Sunday School Lesson 9 - Isa. 46:3-13 - GOD ACTS
LAST WEEK: In Isa. 40:18-31, we jumped forward over 100 years to about 583 B.C., to time when Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Babylonians and the city's inhabitants had been forced into captivity. By this time, these exiles were completely dispirited. Through His prophet, we heard God issue what I would label a huge wake-up call. After being in captivity for so long, these exiles had been tempted to forget God's promises and even wonder if they were ever really true. Through a series of rhetorical questions, God gave them some very strongly worded reminders: (1) That He is still the one true living LORD GOD (YHWH) and cannot be compared to anything; (2) That, as His covenant people, they have known Him through their Scriptures, prophets, and history; and (3) That, as their God, He keeps His promises and exhorts them to return to faith and wait on Him to act.
TODAY'S CONTEXT: In today's section, Isa. 46:3-13, we will hear God's prophet mock the false deities of Babylon who not only will fail to save their people but who are not even capable of saving themselves. In a utter contrast to this, the LORD GOD (YHWH), the one true and living God, sovereign over all creation, is committed to a plan to save His people (the exiles), and nothing can prevent Him from accomplishing it, not even the backslidden condition of the people He plans to save. As NT Christians, it might be hard for us to imagine or understand how people-even OT Jews-struggled against idolatry in those times. In those days, when nations like Israel and Judah were conquered, the victors always claimed the superiority of their gods over those of the losers. In the case of Israel and Judah, the Assyrians and later, the Babylonians didn't necessarily deny YHWH, but claimed their gods were superior to Him. And in contrast to Israel and Judah, no other nation had gods that actually punished their own people for disobedience. However, the truth of the matter, as a judgment, YHWH had in fact allowed Assyria and Babylon to defeat them for His sovereign purposes. In this chapter, God calls the exiles to step out in faith to (1) trust that their God (YHWH) hac a plan to rescue His people and (2) to be confident He would accomplish this plan.
Read Isa. 46:3-7 - THE ONE TRUE GOD CARRYS HIS PEOPLE
3 "Listen to Me, house of Jacob, And all the remnant of the house of Israel, You who have been carried by Me from birth And have been carried from the womb; 4 Even to your old age I will be the same, And even to your graying years I will carry you! I have done it, and I will bear you; And I will carry you and I will save you. 5 "To whom would you liken Me And make Me equal, and compare Me, That we would be alike? 6 Those who lavish gold from the bag And weigh silver on the scale, Hire a goldsmith, and he makes it into a god; They bow down, indeed they worship it. 7 They lift it on the shoulder, carry it, And set it in its place, and it stands there. It does not move from its place. Though one may shout to it, it cannot answer; It cannot save him from his distress.
Note: In vv. 1-2, God concludes that idols are so powerless that they can't even save themselves.
v. 3: "Listen to Me, house of Jacob, And all the remnant of the house of Israel, You who have been carried by Me from birth And have been carried from the womb" - Here, God explicitly identifies His people by name: "house of Jacob" and "the remnant of Israel. Since the false gods represented by idols had to be carried from place to place by people or animals, they were, in effect, 'burdens" to the people who worshipped them. By contrast, the LORD GOD (YHWH), affirms his perspective of Israel as one unified people who have been "carried" by Him since their birth. He not only brought them from the "womb" into this world, but was with them as they grew. They are one people who belong to God as His possession, as opposed to being mere citizens of separate worldly kingdoms.
APPLICATION 1: The OT Jews belonged to God (YHWH) as His possession, as opposed to being mere citizens of various worldly kingdoms. The people Israel were created by God from the womb (bondage in Egypt) and raised by Him as a nation. In the same way, NT Christians are citizens of heaven regardless of their country of citizenship.
v. 4: "Even to your old age I will be the same, And even to your graying years I will carry you! I have done it, and I will bear you; And I will carry you and I will save you." - Even human parents cut their children loose, leaving them to care for themselves and their own families. But the process of God's supernatural care described here is long term, over centuries, even millennia. The term "I will save you" has a double meaning: for the remnant, the exiles, it meant when they could expect to be delivered from the Babylonian captivity in the foreseeable future; but in the eternal context, it pointed to a Messiah King, the Christ, who would ultimately redeem them from the penalty of death.
v. 5: "To whom would you liken Me And make Me equal, and compare Me, That we would be alike?" - This echoes Isa. 40:18 from last week when we concluded that because the LORD GOD (YHWH) is one-of-a-kind and without equal, He cannot be compared to anything or anybody.
He is the one true and living God who is eternal and un-created. And any attempt to compare God to any likeness or image constitutes blasphemy.
APPLICATION 2: Since God is one-of-a-kind and without equal, He cannot be compared to anything or anybody. He is the one true and living God who is eternal and un-created. And any attempt to compare God to any likeness or image constitutes blasphemy.
v. 6: "Those who lavish gold from the bag And weigh silver on the scale, Hire a goldsmith, and he makes it into a god; They bow down, indeed they worship it." - This verse and the next are designed as a mockery that demonstrates the complete absurdity of believing in powerless idols. Go ahead and put it to the test: First, someone would need to spend good money to buy the requisite amount of precious metals (gold or silver) to make the idol; second, they would be required to spend even more money to hire a goldsmith who would then mold or shape the metal into something that fit their human-inspired ideas of what a god should look like; and third, they would bow down and worship something they had in fact created themselves, not vice-versa. Do see the flaw in this?
v. 7: "They lift it on the shoulder, carry it, And set it in its place, and it stands there. It does not move from its place. Though one may shout to it, it cannot answer; It cannot save him from his distress." - So, they pay the goldsmith, heft the idol onto their shoulder, take it home, then put it in it's niche, and what does it do? Nothing. They scream, they shout, they stamp their feet and raise an uproar, but still, nothing happens. It's because nothing is all it's capable of doing; and nothing is what all idols naturally do. What the prophet wanted the exiles to see is the utter ridiculousness of thinking that a powerless, inanimate, man-made object could somehow deliver them from captivity.
APPLICATION 3: All idols are capable of doing is nothing. Nothing is what idols naturally do. Idols are simply inanimate objects created by humans that are totally powerless to save or reassure someone. The fallacy of idols is how can anything conceived by human thought and made by human hands offer anyone spiritual fulfillment? This would likewise apply to modern idols like material possessions, hobbies, and entertainment.
Read Isa. 46:8-11 - REMEMBER THIS, MY PLAN WILL BE ESTABLISHED
8 "Remember this, and be assured; Recall it to mind, you wrongdoers. 9 Remember the former things long past, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, 10 Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, 'My plan will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure'; 11 Calling a bird of prey from the east, The man of My purpose from a distant country. Truly I have spoken; truly I will bring it to pass. I have planned it, I will certainly do it.
v. 8: ""Remember this, and be assured; Recall it to mind, you wrongdoers." - The commands, "Remember, Recall" mark a transition from remembering what happened in the past to a call for action to believe-in and trust the One True God right now. It directly points at those exiles who are wavering-I.e., "you wrongdoers"-between putting their faith and trust in YHWH, the God of their fathers, or in the false gods represented by the idols of their captors. Today, we'd term them as 'wishy-washy,' unwilling to commit one way or the other. Now, having been shown the evidence, the prophet is calling them to make a decision-the only right decision-and to step-out in faith.
APPLICATION 4: People of weak faith can be tempted to worship idols because they don't require you to change. Unlike the one true God (YHWH), idols don't require you to live a life in obedience to well-defined moral standards. And unlike God, idols can't punish you for disobedience. But on the other hand, idols can't bless or protect you in this life or save you for the next life.
v. 9: "Remember the former things long past, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me," - Continuing with the command "Remember," God now presses these doubting exiles to think back on their earliest history-"former things long past"-, even to the creation of the world itself. It would lead them to the inescapable conclusion that the existence of Israel and every nation down through history could only be attributed to one indisputable fact: "For I am God, and there is no other." We could say there is no alternative explanation: that no humans, no idols, nor anything else can be given any credit for all of these undisputed facts in history. This is the reality that these wavering exiles need to believe and act on-what you might call a 'slam dunk.'
APPLICATION 5: There are no alternatives to the LORD GOD (YHWH). The revelation of God to humanity in the Bible makes it perfectly clear that any other god or deity other than the one true and living God and Creator is completely false. This is also true of various modern religious cults that have attempted to alter or add to God's revelation.
v. 10a: "Declaring the end from the beginning" - This is super-prophecy: a 'done-deal' from beginning to end that's based on God's sovereign authority.
v. 10b: "And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, 'My plan will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure';" - The phrase "things which have not been done," is a reference to unfulfilled prophecy. This reminds the exiles in general and the wavering wrongdoers specifically that nothing-not human powers, not fake idols, nor anything else in this world can alter the accomplishment of God's plans-they are already facts in history. And they will all be fulfilled according God's "good pleasure," that is, according to His timing and His purposes.
v. 11: "Calling a bird of prey from the east, The man of My purpose from a distant country. Truly I have spoken; truly I will bring it to pass. I have planned it, I will certainly do it." - The "bird of prey from the east" and "a distant country" is a direct reference to Cyrus, King of the Medo-Persian Empire, which bordered Babylon to the east and southeast. The emblem depicted atop King Cyrus's battle standard was a golden eagle with outspread wings, i.e., "a bird of prey from the east." Cyrus would ultimately complete the conquest of Babylon in 537 B.C., which exactly coincided with the 70-year prophecy of Dan. 9:1-2.
APPLICATION 6: Nothing can prevent or alter the completion of God's plans. Since God is sovereign and in control of all aspects of human history, there is no human intervention nor power that is capable of delaying, altering, or in any way preventing the completion of God's plans. God's plans were set in motion-predestined-before the foundation of the earth.
Read Isa. 46:12-13 - MY SALVATION WILL NOT DELAY
12 "Listen to Me, you stubborn-minded, Who are far from righteousness. 13 I bring near My righteousness, it is not far off; And My salvation will not delay. And I will grant salvation in Zion,
And My glory for Israel.
v. 12: "Listen to Me, you stubborn-minded, Who are far from righteousness" - This verse and the next confirm the principle that God's mercy extends even to those who are pig-headed enough to resist His grace. The emphatic phrase employed by the prophet here, "Listen to me, you stubborn-minded," imparts the sense of an angry father who's almost at the point of taking his belt to a defiant child. God has proven that He is faithful, and has gone as far to predict the exiles' rescue from captivity in the foreseeable future. So, how can they still doubt him, not believe Him? Is their understanding that dark?
v. 13: "I bring near My righteousness, it is not far off; And My salvation will not delay. And I will grant salvation in Zion, And My glory for Israel" - This is an amazing verse. It tells us that God does not need His people's faith in order to carry His plan forward. In spite of their stubbornness, He will keep His promises to them for reasons derived from His own nature and sovereign purposes. Thus, deliverance would proceed on God's timetable and would come at exactly the right time. The "salvation" in this context meant being recued from captivity and it would be centered on "Zion," the mount upon which Jerusalem had stood before the city was destroyed. While the people would be freed from their captors, the "salvation" would occur in Jerusalem where God's presence would once again be manifested among His people Israel.
APPLICATION 7: The completion of God's plans is never dependent on the faith of the people He saves. It's an established truth that God even extends His mercy to people who resist His grace. Because God never breaks a promise, He does not need His people's faith in order to carry His plan forward. As Christians, we must always remember that God chose us, not vice-versa. As Paul later explained this mystery, "For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified" (Rom. 8:29-30).
