Sunday, March 24, 2024 PM

The Prophet’s Calling and Covenant Accountability

Open our Bibles and turn to Isaiah chapter 1 as we continue our introduction to this prophetic book. We've been thinking about what does it mean when we say that Isaiah was a prophet? What is the meaning of that biblical term?

And we've been thinking about the the nature of the prophets. We've thought about their calling and we thought about the relationship to the covenants and and now we're going to talk about their concerns.

Now the first two points that we looked at are directly related to the third in this sense that God called the prophets to hold kings and priests accountable. Not to the whims of the prophet, not to their eccentricities, and some of them are rather eccentric, but to hold kings and priests and therefore the rest of all the people of Israel to the standards of the covenants that God made.

What did God require of the king of Judah? Well God spelt that out. He said what he desired of the king. Who's going to tell the king what to do? God is. How is he going to say that through his prophet?

What are the standards of the priests? How are they to go about selecting sacrifices? Which ones can they accept? Which ones should they reject? How are they to maintain the holiness of the feasts, the feast days and the feast ceremonies?

They have a lot of things to think about. What if the priests and the Levites get lazy? What if they get greedy? What if they begin to slack off from holiness? Who's going to tell the priests how to do their job?

Well God is. How is he going to tell them? Through his prophet. And of course there's going to be all manner of people who have a name prophet, who are glad to say, thus sayeth the Lord, and act out a little eccentric, and do some interesting things, and grab people's attention, and tell people what those people want to hear.

Well who's going to tell these false prophets that they're wrong? God is. How is he going to do it? Through his prophet. And so the nature of the calling of the prophet is connected to the covenants. Meaning God says here's how you're going to live.

Here am I as your creator. Here am I as your God. You are my creatures. You are my people. These are the ways that you are to live. This is what I have designed you for. And the prophets are the ones who need to bring that message time and again.

Jesus told the devil that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. God made the image of God for the Word of God. How are we to live? We are to live according to his Word.

And the prophets therefore had a very important ministry. And if we were to think about their concerns, and to kind of summarize their basic message that they brought time and again, whether it be Isaiah or Malachi, from beginning to end the prophets had a very similar message.

Idolatry, Injustice, and Immorality in Israel

And their concerns were of course about the exclusivity of worship, that God alone should be worshipped. He alone was worthy. He alone is the true God. He's the creator. Therefore they preached against idolatry.

And idolatry was something that would creep in and then take hold and by stages become more and more controlling over the lives of the people. Till at certain points the entirety of Judah and Israel in the split kingdom, that they would look just like the Canaanite tribes who had lived there before.

In fact that was a warning that God gave in the first five books of the Old Testament, the law. He warned that the people that had lived there, that he had been patient with for all these generations, 400 plus years he'd been patient with the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and all those Ites.

They had the witness of Abraham, they had the witness of Isaac, they had the witness of Jacob, they had the witness of Melchizedek. They were not without a witness. And God was patient with them all those years until he brought his people into the land to exercise judgment upon them for their idolatry.

And God told the Israelites when they went in that they were not going to have to do the lion's share of the work of fighting and driving out the enemies because God said I'm gonna send the hornet ahead of you, I'm gonna send famine ahead of you, I'm gonna send hailstones ahead of you.

And he said the land is simply going to spew them out because of how reprehensible they are. But then he warned his people and he said now if you become like them and if you become idolatrous like them and you become Canaanized so that you can't even recognize that you are my special people, the land's gonna spew you out as well.

So he warned him that that was going to happen and so the prophets will bring that up. The prophets will remind the people of those covenant standards that God had made with them. So now you're supposed to be a peculiar people, you're supposed to be set aside, you're supposed to be declaring to the nations who God is, how special he is, but you're no different than the people around you.

How often was that the motivation of the people? Remember when they clamored for Samuel? We want a king just like all the other nations. We want to be like everybody else around us. That was precisely not their job.

Their job was to be different, distinct, declaring to the nations who God is because of how he had designed their society. They were to live in a way that would broadcast the image of God, the glory of God to all the other nations and thus fulfill God's covenant with Abraham that his seed would be a blessing to all the families of the earth.

So they preached against idolatry because idolatry would take root in the society and then you would see rampant immorality throughout their ranks and they would see rapid and rampant injustice throughout the whole society, polluted by their false worship.

And that makes a lot of sense. If you get the relationship with God wrong, everything else goes wrong as well. So let's think about all three of these together in the same passage, which is awful convenient, but you find all three of these concerns of idolatry, immorality, and injustice very often tied together throughout the prophets.

One example is Amos. So let's look over at Amos chapter 2 and we're going to read verses 6 through 8. If anybody needs to, please don't hesitate to turn to your table of contents, unless you're using your digital, which understandably that's easy to find Amos when you're using your Bible app.

But otherwise, in the front of your Bible you're going to have a table of contents and you're going to find Amos in there and you can turn to it. Mine is on page 879, so you can turn there and see if you get close.

So in Amos chapter 2 verses 6 through 8, thus says the Lord, for three transgressions of Israel and for four this is kind of a piece of rhetoric here, for three transgressions of Israel and for four I will not turn away its punishment.

Why? Because they sell the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of sandals. They pant after the dust of the earth which is on the head of the poor and pervert the way of the humble. A man and his father go into the same girl to defile my holy name.

They lie down by every altar on clothes taken in pledge and drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their God. What a mess. What a mess. What's going on? God had given very clear instructions to Israel about how they were to relate to the poor in their nation.

Some of those included things like you don't harvest your wheat field, your barley field, all the way to the corners. When your reapers go gather up the grain, bits and pieces will fall out. You don't go back and gather them up.

When you go and you harvest the fruit off your trees, you go beat the limbs of your trees once. You don't go back for a second beating to get the rest of the olives or the figs. When you go through and you harvest your grapes, same thing, you get one pass through and after that you leave whatever else is there.

Why all of this? Because in Israelite society, the poor were allowed to go work for their food by passing through all of the land and gleaning, like Ruth did in the book of Ruth, to go and glean and gather for themselves that which they needed to survive.

So God instituted a way in which the poor would be taken care of because they would go out and work and glean for themselves that which they needed. And also, if they ever passed through a vineyard and they were hungry, they could eat a handful of grapes.

They weren't allowed to carry bushels out, but they could eat a handful of grapes as they passed through. And God made all those regulations to remind the people, like, hey, I'm the one who's giving you this stuff in the first place.

You need to trust me, not trust how you can maybe get one extra 0 .1 percent extra out of your productivity. He wanted them to trust in the Lord, not trust in their ability to squeeze every last profit that they could.

Additionally, when somebody was poor, perhaps they were poor because they stole and had to replace it fourfold, and now all of a sudden they're impoverished. Perhaps they were just lazy and of bad character, and so they couldn't hold on to their land and their houses, and they had to sell themselves into slavery.

Well, God said every seven years you release the slaves. This Sabbath year, somebody comes and works for you for a period of time. When the Sabbath year comes around, you release them, right? Because on the Sabbath year, nobody's tilling the fields, nobody's trying to grow crops.

So I'm just going to release you, release those slaves, and they can go back to their business. But let's say they remain lazy and they don't get their act together. Well, guess what's going to happen come time the work starts up again?

Well, they're back to being a slave, aren't they? Well, what do you do with multi-generational families that, for generations and generations, they're just completely impoverished, they never have any property, so on?

Well, there's this thing called the year of Jubilee. In the year of Jubilee, all the property that was been sold and exchanged hands all reverted to the original families. And so now the children or the grandchildren of some no-count drifter have a chance to make something of their lives once again.

And there's just this reset. So there are some things that God said about how to treat the poor, but when we see idolatry come into the nation, by and large, that treatment of the poor goes away. They don't treat the poor according to the covenant that God gave to them, they treat them according to the ways that the other nations did, the nations that they adopted those idols from in the first place.

Also, the standards of immorality change. Whereas before, keeping covenant required that a man would be faithful to his wife and that they would completely turn aside sexual immorality, when idolatry came in, sexual immorality was part and parcel to the practices of the idols.

Many times the worship of the idols demanded sexual immorality, which you would pay for, which would go to the God and so on and so forth, and you would practice fertility rights, and all of a sudden you have sexual immorality all over the land.

So that's why the prophets very often preached against idolatry and pointed out, here's mistreatment of the poor, and here's immorality, and you are not keeping covenant standards with the one true God because you're not worshiping just the one true God.

You've brought in idols, and now everything is in chaos. So, idolatry is the main problem. Idolatry is the main problem, and then what follows from idolatry is immorality and injustice. So let's think about some passages from the prophets, and then we'll also look at two passages from Isaiah, and consider how it is that this is a major theme in the Old Testament.

The First and Second Commandments Against Idolatry

Now, we know what idolatry is, and that's defined for us by the law in Exodus chapter 20 verses 3 through 4. Idolatry is wrong long before the Ten Commandments were given, but the Ten Commandments give us a definition to go by, just to clarify how sinful this sin is.

And so, in Exodus chapter 20 in verses 3 through 4, we read this, you shall have no other gods before me. You shall have no other gods before... Oh, there it goes. That's not your fault. You made it level.

I just tilted that. Joel, can you grab me some paper towels? In Exodus chapter 20 and verses 3 and 4, so you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them, nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments.

Now, this is a passage that gives us a definition of what idolatry is. There is the worship of false gods, which is idolatry, worshiping other gods, but then idolatry could be something as subtle as saying you worship the one true God, but then making an image of him.

That's what happened when Moses was up on the mountain and Aaron made that golden calf, and he said, this is the Lord who brought you up out of Egypt. Now, he wasn't saying this is Molech, he was saying this is Yahweh, but he made an image and said, this is the image of the one true God, and that is also a violation.

So either way you look at it, it's going to be idolatry. Normally, when the prophets are preaching against idols, they're preaching against the violation of both the first and the second together, because they weren't really building images of Yahweh, they were worshiping the images of Molech, and Chemosh, and Baal, and Asherah, and the Queen of Heaven, and so forth.

They were worshiping all these images. Now, you notice in the text that the primary concern is their relationship with the one true God, but if they commit idolatry, they begin to take that which is of the created order, that they're just steward faithfully, and they exchange the glory of the Creator for that of the creature.

Romans 1, right? Professing to be wise, they become fools. They exchange the glory of the Creator for the creation. And then, what's the impact in the Old Covenant when, let's say, this generation, generation number one, goes off into idolatry?

What's the impact in the Old Covenant upon the following generations? Yeah, there's a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me.

In the Old Covenant, that's how it worked. The second, and the third, and the fourth generation were feeling the judgment of God earned by that first generation. You remember that Manasseh, how evil he was, how for 50-some years he brought so much idolatry and the shedding of innocent blood and all kinds of immorality into the nation, and even though Josiah, later on, was a really good king, and God said, I'll stay my hand and not bring judgment upon this generation because of Josiah, yet I'm not going to relent from the judgment that Manasseh has earned, and that's going to fall on that next generation, and it did.

That's the way it worked in the Old Covenant. That's why we see that idolatry impacts everything. It impacts your relationship with God, whom you're supposed to love supremely. It impacts the relationship with others, those you're supposed to love rightly, because you are worshipping that which you should be rather stewarding faithfully.

Hosea’s Picture of Spiritual Harlotry

Josiah chapter 4, and let's look at verses 12 through 13. What is Hosea famous for? Yeah, where he was told to go marry a wife of harlotry, to marry a woman with loose morals, as a picture of the tainted relationship between God and Israel.

So in Hosea chapter 4, let's begin in verse 11. Harlotry, wine, and new wine enslave the heart. So we can tell what they're addicted to. Verse 12, my people ask counsel from their wooden idols, and their staff informs them.

So they're using witchcraft. For the spirit of harlotry has caused them to stray, and they have played the harlot against their God. So remember that sexual immorality, that what you call cult prostitution, was completely integrated with ancient forms of idolatry.

So, you know, there's the type of worship where you go to the temple and you sing psalms, and there's the type of worship where you go up onto a green hill under a tree and get yourself a cult prostitute.

Now, which one over time gets more popular if you have a whole bunch of reprobates? Well, the second form gets really popular, doesn't it? And so there's sexual immorality going on, but also that becomes a metaphor for the actual faithlessness of the nation as they abandon God.

And so he says, he says, harlotry is what it is. It's spiritual adultery. And he says, the spirit of harlotry has caused them to stray, and they have played the harlot against their God. Verse 13, they offer sacrifices on the mountaintops and burn incense on the hills under oaks, poplars, and terebinths, because their shade is good.

Therefore your daughters commit harlotry, who are the cult prostitute owners running? Who are they using for the for the prostitution? The daughters of the Israelites. And your brides commit adultery.

So you can tell that this is something that is infecting every level of their society. All right, let's go over to Jeremiah chapter 2. Let's go to Jeremiah 10. Let's begin with verse 1. Hear the word which the Lord speaks to you, O house of Israel.

Thus says the Lord, do not learn the ways of the Gentiles, the ways of the nations, right, the ways of the idolaters. Do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven, for the Gentiles are dismayed at them. So the Gentiles are watching the stars and the moon, and they're looking at the alignment of the planets, and they're doing their horoscopes, and they're getting all worked up about all these different arrangements, and telling everybody who they're supposed to worship, in what order, to assuage the coming wrath of the gods.

God says don't pay attention to that. Verse 3. Why? For the customs of the people are futile, they're empty, they're worthless. Why? For one cuts a tree from the forest, the work of the hands of the workmen with the axe, they decorate it with silver and gold, they fasten it with nails and hammers, so that it will not topple.

They are upright like a palm tree, they cannot speak, they must be carried, because they cannot go by themselves, evil, nor can they do any good. In other words, with the gods of these nations, when they had to cut down trees and decorate these things, they have no inherent life of themselves.

They're, by definition, dead, because they had to cut it off of a living tree. They, by definition, have no glory, they had to add the silver and gold to it. By definition, they can't even stand upright on themselves, they've got to nail it down, so that it doesn't fall over in some Oklahoma.

And finally, these so-called gods can't go anywhere. They've got to be picked up and carried around and placed, so what kind of power do they have? They can't do anything at all. They're inert, they're worthless, they're empty.

So Jeremiah says, why would you give them any attention? Why would you fear them? Why would you pay attention? Because they're just nothing, they're empty, they're vanity. So Isaiah has an elaboration on that in Isaiah chapter 44, and this is where we have one of his extended satires, which on the extended satire is basically one of his most famous cartoon strips.

Would you love to have this for your Sunday morning cartoons? I'd love to see this in full color. Isaiah 44, verse 6, thus says the Lord the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, I am the first and I am the last, besides me there is no God.

And who can proclaim as I do? Then let him declare it and set it in order for me, since I appointed the ancient people and the things that are coming and shall come. Let them show these to them. Do not fear nor be afraid, if I not told you from that time and declared it, you are my witnesses.

Is there a God besides me? Indeed there is no other rock, I know not one. So God is saying, I've planned everything, I've told you that I have, I'm working it out, I'm proving it, and so who is it who's going to say that I don't know what's going on?

Who is it's going to refute what I have said is going to happen? So he's saying there's no point in worshiping anybody else, and God says there's no other rock, there's no other foundation, no other glory, no other God to worship.

And so here becomes the mockery in verse 9, those who make an image, all of them are useless, and their precious things shall not profit. They are their own witnesses, they neither see nor know that they may be ashamed.

In other words, those who worship idols are blind and ignorant, proving the point. Verse 10, who would form a god or mold an image that profits him nothing? That makes no sense. Surely all his companions would be ashamed, and the workmen, they are mere men, let them all be gathered together, let them stand up, yet they shall fear, they shall be ashamed together.

What they're calling gods are just simply manufactured. The blacksmith with the tongs works one of the coals, fashions it with the hammers, and works it with the strength of his arms. Even so, he is hungry and his strength fails, he drinks no water and is faint.

So this first craftsman making an idol is doing the blacksmith work. Boy, he's getting hot, tired, and trying to mold this precious metal into something worthwhile. But even as he works so hard to make his god, the man is about to collapse, because he's tired and hungry and his god can't help him, because he's wearing himself out trying to make his god.

This is ignorance, this is emptiness. Here's another picture, the craftsman stretches out his rule, he marks one out with chalk, he fashions it with a plane, he marks it out with a compass, and makes it into the figure of a man according to the beauty of a man that it may remain in the house.

Here's a woodsmith now. So first we had the metalsmith, now we have the woodsmith. Now he's going to make his god out of some kind of precious wood. Verse 14, he cuts down cedars for himself and takes the cypress and the oak, he secures it for himself among the trees of the forest.

He plants a pine, the rain nourishes it. Then it shall be for a man to burn, he will take some of it and warm himself. Yes, he kindles it and bakes bread. Indeed, he makes a god and worships it, he makes it a carved image and falls down to it.

So he burns half of the cypress, half of the cedar, half of the wood, he burns it in the fire. With that half, he also eats meat. So he takes the same tree that he didn't even grow, it was the rain that nourished the cypress.

All he does is cut it down, half of it he burns to keep himself warm and to cook his bread over, and the very same material that he's burning to keep warm and eat, he takes the very same material and he makes it into a god.

He makes it into a carved image so he can fall down to it. He burns half of it in the fire, with his half he eats meat. He roasts the roast and is satisfied. He even warms himself, says, I am warm. This guy's a real doofus.

I am warm, I have seen the fire. But he can't see, can he? Because the rest of it he makes into a god, his carved image. He falls down before it and worships it, prays to it and says, deliver me for you are my God.

Wow. Wow. What is going on here? Isaiah says, they do not know nor understand, for he, God, has shut their eyes, so they cannot see, and their hearts, so they cannot understand. And no one considers in his heart, nor is there knowledge nor understanding to say, I have burned half of it in the fire, yes I have also baked bread on his coals, I've roasted meat and eaten it, and shall I make the rest of it into an abomination?

Shall I fall down before a block of wood? He feeds on ashes. A deceived heart has turned him aside. He cannot deliver his soul, nor say, is there not a lie in my right hand? Look at the condition of the idolater.

Psalm 115 says that our God is in the heavens and he does whatever he pleases. Isn't that a good news? All that he pleases is good and right. And why should they now say, where is your God? Why should the nation say, where now is your God?

They're pointing out the fact that the true worshippers of God have no image to bow down to. They're saying, hey where's your God? Our God is in the heavens, he does whatever he pleases. But the gods of the nations are not so.

They have eyes but cannot see, they have ears but cannot hear, they have mouths but cannot speak, they have throats but cannot make a noise, they have hands but they cannot grasp, they have feet but they cannot move.

They are altogether useless, also those who make them and worship them. That they themselves, those who worship idols, become like them, blind, deaf, dumb, useless. That's the message of the prophets throughout the Old Testament.

Worshiping Christ and Being Transformed into His Likeness

It's a reminder that we were made in the image of God. It's a reminder that we are made in the image of God and that God designed us to worship him and that whatever we worship, that's what we become like.

God made us in his image to worship him so that as we worship him we become godly. In our sin we need a Savior, so God gives us his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who is the image of the invisible God, Colossians says, so that when we worship Christ we become like him.

Paul says in Corinthians that it's being transferred from one glory to another glory, that as we as we look at Christ in the Word we become like him in this world, that we are transformed into the likeness of Christ when we worship him.

So idolatry reminds us of the futility and the foolishness of it. Worshipping idols turns us into like those idols, but worshiping Christ is how we are transformed into the likeness of God all over again.

Okay, any questions or thoughts as we close? One last note is that idolatry was not just an Old Testament issue, I guess talked about in the New Testament as well. It still needs to be avoided, it's still a problem, and when you read through the Old Testament over 60 times, over 60 times, just actually in the book of Isaiah alone, over 60 times we hear the words about idols or images or something carved and molded, the false gods.

It's going to be a major theme as we go through the book of Isaiah. It's mentioned over 60 times, so something to keep in mind as we move forward. Okay, well let's go ahead and close.