You Look Like What You Worship

Idolatry as Empty Hope in Isaiah 41:29

Now, one more time in the chapter, the command to look shows up before we're commanded to look at the servant in 42 verse 1. So 41 verse 29 says this, behold or look, all of them are false. Their works are worthless.

Their molten images are wind and emptiness. Now what he's talking about here is not the idol primarily, but those who make and worship.

Idols.

So listen to what he says to the idolater. Look, he says, look at the man or the woman giving their hope and their love to something other than God. Every one of them is false. That is their deceitful and their works, the things they've made with their hands that they're trusting.

They are worthless and their molten images are wind and emptiness. Now I want you to notice, other than the fact that idolatry is an empty hope, whatever age, whatever form it comes in, I want you to notice a very important spiritual reality here.

We Become Like What We Worship

Every person begins to reflect and to look like and to be fashioned into the image of the thing that they are looking at with this dependence and delight. In other words, in every religion that man has ever been involved in, false or true, we are being fashioned into the image of the God that we are constantly looking at.

So if it's a false God, if it's the idea of a man's man, and you know, you're watching your television or a movie or however it's getting in past the senses, you know, you have this idea of now this is a real man or this is a real woman.

This is a successful person. This is a happy person. And we have this kind of vague image in our mind and our heart is focused on it for so long that we do in some measure begin to look a little bit like that.

We are being molded into the image of the idol that we're worshiping. Now we don't become what we hope we'll become. But people that look at us can tell, I know what God you love. I know where you're looking.

I know what you delight in and what you're depending upon. I can tell because you're starting to look like it. We see this in men that are in places of, you know, successful businesses and they have become greedy and their whole character is fashioned.

We see this in ladies in whatever way, whether they're idolizing their children. And so that's their righteousness or whether they're very active in church and that's their righteousness or whether they think that their beauty and abilities give them worth and that's where they get their sense of identity from, whatever it is for you.

We will begin to look like the God we look at. And you can see that in verse 24 and 29, they are almost identical. Look at the idol. Now look at the idol worshiper. Do you notice that the idol worshiper has started to look just like his idol, empty, worthless, everything he does is nothing.

Looking to Christ Instead of Our Idols

So again, before we look at chapter 42 and we read that wonderful command, look, behold my servant. And there's the sun breaking the horizon. There's the coming of Christ. Before we look at that, will you, by the grace of God, determine that you will give significant time to looking at your idols?

That does not sound very Christian, but I mean, look at those idols with God at your right hand and to say to God, what's the truth? How do you see this and see the emptiness? And then look at yourself when you're tempted to be an idolater and see the emptiness there to the degree that you are willing to say to God, whatever it costs, I will look away from every foul thing and even the nice things.

And I will turn my heart's deepest longings and all of its hopes upon your son, especially as I see him revealed here. I wanted to tell you about the Media Gratia app. If you get the Media Gratia app, you will receive the whole council podcast a day early.

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