Let’s make God in our own image? How idol hands are the devil’s workshop (Isaiah 43:21–44:23)

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“The people whom I formed for Myself Will declare My praise. Yet you have not called on Me, O Jacob; But you have become weary of Me, O Israel. You have not brought to Me the sheep of your burnt offerings, Nor have you honored Me with your sacrifices. I have not burdened you with offerings, Nor wearied you with incense.”

Isaiah 43:21–23 NASB

In this parallel passage to the Torah reading ויקרא Vayikra (“and He called,” Lev. 1:1–6:7), Isaiah was speaking here after the destruction Jerusalem and the holy Mishkan¹Hebrew for “dwelling place,” i.e., the Tabernacle/Temple. by the Babylonians. Isaiah was writing to a people who were far, far away from home. They were not able to bring any sort of offerings to God’s temple. What could they do? They were not able to bring any sort of offerings, but what could they do in this situation?

What the Babylonian exiles experienced is similar to what we read about in the The book of Hebrews, when the author says that “these are things which are fading away and are about to disappear” (Heb. 8:13). The Letter to the Hebrews was written in the mid- to late 60s A.D. What happened a few years after this letter was written? In A.D. 70, an oppressive power — this time, Rome — again came in and destroyed Jerusalem, and again destroyed the Temple.

The Jewish people who survived the Roman reconquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple had to ask themselves the same question the Babylonian exiles asked themselves: How do we worship God, bring offerings without the Temple?

Hebrews talks about the items and rituals of the Temple being “shadows” (Colossians 2:17; Hebrews 8:5; 10:1). Shadows of what?

So the people were sitting in exile — no Temple, no Tabernacle. Yet, the LORD asks through the prophet Isaiah, “Where are your offerings?”

At that point, God has basically given them a timeout in exile because of their lack of regard for other people and their Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer — their Rock. They don’t have to bring their offerings to the Temple anymore because they can’t physically go through the ceremonies related to the Mishkan to the temple anymore, but yet, they are still weary of God.

The same thing that happened in the hearts of the people leading up to the Babylonian exile and during the exile is the same thing that happened during the end of the Second Temple period. The hearts of the people were not engaged in what was going on in the Temple.

The “burden” of the Temple is no longer there, yet they were still tired of God. They still did not understand the purpose of the offerings. The sacrifices were not about the forgiveness of sins. God asked for them so He could find the people who are willing to obey and be transformed by Him so that He can live with them.

Lets go over the different offerings and look at who was allowed to eat them and why:

• עוֹלָה ’olah (“burnt offering”; Lev. 1:1–17; 6:8–13): The altar consumes it.
• שְׁלָמִים shelamim (“peace offering”; Lev. 3:1–17; 7:11–36): Priests and the person bringing the offering eat it together.
• חַטָּאת khattat (“sin offering”; Lev. 4:1–5:13; 6:24–30; Num. 15:1–24): Priests eat some of it, the person bringing it does not eat it.

The priests are representatives of God on earth. They are also servants of God. The priests ministered in the Temple, taking the gifts back and forth between God and His people. They work together with the people.

When our original parents ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad, they were trespassing on God’s territory. God had given them the entire garden to live in, and He only kept one thing off limits — that tree. He had given mankind dominion over the entire garden, except for one tree. Adam and Even went to God’s tree, trespassing into His domain and eating what was not theirs.

David sang that he wanted to dwell in the house of God forever (Psalm 27:4–6; 23:6). But is the Temple where the king is allowed to work and live? No, but that is where David’s heart was, even if he could not physically hang out there.

What would Jesus do? Deal with your interpersonal problems before: ‘Heaven and I have an understanding’

Yeshua warned us that we first need to deal with the sin or transgression that has separated us from our brother, our neighbor.

“Therefore if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering.”

Matthew 5:23–24 NASB; see also Matthew 18:15–20

Once that is sorted out, then we are ready to give ourselves to God and share His peace with others (shelamim offering). Because when you are completely “burned up,” when there is nothing to hide anymore (’olah offering), you’re right back in the garden, in transparent communion with God.

So in the process reconciling with each other, they are also getting closer to God.

Many have noted that the Bible starts out in a garden (Genesis 2:8) and ends in a garden (Revelation 22). Gardens are the bookends of history. Both at the beginning and at the Day of the LORD, the Tree of Life is in the garden of God.

The Cohenim, the priests, were supposed to be a cut above the rest. They were supposed to lead by example. They were supposed to be the teachers of Israel. Yet, a number did not perform this duty among the people. This is why the prophets were so critical of the priests.

The priesthood were leaving the people ignorant of who God was, and the priests did nothing as the people were lead astray. They were the ones that knew the words of God best and were supposed to be teaching the people His word, yet they not only remained silent but even joined in and led them in worship of false gods.

We see this going all the way back to Moses’ grandson, who built a shrine, supposedly dedicated to God in the northern part of Israel. But even throughout Israel’s history, we find evidence in archaeological excavations that the people of Israel had their own shrines built in various places, styled based on the blueprint of the temple in Jerusalem.

God after man’s own heart

But that’s the issue was God instructed the people not to worship Him the way that the nations worship their gods, because you’re then lowering the Creator of Heaven and Earth to our level and molding the creator of Heaven and Earth on our own terms.

“You have bought Me not sweet cane with money, Nor have you filled Me with the fat of your sacrifices; Rather you have burdened Me with your sins, You have wearied Me with your iniquities.”

Isaiah 43:24 NASB

The people were no longer “burdened” by the mechanics of Temple worship, but they were now burdening God with their sins, transgressions and iniquities. They had missed the entire purpose of the Temple.

The Temple and its services were to transform the people into something different that would be fit to approach the Presence of God. The people were supposed to go there to get rid of the burden of their sins, but instead they thought that the practices that were supposed to help them discard their burdens were the actual burden.

The point of going to the Temple and performing the offerings was to bring oneself closer to God and further away from one’s sins.

Pattern for the New Covenant

“I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake, And I will not remember your sins. Put Me in remembrance, let us argue our case together; State your cause, that you may be proved right.”

Isaiah 43:25–26 NASB

And that sounds a lot like the New Covenant with the house of Israel. In Jeremiah 31:31–34; Ezekiel 36:25–26, God promised to give the people a new heart and that He would no longer remember their sins, transgressions and iniquities. But that required an intimate knowledge of God, not merely an intellectual knowledge of God but a deep abiding desire for the presence of God. But God can only offload our sins, transgressions and iniquities, if we are willing to give them over.

God didn’t put His tabernacle or His Temple in the midst of the people so the people could wave hello and walk on by as they went on their way to do their own pleasure. This was about the God of Heaven and Earth traveling with His people and being in the middle of their community, being an integral part of the community.

God doesn’t want His people to wallow in their sin. He doesn’t dwell in the midst of people who are what intent to go off into sins, transgressions, iniquities. He doesn’t want His people to break their backs with the burden of their sins. He wants offload them.

There are many people out there who play church on the weekend but live like mobsters during the week. But that is not the example God has given us.

The apostle Paul tells us that we are a temple of the Spirit of God (1Cor. 3:16; 6:19), meaning that we move through life with the dwelling place of God inside us.

‘Who will set me free from the body of this death?’: Isaiah and Paul preach the gospel of the Kingdom

Romans 7–8 is a parallel passage to Isaiah 43:21–44:23. The Apostle Paul teaching us what it means to be so far away from God. Modern 12 step programs also lean strongly on this idea that the only way to really get closer to God, to get closer to wholeness is to first reach the realization of one’s moral bankruptcy. When John the Baptist and Yeshua called out “repent for the kingdom of God is at hand” this is what they were calling the people to do. Understand that there was something really wrong, not only in society but in themselves. They had really fallen to the point of being so far away from God.

Not only were they far away from God but they thought any distance between themselves and God was somehow God’s doing.

Now that there was no temple, no animal sacrifices, no annual pilgrimages three times a year, and living in exile, yet somehow we are weary of God. If you’re weary of God, may not realize that you’ve gone away from God at all. You may find yourself thinking during services, “Good grief, when will this end? Because I want to get back to doing my own thing.” When you see what God’s standard is and who God really is, you realize that’s where you want to be, but wow, we are so far away from that standard.

Fall and rise of Israel: From cloud to calf to cloud

“Thus says the LORD who made you And formed you from the womb, who will help you, ‘Do not fear, O Jacob My servant; And you Jeshurun whom I have chosen.”

Isaiah 44:2 NASB

Yeshurun is a nickname for the people of Israel we first see recorded in Deuteronomy. It means “the upright one.” Those descendants of Israel didn’t feel like they were living up to this, and they hadn’t been. From the crossing of the Red Sea to Mt. Sinai and then the Golden Calf, we see a descent from righteousness to debauchery. But after the Golden Calf, we see the people cooperating together to build God a place to live among them and then at the end of the book of Exodus, He moves into His home among His people.

This is the promise that that is being put forward to HIs people that are far away from being the Jeshurun, which is how God sees them, even if they can’t see themselves that way. He is always seeing our potential and encouraging us to live up to that potential.

Although when we look to God’s standard and compare it to ourselves, we may say to ourselves like the Apostle Paul did in Romans 7:

Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?

Romans 7:24 NASB

But Paul doesn’t leave it there. He goes on to say in the very few verses:

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin. Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.

Romans 7:25–8:2 NASB

Romans 8 goes on to talk about the Spirit of God’s being poured out on His people to quench their true thirst. But we have to realize we are thirsty first. We have to realize how dried up we are before we can appreciate the Living Water of the Holy Spirit.

You didn’t give the tree ‘living water,’ so why are you worshipping it?

Isaiah 44:9–23 is a chiasm²A chiasm, named after the Greek letter X chi/kai, also called an אתבש ATBaSh in Hebrew, is a literary device that’s common in the Bible for directing readers to a central point of a passage. A common chiasmus involves the pairing of concepts at the beginning and end, then moving to second and penultimate, and so on until one thought in the middle isn’t repeated, and that is the crux, the centerpoint of the chiasm., and a very interesting one.³John Goldingay, Isaiah, Understanding the Bible Commentary Series, (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2012), 254.

• The redeemer’s exhortation to the witnesses (Isa. 44:6–8)
  • The indictment: image-makers’ folly, images’ uselessness (Isa. 44:9–11)
    • Image-making, hunger, and thirst (Isa. 44:12)
      • Carpenter and wood: execution (Isa. 44:13)
        • Carpenter and wood: preparation (Isa. 44:14) [rain makes trees grow]
      • Carpenter and wood: execution (Isa. 44:15)
    • Image-making, feasting (Isa. 44:6–17)
  • The indictment: image-makers’ folly, images’ uselessness (Isa. 44:18–20)
• The redeemer’s exhortation to the servant and the cosmos (Isa. 44:21–23)

The chiasmus starts with talking about how silly it is to make an idol for oneself from the things that God created then to worship the work of your hands, rather than the one who made your hands.

Isaiah 44:14 is the central verse of the chiasm and the key phrase in this verse is “the rain makes it grow.”

“Surely he cuts cedars for himself, and takes a cypress or an oak and raises it for himself among the trees of the forest. He plants a fir, and the rain makes it grow.”

Isaiah 44:14 NASB

This person is making an idol out of a tree even though the tree doesn’t belong to him. Even though he planted the tree, the man isn’t the one who makes it grow. The seed itself already has the “software” built into it to become a tree.

We live in an era with artificial irrigation and may believe that we are the masters of agriculture, but what happens when we run out of water for irrigation? Well, suddenly, we’re not the masters of our agriculture anymore. We need the rain to fall into our reservoirs and aquifers to supply the water for our irrigation. We realize that we are still at the mercy of the Creator of Heaven and Earth.

And when the rain comes down and nourish the seeds, we have to acknowledge that God is the one who programmed those seeds to become whatever they are going to become.

Do we understand what is going on? Or do we decide to make an idol out of something that God has made, ignoring Him in the process to lean into our own desires?

We must understand there is a domain that is ours and a domain that is not ours. And we need to respect those boundaries.

When our relationship with God is damaged, we have to listen and obey when God tells us where we went wrong and how to repent and make it right. That is, if our goal is fellowship with Him.

The whole goal of the Dwelling Place’s being with mankind, whether it was in the Garden of Eden, the Mishkan, the Messiah, or in the world made new. That is God’s goal through time — to live with us.

Summary: Tammy