February 13–19

This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.

 

Lesson 8: “Comfort My People”

This week’s lesson moves to a change in the message of Isaiah, a move from the mistakes and sins of the nation and a warning of the punishment to come, to the promise of hope and comfort to be found in God. The author has some good things to say but too often, he has them turned backwards in his understanding of what has caused the problems in the first place.

Once again, this week’s lesson ends with a summary that could stand alone as the author’s message of the Bible passage being taught:

“Summary: Through Isaiah, God brought comfort to those who had been suffering. Their time of trouble had ended, and God was returning to them. Rather than being discouraged and confused, they could trust God to use His creative power on their behalf.”

Unfortunately, in this case, the author has it exactly backwards. It was because they had left God that He finally left them. When they returned to Him, He lovingly took them back.

From the lesson:

“The purpose of God’s message is to comfort people who need it! Like Job, their suffering had made them confused and discouraged concerning His character.”

The first sentence is true but, once again, I believe the second part of that quote has it exactly backwards. More likely, their misunderstanding of God’s character is what caused their turn away from God, which then led to their suffering. When man turns from God to his own understanding, God will “turn him over” to his error (Romans 1), and nothing but evil results.

Again from the lesson:

“But if an idol is intended to represent the true God, as the golden calf was (Exod. 32:4, 5), the Lord rejects it as a likeness of Himself, for nobody knows how to depict Him (Deut. 4:15–19), and nothing can represent His incomparable glory and greatness.”

While that is true, it misses the point. It isn’t just a matter of “not knowing how to describe Him” but the fact that HE IS SPIRIT and therefore there is no description of physical form. Further, God expressly forbade creating any idols in the second commandment. The golden calf was direct disobedience.

John 4:24 clearly says, “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” 

Any attempt to reduce God to a description of physical form is to lower Him from being God down to being something less. 

There is more to this part of Isaiah than just comfort for the people of Israel. This part of the book has a distinct Messianic message. From John Wesley’s explanatory notes we read:

“He so evidently and fully describes the person, and offices, and sufferings, and kingdom of Christ, that some of the ancients called him the fifth Evangelist. And it is observed, that there are more quotations in the New Testament taken out of Isaiah, than out of all the other prophets.”

The people of Isaiah’s time could see the promise of restoration from God’s discipline for their sin, but from our later perspective, we can also see the deeper promise of restoration, that of eternal redemption.

From the commentaries of another Biblical scholar, J. Hampton Keathley, III, we gain this summary:

“Chapters 1-39 speak of man’s great need of salvation while chapters 40-66 reveal God’s provision of Salvation in Messiah and His kingdom.”

And further, he wrote:

“Judah was not yet even in captivity, but Isaiah wrote prophetically or proleptically of two deliverances:

(1) He envisioned the nation as on the eve of her restoration at the close of the 70 years just as the Lord had promised.

(2) He envisioned Judah’s ultimate hope and comfort: he depicted the nation’s final restoration, following the tribulation, in the blessings of the millennium with the coming of the Lord in His glorious reign of peace and righteousness on earth.”

Those quotes are taken from a larger work by Keathley on the book of Isaiah. For those who want a more in-depth study on Isaiah 40, his work can be accessed here: https://bible.org/article/comfort-god’s-people-isaiah-40

The lesson’s author makes an interesting statement about idolatry:

“Idolatry destroys a unique, intimate relationship with God by replacing Him with something else (Exod. 20:4, 5; Isa. 42:8). So, prophets refer to idolatry as spiritual “adultery” (Jer. 3:6–9, Ezek. 16:15–19).”

While very true, it is relevant here to bring up what Romans 7 says about the same subject. There, Paul builds on the argument he has been building in preceding chapters which culminates in his conclusion in chapter 7 that trying to combine Law and Grace is the equivalent of committing spiritual adultery.

Later in the week, the author asks a good question:

“What is the answer to Isaiah’s rhetorical question: “To whom then will you liken God?” (Isa. 40:18, NRSV.)

For Isaiah, as for Job, the answer goes without saying: no one. God is incomparable.”

In response to the question, I would ask the devout Adventist why he/she lowers God to a position of a being in need of vindication by his own created beings? Why lower Him by elevating His created being—Lucifer—to a position of such power that God is obligated to answer to that being’s supposed questions and accusations? And why claim that there is war being fought between an Almighty God and His created being that could still be lost by God?

If you read Job 38-41 you see God’s answer to that kind of challenge as He says, in so many different ways, how He is so far above His creation that it answers to Him, not the other way around!

Let’s look at just a few statements God made to Job:

Now gird up your loins like a man, And I will ask you, and you instruct Me!

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? (Job 38:3, 4).

“Have you ever in your life commanded the morning, And caused the dawn to know its place, That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, And the wicked be shaken out of it? (Job 38:12–13).

Job 39 contains God’s words about nature and all that He created, showing how He, the Creator, is in control, as opposed to man who knows nothing about it.

Job 40 starts out with the summation of the last two chapters and God’s challenge to Job:

Then the Lord said to Job, “Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Let him who reproves God answer it.”

Then in verses 6-9, after Job has admitted his error and his insignificance compared to God, God further challenges him:

Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm and said, “Now gird up your loins like a man; I will ask you, and you instruct Me. Will you really annul My judgment? Will you condemn Me that you may be justified? Or do you have an arm like God, And can you thunder with a voice like His?

From there to the end of chapter 41, God continues to point out how He and His power are so far above His mere created beings that they have no place in questioning or challenging God over anything.

In the questions at the end of the week, the author asks: “By taking Isaiah 40:12–31 to heart, how could one be cured of pride and arrogance?”

This is a good question and an important one. It is the epitome of pride and arrogance to lower God to the position of having to answer to His created beings. Perhaps a repeated reading of Isaiah 40 and Job 38-40 would be a good step towards ridding ourselves of those sins. †