Isaiah [Part 9] - The Essence of Idolatry

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom. We are in chapter 40 of Isaiah. I already did one lesson from chapter 40 of Isaiah, and I suddenly remember there is something very important in chapter 40 that I skipped or just mentioned cursively. So I want to go back and talk about the second half of chapter 40 of Isaiah. I want to also mention that the scholars who think that there are two writers that wrote the book of Isaiah, one before the Exile and one after the Exile, I don't believe that. I believe there's only one writer, and a writer that writes for many years and prophesies for many years and hears from the Lord for many years, his style could change. I know that I write things now that are very different than what I wrote when I was 20 years old. I am 77 years old now, and my style has changed. A lot of things in my life have changed, including my style of writing and my vocabulary. That's normal, and it doesn't mean that there are two Isaiahs.

In chapter 40 of the book of Isaiah, there is what's called a wisdom text. There are wisdom texts in the Bible like the Book of Ecclesiastes, the Book of Proverbs, and there is some wisdom text in Psalms and some wisdom text in the first book of Kings. It means that it deals with the issues of a particular type of writing that has wisdom questions, and we see this in Isaiah chapter 40. I'm going to read the wisdom text from Isaiah chapter 40, verse 12 and on:

That's the wisdom text.

Now, what is interesting in this text is there are questions and there are no answers, and most of the wisdom texts actually are called wisdom texts because they are demanding the reader to come up with the answer. Now, luckily, we have a text that is very parallel to this text in Isaiah, and it's in the Book of Proverbs, chapter 30, and verse 4. I'm going to read:

In other words, if you know who it is, tell us.

Now, it's a very interesting text. Both texts have some common elements, like who has measured the water in his garment, on his hand, the wind, the earth, the dust. There are parallel questions. The interesting element that the Book of Proverbs brings here is that whoever it is, this text is describing the creation, the Creator and his creation, but according to Proverbs, the one who did all these things, who directed the Spirit of the Lord, or as his counselor has taught him, has a son.

It's a very important text to prove to us that from the Old Testament, from a text that is not even widely known by most Christians, we learn that the Creator, who measured the water and the dust of the earth and the heavens with a span, has a son. When I read Isaiah, that is the most Messianic text in the whole Bible. The book of Isaiah has the most Messianic texts in the whole Bible. And then I read Proverbs, and I find out that the Creator who created the earth has a son. And a light lights up in my brain and says, this is an important text. It not only describes the Creator, but it also is possible that in Isaiah, because of all the other Messianic texts like Isaiah 11, and like Isaiah 9, and like Isaiah 7, and like I said, there's many, it could be alluding not only to the Father but to the son.

Why do I say this? Not because I want to invent something that is not written here, but because of the hints that this text gives. Verse 14 of Isaiah 40:

God the Father, did he take counsel with anybody? Yes, he did. Already in the Book of Genesis, in the act of creation, he was talking to somebody, and he said,

And then again, in chapter 11 of the Book of Genesis, he talks to somebody and says,

Again, he is inviting somebody from heaven to go down from heaven down to earth and confuse the languages of the people that built the Tower of Babel in rebellion to God because they didn't want God to control them. They wanted to be free from God.

So that's why I'm repeating here this text from chapter 40 of Isaiah because I kind of skipped it a little bit and didn't give it the right emphasis. And now I want to go and finish chapter 40 of Isaiah, and I hope that what I'm saying is a challenge to you. You go back to Proverbs 30, read verse 4 and 5, and meditate about it because it's important for you to have assurance that our faith in a Divine Son of God, the Messiah, the King of the Jews, is real. And he was prepared from the creation of the world, before the creation of the world. Like the Book of Revelation says, that the Lamb of God was sacrificed in the mind of God, in the will of God, in the plan of God before the creation of the world. Before the sun was, he was. So I hope that helps you.

And verse 15 of chapter 40:

You, my brothers, my sisters, my fellow men, to whom you're going to liken God? What is similar to God, or

Oh yeah, it's a strong text. It's a very strong text. The strength of this text is that the writer, Isaiah, is describing the essence of idolatry. The essence of idolatry is not a superpower that created the heavens and the earth. It's not a Divine being. The essence of idolatry is what we do with our hands. We create our own gods. Idolaters create their own gods. They address the gods with the characters that they fear, with the characters that they can control by money, by power, by wealth. That's an idol. If it is a god that you can control, some Christians do the same thing. There are Christians who are idolaters as well, folks. If you think that you, as a human being, a child of God, can control God by saying, "Thus says, I say, Jesus, heal that man," or something like that, if you think you can control Jesus, if you think you can control the Father or the Holy Spirit, you're on the edge, on the verge of idolatry.

God is in control of everything. And Isaiah, the prophet, repeats that theme over and over and over. He says here in chapter 40, the essence of idolatry is something that you can make with your hands, that you can create from your imagination, that you can think that you can control him. Verse 21:

This aspect of God is something that, for it, I'm repeating and going back to chapter 40 of Isaiah because, much to my regret, Western civilization, with all of its glory and with all of its greatness and with all of its might and nuclear weapons, huge airplanes that circle the earth with nuclear bombs in them that if they dropped them, they would delete much of the population of the world. With all that power, it is nothing compared to the God who created the heavens and the earth. And with a blow of his mouth, the wind from his mouth can delete the whole solar system. The sky that we see would change with one word from God according to this text that we've seen. And that ought to make us all much, much, much more humble, much, much, much more fearful in a good way, not in a bad way, from God and from his power and from his love because his love is so powerful that it can change an arch criminal in a second. And when he gives his heart to God, God can circumcise his heart and change his life and make him into a saint.

Psychology, psychiatry, medicine, science cannot do that. In a second, lives can change when they submit to the Creator, to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. In a second, I've seen it happen. There was a family with two children, a son and a daughter, and a husband that was a world-famous artist, painter, sold paintings in Europe, in the United States. He had agents in Europe, agents in the United States, for thousands of dollars. But he did most of those paintings under the influence of alcohol and drugs. Eleven years, the man wasn't sober, either by day nor by night. His wife became a believer, and we had a Bible study with a group of students from Tel Aviv University. And one night, an Arab brother that was 60 years old, I was at that time in my late 40s, and I was sitting in the front seat, and on the back seat was the wife of this artist, and she began to cry. It was like near 12 o'clock at night. We were driving back after the Bible study, and she began to cry. And she said, "Tomorrow I'm going to the rabbinical court to divorce my husband. I and the children cannot stand that anymore. 11 years he has been drunk and on drugs. Yes, financially we're doing okay, but we don't have a family. And I see the damage that is causing the kids."

Our Arab brother, who was already past his 60th year, said, "You are not going to divorce your husband tomorrow. We are going up to your apartment right now to talk to your husband." She said, "It's no good. He's drunk, he's under the influence of drugs. He is not going to let you in. He may not even be dressed; he may be in his underwear." The Arab brother said, "I don't care, we are going up." So, the wife is behind us, both of us men in the front. We knock on the door, and there is her husband, drunk as it could be. He said, "What do you guys want?" I said, "We want to talk to you." He said, "No, I don't want to talk to you." The Arab brother caught the man by his hand, by his arm, and pushed him into the kitchen. And he said, "Sir, if you don't change and give your life to God tonight, in a few months you'll be found dead in the gutter without a family, without a home, without your children. You will be found drunk and on drugs, dead in the gutter, because your wife is going to divorce you tomorrow." "Aha," he said, "I don't care." The Arab brother told him, "You better care and you better start praying right now for God to save you and to save your family." He said, "I don't pray, I don't know how to pray." So, the Arab brother caught me by the arm, pulled me forward, and said, "Joseph was going to pray and you are going to repeat his words." I started to pray. I didn't finish the first sentence. The man was flat on his face; he fell flat on his face crying his soul out. That was the last time that he drank alcohol and the last time that he took drugs.

He's alive, his wife is alive, his children are alive. He didn't paint for 30 years, didn't touch a brush for 30 years, sold the studio. He had a big studio in a suburb of Tel Aviv and went for rehabilitation in one of the most famous rehabilitation places in the kibbutz, one of the kibbutzim in the North. After a couple of years in rehabilitation, that was paid by the city in which he lived in because they liked his art and they understood the problem, he became the director of the rehabilitation center, became a lecturer in the University of how to rehabilitate alcoholics and drug addicts. And after being the director for more than 20-some years of that center, he retired, and only after he retired, 30 years later, he went back to painting. And you know what he's painting now? He's painting The Lord's Prayer, starting with the clouds in heaven and the bread, Our Daily Bread. And he doesn't make one picture; he makes several pictures of each element. I need to go up North. He promised to give me one of the pictures of the clouds. Fabulous work. Yes, God can change people in a second. Yes, God can do it.

And that's what Isaiah says. We are nothing without him. We are nothing without him. Isaiah, in chapter 40, calls us in verse 26,

In other words, God knows us all. He knows us by our name. He knows us by our number. He knows who we are. He knows our weaknesses. He made us. We don't forget that, folks. This understanding that God made us and loves us and wants us to be happy eternally, not only down here in this earth, in the muck of humanity's mud because of sin and because of alienation from our heavenly father. Yes. Then the writer Isaiah turns to Israel, to Jacob, and says, in verse 27,:

The end of chapter 40, folks. But I am repeating back from chapter 40, verse 27. Who do you think you are, O Jacob, O Israel? You think you hold God by his throat? You think you can control God? That's one of the things about religion. Almost all religions have that secret agenda that they think that they can control God, that they have God in their pocket. No, sir. Not the God of Israel, not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Yeshua Mashiach. He can change us. He can give strength to the weary. He can give wings of eagles to his children to soar in the heavens and do wonders in his name.

Yes, that's Isaiah chapter 40. The next lesson will go forward and talk about God from chapter 41. And it starts with this, and with this, I'll end. The prophet says, "Keep silent before me. Keep silent before me. Shut up. I know what I'm doing," God says. "I control the world. You may think that your government controls the world, but God says, I control the world." With this, I'm telling you Shalom from Jerusalem.