Studies in Isaiah - Part 8 — Harry Ironside

Idolatry and the Folly of Self-Worship

Embracing chapters 40 through 48, in which we have Jehovah's controversy with idols. Throughout this section, he is emphasizing his own... It strains the thoughts that run through people's minds. I remember reading a lecture of Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll some years ago, and he dwelt on this.

He said, what a boaster this God of the Bible is. He talks about himself and what he has done and can do. Well, one could understand an ungodly man looking at it that way, but who in all the universe has a right to boast save the God who created it?

And why does he set forth his own glory and his own majesty and his own power? Why does he emphasize his own wisdom and his own strength and ability in order that men may realize the importance of living in touch with him and the folly of turning to anyone else?

What folly for the people of Israel, after all God has done for them, to turn aside to dumb idols. Yet how senseless people are. Why, we read of different occasions in the Kings and Chronicles, even when the people of Israel or Judah went out against some of their foes, and then they brought back the gods of the nations that they had overcome, and they set forth to defend their own.

Yet the people of Israel were so foolish that they took them over. Today men do not worship idols of gold and silver and brass and iron. One who turns away from God sets up some kind of an idol in his heart.

He either worships himself, worships folly, pleasure, fame, something of that kind. I remember how aptly Dr. Philpott spoke when he was being introduced on one occasion. The speaker said to him, I'm happy now to present to you Dr. Peter W. Philpott, a self-made man.

And Dr. Philpott said, I'm really sorry that our brother has introduced me in the way he has, though I appreciate his kind thoughts. But he says, you know, I've noticed that these self-made men all seem to worship their own creator.

God's Promise to Sustain Israel

And that is very apt, I thought. If men do not know the one living and true God, then the first thing you know, they set up the great God self and worship him. Consider then the first part of this section in which God is telling Israel of what he has in store.

The deliverance yet to come of the forerunner who will announce his coming, of the comfort that he has for those who believe his word, who put their trust in him. And then just as we can, and how he has foreseen the dangers and the sorrows that Israel must pass through, the deep waters through which they'll have to go.

But he has promised that where there's real faith in their part, he'll be with them in all their sorrows and all their troubles. And then, in the very closing words of the 44th chapter, there is an abrupt change and he speaks of one who is yet to come to be the deliverer of Israel from the power of the Chaldeans, calls him by name, though he had not known him, that is Cyrus, king of Persia.

Now remember that I suppose these words were written somewhere around the end of the 8th century before Christ. About 710, 720, somewhere in there. And the Babylonian captivity was not until about 600, so that over a century was to elapse.

More than that, the Babylonian captivity was to go on for 70 years, so that nearly two centuries would elapse before Cyrus himself was to appear. And yet God foretold to the people of his day that this man would arise, so that when he did come, they would know it was the hour of Jehovah's deliverance.

Chapter Divisions and Isaiah's Prophecy of Cyrus

I think I mentioned here, or was it in some other place where I was preaching lately, I don't recall, but I mentioned that sometimes the divisions into chapters and verses, we all know that it wasn't a question of inspiration dividing the Bible into chapters and verses, it was simply a matter of accommodation on the part of human editors who thought it would help us to separate the subjects and to find certain passages.

And I suppose it has been very, very helpful to have our Bible divided in this way into chapters and verses. But on the other hand, sometimes it's misleading. Sometimes it keeps us from getting the full intent of the passage if the passage is broken up in the middle.

And it seems as though at times the editors have used poor judgment in making the breaks where they have. For instance, take the break between John 7 and 8. The last words of John 7 are, and every man went to his own house.

The opening words of John 8 are, Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. They failed to translate one little word which should have been rendered but, and they've broken a sentence right in two. Every man went to his own house but, Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

He had no house to go to. And when others went off to their comfortable homes that night, he went out to the mountainside, I suppose to the Garden of Gethsemane, and spent the night there, lying upon the bare ground or communing with his Father.

And so these divisions don't always follow right. Now it's very evident here that the last verse of chapter 44 is introducing what you have in chapter 45. And so I'm going to ask my wife to read it together, the last of chapter 44 and the beginning of 45.

Taking the subject of the sentence from verse 24, he is my shepherd and shall perform all my pleasures, even saying to Jerusalem, thou shalt be good, and to the temple thy foundation shall be laid. Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him, and I will loose the loins of kings to open before him the two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut.

I will go before thee and make the crooked places straight, and I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in thunder the bars of iron, and I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.

For Jacob, my brother, and Israel, my elect, and have even called me by thy name, I have sure named thee, though thou hast not known me.

Now this is the passage pre-eminently that the critics take as proof that the Isaiah who wrote the first part of the book could not have written these words. But as we said this morning, that's simply taking the whole question of inspiration.

If we believe, as every Christian should, that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, that the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but that holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, there's no more difficulty in understanding that God could foretell the rise of King Cyrus and what he would do for his people than there was in that he could foretell the coming of the Lord Jesus into the world and the redemption that he would accomplish.

His first coming and his second coming and the effects and result of his rejection and then the results of his final acceptance by the people of Israel. All this was foretold ahead of time and so in the same way God, through Isaiah, foretold the rising up of Cyrus.

Cyrus, Babylon, and Israel's Deliverance

It's good for us to remember just who this Cyrus was. He was the nephew of Syaxares, who at this time was king of Media. Media and Persia were two kingdoms that were, as a rule, very closely related. They sprang from the same stalk and it was through these kingdoms united together under the leadership of Cyrus and Syaxares that eventually Chaldea was conquered and Babylon became one of the chief cities of the Persian Empire until its eventual complete destruction.

It's interesting to turn aside the secular history to get fuller information about some of these things. Herodotus has a lot to tell us about it and there are other ancient records that have come down to us that tell us how Cyrus and Syaxares entered into a, as we would say, and marched against Babylon and eventually took Babylon by turning aside the waters of the Euphrates into another channel and so came in under the Tuleve Gates, under the gates of the river itself.

That's what's indicated here. So God foresaw all this. He looks ahead and he tells us, he tells Cyrus himself, I've called you to this. You see, one thing we need to remember, one reason why Cyrus and the Persians befriended the people of Israel was this, that the Persians, like the Israelites, were monotheists.

They did not believe in idolatry. They did not worship idols. They abhorred idols. They worshipped God under the symbol of the sun and they also believed in a great power they called Orimen. Orimaz was the name for God.

Orimen was the name for the power of darkness and some people think of them as dualists, as though they believed in two great gods, the god of light and the god of darkness, but it seems more likely that what they really believed was in one true and living God but with a great adversary, just as we believe in Satan, an adversary seeking to impede in every possible way the carrying out of God's counsels.

Well then naturally a people believing in one God who was symbolized by the sun, didn't actually worship the sun as some have thought, but who was symbolized by the sun, would look with favor upon Israel when he found that they did not worship idols.

It was because of idolatry they were sent down to Babylon, but Babylon cured them of idolatry. The seventy years that they dwelt in Babylon gave them such a sickener of idolatry that no matter what other sins the Jewish people have fallen into since, they have never as a people been characterized by idolatry.

Undoubtedly here and there there have been Jews who have been idolaters because of ignorance and because of being brought up among an idolatrous people, but the nation as such learned to abhor idolatry from what they saw in Babylon.

It was as though God said, well you will worship idols, you will turn away from me, you will follow after these false gods, I'll give you idolatry for breakfast, dinner, and supper, let you see how you like it.

And so down they went to Babylon, and there they suffered for seventy years under the awful conditions of that idolatrous kingdom. And when they came back to the land of Palestine they were through with idolatry, but never again in an idolatrous people.

They to this day abhor idols of every description, and that's one reason why the Christian church in the medieval church and that which came out of it, the Roman Catholic and the Greek Catholic and the Greek Orthodox and other branches of the Catholic church have had such difficulty in impressing the Jew because if the Jew even looked inside one of their churches to him it was just a heathen temple.

Here were all kinds of icons and images and people burning incense to them and burning candles in front of them and bowing down to the Jew. That is perfectly abhorrent. That's idolatry. And he hates and detests everything of the kind.

It's only when a pure Christianity, apart from all that, is presented in loving kindness to the Jew that one is likely to make any impression upon it. Of course I do know this, that all down through the centuries there have been Jews who have been converted to Romanism, but very frequently that conversion has been just a pretext in order to escape persecution, as in the case of the Rome, and yet it had their hidden services when they carried on the synagogue worship as they had done of old.

But where there's a real new birth and the Jew becomes a true Christian, he turns away from the old and the rise of King Cyrus, he was to open the way for the remnant to return to Jerusalem. But of course this was just to be a partial return.

Israel's Future Restoration

There are those who insist that all the prophecies connected with the return of Israel have been fulfilled already and that therefore we're not to look for any future fulfillment of them. But God says in this very book of Isaiah, I will set my hand a second time to recover my people.

And that's what he's already beginning to do and what he will do shortly when he'll gather them back as a people to their home land. Well now following this revelation, this prophecy in regard to King Cyrus, God comes back to the subject that had occupied him before, emphasizing man's littleness and man's frailty and man's lack of merit and emphasizing his own majesty and power and glory in contrast to the idols to which the people had turned.

I'll ask my wife to read another portion.

God's Sovereignty Over Light and Darkness

Yes, but I am the Lord and there is none else. There is no God beside me. I greet thee, though thou hast not known me.

But still Cyrus is speaking to them.

That they may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is none beside me. I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil.

I, the Lord, do all these things. That's very striking right there in connection with what I said a moment ago. Some people have thought of the Persians as dualists because in their sacred writings, the Zendevesta, for instance, they give the primary place to Hormuz, the God of light, the one true and living God.

And then Ahriman occupies a very large place as the supernatural foe of God. He's the spirit, the power of darkness. And according to their thought in the Zendevesta, which I can't give you a detail for I was only 14 years old when I read it through and I've forgotten it since, but I do remember, I read it that time, and I do remember this, that in the Zendevesta, God is presented as in constant conflict with Ahriman, Hormuz and Ahriman in constant conflict.

One is the God of light and the other is the evil spirit of darkness. One is the God of peace and the other is the, and so on. One is the God of goodness and the other is the evil, is the spirit of evil.

The answer to this, God is no different. He says, now I'm the one true and living God. Beside me, there's no other. No significance with me. What does that mean? You know, some of our, in other words, if there's a thunderstorm and great damage is done, God says, I take full responsibility for it.

If everything is fair and beautiful, if there's a great earthquake, the minor prophets shall there be evil working directly.

What makes you so strong, Neil?

I can just see you, you know, twisting up that little Mr. Plato and I was a pagan philosopher, had to a very large exercise open to divine realities. If made needs done in the body, how can he forgive sins?

The Futility of Self-Righteousness and the Call to Believe

It's not the province of a judge to forgive criminals. It's the business of the judge to pronounce sentence upon evil doers and to see that that sentence is carried out. Here in Isaiah, who lived two centuries and a half before you know, into direct contact with him through grace.

And yet people make, they make difficulty out of the word believe. And here, and they make difficulty out of the word look. I've had people say, how can I look to one that I haven't seen? If you stood up there and said, look unto me, I can look to you.

I understand what you're talking about. But when it says, when an unseen God says, look unto me and be you saved, I can't understand it. I generally use a little illustration like this. I say, well, and they're buying a home.

And they have a mortgage on the home. And they've been able up to a certain time to keep up their payments. And then they find themselves unable. And finally, the one who holds the mortgage, the note against them, that if everything is not cleared up by a certain date, he's going to foreclose on it.

And the homeowner goes round from bank to bank and tries to get a loan, maybe goes to the tribe to get a GI loan if he's been in the service or something, and he doesn't know what to do. And the wife and the little children are utterly...

And then one day, they say that the note has to be taken up on Monday and this is Saturday afternoon. He's going down the street utterly melancholy, going to lose everything, when he meets an old friend of his.

A man who has perhaps in years gone by that this old friend has prospered financially in a way he hasn't. And this friend makes his name. I don't know what name we'll give him. Any name will do. He says to him, Why, George, what makes you look so blue?

Something troubling you? Well, he says, yes. Something is troubling me. I'm afraid on Monday I'm going to lose my home. I couldn't keep up the payments and the note is going to be called and I can't pay it.

Well, have you tried to get somebody else to take it up? Oh, yes. I've been to bank after bank and nobody will do anything. And he says, Well, look here, George. You know me. You know I'm well able to look after that.

So I want you just to look to me. When does it have to be paid? Well, they demand that I pay it, that I meet them at the bank at two o 'clock on Monday and settle the thing and if not, they're going to foreclose.

All right, George. Boom, you know, and he comes in and his step is different. Have you got the money? No, he says, I haven't got a cent. I thought to look at you that you were going to tell me that you had the money to pay the loan.

That's all right. It's all going to be tended to but I haven't got a cent. Well, what do you mean? Well, I met so-and-so and you know he's well able to tell it. He told me to look to him and not to worry about it anymore.

She begins to cry. She says, Oh, dear, I thought at first there was something to it but how on earth can I look to one that I can't see? I don't understand any of that. Do you think any woman would be fool enough to talk like that?

Yet people talk that way in regard to eternal things. But they must both understand that look comes to you and God's sinners are up and be ye saved. Haven't we to the end of chapter 40? And so we turn to chapter 46.

God Carries His People While Idols Must Be Carried

You read the middle verses of chapter 46. They carry him and set him in his place and he's standing. From his place shall he not remove? Yea, one shall crown him. Yet can he not answer nor save him out of his trouble?

Remember this and show yourself to men. Bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors. Remember the former things of old. For I am God and there is none else. I am God and there is none like me. Notice the,.

Both the irony here and the wonderfully precious. God now is still contrasting himself with idols. And he says in the beginning of the chapter, these idols they'll bow down meeple stupid. They can't do anything to save themselves.

Well at last Cyrus was to attack Babylon and the city was to fall. The gods of Babylon couldn't save themselves. What did happen? Why the priests of Babylon got busy and they loaded their gods upon carts in order to wheel them away and set them up somewhere else.

Gods who couldn't deliver their own people had to be delivered by the people from absolute destruction. And the, God says, I'm altogether different to that. These gods had to be carried by their makers.

I undertake to carry you. I've brought you hither to and I'll continue to carry you through even down to old age will I carry you. When whore heads adorn your brow, when you come down to gray hairs, I'll be there to carry you and sustain you and see you through.

Then he goes on to ridicule just as he had done before in connection with the making gods out of the trees of the forest. He goes on to ridicule those who make gods out of the various metals. The goldsmith and so on takes a piece of metal and he fashions it and works over it and then he sets it up and says this is a god.

But when he sets it up it's immovable. It can't walk, it can't see, it can't hear, it can't do anything. And in time of danger it needs somebody to protect it. What a god. But God says I looked toward you Israel.

How could you ever turn aside to such senselessness as idolatry when you've known how wonderfully I've sustained and cared for you through the centuries. Look back over the past and see what I've done.

And I promise to care for you just as wonderfully in the future. I've greater things in store in the future than you've ever known in the past. This really is the message of chapter, so chapter 47 brings us to the downfall of Babylon.

Babylon's Downfall and the Deception of Astrology

I believe thou shalt be able to profit if, though hid, thou mayst prevail. Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsel. Let not astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators stand up and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee.

Behold, they shall be as stubble. The fire shall bring them. They shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame. There shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it. Thus shall they be able to be with whom God has labored, even thy merchants from thy youth.

They shall wonder every one to his quarrel.

None shall praise thee. When we were engaged in the first part of this book, we drew attention to the fact that Babylon was the very fountainhead of idolatry. According to the best records that we have, all idolatry began at Babylon.

If you want fuller proof of that, you've never examined a book called The Two Babylons. I would suggest that you read it. There are two or three copies in the library. I know I put a couple of copies there myself, so unless somebody's copped them.

And Babylon, by her, is said to have bewitched the nations. Nation after nation followed her in the practice that recognizes the lady's wealth and surpassed that of any of the nations around. Looking far ahead to the time when Cyrus and his army would come up against them, it says, Thou shalt no more because the day was coming when they'd be stripped and made, everything taken.

God would prove that their idols had absolutely no power. But his word should stand. He speaks of the stargazing. When you get people turning away from the one true and living God and refusing the word of God, they're always ready to turn to other things.

It's been a characteristic thing down through the centuries that when men, when leaders, great leaders, gave up confidence in God and his word, then they readily became the prey of all sorts of charlatans.

Take even the infamous Hitler whom God destroyed. He had a special one who he consulted with constantly, you know, as to lucky days and unlucky days when he was to attack. Nations and all this kind of thing.

He had an astrologer. He went to the, looked into the map of the stars. Well, all that began a battle. Way back there, centuries ago, they had their astrologers. There's a great deal of difference between an astrologer and an astronomer.

It's an exact sign. And yet how many people there are that give heed to it. You take our papers today, many of them, the biggest dealers on the market into making big deals all by the roadside. Sign up that when we come in and consult her.

Charlatans like that better look into the future for them. But thank God the believer doesn't need anything of that kind. He's got something absolutely. See, I'm beginning to see better than I was. I was on, I was going down, I was in Los Angeles years ago and I was going down one day on the electric line from Los Angeles to Long Beach just to have a little relaxation.

This Saturday I was all worn out with so many meetings and I've hardly taken my feet when one of these queer-looking dames came along and looked like her dress had been made out of a lot of red bandanna handkerchiefs sewed together and she had some spangles across her brow and a lot of Bulgarians slipped right down beside me and took hold of my hand.

I'm not used to ladies grabbing your hand. And then she said, she said to me, gentlemen, gentlemen, you with silver put your 25 cents I tell you past, present, future. You can tell all mysteries of the future 25 cents, gentlemen.

I said, well, really, I'm just trying to touch around got a good grip on her and I said, well, really, it isn't necessary because I've had that all told already. Oh, she said, but I am expert. I know very exact past, present, future.

Yes, I said, well, I got it from an expert. I have it here. I have it here in a little book and I pulled out of the other hand, my New Testament turned to the second chapter of the epistle of the Ephesians.

The Gospel's Past, Present, and Future

I said, here, I've got my past, present and future. Here's the past. You have the quickened who were dead in trespasses and in sins but in time past you walked according to the course of this world according to the spirit that now work in the children of Israel.

Oh, by the way, I got the wrong man. I got the wrong man. Let, let, let go. I said, no, I won't let go. I want you to come down here and take hold of me and now that I've got you, you're going to stay here.

I'm going to give you the rest of it. Now, I'll give you my present. I'll give you my present. But God, who is rich in mercy with his great love for which he loved us even when we were dead in sins and quickened us together with Christ.

By grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It's the gift of God. That's my present. Yes, that's all right, sir. That's all right. I've got enough. Goodbye, sir. Goodbye. No, I said, wait a minute.

I haven't given you it all yet. I said, now here's my future. That's in the ages to come. He might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness. And I got enough and she gave such a fool she was gone.

And down this car she went. She said, I got the wrong man. I said, isn't it amazing the foolishness of people? I, I heard, I, I remember reading of a couple, of a gentleman who was riding in a railroad train one day and he was reading his Bible as I suppose most of us often do.

Rejecting Occultism and Returning to the Word of God

I find it one of the very best ways to get into contact with people. And he was sitting reading his Bible when a rather dapper looking gentleman came along and he looked at him and he said, oh, reading the Bible?

Yes, sir. Well, well, you believe the Bible? Yes, sir. Well, I didn't think that any, that any educated people believe in the Bible anymore. He said, you look like a cultured man. I'm surprised that you're reading that.

He says, you know, I, I believe the day will soon come when people will no more believe in the Bible than they'll believe in ghosts and witches like our forefathers did. And he said, my friend, when people reach the place where they don't believe in the Bible anymore, they'll believe in witches again and they'll believe in ghosts again.

And that's true. Oh, how many people have turned away from the Word of God to go into Spiritism and Theosophy and all these various occult systems that profess to have to do with the dead. Well, all that's Babylonianism, you see.

Come right down through the centuries and God has judged it all and He puts it all as it were to one side. He says, why do men need this? Here am I, here am I, infinite in wisdom, power and might and ready in grace.

Israel Refined Through Affliction

To reveal myself to the man who seeks my face. Now let's go on. Give me a little more. Verse 10 of chapter 48,. Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver. I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.

Yes, and that covers really God's dealings with the nation of Israel. No other nation has suffered as this nation has suffered. And yet it remains intact,.

A nation to this day, and will to the very end. When at last they've come through all the afflictions and tribulations and troubles, they'll understand the meaning of this verse. I have refined thee, but not with silver.

God will bring that nation out of all its troubles and all its tribulations to be to the praise of His glory a royal diadem upon His brow throughout the generations to come. Read the chapters in a wonderful way.

Jehovah's Final Call to Israel

Jehovah's conflict with idolatry. Thus saith the Lord thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, I am the Lord thy God,.

Which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go. O that thou hadst talked unto my commandments, then hadt thy peace been in the river, and thy righteousness at the waves of the sea.

Verse 20,. Go ye forth, O Babylon, flee ye from the Chaldeans, for the voice of sin declares thee. Tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth. Say ye, The Lord hath redeemed His servant Jacob, and they thirsted not when He led them through the desert.

He caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them. He clathed the rock also, and the waters washed out. There is no peace, saith the Lord unto the wicked. And so, just as in the past God had undertaken for Israel, so He'll undertake for them in days to come.

Those who turn to Him in repentance, those who receive the Savior that He has provided, will be brought into fullness of blessing. But the section ends with the solemn words, There is no peace. Now here it's Jehovah.

At the end of the next session it's my God. But there's no peace, saith Jehovah. It stands out in vivid contrast with the idols to whom they had turned for succor and help and who had failed them.