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“God’s Word to Little People”
Isaiah 40
 
INTRO: HIDE-N-SEEK
          Recently my family was over at my folks’ house and my dad and I played Hide-n-Seek with my 2½-year-old daughter, Maria.
This got me to thinking back to games of Hide-n-Seek that my siblings and I played with my dad when we were kids.
Generally the games would go pretty fast.
Everybody would have a 30 or 40 count to hide, then the “seeker” would search the house and within 5 or 10 minutes everyone would be found and we’d start another round with a new “seeker.”
On one occasion, though, I remember hiding and not being found for what seemed like hours.
I had crawled up on a large storage shelf in the corner of the basement and hid behind some camping gear.
The seeker – my little brother, I think –made a pass by the shelves early on in the round but that was it.
After that it was quiet and I sat - increasingly restless - as the “hours” passed.
“Is he just not able to find me?”
I thought; or… “Has he forgotten about me?
Maybe the whole family forgot about me and they’re all upstairs playing Scrabble without me.”
JUDAH FEELS INSIGNIFICANT
          The people of Judah, to whom Isaiah wrote the words of Isaiah 40, began to have similar thoughts…about God.
They had been defeated in war and forced to walk the 700+ miles from Jerusalem to Babylon.
Now they were exiles, stuck in Babylon, subject to the whims of a godless king.
And they wondered, “Is our God not able to rescue us?
Maybe he’s not strong enough to stand up to Babylon.
Or… maybe, he’s forgotten about us.”
Some of their cries are actually recorded for us in the book of Lamentations.
Here’s how it ends:
20 Why do you always /forget/ us?
Why do you forsake us so long?
21 Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may return;
renew our days as of old
22 unless you have utterly rejected us
and are angry with us beyond measure.
(Lament.
5:20-22)
The people of Judah are desperate to know: “Will our God just leave us here…forever?”
Far away from home, far away from the temple where they experienced God’s presence, these exiles felt insignificant.
Now, of course, they knew that it was their own fault that they ended up where they did.
God plainly told them on their way into their new homeland, that if they forgot about him – if they turned in on themselves and turned to idols – then they would be removed from their land.
They knew that this mess was of their own making, but that just made things worse, made them feel even more insignificant.
They felt guilty and tired; they felt forgotten.
And they wondered: “Has he written us off as hopeless, not worth the effort?
Does God in his great vastness not notice what we’re having to endure here?
Will he just leave us in this mess?”
LITTLE PEOPLE IN A DANGEROUS WORLD
          The experience of those exiles was not, however, unique to them.
The words of Isaiah 40 continue to be so powerful today because feeling insignificant, feeling tired, even forgotten – these are also common experiences today.
I was reading in Time magazine recently that each year more than 2 million American teenagers attempt suicide.
5.5 million are in psychological counseling.
But this is not unique to teenagers.
Last summer in the church I was interning at I met with a woman named Jacki who is in her late thirties.
Jacki has four young kids and a husband who is bi-polar and can be verbally abusive and domineering.
Their marriage is on the rocks.
She spends long days at home by herself with the kids.
Her family lives far away.
People in the church seem hesitant to get involved.
For Jackie every day is a battle just to keep it together.
For many of us, there’s something in Jackie’s experience that we can relate to: maybe we’re young and find ourselves always picked last for the team, or, maybe, we’re on the older side and feeling like society - and possibly even our families - have moved on without us.
Many of us feel like we’re surrounded by people who are more gifted, more spiritual, more disciplined than we are.
We wonder if we got stuck with the leftovers when God handed out talents, abilities, and personalities.
In short, many of us feel “little.”
- [bring up little people] -
          Now my preaching professor cautioned us students against using props in our sermons because people in the back row won’t be able to see them, especially if they’re small.
Well, I’m breaking that rule today.
If those of you in the back rows can’t see these very well, it’s OK…actually, it’s quite fitting.
You may recognize these (if you can see them) as Fisher Price “Little People.”
I remember having these around when I was young, but I don’t remember actually playing with them all too often.
They’re pretty simple – no batteries, no wheels.
We had a lot of them and, unlike my stuffed animals, they didn’t get named and were generally neglected.
I think a few may have gotten thrown at my little brother, but other than that, they found their way to the bottom of the toy box.
Now my kids have Little People – the new, revamped Little People.
They aren’t quite as little as the old ones – so kids don’t choke on them – and they are a bit more interesting, but, at least in my house, they still don’t get played with much.
They get passed over for the big trucks or the toy cell phone that talks and plays music.
So there the Little People lie in our living room in a basket on the bottom shelf.
I would contend that most all of us – even those among us with the most prominent job titles, the most experience in church leadership, or the highest academic degrees – experience this sense of being little from time to time…and maybe more often than that.
Maybe it’s being little in comparison with people around us who seem to have it all together.
Maybe it’s being little in the presence of a big mess – of our own making, or not.
Maybe it’s simply feeling little in this unpredictable world – a world of  random accidents where a father of three gets hit and killed by a drunk driver, where college students get shot while attending class.
Natural disasters, violence, cancer – none of us are immune to these things.
We are vulnerable.
Our lives are contingent - contingent on forces much bigger than we are.
It can all be quite wearisome at times.
BEHOLD YOUR GOD: THE ONE WHO REIGNS
          Isaiah’s message to the little people of Judah is a message for “little people” today.
Isaiah tells us two important things about who God is, about God’s nature.
And he does so, first, by comparing God, the Creator, with his creation.
Let’s just take a moment to look at how God is described in Isaiah 40.
Verse 15 says that the nations, that whole countries are like drops in a bucket.
In comparison to the size and strength of God, they amount to hardly anything at all.
Then in verse 22 it says that “he sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people [-us-] are like grasshoppers.”
Basically, Isaiah says to us: “You feel little?
Well, in the grand scheme of things you are pretty little.”
About a year ago I spent a few days in Death Valley, California.
There, I can tell you, I certainly felt about as little as a grasshopper.
Death Valley is the biggest national park we have in this country, and I think the least popular; there aren’t a lot of people there.
There isn’t much of anything else either, except an endless expanse of salt flats and rocks and open sky.
I was there by myself.
Other than knowing that I was somewhere in western California, know one knew exactly where I was.
And standing there on a dusty ridge with my sunscreen and hat on I would look out across the horizon; and in that huge, barren – but beautiful – landscape I was convinced of two things: 1) how little – how grasshopper-like – I really am; and 2) how big God is.
“He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,” Isaiah says, “and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in” (40:22).
BEHOLD YOUR GOD: THE ONE WHO LOVES
          But, you might say, “How is this necessarily comforting?
So God is big; he’s powerful; couldn’t that just make him a manipulative dictator in the sky who moves his creatures around on a whim like pawns in some game?
Doesn’t it say in verse 23 that ‘he brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing’?
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