4 th February: 5 th Sunday after Epiphany: Isaiah 40.21–31

Our God the Creator, the Lord of History

‘There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’ From 2008 to 2009, this slogan graced the sides of British buses as part of an atheist marketing campaign. This is just one example of the atheist challenge to belief in God; led by famed evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, who also supported the bus campaign, the atheist movement is posing a serious challenge to the Christian belief in God’s creation. Dawkins’ bestselling book, The God Delusion, has been translated into numerous languages and is published in countries around the world, spreading the theory of atheistic evolution.

In the face of atheists’ fierce challenge to our belief in God, it is worth studying the message of the prophet known as Second Isaiah, generally believed by biblical scholars to be a near contemporary of the author of Genesis 1. Second Isaiah emphasizes God’s act of creation, more so than any other prophet in the Old Testament, describing it in terms remarkably similar to Genesis 1. ¹ For example, the prophet often uses the Hebrew verb, bārā’, which is also used in Genesis 1 to depict God’s act of creation. In addition, tohû, a rare Hebrew word meaning ‘a formless void’ (Gen 1:2) is found both in Genesis 1 and in Second Isaiah to describe the world before creation (Isa 40:17, 23; 41:29; 45:18). But the similarity goes deeper than individual words: Second Isaiah appears to accept Genesis’ claim that God created the world with His words (43:1; 48:3; 52:6; 55:11).

To understand why Second Isaiah focused on God’s act of creation, it is important to understand his historical context. Second Isaiah lived through the collapse of Judah at the hand of Babylonia, the destruction of Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple, and the exile of Judah’s leading elite. This shocking reality posed a grave theological question to the people of Israel. Until then, they had a strong faith that they were under Yahweh’s protection and that Israel would never come to ruin. However, when their country was devastated and the Temple, Yahweh’s residence, destroyed, many started questioning whether this meant Israel’s God was inferior to Babylonia’s deity, Marduk.

Wrestling with these issues, Second Isaiah presents a new interpretation of Yahweh to overcome the Israelites’ doubts and despair. First, he introduces the concept of monotheism. At the time Israel believed in monolatry; they acknowledged the existence of numerous deities but worshipped only one—Yahweh (cf. First Commandment). However, Second Isaiah repeatedly states that all other gods, including Babylonia’s Marduk, are merely idols created by humankind (40:18–25 ² ; 41:6-7; 44:9–20; 46:5–7). He goes on to say that the sun, the moon, and the stars, worshipped by Mesopotamians as celestial gods and named Shamash, Sin, and Ishtar (planet Venus), respectively, were not gods at all. Instead, Yahweh was the one who created the heavenly bodies, numbered them, and gave them their names (Isa 40:26; Ps 147:4).

Second Isaiah also highlighted the fact that Yahweh is the Creator. While the Israelites believed that God resided in the Temple here on earth, Second Isaiah says that in actuality he exists in the heavens, a location fitting for the creator of the entire universe. Yahweh is a God ‘who sits above the circle of the earth…and who stretches out the heavens like a curtain’ (Isa 40:22). The entire universe is God’s creation and His sovereignty extends over all things and events in the world, including Judah’s conquest by Babylonia. In other words, God is not just the Creator, he is also the Lord of History. God did not create the world only to then stand idly from afar as a spectator, but meticulously intervenes in the history of this world. Therefore, God is not only transcendent, but also immanent.

The immanent God is someone who realizes justice in the world on the side of the weak. Deuteronomy introduces Yahweh as the caretaker and protector of the aliens, orphans, and widows (Deut 10:18; 14:29; 16:11, 14; 24:19–21; 26:12–13; cf. Ps 146:9). Second Isaiah describes a God who ‘gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless’ (Isa 40:29) and ‘brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing’ (Isa 40:23).

And yet, despite the fact that we believe in an imminent God who interferes in human history, it is hard at times to sense His presence in our own lives. And this struggle has been going on since biblical times: in today’s reading, we hear the Israelites’ pained cry: ‘My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God’ (Isa 40:27), a lamentation shared by many psalmists (Pss 22:24; 27:9; 44:24; 69:17; 88:14; 143:7). Today we ask the same questions as the Israelites when faced with the realities of war and terror, disasters, and famines: ‘Can God truly exist when there is so much suffering in the world? Even if God exists, does He really intervene in the course of human history?’

It may seem as though history is led by those who hold power over this world. However, the Bible clearly states that God is the creator of this world and that only He can influence history. In the eyes of God, the powerful on earth are as insignificant as mere grasshoppers (Isa 40:22). This God, the great creator, is on our side.

God helps the weak and grants them strength. But not all those who are weary receive God’s power: only ‘those who wait for the Lord’ (Isa 40:31) are privileged with God’s help. Depending upon the world’s powerful or our own strength is no different from idolatry (Isa 40:6–8, 15–20). If we despair when looking at this world, we remain ‘the faint’ and ‘the powerless’. However, when we look toward the Lord, rely upon Him, have hope in Him, and wait for Him, we will experience the power of God, the great creator.

We live in an age of cutting-edge science. As science and technology advance, humankind has a tendency to believe that we do not need the help of God and that we can create a better world through our power alone. Like in that bus campaign, some evolutionary biologists claim that God and evolutionism cannot exist together. However, Christian faith begins with a belief in the existence of God and in His creation. This does not imply that we must believe in the literal description of creation as recorded in Genesis 1 as scientific and historical fact. To believe in God’s creation is to accept that the world belongs to God, and that God is the Lord of this world and drives human history.

Who is the creator of the universe? Who is the Lord of history on this earth? Second Isaiah continues to beseech our faith and conviction, even in the present day: ‘Have you not known? Have you not heard?’ (40:21, 28).