In Isaiah 40, we see the ultimate provision of someone to PREPARE for the coming of the incarnate Son of God, someone to cry to the world, to prepare it for the hearing (Isaiah 40:3), and the tenderness of the One to take the lambs in His arms (40:10 -11). We also see the empathy of Him who asks this question, or indeed this series of questions (40:18ff.):

"To whom then will you liken God? (1)

Or what likeness will you compare to Him? (2)

 “The workman molds an image,
The goldsmith overspreads it with gold,
And the silversmith casts silver chains.

Whoever is too impoverished for such a contribution
Chooses a tree that will not rot;
He seeks for himself a skillful workman
To prepare a carved image that will not totter.

 "Have you not known?  (3)

Have you not heard?  (4)

Has it not been told you from the beginning?  (5)

Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? (6)

 

"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 out like a tent to dwell in.
He brings the princes to nothing..."

 Later in this same Chapter we see more questions, until indeed they mount up to 10  of them!

"To whom then will you liken Me,

Or to whom shall I be equal?" says the Holy One.  (7)
 (italics added to show the development)

“Lift up your eyes on high,
And see who has created these things,
Who brings out their host by number;
He calls them all by name,
By the greatness of His might
And the strength of His power;
Not one is missing.

"Why do you say, O Jacob,
And speak, O Israel:

‘My way is hidden from the Lord,
And my just claim is passed over by my God’ ? (8)
 

"Have you not known? (9)

Have you not heard? (10)

“The everlasting God, the Lord,
The Creator of the ends of the earth,
Neither faints nor is weary.

“His understanding is unsearchable.

“He gives power to the weak,
And to those who have no might He increases strength.

“Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
And the young men shall utterly fall,
But those who wait on the Lord
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
 They shall walk and not faint." 

Cumulatively, these questions speak; by asking, they answer; the rhetorical becomes the moral and the moral the merciful.

Who then is God who speaks ? It is the known God of Israel who gave the law to Moses, who told Abraham that through him and his seed all nations would be blessed, who comes to judge all the earth (Psalm 96:13), who declares that all the gods of the nations are idols, in that same Psalm. It is He who in the beginning created all things, without aid, by Himself (Revelation 4:11, Isaiah 44:6,24, 45:12). It is HE with whom we have to do; and there is no other.

 

2    The Certainty of Christ, Owner and Disposer of Life
John 3:18,31-36

“He who believes in Him is not condemned;
but he who does not believe is condemned already,
because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

Hence it is just as John declares in the name of this same God, the Creator and Redeemer. So great is His love, so profound His deep mercy, so high His vast overarching control, so wonderful is His salvation through Jesus Christ, that to believe, is to receive the gift of grace and not to come into condemnation; but to reject Him, this is to reject the only God there is. It is to be at war with the God of all truth; for if His ONLY BEGOTTEN Son, the exact image of His person, the precise portrait (Hebrews 1:3), the Everlasting Word of God is rejected, then there is no other. You see the reality and desire another: you can only then perish, for truth is forsaken and God’s own self-revelation and salvation is cast aside like old clothes.

It means that YOU who do any such thing are in fact calling God a nut, an idiot, One who makes man and has no answer for his errors, has given no thought to his salvation, and lets things rot without remedy.

That, it is a supreme insult. Small wonder that any rejecting Jesus Christ “is condemned already.”

As John the Baptist declared (John 3:31ff.):

“He who comes from above is above all;
he who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of the earth.
He who comes from heaven is above all.
And what He has seen and heard, that He testifies;
and no one receives His testimony.

“He who has received His testimony has certified that God is true.
For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God,
for God does not give the Spirit by measure.

 

“The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand.
He who believes in the Son has everlasting life;
and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life,
but the wrath of God abides on him.”