false worship: a feast of ashes

He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?”

Isaiah 44:20

Isaiah 44:9-20 is all about the delusions and lies that come from worshiping idols. We are easily deceived into seeking from anything other than God what only God can provide. But God confronts idolatrous hearts. And in this passage He does so with a practical, almost comical, logic that points out the outlandish things we do, the illogical extremes our hearts go to, in the pursuit of false worship.

The four part case God presents to confront idolatry goes like this:

1.  Idol-making and idol worship lead to nothing. Idolaters will ultimately answer to God anyway (Isaiah 44:9-11).

2.  Idol-makers take what is natural and falsely convince themselves it is supernatural. They use tools to cut wood, carve idols of their own design, then deem the outcome “gods” (Isaiah 44:12-14), which makes absolutely no logical sense at all!

3.  The same cedar wood that is carved into a “god” is also burnt for fuel, bakes bread, and warms the idolater. A natural thing provided by the true God (wood) is falsely exalted by virtue of extreme human effort and its natural design (fire, fuel, food preparation) is rejected in favor of replacing it with a delusion (Isaiah 44:15-19).

4.  The end of the idol is destruction. It still has its natural ability to burn! God will burn our wood-carved idols to ash… (Isaiah 44:20) showing us what they really are! 

God’s point is this: Idol-making is irrational and stupid. It is a kind of crazy denial of reality. It attempts to replace the Creator with His creation. It relies on lots of human effort. We work hard at rejecting God and making our idols. And when they disappoint us (and they always will because THEY ARE WOOD FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!) we fall hard. Delusions are dangerous. False worship delusions are eternally consequential and lead to judgment and destruction. 

Lord,

I’ve never taken a chisel to wood to make my idols, but I have still indeed made plenty of them! I have suffered when I’ve worshiped this world’s stuff instead of You. Draw my heart to reject a false feast of ashes, to want You more than comfort, more than worldly concerns, more than thinking a career provides what I need, more than the acclaim of people!

Amen