Coromandel Baptist Church

Sunday 23 November 2008 Isaiah 55:1-13; Matthew 18:1-6

My Thoughts Are Not Your Thoughts

In Isaiah 55:8 we are told, “my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD”. Here we notice immediately that the ‘thoughts’ and ‘ways’ of the Lord are described as parallel terms. The Hebrew poetic style used indicates that they are synonymous. God does not have ‘thoughts’ in the abstract. He is as he does and his ways are shown in his actions. His ‘thoughts’ are who he is, revealed in his ‘ways’. His ‘ways’ are his character, revealed in words and actions, without any contradiction or shadow of turning in terms of their consistency with his nature. The King James Version of Proverbs 23:7 says of the deceitful man, ‘as he thinketh in his heart so is he’ i.e. in the outworking of his actions. Jesus says ‘out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks’ (Matt. 12:34; Luke 6:45), and this may be either as a witness to a man’s nature as a child of God or a child of the devil. The righteous man ‘speaks truth in his heart’ (Ps. 15:2), and the unrighteous speaks according to the transgression in his (Ps. 36:1; Is. 32:6). As God’s creatures, made in his image, our thoughts and our actions are inseparable.

When we speak of God’s ‘thoughts’, however, we are not speaking of the way in which we ‘think’. God accommodates himself to our language, but there is a difference in the essential nature of the Creator and his creatures. God does not need to ‘think’ in the sense of cogitate, meditate or use secondary data to arrive at conclusions. He is not bound by time and the limitations of the three spatial dimensions and five senses of creaturely existence. He does not engage in drawing up cost-benefit analyses of perplexing situations, having to wrestle with deep thoughts over long periods in order to arrive at some (hopefully successful) conclusion. He does not see what will happen, but what happens occurs because of his will. He does not look through the mists of time to see what will (or may) come to pass, but what comes to pass is because he calls it into being. Our ‘thinking’ is designed to achieve an outcome on the basis of our knowledge of good and evil. God’s ‘thinking’ is the revelation of what alone is good, and in that, he brings about the judgement of all that is evil.

But, in addition to this difference, the main emphasis in Isaiah 55:6ff. is the qualitative disparity between God’s thoughts and ways, and ours. His thoughts and ways are those of love, moving to his rebellious creatures in grace, to grant them freely that which they could never deserve. This action is sheer mercy, the expression to his covenant breaking people of his loving kindness and faithfulness. The history of God’s people has been one of continual rejection of his love and resistance to his will. In the context of Isaiah, his people had exchanged the glory to God for the idols, and had committed spiritual adultery against him in so doing. He had betrothed himself to them in covenant love, and they had responded in persistent, ingrained hateful rejection. If his thoughts and ways were like ours, the response on his part would be rejection and hatred. But, unlike us, he loves his enemies and intercedes for the transgressors, even to the point of sending his own Son (the suffering servant of Isaiah 53) to bear their iniquities and remove their guilt. His thoughts are qualitatively different, as the heavens are different from the earth (Is. 55:9a), a phrase which conjures the free forgiveness of sins in Psalm 103:11, which is the only other place this phrase is directly used. In other places (e.g. Ps. 36:5; 57:10; 89:2) the use of heaven’s height as a comparison is always linked to God’s mercy and faithfulness to his people.

In Matthew 18:1-6, we see how the disciples looked for ‘witness marks’ of power, position and prestige in order to validate their status. In response, Jesus took a little child and placed him among them, telling them (and us) that we must turn and become like little children. The context of the passage clearly indicates that the disciples (and we, who have believed in the ages since) are in fact ‘little ones’ in the kingdom. The child in the passage is the illustration of the kingdom. The teaching in the passage is about the members of the kingdom, regardless of their chronological age. Little ones have no ability to engage in the pursuit of power, position and prestige. They have to trust the Father to provide for them, protect them, vindicate them and grant to them the glory for which they were created. Little ones are not able to weigh up good and evil, to engage in cost-benefit thinking in order to achieve a politically advantageous outcome. Little ones need to be held in the Father’s arms, led by the hand to walk in his steps and guided by the continual care of the Father to bring them to maturity.

Instead of creating their own ‘witness marks’, little ones learn to read the witness marks the Father has given of himself. These attest to him, not to them. In Isaiah 55:3-4 these are the everlasting covenant of God, and the revelation of this in the midst of the nations through his servant, David. By the time of Isaiah the original king David had been dead for approximately 200 years. The ‘David’ in view was David’s greater Son, the Messiah. He has been set amidst the nations as the witness of God’s thoughts and ways. In him, who is the Way, we see the thoughts and ways of God revealed. And in him we see that God’s thoughts and ways are as different from ours as the heavens are high above the earth. In him, we see all that Isaiah 55:10-11 promises accomplished. Jesus is the Word who goes forth from the Father’s mouth, and which does not return to him empty. Jesus indeed accomplishes all that the Father has sent him for, so that the new creation may rejoice at the deliverance of God’s little ones from their captivity (Is. 55:12-13).