I hope that you have been well. My family and I were away at a conference in the US for the past week and took a week away from posting these lessons to catch our breath. I hope that you enjoyed the journey through the Book of Romans. Today we will ask a question that we all need to consider: who or what is our Idol? This may seem like a weird question to ask in 2026, but I fear that this question is maybe more relevant today than it was in Isaiah 44, about 700 years before Jesus was born. We will explore this, and I hope that we can identify and get rid of any idols that are obstacles to us truly relying and trusting in God.
Verses 1-8: God lays out that He is the Supreme God. It was He that chose Israel (verse 1), made her and formed her (by the way, read Ezekiel 16 if you ever wonder how God feels about Israel), like a child is formed in the womb. God had blessed her and blessed her offspring (verse 3). For a long time, the people loved to be called by the Lord’s name, and even in their idolatry, they did so.
In verse 6, God says that He is their King; He is their Redeemer. He shows that He is the Almighty One, the First and the Last, and clearly stated that there are no other gods; none! God finishes the opening verses by stating that He is the Rock, and there is no other. As an aside, Jesus is also called the Rock; He identifies Himself as the Rock, and in 1 Corinthians 10:4, He is identified by Paul as the Rock that followed the Israelites in the wilderness and provided water.
Verses 9-20: God launches into a very sarcastic conversation with the people of Israel and, in so doing, shows the utter stupidity of idolatry. He deals with two kinds of idols: those made of metal (verse 12), and then ones made of wood (verses 13-17). God is drawing a contrast here between Him and the idols they fall down to. He is the Creator, the Maker, the Sustainer, and the Rock; steadfast, sure and strong. In contrast, they worship an idol they have to make. He has established that the one doing the making is the actual god.
Nonetheless, the blacksmith takes metal, heats it, and beats it into shape. He cannot stop once he has begun to make the image, so he grows weary; he does not even stop to drink (verse 12), and he does not even eat until the image is fully formed. Notice that the God of Heaven did not grow tired, did not get thirsty nor hungry when making and sustaining Israel. The craftsman, the woodworker, cuts down a cedar (verse 14); he has to mark it and measure it before he cuts it and shapes it into the image of a man.
In verse 14, God throws out a dig at the craftsman, mentioning that the man had to plant the very tree he is worshipping and further had to rely on God to even send the rain to nourish the tree. Yet, he refuses to acknowledge God. In verses 15-17, he cuts down the tree and divides it into a section to burn and make food, warm himself, and then the rest he forms into a god and falls down to it and asks, ‘Deliver me.’
There is such spiritual blindness in these Israelites that they cannot see how evil and how ridiculous this is. But even in their sin, God is gracious, and in verse 21-28, He reminds them that they are loved, they will be forgiven, and that Judah will be restored.
God then gives a closer fulfillment of prophecy to confirm a promise that is further in the future. In verse 28, He mentioned Cyrus. This is the Cyrus that invades Babylon about 200 years later, and it is recorded for us in Daniel 5. In October 539 BC, we have a non-biblical historical record from the Persian Empire that Cyrus the Great defeated the Babylonian army at the Battle of Opis and entered the city basically without resistance. Then, once he spoke to Daniel, he sent the Jews back to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. This is a short-term fulfillment of a far future promise; Judah will be restored, and Israel redeemed.
There are many who tell us that God is done with Israel. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus, a Jewish King, will come to rule from Jerusalem one day, and Israel will be the center of the political and religious world for a long, long time.
Now, to us. What idols do we have? Spouses, children, homes, money, fame, comfort, security, health, and on and on we can go. A lot of us Christians may have some things that are more important than God – His way, His wants for us, His plans for us – and we would rather be complacent than step out in faith and lose these things.
The Laodicean church was rich externally, but poor spiritually. Being rich had become their god; yet if one went to a service there on any given day, you would have heard the Gospel, heard that Jesus loves you, heard from one of Paul’s writings, and maybe seen a baptism, yet they were far from God.
Maybe you are your biggest idol; you are more important than God; you are first in your life and not Him. We need to be clearing and tearing down the idols in our lives; I know I had to do some tearing down; maybe you do too!
Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario