The Solitary God Ridicules Idolaters and Raises Up Cyrus

Isaiah 44

Who, like me, can announce the future? Let him say so and make a case before me, since I have established an ancient people. Let these gods declare the coming things, and what will take place. (Isa 44:7)

Main Idea: God ridicules idolaters and exalts his supremacy over idols by predicting the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple by Cyrus more than a century and a half before it happens.

1. God Promises to Pour Out His Spirit and Create His Children (44:1-5).
   1. The Lord promises to pour out his Spirit on the dusty ground (44:1-3).
   2. The result: God raises up his children out of the dust (44:4-5).
2. God Alone Can Explain the Past and Predict the Future (44:6-8).
   1. No one is like God (44:6-7).
   2. God’s challenge to the idols: explain the past and predict the future (44:7-8).
3. God Ridicules Idol Makers (44:9-20).
   1. Idol makers and idol worshipers will be shamed (44:9-11).
   2. God ridicules idolatry (44:12-20).
4. God Has Swept Away Our Sins Like a Mist, So Rejoice (44:21-23)!
   1. God sweeps away our sins like a mist (44:21-22).
   2. All creation rejoices in the redemption of God’s children (44:23).
5. God Raises Up Cyrus to Rebuild Jerusalem (44:24-28).
   1. God the Creator foils false prophecies and fulfills true ones (44:24-26).
   2. God commands Cyrus to rebuild Jerusalem and its temple (44:27-28).

God Promises to Pour Out His Spirit and Create His Children

Isaiah 44:1-5

In this chapter God continues his battle with the idolatry that threatens to destroy his people. To win their hearts, he has to command their attention (v. 1). God alone shaped Israel from birth (as he did to each of us) (v. 2); so also God called the nation Israel into existence. He will never forsake Israel; he is ready to help. In verse 2 he calls them “Jeshurun,” meaning “Upright,” a stark contrast to their other name, “Jacob” (“Deceiver”). So God is conferring on sinful Jacob the imputed righteousness in which alone he can stand before a holy God. Christ will later purchase this righteousness at the cross.

God then makes the magnificent promise that is our only hope of survival: he promises to pour out his Holy Spirit like “water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground” (v. 3). This image should be familiar to us by now because we’ve also seen it in Isaiah 32:15; 41:18; and 43:20. Though we shouldn’t deny that Adam’s sin has turned fertile fields and lush gardens into wastelands and that God intends to reverse that curse in the new earth, yet the image here is primarily spiritual: the pouring out of water on the desert is clearly the gift of the Holy Spirit, poured into transformed human hearts. This is the new-covenant blessing that was bought by the blood of Jesus Christ.

The result of the outpoured Spirit is the raising up of children for God (vv. 3-5). That Israel would even have any descendants at all after Babylon is a gift of God’s grace, as he said in Isaiah 1:9. But these verses go beyond that. The image of a stand of poplar trees flourishing by an abundant stream (Ps 1:3) reflects the promise of the Holy Spirit transforming hearts, children of God born not in the normal way but by the Spirit of God (John 1:12). This predicts the blessings of the new covenant (Ezek 36:26-28): a transformed people living in a transformed land for eternity. And this promise will extend to the Gentiles as well. Isaiah 44:5 speaks of three individuals who seek to outdo each other in expressing a new loyalty to the Lord, the God of Jacob. Like Cornelius and his family, they will receive the outpoured Holy Spirit by faith and become children of Abraham (Gal 3:7). So, as John the Baptist said, “God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones” (Matt 3:9)—or from the dust of a spiritual desert.

God Alone Can Explain the Past and Predict the Future

Isaiah 44:6-8

As God continues to challenge the idols to a duel, he once again returns to the theme of proclaiming history—either explaining the past or predicting the future, as we’ve seen (41:21-28; 43:9-12). But it comes spectacularly to a head in the prediction of Cyrus by name in this and the next chapter. The greatness of almighty God is front and center as God deeply yearns to melt the hearts of his elect into awe. He says that he alone is “the first and . . . the last.” Just as Jesus Christ said, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Rev 22:13). Unlike Eastern religions that assert the cyclical nature of history by reincarnation, the Bible teaches that history is linear, ordained by God before even a single event had occurred. God was “in the beginning” (Gen 1:1), and he will be there at the end as well; he also controls every single day in between. Therefore he alone can accurately lay out the past and predict the future. He challenges anyone who thinks he is like God to recount in careful order (the Hebrew verb means to lay out in careful rows or stacks) what has happened from the time he established “an ancient people.” Though it might not seem supernatural to do this, a perfect history of the past is something only God can relate. To prove this, compare the accounts of different professional historians about D-Day or the signing of the Declaration of Independence. No two accounts would perfectly jibe.

But what is supernatural is to predict the future, laying out in detail what is yet to come. James 4:14 says, “You do not know what tomorrow will bring.” But in Isaiah 44:28 and 45:1 God stunningly names Cyrus as the man who will set his exiles free, rebuild the towns of Judah, rebuild Jerusalem, and lay the foundation of the new temple. This is mind boggling because Cyrus would not be born until sometime between 600 and 580 BC, at least a century later! Did his parents really have a choice in naming their son? As Proverbs 16:1 says, “The reflections of the heart belong to mankind, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.” God named that baby and then raised him up to astonishing power, as we will see in the next chapter.

God alone can do this. Events of history continually stun us, but nothing stuns God. So we should not fear anything (v. 8) because God has predicted everything we need to know about the future, and it will certainly come to pass.

God Ridicules Idol Makers

Isaiah 44:9-20

Scripture only rarely depicts God as laughing. Three times in Psalms almighty God is said to laugh, and all three times it is at the wicked—a laughter of scornful judgment (Pss 2:4; 37:13; 59:8). Isaiah 44:9-20 is dripping with the laughter of God at idol makers and idol worshipers. The utter foolishness of worshiping and serving created things rather than the Creator is exposed and condemned by ridicule.

In verses 9-11 the Lord begins by giving his overarching verdict on idol makers and idolaters: they are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless; all who witness on their behalf or yield to that temptation will be put to shame on judgment day.

In verses 12-17 God escorts us into the workshop of an idol maker. The first idol he makes is constructed of iron, the second of wood. But the material doesn’t matter: the process itself is ridiculous. The ironworker must labor over hot coals to make his metal god. Sweat pours from his face, and if he forgets to drink water or eat, he grows steadily weaker. How different is our God, who as the Creator of the ends of the earth never grows faint or weary (40:28); and those who worship him have their strength constantly renewed (40:31). But this ironworker sits at the end of a hard day of heating iron to a glowing yellow and pounding it on an anvil. He mops his brow and feels satisfied. He has made a god worthy of worship!

So also the carpenter does the same work but in wood. He measures with a line, marks it out with a compass, and shapes it with a chisel. Like a famous sculptor once said when asked how he made a magnificent statue of a horse: “I choose a block of marble, then cut away everything that doesn’t look like a horse.” So it is with the idol maker, and herein is the offense: he has an idea in his mind first, then cuts away everything that doesn’t look like the “god.” But we must see the arrogance in this; we the created have turned unfulfilled away from our glorious Creator, and we take his place, shaping a god out of our own imaginations. In the end all idolatry is just self-worship.

The satire goes beyond this, for the idol maker goes out into the forest to cut down cedars, cypress, or perhaps an oak. In order to have a lasting supply, he plants a grove of trees. (And the rain made it grow! God’s activity cannot be avoided.) He chops down a likely tree for the idol, but he doesn’t need the whole piece. So he cuts it in half; half he uses for a fire on which he can make his dinner—roasting his meat, which he eats and is satisfied. But the other half he uses to make a god, before which he bows down and says, “Save me, for you are my god.” God repeats for emphasis: half for the fire, which he sees and enjoys; half for a god, “something detestable.” Absolutely ridiculous!

The Lord summarizes both the idol and those who worship it at the end: their eyes are shut so they cannot see; their minds are closed so they cannot understand. In other words, you become like what you worship! These idolaters should stop and think about what is happening; they should open their eyes to the utter folly of it all. But they never do.

God Has Swept Away Our Sins Like a Mist, So Rejoice!

Isaiah 44:21-23

Isaiah 44 stands as a permanent indictment against worshiping and serving a created thing rather than the Creator. He calls on Jacob/Israel to remember these lessons, and they should remember also that the Lord made Israel to be his servant and to worship him alone (v. 21). They must never forget God because God will never forget them.

And in his amazing grace, when they lurch into idolatry and then get evicted from the promised land into their just exile in Babylon, God will remember them there and will forgive them. In a beautiful image, God sweeps away their sins like a heavy cloud or like a morning mist. No matter how great or small their sins, they will be swept away! Therefore, God calls on his people to return to him in repentance, faith, and love, for he has redeemed them. This redemption, this buying of Israel out from bondage to sin, could only be paid for by the blood of the Son of God. This future purchase is vastly more significant than the prediction of Cyrus with which the chapter ends.

As a result of this redemption, all of creation will be liberated from its bondage to decay and its groaning for freedom and will break forth into joyful celebration (Rom 8:19-23). So the heavens are invited to rejoice and the depths of the earth commanded to shout; and the mountains, forests, and every tree will sing for joy. No longer will a woodsman come to cut them down and use them to dishonor God.

God Raises Up Cyrus to Rebuild Jerusalem

Isaiah 44:24-28

In these verses God unleashes details of the amazing restoration he has planned, the return of the remnant of Israel from Babylon under Cyrus the Great. God reminds Israel that he is both its Creator from the womb and its Redeemer (v. 24). But more than that, he is the God who has made all things and who stretched out both heaven and earth by himself. This awesome and powerful God is the one who controls the events of human history. The idols cannot foretell the future, and if the idolatrous priests come out in their bizarre garb and begin to whisper and mutter and look at omens to make some startling predictions, God will expose them as the frauds they are. But the words of his true prophets will be confirmed.

So it is in this case: Isaiah has predicted that Jerusalem will be inhabited again and the towns of Judah will be rebuilt, her ruins restored (v. 26). Of course, this assumes the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem that hadn’t even happened yet, but such is the astonishing power of Isaiah’s prophetic vision. The temple would be leveled, all its golden articles taken to Babylon—all of that in the distant future. But Isaiah looked beyond that and saw a man named Cyrus, whom the Lord would raise up to rebuild it all. He would be God’s “shepherd” (v. 28) to accomplish all his purposes, rebuilding Jerusalem as a stage for the final drama of redemption, the death of Jesus for the sins of his people.

Applications

We modern people do not literally carve graven images and bow down to them, yet we must understand how rampant idolatry is in our culture. We worship material things just as they did. There is no end to the mansions, restaurants, malls, websites, sporting arenas, universities, investment houses, and steel/glass skyscrapers that testify to our earthly lusts. The utter emptiness of such a lifestyle of delusion is exposed and ridiculed by this chapter as powerfully now as it was then. We must stop and think; we must reason with ourselves and with our idolatrous neighbors to present before our spiritual eyes the vast superiority of the living God’s glory. We must drink in the Spirit’s living water (by the gospel of Christ and by the Word of God) so that we may clear our brains of this magnetic delusion. We must see again the supernatural evidence of the Word of God in predictive prophecy: no idolatrous religion has such credentials. And we must proclaim the gospel of Christ to the ends of the earth, for no other message can make our sins and delusions disappear like the morning mist.

Reflect and Discuss

1. How does verse 3 point to the powerful effect of the outpoured Spirit on our thirsty souls? How does this verse give us strong evidence that all the “streams in the wasteland” imagery of Isaiah is referring primarily to the work of the Spirit on human hearts?
2. How should we personally seek refreshment through the pouring out of the Spirit?
3. What claim does God make in verse 6?
4. How does God support that claim in verse 7? How can we use the Bible’s amazing prophecies to prove the uniqueness and superiority of Christianity to other world religions?
5. What is the purpose of verses 9-20? Why does God use a tone of ridicule here?
6. What aspect of idolatry do these verses primarily hold up to ridicule?
7. What are some examples of modern idols in our culture and age?
8. What great encouragement does verse 22 give us? How does it point to Christ?
9. What specific prophecy does God give in verses 26 and 28? How is the presence of the specific name “Cyrus” a clear example of a miracle, given that Isaiah lived a century before Cyrus was born?
10. How does this chapter strengthen your faith in the God of the Bible?