Isaiah 40:10-11, “Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and His arm rules for Him…He will tend His flock like a shepherd; He will gather the lambs in His arms; He will carry them in His bosom…”
I really love this passage from Isaiah because it–like many other places in scripture–sets before us both the overwhelming authority and the intimate compassion of our God. He is the one who comes in might, whose arm rules for Him, who–Isaiah goes on to say–marks out the universe with a handsbreadth, counts the collected might of the nations as nothing, command ths stars by name, and holds the oceans in the hollow of His hand (a hand that would be pierced by His love). YHWH is indisputably the ALMIGHTY God…
And yet (or, better said, “and because of this”) He is also the gentle and good shepherd who is able to take the same hand that holds the raging oceans and use it to clasp a newborn lamb to His heart. He is the God who wields sovereign power in the service of self-giving love….He is the God of Philippians 2:6-11. He is Jesus Christ who, because He is fully God, wields that almighty power to make Himself nothing (consider what kind of power can make God “nothing”…..only the power of God) so that He might pour Himself out in service to the point of death on the cross. And it is because of this descent into service and death that the Son is recognized by all the universe to be YHWH, the Holy One of Israel–to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:9-11).
Our God is the Mighty Ruler and the Gentle Shepherd……His is the one who ordains our sickness in sovereign authority and who lovingly holds us to Himself through it….He is the one who–in inscrutable wisdom–commands a thorn in our flesh, and who also sustains us in the midst of it….because INFINITE power and INFINITE compassion are united in this God (a union manifest most clearly on Calvary) we have unshakable hope….
