Written by Dr. Frank Leeds III

Isaiah 40:12-19

Who else has held the oceans in his hand?  Who has measured off the heavens with his fingers?  Who else knows the weight of the earth or has weighed the mountains and hills on a scale?

Who is able to advise the Spirit of the Lord? Who know enough to give him advice or teach him?  Has the Lord ever needed anyone’s advice?  Does he need instruction about what is good?  Did anyone teach him what is right or show him the path of justice?

No, for all the nations of the world are but a drop in the bucket.  They are nothing more than dust on the scales.  He picks up the whole earth as thought it were a grain of sand.  All the wood in Lebanon’s forest and all Lebanon’s animals would not be enough to make a burnt offering worthy of our God.

The nations of the world are worth nothing to him.  In his eyes they count for less than nothing—mere emptiness and froth.  To whom can you compare God? What image can you find to resemble him?

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That was the big picture.  Now I am going to tell you a story, which is a small picture.  It is a long story, several chapters at the end of the book of Genesis, but I will condense it for you.  I will tell you why I am calling it a “small picture” at the end of this reflection.

Jacob’s Dysfunctional Family

It is the story of Joseph, which begins with his father Jacob.

Jacob has two wives.  Now I have my hands full with one wife, but he has two and they are sisters [possibly twins] that suffer from ‘sibling rivalry’.  Jacob loves them both —but he loves Rachel more than Leah.                     

• Leah has the joy of having their first son.  Rachel suffers through it.  Jacob? What do you think.  Joyed with having a son, but wished Rachel was the mother?
• Leah has the joy of having their second son.  Rachel suffers through it.  Jacob I assume is as stated above.
• Leah has the joy of having their third son. Rachel suffers through it.  Jacob? More of the same only more intense?
• Leah has the joy of having a fourth son.  Rachel suffers through it.  Jacob? What do you think he is thinking and feeling?  
• Leah stops having children so she gives her husband her servant so she can have children [as a junior wife] for him.  The servant bares him two more sons.
• Rachel still has no sons, so she did as her sister and she too gave her servant to Jacob, and that [junior wife] servant gives him two more sons.
• So, Jacob now has two wives, two additional wives, a few female servants and 8 sons.

Looking at it as an outsider, one would conclude that life isn’t fair.

Now, both sisters are old.  Jacob is old.  But, the love of his life finally has a child.    Surprisingly, he has a son in his old age and from his favorite wife.  He is named Joseph.  Jacob is now a happy man!

Now, put yourself in Jacob’s place.  Are you able to feel his joy?  [The Torah is meant to be heard and felt]

Then one day, when Joseph is a very young man, his father gives him a coat, or perhaps a cape, of many colors, which is a sign to the other brothers that ‘Joseph is the designated heir and will be the head of the family.’  Typically, that is a role for the eldest son.  Joseph is not the eldest son BUT he is the eldest son of the favorite wife.  Life, as you can imagine, gets complicated.

Now, put yourself in the brother’s position.  Are you able to feel their jealousy?  Jealousy is a large part of life that we all must deal with.

Then Joseph stands before his brothers in his coat of many colors and tells his brother that he had a dream.  One day they would bow down to him.

Now, can you feel how the brothers changed from jealousy to just plain ANGER?  They wanted to kill the young brat and so they designed a plan.  While he watched the family sheep, they would go to him and kill him.  As they were approaching, they saw an Egyptian caravan passing through and knowing the value of money, decided they can sell him and then go tell they father he was killed by a wild animal.

To make a long story short, Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt but ended up as the number one advisor to Pharaoh.  During a time of ‘plenty’ Joseph had the country store up plenty of grain.  Famine then affected the entire region.  Jacob’s family was without grain, so he sent a few of his sons to Egypt to buy grain from them. 

Shortening the story further, Joseph ended up saving all the families in the region from starvation and Pharaoh invited Jacob and family to live in Egypt and gave them the best farming land in the country. Joseph and family spent many good years in Egypt and they prospered. 

Seeing God’s Plan

This story then became the spine of the Hebrew faith [according to my humble belief]. The lessons are:

1. This event did not happen in life without a plan.
2. God arranged all this ahead of time.
3. What appeared to be really bad, turned out to be really good.
4. This story allows us to see the beginning and the end, but if you could not see the ‘bigger picture’ you would not have known this.
5. Therefore:  As we live our life, we must trust God that it will all work out according to His plan…What Christians call ‘sovereignty’.

Waiting for God’s Resolution

Evenually, all Israelites were treated as slaves, but they trusted God for a few generations more, and then Moses was sent to deliver them.

So, for many generation they operated on the same principle: Trust God, even though we cannot see the big picture, but we shall see it in a few generations.

Many generation later, their problems became so severe that life was bewildering.  They believed that if they were honest righteous people they would prosper.  If they were evil and forgot the ways of the Lord, they would suffer. 

However, they looked around and saw the wicked proper and the righteous suffer.  We have all seen the same thing, haven’t we? They could not see the big picture and the number of generations who were not seeing it was getting larger. This is when the book of Job may have been written.

This is when the book of Isaiah, including the excerpt at the top, was written. It is a reminder to all of us. The issue was that after several generations the big picture never surfaced.  Much time had passed, and everything was messy and life was foggy.  Isaiah reverts to the REALLY BIG PICTURE.  The universe was not created by us.  Isaiah presents the same questions as Job.  

• Where were you when the universe was created?
• Did the Lord call you and ask how to do this?
• The Apostle Paul asked the same questions in the book of Romans as he paraphrased Isaiah:
  • Who knows the mind of our God and who can give council to him?
  • Who has given to God that God should repay?

Conclusion

The story of life is too big for us to understand…and we all have issues in our life that we cannot comprehend.

I want to close this story with a little personal tidbit.  Many years ago, when I was studying Hebrew, I did so by writing Hebrew words on a 3×5 card and on the back wrote the English understanding. On one of these cards, I had written “Future or behind.”  I put the card aside because that can’t be right.  We all know the future is ahead.  A little later I looked at another card on which I had written “Past or In front of”.  I put that aside.  But how could I make that mistake on the same issue.  It made no sense. Hebrew can be confusing.

Later I read a story in which an old Rabbi was asked: “Why do you put the past ‘in front’ and the future ‘behind’?”  And the Rabbi said, “Which one can you see?”

We are all in the same boat.  We can see our past in front of us…and we are blind to the future behind us.

So, the lesson from Isaiah and the Apostle Paul is the same.  The big picture is too large for us to see; so, as you look at your past, may it give you confidence to trust God for your future.