The chapter ends with a “challenge” to the false gods of Isaiah’s day. Irony, sarcasm, from Almighty God, the Only True God!
Read with me God’s “invitation” to these (dead) man-made idols: “Produce your cause, saith the LORD; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob. Let them(the false idols, gods) bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen: let them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come. Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together.” Isaiah 41:21-23
Can an idol foretell the future? Our God can!
Can an idol interpret the past? Our God can!
You false gods/goddesses … DO SOMETHING … either good or evil! Show us your hands! Create something! Destroy something!
Yet they remain dormant!
While our God is active, still on the Throne … doing things every day!
Then the Lord gets even bolder! Here is His Verdict on those idols … “Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of nought: an abomination is he that chooseth you.” Wow, verse 24.
Paul repeats this truth in 1 Corinthians 8:4 … “We know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one.”
Note how God calls (verse 24) idol worshippers “abominable!” Something disgusting, sickening!
Then our chapter ends with God giving an illustration of His Ability (His Omnipotence and Omniscience) to control worldly events. To guide His creation. “I have raised up one from the north, and he shall come: from the rising of the sun shall he call upon my name: and he shall come upon princes as upon morter, and as the potter treadeth clay.” (Verse 25) Speaking of King Cyrus who ultimately defeated the Babylonians and set Israel free. He stomped the Babylonians, in fact! (Prophesied many years in advance, by the way.)
God outperforming the idols!
Foretelling the future!
Arranging (what is now called) world history! And interpreting it properly!
(The very things aforesaid that idols cannot do!)
The Living God, our God!
And the chapter’s last verse … “Behold, they are all vanity; their works are nothing: their molten images are wind and confusion.” Verse 29, back to the worthless idols, mere chunks of (eventually rotting) wood or tainted silver or inferior gold.
Wow!
Our God is (rightly so) a Jealous God indeed!
Beside Him, there is none other!
“For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” Exodus 34:15
I adore Him, don’t you?
— Dr. Mike Bagwell
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