Examine Your Idols

Now, that spiritual principle is wonderfully exemplified in the chapters that lead up to chapter 42. So chapter 40. You have to understand the connection between chapter 40 and chapter 42, or it really is a waste of time for you to look at chapter 42.

Beholding God in Isaiah 40 and the Servant in Isaiah 42

The connection is this. Behold your God. This immense and incomprehensible and incomparable God is coming to save you. But be careful. We're not just thinking about God in the abstract. We're actually seeing the God man described.

God, the eternal son, will come united to our humanity. So chapter 40 is not just talking about God the father. It is talking about the God who is coming to rescue us. God coming to us in the person of his son.

But you also must understand the intimate connection between chapter 41 and chapter 42 and why chapter 41 had to come between the command in chapter 40 to look at God and the command in chapter 42 to behold the servant.

Chapter 41 contains this same command to look or to behold in two places. First is in verse 24, behold, you are of no account and your work amounts to nothing. And he who chooses you is an abomination.

What's he talking about?

Chapter 41 primarily is kind of a court scene where God calls all the idolatry of the nations before him, especially the idols that Israel has been hoping in. And he asks them, but you know, in a sense before the courtroom to demonstrate that they really are worth hoping in.

Can you do anything? He says, can you do anything good for my people? Can you do anything bad to my people? Can you just do anything at all? And of course the idols can't and it's a, it's a chapter that mocks the idols and therefore exposes the complete madness of looking anywhere but God.

But verse 24, we find this command, look, behold, you are of no account. He's talking about the idols. So before you look at Christ, the servant, you're going to have to do this, stop and take a long, serious look at the idols of your heart.

The idols of your culture, which have crept in and kind of, you know, shoved and bullied their way into your thoughts and your, your affections, things that you tend to find yourself drifting toward when things are difficult.

Look at your idols and agree with God. In a sense, look at the idol with God alongside of you and ask him, what does he see? And don't be satisfied until you see the idol as he sees the idol. And so he says, you, your idol is of no account.

Your work, the work of the idol amounts to nothing. And he who chooses you, the idolater, is an abomination. Well, we're glad you were able to join us this week for the podcast. If you haven't already, you can subscribe to the whole council on your favorite podcast.

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