Almighty God and the Nations

Fear not – the nations are but a drop in the bucket:

God is King over all. He is king over individuals (whether they submit to his authority or not) and he is king over the nations as well. Sure, it may not always seem that way. We look at the world today and so many horrible tyrants, dictators and woke wonders are in charge who are doing so much damage to their own nation and to the world.

Simply watching the disaster unfold in Spain the past few days because of the far left socialist and Muslim-appeaser Sanchez, or the ongoing ruin of New York City because of the far left socialist and Muslim-appeaser Mamdani offers two clearcut cases in point.

We not only have terrible tyrants in North Korea and Communist China, and ruthless warlords in so much of the Muslim world, but we have plenty of woke Western leaders who are working overtime to undermine and destroy the West. As the late great Charlie Kirk once put it:

“You have the Marxists that have infiltrated your government, and the Muslims that are coming into your country. They have HUGE disagreements on a lot, but they both agree on one thing…. They HATE the West, and they want to see it broken.”

Any person with a properly functioning mind and heart seeing all this happen must be hyper-concerned. It is worrying stuff indeed. It all can seem so overwhelming at times. But the Christian needs to go back to Scripture and get things back into perspective.

God IS in control. He is ruling the nations. He does set up rulers and he does remove them. The Bible throughout speaks to these realities. Two passages I just read again in my daily reading certainly fit the bill here – both from Isaiah 40. The first in Isaiah 40:15-17:

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.

In his 2-volume 2019 Mentor commentary, Paul House says this about the passage:

These verses indicate at least four things about Yahweh. First, as Alexander writes, ‘He is independent, not only of nature and of individual men, but of nations.’ He is not dependent on advisors and teachers to know how to rule the world (40:13-14). He is not dependent on large groups of nations to maintain his rule (40:15, 17). He is not dependent on appropriate human worship to continue to rule, for not even lush Lebanon has enough forests and animals to provide sufficient burnt offerings to recognise Yahweh’s true worth (40:16).

 

Second, Yahweh’s power is not taxed by the scope of His rule. For him, governing the nations is no more taxing than a human being ruling over water drops from a bucket or dust on the scales (40:15, 17). He has none of the struggles the kings of Assyria have had keeping their empire together. He effortlessly carries out His duties. He does so on the most distant lands near the seas, which is what the word translated ‘coastlands’ signifies. Isaiah 11:11 and 24:15-16 have already stated that Yahweh’s rule extends this far, and this concept appears regularly in the rest of the book (see 41:1, 5; 42:4, 10, 12, 15; 49:1; 51:5; 59:18; 60:9; 66:19).

 

Third, Yahweh can do with the nations as he wishes. All the nations of the earth are insignificant in comparison to Yahweh. The passage does not degrade the nations. It emphasises that all the glories of all the kings on earth cannot compare to Yahweh’s glory.

 

Fourth, Yahweh rules history. He can use Assyria for his purposes, as 10:5-34 promised and 36:1-37:38 confirmed. He can keep his promise to come to his people and provide the shepherding they need. No nation can stop Him from doing what he wills to do for his people’s sake.

Those truths need to be continually kept in our minds as we fret over the state of play of our leaders, the nations, and the state of the world today. Another quote: Referring to verse 17, Raymond Ortlund Jr in his 2005 PTW commentary says this:

Isaiah shifts back again from a particular nation to all the nations. His point is that when God created man, he didn’t dig his own grave. He didn’t create an unforeseen difficulty. All human opposition is, to God, a minus factor in the equation of reality. Why are we impressed with it? When we begin to see God through God’s eyes, we see the promises of God as more real, more weighty, more solid than anything else in all of life. And that’s thrilling.

The second text is Isaiah 40:21-24:

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.

Those words offer even more hope and comfort for the distressed people of God. Gary V. Smith in his 2-volume 2007, 2009 NAC commentary writes the following:

God rules over everything the eye can see in every direction, even to the distant ends of the earth. But God’s rule is not limited to what is visible to the naked eye, for his dwelling place is in his tent above this domed half circle (1 Kgs 8:27). The important point to emphasize is God’s kingly rule over all the earth—from one end to the other. He is so great that people are comparatively imagined as tiny insignificant grasshoppers. God’s power is celebrated and his glory proclaimed by remembering the tradition that God stretched out the vast heavens like a fine cloth (42:5; 44:24; 45:12; 51:13 “the canopy of the heavens”), just like a person might stretch netting over the poles of a tent.

 

If God has this kind of power and control over the universe, he is surely able to control the grasshopper kings that walk throughout the earth. God’s rule over the heavens and the earth as king is the theological basis for extrapolating his control over the powerful human rulers of this world at this time. God has the power and authority to make nations (40:15-17), their strong rulers, and mighty judges (the king did this) into nothing (40:23b). The discontinuity between the grandeur of the power of God Almighty and the nothingness of earthly kings would be a word of encouragement to the people of Judah who were being attacked by a strong earthly king.

 

In order to further undermine the power of this enemy, the author compares the rulers of this world to fragile young sprouts of seeds (40:24; Hos 2:25). These kings may proudly proclaim their greatness and power, but from God’s perspective these arrogant kings are no stronger than a weak tender plant. God’s swift and effective judgment of the rulers of this world is expressed in three parallel “no sooner” clauses in v. 24. In God’s framework of eternal time, these kings rule only a short time, so they also can be compared to something that is “no sooner” planted, something that has “scarcely, no sooner” taken root in the soil. Because their root system is not well developed, these plants are very vulnerable to the slightest changes in the weather. These strong rulers are no different than the young plants, for they will quickly wither and suffer the common fate of useless chaff when God sends the destructive wind of his judgment on them. One wonders if there is a more specific intent in these words. This same imagery was used when God announces that he will destroy the nation that is roaring against his people. The Assyrians will be swept away like chaff: “In the evening, sudden terror! Before the morning, they are gone! This is the portion of those who loot us” (17:14). Later in 29:5 Isaiah refers to the destruction of the Assyrian army: “But your many enemies will become like fine dust, the ruthless hordes like blown chaff. Suddenly, in an instant. . . .” This interlinking vocabulary may be providing a reminder of the words of hope that the people had heard in other prophecies.

And one more quote from Ortlund:

God is at work in the world today. It is he who raises up leaders and brings them down again, according to his own purpose and for his own glory. The power brokers who seem so formidable to us, with their monumental egos and pretentious ambitions, are to God like little seedlings—scarcely planted—and God merely blows on them, with zero effort on his part, and to them his mere puff of air is a raging tempest driving them into oblivion. And that makes God himself the only world-figure really to fear, doesn’t it?

If God through the prophet Isaiah knew that his people back then needed to hear truths like these, how much more do his people today need to be reminded of them? God is still on the throne, and the nations are still subservient to him and his purposes. Let that comfort and reassure us in these dark days.

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