Exposition by Max A Forsythe
Today we will divide chapter forty-four into two parts to be considered separately. These verses from nine to twenty, contain one of the greatest condemnations of idolatry in the whole of scripture. One would think that the tendency to worship images or animals would have long since disappeared, given the logic of the argument before us. However, just this week I read about the birth of a white buffalo calf in Wisconsin. The calf’s name is “Miracle”. According to the report, the white buffalo is particularly sacred to several tribes of American natives. So far thirty tribal natives have visited, and some have held ancient ceremonies in honor of the animal’s birth.
Of course we must also mention the extensive devotion to crystals and triangles among the New Age set to appreciate that very many moderns are susceptible to this interest. Calvin noted that man’s thoughts are excessively wicked, as mankind casts aside and stains his glory, by making earthly and fading things. John Wesley also agreed that in his “natural state, every man born into the world is a rank idolater.” Perhaps it is well the baseball players have gone on strike, to wean some of the worst addicts from their addiction. Or are there other idols and images fashioned from film and print? Probably the worst idol in this fair land is made of green paper on which are sometimes printed the words “In God We Trust”. And yet, as a popular commentator wrote in a news magazine this week, even Christians are unfamiliar with biblical ethics when it comes to the use and abuse of wealth.
Of course we no longer talk about idols and graven images in our modern world. But what about obsessions, interests and desires beyond control? Go to an auto show and watch people rub their hands over the chrome and painted surfaces. How about a gun show instead? I can remember when I was in the Army how much I loved the feel of the wood stock on my M14. If you do not think it too personal, ask any military person about the names bestowed on all types of equipment. My rifle was named “Betsy” after another rifle in history. I well remember the mutinous thoughts that filled my emotions, and many of my friends’. when our carefully polished wood was replaced with a rough-edged moldy green plastic to save us weight. That rifle was just never the same after that!
Perhaps we haven’t touched your favorite possession, like Archie Bunker’s precious chair, which has been installed in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC. Certainly, as human history shows us, this sinful tendency to put something in place of our Creator is in every one of us. What can cure us of this sinful predilection? Let us consider the revelation of God’s instructions in the chapter before us. So let us prayerfully invoke the cleansing power of the Spirit to bring us further up and further into the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This whole section is designed to show us the folly of idolatry. Dr Young tells us that the apostate have desired to pull God down to the level of the creature and to honor Him by means of images their own hands have fashioned. We might even go a step further, as so many liberal theologians have, in reducing God’s revealed word to the mere opinions penned by WASPish men. This, we believe and teach is no such opinion, but instead the very breath of the Almighty conveyed to us through the inspired mind and hand of Isaiah.
Look at what the Almighty thinks about those who turn to idols. In our translation these people are nothing. In the Hebrew the word is the same as used in Genesis to describe the waste and uninhabitable earth. (Genesis 1:2) “Now the earth was formless and empty” as Moses penned it, from the mind of God. This is the nature of those who would make idols. They are wasted and empty, if we may use a contemporary thought. The worthlessness of the second strophe emphasizes the utter absence of life and power in the hands of the workman or worshiper. Those who would speak in defense of idolatry are blind and ignorant - so ignorant that they do not comprehend their everlasting shame. This week I think I was given a compliment. One of the other teachers shared a conversation with one of the slower classes. For some reason they were discussing the words stupid, ignorant and idiot, which are not to be in our professional vocabulary. One of the students suggested that while most people weren’t sure what those words meant any more, at least Mr Forsythe knew them well!
Too well, I suppose. This year I have been given a new course to teach for which their is no meaningful body of knowledge worthy of serious study. When I asked what I was supposed to do, listening skills and the writing of memos were suggested. The little workbook I once saw on memos was supposed to last three weeks. And as I was thinking about listening skills, I was being heretical in thinking that if you wanted people to listen, the best bet is to have something to say that is worth listening to.
Yes the forms of our idolatries may be different in our day and age, but the worthless nothingness of idolatry has not improved any since the time of Isaiah. Verse ten asks a question. “Who shapes a god and casts an idol, which can profit him nothing?” Certainly very many pagans have believed that the works of metal, wood or stone were somehow imbued with immortality. The height of the craft was achieved, I suppose, by the ancient Greeks. Some of their statues have come down to us. The armless Venus found in the mud and slime of a Milanese harbor is probably the most famous. Very many of our contemporary artists are appalled that such a fine statue would have been thrown down by newly converted pagans. Oh, excuse me, pagan is their word. Historically, as the Greeks and others were converted to Christianity, they burned and buried of their own accord their books of magic and the statues of real honest to God paganism!
Last year when I took an art class for college credit, I was amazed at the humanistic emphasis and the old age attitudes manifested in contemporary textbooks. It got to be such a spiritual burden I agreed to take a “B” in the class since I refused to read any more garbage about the wonders of sixteenth century humanism. The idol makers of Isaiah’s time will have plenty of company at the end of the age. Mankind has learned very little through the millennia. Craftsmen are after all, nothing but men, God tells us in verse eleven. Let them gather by the river, so to speak. Let them stand in the presence of the only true God and feel their knees tremble.
After all, Isaiah shows us, the blacksmith merely takes a tool and works with it in the coals. Just last week I was selling a forge, anvil and assorted tools having to do with the trade for my widow neighbor. An expert in such matters came in to price things for me. He showed me the hand-made forms which some unknown blacksmith had forged to form something else. One form would be set in the anvil, the other form would be hammered from above, and the molten part would be formed with the mighty blows of a thirty pound hammer. Now there is an object that would build muscle power. My grandfather left me such a hammer. It was the only weapon that I ever found that would pound nails into one hundred and fifty year old oak beams. But believe me, you didn’t swing that thing very long.
In verse thirteen Isaiah reports on the work of the carpenter as well. One of our craftsmen does exquisite work. For decoration he will saw two different colors of wood with a scroll saw, and then fit and glue the two together to make marble style lids for jewelry boxes. He makes the forms of ducks on the wing, rather than the image of man suggested here in this verse. But what of the wood for the project?, Isaiah asks. Even if he begins with the finest of cedars, cypress or oak, what does he have when his work is finished?
Many of the ancient craftsmen actually believed that they were revealing the form of a god or goddess that already dwelt in a sacred tree or stone. But God asks through Isaiah, what of the leftovers, what of the unused sacred parts? Does not the craftsman burn them for common fuel to keep warm or to cook by? Where is the common sense of idolaters, He wonders? If the tree is sacred, what of the wastage? Wouldn’t it be sacrilege to use that which is thought to be sacred for common things? And yet we see at the end of verse seventeen that the craftsman will bow down and worship the god fashioned by his own hands. People still visit the shrines for such nonsense. Some, like Anchor Watt and the Taj Mahal, have become tourist shrines, making more in our modern age than they ever did in antiquity.
God laughs at the idol makers who take their craft seriously. “They know nothing, they understand nothing; their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see, and their minds closed so they cannot understand”. How well does our God know the people of all ages. Don’t people think logically?, He asks in verse eighteen. No, they don’t, He answers in verse nineteen. If man can come to such incredible mischief using material things, just wait until the whole human genome is mapped. This is being carefully planned, and work is pressing ahead to understand exactly what each little strand of protein in our DNA actually accomplishes.
What manner of “gods and goddesses” will future craftsmen attempt to fashion with human and animal material under their control? A few years ago, some scientists were playing around with a high speed centrifuge in England. Into it they put fetal material of sheep and goats at the four-cell stage. They spun the two together and by passed the natural split to eight cells. The resultant creature that was born they called a geep. The pictures in the news magazine showed a cute little creature with one leg of a goat and three of a sheep. Here a sheep ear, a goat horn, and wool and hair mixed together like a shag rug. Thank goodness, the first author observed, that they had not tried to use human material. A few weeks later, the same magazine reported that they actually had. A half man and a half goat was brought to the thirty-two cell stage, when they got nervous and aborted the monster. As a former Doctor in the United States Department of Health and Human Services observed in the seventies, “we have yet to see what man can make of man”. Opportunities for idolatry and wickedness have not diminished. The temptation to fashion gods is still with us.
Such poor creatures Isaiah describes in verse twenty. See the deluded heart that misleads? See the inability to comprehend that his idol is a lie? Just last month I met an old friend from high school who I used to argue with. We were at the bank and he has become very successful in collected little green pictures. As we talked about the value of such things I pointed out that behind the printed paper there was no valuable metal, no longer any gold and silver. The only value such paper has is the confidence that people have in it. I told him that when people no longer believe that the dollar has value, then suddenly it won’t. He was horrified; he said that I shouldn’t even think such things. Why our whole culture could go down the tubes if people took in my heresy! In whom do you believe today? The little green men whose pictures are extremely popular? Or do you believe in the God which some bank notes still proclaim “In God We Trust”? May you persevere in this matter and put all vain idols out of your mind so that you can worship God alone! Amen.
Resources Used:
Buelow, Michael. "Indian
Tribes Pay Homage to Rare Buffalo Calf", The Bellefontaine
Examiner.
Ellis, Charles..
The Wells of Salvation.
Thomas, Derek..
Welwyn Commentary Series: God Delivers.
Young, Edward J.
The Book of Isaiah.
Youngblood, Ronald F. The Book of Isaiah: An
Introductory Commentary.
The Holy Bible.
New International Version (1984 Edition)
NOTE: I am not able to automatically
recommend any future editions.
Christ Covenant Reformed (Presbyterian Church in America) -
Box 13926 - Columbus, OH 43213
(c) 2001
04 September 1994
Permission granted to redistribute unedited versions with this notice.