The Lord demands that we acknowledge the truth

Sermon for Midweek of Easter 4

Isaiah 46:1-13

Throughout Jesus’ state of humiliation, from His conception to His burial in the tomb, God revealed to us His humility and His meekness. But meekness and humility are not His only traits. In Isaiah 46, the LORD “boasts” about Himself, in a sense. We usually think of boasting as something negative, as a character flaw. But it’s not a flaw when our God does it. When He speaks of His greatness, He’s simply speaking the truth, and, at times, defending the truth against those who don’t wish to accept it, against those who worship false gods. Such is the case in this short chapter, where the Lord demands that we acknowledge the truth of His greatness in actually doing something to deliver His people, unlike the false gods of the nations.

We meet two of the false gods in the Babylonians here in Isaiah 46: Bel and Nebo. Bel was one of their important gods. You see his name reflected in “Belshazzar,” the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar who was eventually overthrown by the Cyrus the Persian. He’s also known as Marduk, as he’s referred to in the book of Jeremiah. Bel was their sky-god and the supreme ruler of the gods. Nebo or Nabu was another Babylonian god, the son of Bel and the god of wisdom. You see his name reflected in the name Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king who destroyed Jerusalem and took the Jews captive in the first place. What does Isaiah say about Bel and Nebo?

Bel bows down, Nebo stoops; Their idols were on the beasts and on the cattle. Your carriages were heavily loaded, A burden to the weary beast. They stoop, they bow down together; They could not deliver the burden, But have themselves gone into captivity.

Normally it’s people bowing or stooping down before their god. But, in utter shame and disgrace, the statues of Bel and Nebo would be the ones “bowing down” to the Lord, because, when the Persians came in and conquered Babylon, they took the Babylonian statues of their gods and laid them face down on a cart pulled by animals through the city, as a display of shame and disgrace. The Babylonians had hoped in their gods to deliver them and carry them to victory, but instead their gods were carried away into captivity, as the Lord predicts in these verses.

“Listen to Me, O house of Jacob, And all the remnant of the house of Israel, Who have been upheld by Me from birth, Who have been carried from the womb: Even to your old age, I am He, And even to gray hairs I will carry you! I have made, and I will bear; Even I will carry, and will deliver you.

Now the Lord reminds what’s left of the people of Israel who He is, who the true God is. He reminds them: I have upheld you from birth. I gave birth to you, I’ve carried you since that time, and I will still be the one carrying you in your old age. We can certainly apply those beautiful words to how God carries individual believers in His fatherly arms. But these words are spoken here directly to the nation of Israel as a whole, as God’s “son” to whom He had “given birth” by choosing Jacob and making him in a great nation, how He preserved that nation through slavery in Egypt, through the conquest of Canaan, through all the bitter enemies who had threatened them and through all the wretched kings who had ruled over them. The Lord was the One who had carried them, as on eagles’ wings, and He promises to keep doing it “even to gray hairs.”

And He did, returning them safely to the land of Canaan, delivering and carrying them through still more hardships in the coming centuries, all the way up to the coming of Christ. At that point the Israel that has God’s promise of continual deliverance is not a biological nation, but a spiritual one. It’s to His Holy Christian Church that this promise now applies, to whom God speaks, “Even to gray hairs I will carry you! I have made you, I will carry you, I will deliver you.”

“To whom will you liken Me, and make Me equal And compare Me, that we should be alike? They lavish gold out of the bag, And weigh silver on the scales; They hire a goldsmith, and he makes it a god; They prostrate themselves, yes, they worship. They bear it on the shoulder, they carry it And set it in its place, and it stands; From its place it shall not move. Though one cries out to it, yet it cannot answer Nor save him out of his trouble.

Here’s another example of the gods being carried instead of being able to carry. People carry around a bag of gold. They hire someone to make a god out of it. Then they carry around their god on their should, set it up, and leave it there. It doesn’t move. It can’t move. It doesn’t lift a finger to help them, even if they cry out to it really loud. But no one has carried the Lord around. He is the one who carries His people. And He does move to deliver them. He acted in history to save Israel from Babylon. But more than that, He acted in history to descend to the earth in the Person of His Son, whose every action was the movement of God to save sinful mankind. Seriously, to whom will you liken God? To whom can anyone compare Him?

“Remember this, and show yourselves men; Recall to mind, O you transgressors. Remember the former things of old, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done, Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure,’ Calling a bird of prey from the east, The man who executes My counsel, from a far country. Indeed I have spoken it; I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it; I will also do it.

Acknowledge the truth, God says to His people, especially to those who had been denying it. He is the only true God, the only God who actually speaks to His people, who acts for His people, who delivers His people, and who told them ahead of time that He would do it, from the deliverance from Egypt, which He had told Abraham about ahead of time, to the conquest of Canaan, to the captivity in Babylon, to the return from captivity (which God alludes to here again as He calls His “bird of prey from the East,” that is, Cyrus, to defeat the Babylonians), to the birth, life, death, and resurrection of the Christ. What is it that separates Christianity from every other religion? It’s the fact that Christianity is based on truth, that which agrees with reality. It’s a historical religion, with historical writings, and with a God who has acted in human history and who even became a part of human history.

“Listen to Me, you stubborn-hearted, Who are far from righteousness: I bring My righteousness near, it shall not be far off; My salvation shall not delay. And I will place salvation in Zion, For Israel My glory.

Listen to Me, God says. He demands that unbelievers set aside their stubbornness and acknowledge the truth. He is the true God. And interacts with His people and comes to their aid. He placed salvation—His Son, the Christ—in Zion. And now He places His salvation in the spiritual Zion, in the Church that preaches the Gospel of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Here in His Church, here through His Son, God offers His salvation, to you, and to all! That’s the truth! Amen.