The Solitary God Ridicules Idolaters and Raises Up Cyrus

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.

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.

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.

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.