The Folly of Idolatry

The Greatness of God in Isaiah 40

Please turn in your Bible to Isaiah 40. Isaiah 40, that can be found on page 600 of your Pew Bible. We're going to continue here in Isaiah 40. We have read previously about the greatness of God, spoken of to us by a number of rhetorical questions.

Have you marked it?

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, et cetera, et cetera? God has created the world, so he is powerful enough to make the new creation. This passage we will look at today continues to speak of God's greatness.

I'll read from verse 12 to the end of the chapter. When you have that, please stand for the reading of God's word. Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?

Who has measured the spirit of the Lord, or what man shows him his counsel? Whom did he consult, and who made him understand? Who taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding?

Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are counted as the dust on the scales. Behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust. Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.

All the nations are as nothing before him. They are counted by him as less than nothing in emptiness. To whom, then, will you liken God? Or what likeness compare with him? An idol, a craftsman crafts it.

A goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts for it silver chains. He who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will not rot. He seeks out a skillful craftsman to set up an idol that will not move.

Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 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 like a tent to dwell in, who brings princes to nothing and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.

Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown. Scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth when he blows on them and they wither. And the tempest carries them off like stubble. To whom then will you compare me that I should be like him, says the Holy One.

Lift up your eyes on high and see who created these. He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of his might. And because he is strong in power, not one is missing.

Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel? My way is hidden from the Lord and my right is disregarded by my God. Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth.

He does not faint or grow weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint. And to him who has no might, he increases strength. Even you shall faint and be weary and young men shall fall exhausted.

But they who wait for 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.

Amen.

Sacrifice Accepted Through Christ

You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we ask today that you would show us more of your greatness. As has been prayed already, you are great beyond our comprehension. Yet you are not, your greatness does not exceed, there is still much more greatness of yours for us to know.

So even though it exceeds our comprehension, our comprehension as it exists today is not what it could be. So we ask that you would increase our comprehension so that we would understand you more, so that we would know your greatness and that we would even understand it through these notions that you speak of in this passage, idolatry and sacrifice.

In Jesus' name, amen. So it might be a surprising passage that I've cut up here. You may notice that in the readings, I've been reading a different set of chunks than the ESV has broken this out into.

I'll first speak on why I do that. You notice you have these different statements about messages that are proclaimed to God's people. Isaiah 40, one through two, you have a command to comfort God's people.

Then you have in verses three through five, a voice that's to cry in the wilderness. Verses six through eight, you have a voice saying cry, and then Isaiah saying, what shall I cry? Another statement about messages.

And then nine through 11, you have another statement about messages. Go up to a high mountain of Zion, herald of good news. Now it is at this point that we begin talking about the greatness of God in verse 12.

And so that is why I've broken up the reading in this way. But now the question is, why is the preaching text here from verses 16 onward to 20, when 16 and 17 really seem to follow from these previous passages that are related to the greatness of God, that he is so great, Lebanon would not suffice for fuel.

Well indeed it does follow as an implication of the previous passage, but it really does belong here with this passage about idolatry in a minute. And you see in verse 20 when it talks about he is too impoverished for an offering, it is connecting to this previous passage about offerings, about the burnt offering, verse 16.

And so we have these two notions of offerings. We have the offering of sacrifice, like an animal sacrifice. We also have the notion of an offering of idolatry. And so as these things are compared together, God is teaching us of his greatness in two ways.

Why has he called his people to sacrifice to him, even though he is too great to be sacrificed to? But he's not called people to make images of him when he is too great to make images of. Okay, so you realize that?

He's too great that any sacrifice is good enough. He's too great that any image is good enough. But he's commanded sacrifice, and he's forbidden idolatry. Now for us, he's not commanded animal sacrifice.

He's commanded a sacrifice of praise, which we are rendering to him here today. Why is he called for one, not the other? So let us first look at the nature of his greatness in light of sacrifice. Look at his greatness in light of idolatry, and then put these two together.

Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering. All the nations are as nothing before him. They are counted by him as less than nothing in emptiness. So it speaks of nations in particular because this is coming in the context of a foretelling that Babylon will come take the people away.

This is the foretelling that after they go away, they will come back. How is this possible? How is it possible that the greatest nation in the world can take them away? All the nations could be against them, and God will take them back.

He is greater than all the nations. This is the confidence he is giving the people about the goodness of his gospel. There is power in it because he is greater than all the nations. In fact, they are counted by him as less than nothing.

Less than nothing. Now, asking yourself, how can they be counted as less than nothing? One way of looking at this, which would be very simple and not a bad way of looking at it, would be this is just hyperbole.

They are as nothing to him. Because he is so great, they are as nothing. I think there are a few ways that you might realize that nothing does not express the matter well enough. Okay, first is on account of his mercy.

Now, a lot of people would think of, okay, if God is going to fight against the nations, it is going to take him effort to expend. If you might imagine him exerting effort, even though he is all powerful and he doesn't really exert effort, you might imagine him exerting some kind of effort to fight the nations.

But that is not really the best way of thinking of it. In fact, he is merciful towards the nations. His justice demands that they be destroyed. And so him in being patient is actually restraining himself, like a bow, right, being drawn so that it is taking effort not to fire the arrow against the nations.

They are less than nothing. It is requiring him, if you imagine this analogy of energy, even though he does not expend energy, even though he is all powerful, if you were to use that analogy of energy, it is requiring him energy to not fire the arrow of judgment.

It is the more straightforward thing to just destroy them. It is him exercising mercy and that he does not destroy them. So in that sense, nothing is not enough to describe what they are to him. They are as less than nothing.

Now, another way you might imagine this is in having spoken of his greatness before, that he is greater than all things. He is larger than all things in the sense being omnipresent, but more precisely being immense, being without measure.

It is not just that he is larger in some sense of being of the same species as though he exists in physical space, right, being greater in physical space. If that were the case, then you could say that these things are nothing.

You know, they're a zero on the scale or pretty close to zero. And he is a very large number on the scale or even infinity. But these aren't even the same scale.

He is immense.

He is with, which means without measure. He is not measured on the same scale. The greatness of nations and his greatness are not two kinds of, are not the same kind of greatness, one being much larger.

They are simply analogous concepts of which his greatness totally transcends man's notion of greatness. His might is not measured the same ways that ours is. It is not a physical kind of might. So there are multiple ways that he is greater than them such that saying that they are as less than nothing to him is not strictly hyperbole, but actually expresses that just saying nothing is not enough.

There is, they are even less than that. He calls them emptiness, or in some translations, vanity. You know, they're vanity, they're nothing. They will fleet away. They are temporary. In the book of Daniel, this is pictured as all the nations that are going to come after Babylon, including Babylon, are pictured as a statue that has different portions to it, gold portion, iron, bronze mixed together at the bottom, silver, et cetera.

And a rock comes, the rock being the kingdom of God, and destroys it, just obliterates it into pieces. The nations are as nothing. And so because God is so great, because the nations are nothing, he requires a great sacrifice.

And by requires, I don't mean that in the sense of demanding it. I mean that it would only be appropriate, the kind of sacrifice that would be appropriate for him, that would be most ideal and appropriate for him, would be an infinitely great sacrifice because he is infinitely great.

So it says in verse 16, Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering. Lebanon has come up often in the book of Isaiah. It is a forest full of the tallest cedar trees, and it's frequently used as a picture of greatness and might because it has the tallest trees, it has the largest trees.

Lebanon, all the trees in it would not suffice for the fuel that you would need to burn the offering that would be suitable for God. If you were to take all the trees of that forest, put them in a pile, and imagine that you had a sacrifice large enough, it would not be, that wood would not be sufficient to make that sacrifice.

And then on top of that, all the beasts of the forest are not sufficient to be that sacrifice. Even they are not great enough. So you take the largest forest in the world, right, at least to know their known world, you take all the wood and you take all the animals and they are not enough to make a sacrifice because he is greater than all these things.

And yet, and yet he accepts our sacrifice. Why is it that he would accept our sacrifice? First of all, because it is made through Jesus Christ, the mediator, who he himself has given a perfect sacrifice.

While our sacrifices couldn't be good enough, Jesus Christ in offering his own life has offered something that great. He has offered his own life, which is he being God is offering something that is as great as God himself, right?

And so he is, in offering his own life, is offering a perfect sacrifice. So when we give sacrifice and he mediates that sacrifice to God, it being offered up in him, the perfect one who has given the sacrifice, it is acceptable.

And so God has called us to acknowledge his greatness by offering sacrifices. And these are acceptable because they are, not because our sacrifices are good enough, not because our, yeah, our righteousness, our anything about what we've done is good enough or because these things are needed by God.

You know, any of the praise we give or in the Old Testament, any of the animals they give were needed by God. Okay, he's not hungry, he's not thirsty. He does not need the blood, the flesh, the animals, rather for our sake that we might acknowledge his greatness and understand his greatness and be able to respond to him in gratitude, he's given this way.

And then these things are accepted in Jesus Christ who has made a perfect sacrifice and therefore mediates our sacrifices in a way that is acceptable to him. But now it continues on after having said that no sacrifice is sufficient, but yet we know that this is a nation who has been commanded to sacrifice to God.

It also speaks of idols. It says, to whom then will you liken God or what likeness compare with him? An idol. You know, it says it as this exclamation. How ridiculous. A craftsman casts it and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts for it silver chains, silver chains representing in Scripture often power and authority.

You know, that you would wear around your neck. Joseph, when he is made second in command over Egypt, is given silver chains around his neck to show that he is Pharaoh's right-hand man. He who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will not rot.

He seeks out a skillful craftsman to set up an idol that will not move. Now, idolatry has been forbidden by God, forbidden in the second commandment.

Why?

You cannot represent God. You cannot liken him to anything. There's so many ironies here in this passage, right? First of all, you have the skilled craftsman that's making the idol. And so, who's the one who is really valuable?

Is it the craftsman or is it the idol? It's the craftsman whose skill's being made with the idol. If you think the craftsman is made in the image of God and then the craftsman makes the idol in his image, now we have something that's of less worth to be praised than the man himself, right?

So, I mean, it would make more sense even to praise man instead of to praise an idol like this. The fact that there are concessions made that you can make, oh, well, if you don't have gold, if you don't have silver, you can make it out of wood, and that's just as good.

Concessions are made there. And then he makes sure that it will not rot, it will not move. You know, the fact that it is fragile enough, he has to be careful of these things. These all indicate, it's very ironic that God would be likened to these things.

How can you liken him to these things? And you see this comparison, speaks of an offering after having just spoke of an offering. You know, no offering is sufficient and no idol is sufficient, and yet God commands offerings.

And he does not command idols, he forbids idols. So why is that the case? Why is this not special pleading? Especially when you look and you see the concessions that are made in Leviticus. If you cannot bring a lamb, you can bring two turtledoves.

If you can't bring two turtledoves, you can bring a tenth of an ephah, a fine flower. Why would that be, why would God give concessions for the sacrifices, but not give any kind of concessions for idols?

Well, very simply, these are two directions of our relationship to God, right? With the sacrifices, it is we who are giving of ourselves to God, offering up to him. With idols, it is us trying to bring God down to us and making him less, okay?

So you need to think about these as two different directions of relationship with God. Sacrifices are us giving of ourselves, offering things up to God. Idols are us trying to bring him down to us. He has commanded one, he has not commanded.

The other.

Why Idolatry Lowers Our Thoughts of God

Imagine if you made no sacrifice at all, right? You would not be thinking about God because you wouldn't bother making a sacrifice. Maybe occasionally you'd entertain the abstract intellectual notion that he is too great for sacrifices.

But apart from making a sacrifice, you're not actually engaging with giving him thanks. You're not actually engaging with thinking about his greatness, right? And so you wouldn't be giving him any kind of glory.

And given that he has made this world in order that we would enjoy him by understanding him and glorifying him, it wouldn't accomplish his purposes. It wouldn't even be good for us. And so he has given us the notion of sacrifice, the notion of offering, the notion of good works and giving, right?

As a way for us to appreciate him, as a way for us to recognize his greatness more than we would otherwise. But what happens with an idol? With an idol, you do the opposite. With an idol, making it in some other image, you think about God less than you would otherwise.

You know, it is interesting. If you're a person who grew up without any kind of idolatry around you and you go to maybe visit a foreign land where they have a lot more idolatry, or even, you know, we live in a pretty international area here.

You just go to certain ethnic restaurants and they've got a bunch of idols laying around, right? And you see that, and to our eyes it just seems so limited and so minuscule and so sad. You know, things made out of plaster compared to our great God, so great.

What happens when you try to bring God down, make him tangible in that way, make him accessible so that you can grasp onto him so that you can understand him, is not to raise up your thoughts about what God is, but is to lower your thoughts of what God is.

How can you liken him to anything? You cannot liken him to anything. So this is why this has been forbidden. Now, the applications of this should seem obvious, right? Some of them, some of them maybe not so much.

First of all, false idolatry. You know, any kind of false God, you should not be worshiping any false God, but any idols of God you shouldn't be worshiping. God himself, we should not make any idolatry of any idols of him, okay?

We should not make any, the Israelites, when they made a golden calf, right? This was not, this was not in God's will. Also, given that God has not commanded that we make idols, think about what the implications are for other aspects of worship.

If someone were to go and make an idol without having had the command of God, even before the second commandment was given, it still would have been wrong to do that. So what does that mean? That means for us that any kind of worship that we are trying to give to God without his command is something that likely lowers him in our eyes and does the opposite of what worship should do.

Rather than raising up our thoughts to who God is, it lowers our thoughts of who God is. This has been the, this is the standard reformed interpretation of the second commandment about idols, is that it does not just refer to graven images, but to all kinds of worship that are outside of God's command.

He does not command images. We are not permitted to make images. Images were wrong even before he said not to make images. Any kind of thing that we come up with in order to honor God is going to decrease him.

He is the one who tells us how we are to raise our minds to him. So do not add to, do not add to God's worship. This applies for images of Christ as well. He is not to be pictured. Now you see this in a lot of versions of Christianity that are not truly of the faith, right?

They have, well, and even some that are. They have images of Christ, and they will even use these things in worship. So it's not just Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, but even Lutherans misguided in this way, that they would make images of Christ and then have these involved in worship in such a way that they are not raising your thoughts up to the greatness of Christ.

They are lowering them. This applies to even outside of worship. Even if it were something as simple as a children's Bible, does a children's Bible showing a picture of Jesus raise your mind to the greatness of God or drawing him in some cartoon fashion, you know, with big, you know, something close to anime-style eyes or whatever, right?

It lowers your thoughts of him. These are not things that raises the child's mind to who Christ is. These are things that lower a child's mind of who Christ is. We ought not make any images of God, even including images of Christ.

These are not permitted. These are forbidden by the second commandment. It is, yeah, if you have these sorts of things in your home, you know, get rid of them. They are not needed. They are not helpful, and a lot of people will say, okay, well, I understand that images are forbidden in worship, but can they not be used for non-worshipful instruction?

Well, I would ask you, is it permissible that you think non-worshipful thoughts about Christ? Are you allowed to have non-worshipful thoughts about Christ? The third commandment says to not take the Lord's name in vain.

Dare you speak of Jesus without meaning it, without thinking of him seriously? Dare you use images, you know, recorded on a page and look at them in a way where you are not taking him seriously? Right, is that what you're saying is that, oh, well, I'm not thinking about him in that way, in a religious way, in any kind of worshipful way?

Well, then that is, that's violating the third commandment. Okay, so you have two options here, right? You're either violating the second commandment when you make images of Christ, or if that's not the case, let's say I'm wrong here.

You're violating the third commandment because you are using these images in a way that is not worshipful. Okay, so if it's worshipful, it violates the second commandment. Not worshipful, it violates the third commandment.

There's really only those two options. But God has, and this is what all man longs for, all man longs to know God and to experience his greatness. And this is why this is such a common feature in religions is to make idols.

It's because they want to pull God down to them so that they can know him, so that they can experience him. This is the longing in the heart of man. God knows that this is the longing in the heart of man, and so he has given us Christ in the incarnation that we might know him.

Now, even though he walked with the disciples, they did not even experience the fullness of his glory through looking at him, right? They got little tastes of it at, for example, the transfiguration at the ascension.

But he was lowly and not one that had any particular beauty for him to be looked at. That's what Isaiah says later in about 10 chapters or so. No particular beauty to be looked at, but there is a beauty in him that is now there that we will see when we do see him.

This is known as the beatific vision, the blessed vision of God. The word beatific, think like the Beatitudes, okay? The Beatitudes are when Jesus says, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the poor, right?

So beatitude has to do with blessedness. This is the beatific vision because it is the blessed vision of God. Blessing is referring to having things and having happiness and contentment, right? God is perfectly blessed because he does not need anything.

He is blessed in the sense of giving that he gives to us. And then at that point, we will be blessed and that we will have all things from him. It is the final moment where we are fulfilled in our purposes to receive the goodness of God in a way that we have the full experience of him.

No man can see God, but he has sent Jesus Christ in order that in him we might see him. And even physically, with our own eyes, be able to see what is unseen. Does that make sense? Even though God cannot be seen because of the unity of the person, Jesus' human nature being united to his divine nature, we will be able to see God in Jesus Christ in a way that will not be veiled as it was when he walked on this earth, right?

In a way that we will fully experience him. And this is what we should be longing for. Not any kind of experience that can only be had here, but that vision. And this is why God has called us not to have images, because he has something waiting for us that is that perfect image by which we will know him, Christ being the splendor of his glory.

And this is a wonderful truth that we should look forward to with great eagerness. And that even through sacrifices, even through offerings, our minds should be lifted up to his greatness. So here on this earth, we are called to give of ourselves.

You know, this is what this morning's message was about. We are called to be all in, to renounce all that we have, not necessarily in selling it all, unless God calls us to that, but in being ready to leave any of it behind.

We must give of ourselves, and in giving ourselves, we more and more recognize God's greatness, more and more appreciate God's greatness. But we do not do anything to pull him down to us, to lower his greatness in our eyes, so that it can be fully appreciated on that day.

The Church’s Betrothal and the Final Vision of Christ

Now, most of the people I've spoken to know that I like using this analogy. There is a consummation coming in the kingdom, right? There's a marriage supper. The church and Christ, they are spoken of as married in scripture.

And this is supposed to be a model for human marriages. However, a lot of people don't realize the church is not married in the way that we often think of marriage. Church is married to Christ, and that she is betrothed to Christ.

Okay, the consummation has not yet happened. This is akin to what we think of as an engagement. And that has yet to happen. There is yet to be the marriage feast. There has yet to be the consummation.

And it is at that consummation that we see him in all his glory. So if you think about how these analogies are working, what is this very much akin to? This is very much akin to the sight a man and a woman have for each other at their own consummation, right?

And so what would be inappropriate in human relationships is to see images that are not meant to be seen prior to that consummation,.

Prior to marriage.

It devalues the benefit or the blessing that ultimately is to be had in the marriage. You know, the husband or wife, or future husband, future wife, that looks at pornography, et cetera, right? They end up denigrating what they will have in marriage.

And so those who try to appreciate God through images of Christ, through any kind of idolatry of pulling him down to us through whatever means they might use, what are they doing in light of the marriage between Christ and the church?

They're engaging in some kind of spiritual pornography, trying to see and experience that which is not meant to be experienced here before that final day when we do see him in all his glory. This is what we are to be waiting for.

This is what we are to be looking for. And we are not to obtain it for ourselves apart from it being given by God at the appropriate time. So today, let us make the appropriate sacrifices of praise, raising our thoughts to him, and let us never pull him down to us, introducing our own means of worship that can only denigrate him.

Amen.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your guidance and worship. We thank you for the opportunity that we do have to worship you, that Christ has made a perfect sacrifice. And so even though you are far above all things and none of our sacrifices are sufficient, we can even offer our small sacrifices, them being accepted in Jesus Christ, who is our perfect high priest who has made the perfect sacrifice.

And thank you also that we have some wonderful experience of you that awaits us such that idolatry and things are forbidden. Men often see these things as harsh impositions on men to restrict him, but we know this is out of your kindness because you have something much, much greater for us, and we long for that day.

We look forward to it. In Jesus' name, amen.