Page 93 - Isaiah Student Worktext

V. 3-5 Like the illustration of Jesus as the Living Water, God will pour His water on the thirsty. He will
pour His Spirit on the descendants of Israel. As a result, they will flourish and spring up.

Then, instead of being ashamed to be called the people of Israel, they will proclaim it themselves. They
will be ‘competing’ to outdo one another in their proclamation that they belong to the Lord, God of
Jacob and Israel.

V. 6-8 God begins to challenge the idols, reminiscent of Elijah’s challenge to the prophets of Baal. God
is the First and the Last Revelation 22: 13. There is no other God besides Him. There is none who can
proclaim that they have created and none who can speak of the things that will come.

Because God is the One True God, we need not have fear.

So, God declares that the real power is knowing what has not yet happened.

‘Events of history continually stun us, but nothing stuns God’.

V. 9-11 God now begins something bordering on ‘ridicule’ of the idols and their makers. Again, it
reminds of Elijah’s taunting of the prophets of Baal. 1 Kings 18: 25-27

Those who make useless images, who shape molds of things that will profit nothing, will all be brought
to shame.

V. 12 A blacksmith working with tongs in the fire and pounding the molten metal into shape with his
strength gains nothing. He still tires, he still gets hungry and thirsty.

V. 13-17 This section speaks of a craftsman who is making a wooden idol. He carefully measures, he
searches for just the right tree, and even plants trees so that the supply won’t run out…because the idol
will eventually have to be remade. Trees cannot grow without God’s contribution of sunshine, rain, etc.
God is involved in all things.

He selects a part of the log for the idol, but the rest of it is used for fuel.

I’ve heard sculptors who are asked how they carved a statue of, for example, a man. He says that he
simply cuts away everything that doesn’t look like a man.

Once everything that doesn’t look like his false god is cut away, the craftsman instantly falls down to
worship it. One minute it was a tree growing in the ground, the next, half is burnt and half becomes an
object of worship, and he is asking the very thing that he crafted to deliver him.

V. 18-20 We will become like what we worship. These people worship wooden or metal idols that could
neither see nor hear nor move…their own eyes and ears and activity will become useless to them. Their
worship is useless and there is no salvation in it.

V. 21-23 Despite the repeated failures of the people of Israel, despite the repeated failures of all of us,
God makes this promise: return to Him and He will blot out the sins of our lives. No matter how small or
great, they will be swept away if we return to the One True God.

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