to unpack verses 12–26, but I want you to see the connection between verses 1–11 and verses 12–26. The announcement is given that God will come and save his people. God is coming—prepare the way (vv. 1–5). God is coming. He has given us assurance that nothing can stop this from happening, because the Lord has said so and his word is sure—it stands forever even when everything else fades and fails (vv. 6–8). Man’s word is like man himself; he withers and then is gone. God’s word is like God himself; he endures forever. Then we get to the message: Look—it is God (v. 9). He has come with strength (v. 10) to shepherd his people (v. 11). What we see in these verses is that salvation is not a program; it is the very presence of God. Salvation comes because God comes. Look, it is God; he has come to save us!

These verses set the stage for our text. Here is the connection between the two passages. Verses 1–11 focused on whether or not he would save his people, and this section (verses 12–26) addresses whether or not he could save his people. Do you see the difference? Verses 1–11 ask, “Will he?” Verses 12–26 ask, “Can he?” The first section asks about his desire, the second section ponders his ability to do what he says. One of the great glories of the Bible is that God not only gives the message to believe, but he gives reasons to believe it.

Isaiah is saying, “Yes, God’s promise is big, but not bigger than him. His checks are big, but they don’t bounce. You can take them to the bank. He can do what he says because he is who he is. He can make God-sized promises and back them up because he is God! So here is the main point of verses 12–26, and thus the main point of this message: Bethlehem, come to grips with the greatness of God. Specifically, come to grips with the greatness of God as (1) Creator, (2) King, and (3) Incomparable.

These verses use glorious poetic parallelism to make the point about God’s greatness memorable and beautiful in a grand and stunning way.

Isaiah 40:12–20	Isaiah 40:21–26
Creator of the World (vv. 12–14)	Creator of the World (vv. 21–22)
King of the Nations (vv. 15–17)	King of the Nations (vv. 23–24)
Incomparable (vv. 18–20)	Incomparable (vv. 25–26)

1. God as Creator (vv. 12–14; 21–22)

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand
     and marked off the heavens with a span,
enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure
     and weighed the mountains in scales
     and the hills in a balance?
Who has measured the Spirit of the LORD,
     or what man shows him his counsel?
Whom did he consult,
     and who made him understand?
Who taught him the path of justice,
     and taught him knowledge,
     and showed him the way of understanding?—Isaiah 40:12–14

Do you not know? Do you not hear?
     Has it not been told you from the beginning?
     Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
     and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
     and spreads them like a tent to dwell in.—Isaiah 40:21–22

You have to use your imagination to see and feel the scale of God’s greatness. Here are a few pictures to help you come to grips a little more with the greatness of God: (1) measure the waters, (2) weigh the mountains, and (3) measure God’s wisdom.

First, in terms of water, imagine going to a mountain brook and stooping down for a drink for which you cup some of the water in the hollow of your hands. Now make that image God-sized. God does that with the oceans. He measures the waters with the hollow of his hand (v. 12). We try to measure the volume of all water and the best we can do is about 332.5 million cubic miles (mi3). A cubic mile of water equals more than 1.1 trillion gallons. (United States Geological Survey, http://water.usgs.gov/edu/earthhowmuch.html [accessed on 9/14/16].)

332.5 million cubic miles in which each cubic mile is equal to 1.1 trillion gallons! How much water is that? God says, “About this much of my hand.” There is a well-known song that says, “I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean.” How much smaller should you feel in the presence of the majesty and greatness of a God who cups that ocean and all the others in the hollow of his hand?

Second, in terms of weight, imagine going for a walk and finding a big rock. You pick it up and bring it back home because you want to weigh it. You put it on the scale and determine the weight. Now re-size that image and put it on a God-sized scale. God does that with the mountains. I watched the movie Mt. Everest on the plane ride back home from Morocco this summer. It was the story of how many people died on one particular guided climb one year. People die trying to climb this mountain every year. We do our best to weigh it. Going with our height of 11,500 feet from Base Camp to summit, we can peg the volume at 2.1 trillion cubic feet. Multiply that by the density and Everest tips the scale at 357 trillion pounds. That number doesn’t even include the snow and ice.

How much is 357 trillion pounds?! We couldn’t find a crane big enough to lift it or a scale strong enough to weigh it. God picks that up. How do you picture Him picking it up? Like we weigh a bunch of bananas at the grocery store? The earth is 71 percent water. All the mountains and hills could easily fit in all the waters of the hollow of his hand. He picks up all the mountains and hills with a little finger and could skip them like a little rock across the oceans that he holds in a small part of his hand.

Third, in terms of wisdom, imagine that the school you attend wants to try to place you in a particular math class. You take an assessment test to see where you should be placed. We are familiar with these tests: IQ test, ACT test, SAT test, etc. You can’t measure God’s knowledge and wisdom. He doesn’t ever need advice. He never needs to go to the library. He doesn’t look anything up on Google the way that I did when trying to find out how much water is in the world or how much Mt. Everest weighs. He always knows the right way. You can’t measure him against a standard because he is the standard. He uses part of his hand as a standard of measure! You can’t give him a test to pass—he is the test, he is the reference point. But then there is an even more impossible question to answer. “Who has measured the Spirit of the LORD” (v. 13)?! God is a spirit; he doesn’t have a body like man. This is asking us to measure God. There is no tape measure; there is no bathroom scale. There is no way to measure God.

We cannot fathom such massive, majestic, incomparable, immeasurable, glorious greatness! As Creator of the earth, he is the King of the nations. Verse 22 tells us that he sits enthroned above the circle of the earth; its inhabitants are like grasshoppers (v. 22). Ever put up a tent? Isaiah says the heavens are like a tent for him to dwell in. We are told later in Isaiah that heaven is his throne and the earth is his footstool (Isaiah 66:1). Heaven and earth can’t contain him. Now we are forced to come to grips with the greatness of God as King.

2. God as King (vv. 15–17; vv. 23–24)

Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket,
     and are accounted as the dust on the scales;
     behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust.
Lebanon would not suffice for fuel,
     nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.
All the nations are as nothing before him,
     they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.—Isaiah 40:15–17

…Who brings princes to nothing,
     and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.
Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
     scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows on them, and they wither,
     and the tempest carries them off like stubble.—Isaiah 40:23–24

There are a few more pictures here to help us put the greatness of God into perspective. God is compared to (1) the size of the nations, (2) a sacrifice that would suffice, and (3) the staying power of the nations.

First, consider the size of the nations. The nations that look so big—we hear about Iran testing nukes, Vladimir Putin, America’s presidential election, ISIS—look again…compared to God all the powerful, fearful nations really just amount to a drop of water or a speck of dust. Imagine that you have poured all the water out of a bucket, but wait, there is a little drop left. You have to shake the bucket a little more to get that drop out. That is the nations in comparison to God. Dust on the scales? You have emptied the dust that is on your balance in order to get it cleaned, but wait, there is just a little speck left. The nations are like that little piece of lint that you try to get with your vacuum but it just won’t pick up so you have to do it by hand. God is like, “Why are you afraid of lint if you have me?”

What looked so big from one perspective now just becomes a big drop or a big speck from God’s perspective. That is one big drop of water. The nations are big only in the sense that you can call something a “jumbo shrimp.” Yes, big from one point of view if you are comparing one kind of shrimp to another, but not compared to a blue whale. The nations in God’s perspective are like krill to a blue whale.

Second, consider a proper sacrifice for God. What kind of sacrificial gift would be fitting for the transcendent glory of God? Mt. Lebanon was a grand mountain known for the immense cedars of Lebanon. They were like the Redwoods of California—they seemed to reach to the heavens. God’s glory is so great that you could cut down all those trees in the forest along with all of the animals in the forest and have one big burnt offering for a sacrifice. Would it be enough? It would not be even nearly big enough to enable you to approach a holy God.

Third, consider the staying power of the nations. How firmly established is their rule, how strong of a hold do they have—even a great dynasty? A nation like Assyria or Babylon or later the Persians or Romans or whoever is like a dandelion that a kid picks up, blowing all the seeds away.

In all of these comparisons, what we find is that there is no comparison. God is incomparable in his greatness. That takes us to point three.

3. God as Incomparable (vv. 18–20; vv. 25–26)

To whom then will you liken God,
     or what likeness compare with him?
An idol! A craftsman casts it,
     and a goldsmith overlays it with gold
     and casts for it silver chains.
He who is too impoverished for an offering
     chooses wood that will not rot;
he seeks out a skillful craftsman
     to set up an idol that will not move.—Isaiah 40:18–20

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?
He 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.—Isaiah 40:25–26

These verses seem to build as the conclusion with considerable irony. The problem is not necessarily a problem of believing. Isaiah looks around and says, “I see that you have no problem believing. You believe in much. You fashion idols and look to the stars.”

That is probably why the previous section mentioned princes and rulers of the earth. They are thinking of God wrongly by comparing him to human princes and rulers of the nations to whom they are captive.

What an expose of unbelief. This is misplaced trust and amazement. People who don’t believe in God inevitably believe in something—themselves, other people, even other religious ideas. You are ready to accept the promises of man or the power of wooden statues, but you are slow to receive the promises of God?

Some today would say that they do not bow down to little wooden statues, but what are our counterfeit, cheap replacement gods? Wealth, status, position? The way we dress, the relationships we have, the abilities we have, the intelligence we have?

Look again if you want to see incomparable greatness. Isaiah 40 says look up into the night sky and you will see the greatness of God. Other nations looked up in the sky as saw things to worship. Many regarded the host of heaven as gods or the visible representations of the gods. Babylonians held this belief and Israel sometimes sunk down into this false worship of the host of heaven (2 Kings 17:6; 21:3).

God’s people look up in the night sky and don’t see things to worship; we see reasons to worship. Our solar system may seem large, but it is not all that impressive when compared to our galaxy. In fact, if the Milky Way Galaxy were the size of the continent of North America, then our solar system would fit in a coffee cup. Our Milky Way Galaxy is the light of 200-400 billion stars turning like a giant pinwheel (100 light-years across).

But the Milky Way Galaxy is not all that impressive compared to how many galaxies exist. Edwin Hubble showed us that our galaxy is one of many galaxies in the universe (back in the 1920s). The best estimate is that there are between 125 billion galaxies gathered in clusters. We are talking about a number like 1x1022 or 10 billion trillion stars.

That number leaves our head spinning and smoking. We can’t even count them let alone create them or name them, but creating the stars was effortless to God—the work of his fingers (Psalm 8). We sometimes talk about someone lifting a finger to do something. That is our God. Do we believe that God will come with strength and shepherd his people (Isaiah 40:9–10)? You look at a sheep farmer with his herd of sheep; God is like a shepherd of the stars—he calls them all by name and none of them is missing because of his power (Isaiah 40:26).

Our mission to make God supreme is a mission to magnify God like a telescope because we are witnesses of his glory. Here is what Pastor John said in a fundraising campaign back in 1996:

“But the problem is that in the night sky the wonders of the heavens do not appear as they really are. They seem small and not very bright or awesome. So we must magnify them. That’s what a telescope is for. Not to make them look bigger than they are. But to help us, in our weakness, to stop thinking of them as small and show us how great they really are.”

Then he talked about a comet that was going to pass by the earth and why people need a telescope to be as impressed as they should be.

“If you can magnify Hyakutake, and show me that a smudgy softball is really 30,000 miles across (four times the size of the earth), I will be more amazed. Or if you can magnify the tail and show me that a dim cloudy trail of light a few handbreadths in width is really 6,000,000 miles long, then I will feel differently about this amazing thing called a comet.”

If the world sees God like that comet, then what does the world need? The church! But what kind of church? Pastor John compares the mission of Bethlehem to the mission of an observatory.

“I see Bethlehem as a kind of Christian Kitt Peak National Observatory. Kitt Peak is located 50 miles southwest of Tucson and is a major astronomical observation center—in solar, planetary, stellar, galactic, and extragalactic astronomy. It has 15 major telescopes including a 36-foot diameter radio telescope. Perhaps more than in any other place on earth, Kitt Peak astronomers magnify the heavens to show the greatness that they really have, and to spread that truth all around the world.

What is needed is a church—a people—which magnifies God like a telescope. A church which causes others to stop thinking of God as small, but to think about him and see him as great as he really is. That is what we are freeing the future for. Our mission at Bethlehem is to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples” (http://www.desiringgod.org/messages/let-all-who-seek-thee-rejoice-and-be-glad-in-thee-let-those-who-love-thy-salvation-say-continually-the-lord-be-magnified, March 17, 1996).

Application: Repentance and Revival

Reclaim Our Mission Through Repentance

If we are to reclaim this mission statement to magnify God and to make him supreme, we can reclaim it only through repentance. We have done the exact opposite of Isaiah 40. We have made small things into big things and we have taken the Biggest Being Possible and made him seem small. We have let our small minds and hearts become a box—there is my God box; that is who he is. God doesn’t like being put in a small box and being told that is who he is and where he belongs. We have trusted and believed the promises of those weak, small things more than we have believed the promises of our almighty, strong God. We have believed that the things we face are too big—even if God was with us and has made promises to us.

Repentance is when our hearts are pierced for making small things into big things or “god” things and making God (the Biggest being) into a small thing. Revival is when God gloriously and explosively breaks out of the box we put him in and we refuse to put limitations on him.

If I am going to be totally forthright and upfront with you, I want to repent before you today. This campaign has felt unnerving at times. I have walked more in fear than in faith. If I am honest, at times it felt like the impending campaign was big—bigger and scarier than God. Remember the question of last week: What is little faith and what would great faith be? Abraham was told to look at the stars and try to count them—that is how numerous the children of this childless man would be. Paul tells us that Abraham did not grow weak in faith through unbelief. He grew strong in faith, giving glory to God. How…how does faith make God look really big and glorious? Abraham was “fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised” (Romans 4:21).

I want us to make God look really big and glorious by moving forward with the confident conviction in this campaign that God can do what he says. He is calling us to move forward with our mission. He will supply our every need according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

Just take one moment to apply the greatness of God to our financial need. I have never seen 38 million dollars. I was trying to remember the other day the highest amount of cash I have ever held in my hand. God holds 332.5 million cubic miles of water in his hands and each cubic mile is equal to 1.1 trillion gallons! God with his little finger easily lifts and measures 357 trillion pounds (one mountain—Everest). God creates, names, and keeps in orbit 10 billion trillion stars.

Do you still think 38 million sounds big in God’s economy? It would not even be like one of his pennies of pocket change—like, “Let me shave off part of one of my pennies.” I am not afraid of moving forward.

Does the task of engaging 25 unengaged people groups seem hard and big? Our God sees all the nations like a drop in the bucket and our God can hold 332.5 million cubic miles of waters in the hollow of his hand. Those nations are like dust on the scales, but our God can lift up the coastlands and islands of the world like we pick up sand on the beach.

Think about the conclusion of Isaiah 40 in verses 27–31. Is our way hidden? Doesn’t the God who knows all things, know our need, Bethlehem? He is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth—don’t we know? Don’t we know that he can do all things and not grow weak? He not only has all strength, he gives it to weak people so that they fly on eagle’s wings as they wait for him. Soar with hope!

When you hear about something that seems too big or too scary or too intimidating for you, stop and pause for a moment. Call to mind that you are about to express an opinion and an assessment about the eternal, almighty God who formed and fashioned everything you see with a word from his mouth, who stretched out the span of the heavens, can measure the waters in his cupped hands, can weigh the mountains and the hills and call all the stars by name.

The truths of God are meant to be explosive and wildly untamable and undomesticatable. Instead, we exclaim with Job in wide-eyed wonder that God has no limits!

I know that you can do all things,
     and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. 

Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
    things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
     but now my eye sees you; 
therefore I despise myself,
     and repent in dust and ashes.—Job 42:2, 3, 5–6

I repent. Meditating on Isaiah 40 was a holy moment for me this week—holy ground. My eyes have seen him. I repent and I am not afraid anymore.

But it would be fatal to stop there. There are really two problems at work here. God can seem (1) small and (2) far away and so other things seem bigger or truer. These two things are related. Sometimes other things seem bigger because God feels farther away—less tangible and less real and less true. The analogy with the stars is a good case in point. God can feel like the stars. Yes, he is incomparably bigger than he seemed to be. And he feels as far away as a star. Isaiah 40 helps us at this very point too.

Conclusion: Repent and Believe the Love of God

Isaiah 40 begins by saying that gospel comfort can be ours because there is a pardon for sin (Isaiah 40:2). That word for pardon is always connected with a sacrifice for our sin. What kind of sacrifice could atone for our sin? How could we ever approach God when all the trees of Lebanon and all the animals of the forest would not suffice for a sacrifice (Isaiah 40:16)?

And does God really care? Yes, he is powerful and wise, but what about loving? Does he regard us as nothing? That is the way I feel sometimes. Like one big zero. Notice that verse, “All the nations are as nothing before him” (Isaiah 40:17). Commentators are exactly right to note that it does not say the nations are nothing to God, but nothing before Him—that is, in comparison and contrast.

God shows his love for the nations through the promise of a servant that he will send to them as a light for the nations so that God’s salvation will reach them too, even to the end of the earth (Isaiah 49:6).

You may struggle with exactly the same complaint that Isaiah’s readers expressed. They heard that God was powerful and wise, but they doubted his love. They felt forgotten and forsaken.

But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me;
     my Lord has forgotten me.”—Isaiah 49:14

God compares himself to a woman with a nursing child:

“Can a woman forget her nursing child,
     that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
     yet I will not forget you.”—Isaiah 49:15

No one can match the love of a mother for her children. They once studied the different responses of a father and mother in Louisiana if an alligator attacked their child. The father would look around for a weapon. But the mother did not hesitate—she didn’t look for a weapon, she became a weapon and went right after the alligator with fists and fury.

God says, a mother may forget, but I will not. Then the metaphor becomes almost too good to be true.

“Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.”—Isaiah 49:16

It was fairly common in the ancient world to have a master’s name tattooed on the servant (Isaiah 44:5—“another will write on his hand, ‘The LORD’s’”). But it is at this very point that the gospel comes with the power to blow away all of our expectations. Never, ever, ever in the ancient world would one see the name of a servant tattooed on a master. That would put the master in the role of the servant! Who could imagine a master devoting his life to serve?

We can! Those were just words—it is hard to just take someone’s word for it. So God gave us actions. He did it. The Son of God came as the servant. Four chapters later, Isaiah 53 prophesies the coming of this servant that would be a sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the people. Who could possibly offer such a sacrifice? Isaiah 40 has already declared that this is the Lord himself. The New Testament gospels everywhere confirm this point. “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

The sacrifice of his Son shows God’s incredible love for the world. He has come. It is not too good to be true. He really came. He really suffered. He really died. He was really pierced so that sinners can receive his salvation and “behold the manner of love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God” (1 John 3:1).

Who has felt the nails upon his hands, bearing all the guilt of sinful man? God eternal humbled to the grave, Jesus Savior risen now to reign! Behold our God, seated on his throne, come let us adore Him. Behold our King! Nothing can compare. Come let us adore Him. You will reign forever…let your glory fill the earth!

Sermon Discussion Questions

Main Point: Bethlehem, come to grips with the greatness of God.

Outline of Text
These verses use glorious poetic parallelism. In a grand and stunning way, they make the point about God’s greatness memorable and beautiful:

Verses 12–20                                  Verses 21–26
Creator of the World (vv. 12–14)      Creator of the World (vv. 21–22)
King of the Nations (vv. 15–17)        King of the Nations (vv. 23–24)
Incomparable (vv. 18–20)                Incomparable (vv. 25–26)

Outline of Sermon

1. God as Creator (vv. 12–14, 21–22)
2. God as King (vv. 15–17, 23–24)
3. God as Incomparable (vv. 18–20, 25–26)

Discussion Questions

• What three aspects of God’s greatness does the text unpack? Which one stood out to you most?
• Two common problems with our understanding of God are that 1) he seems smaller than he is and 2) he seems further away than he is. How are we supposed to address these two problems?  

Application Questions

• As a result of hearing this sermon, what is the first change you need to make in your life? Are there further long-range changes or adjustments you need to make?
• What situations exist in your life right now that cause God to feel either small or far away or both? How can you bring the reality of God’s greatness into focus in these situations?

Prayer Focus

Pray for a grace to make God supreme by magnifying his power, wisdom, and love.