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Isaiah (17)
Man’s Desire to control – Idolatry!
8 Welcome and announcements
!!! *8** Doxology* /Hymn 323: “Into Your presence we come”/
8 Call to worship and Greeting
!!! *8** Hymn no 1:* / “Rejoice, the Lord is King”/
8 Prayer of adoration and Confession of sins
8 Declaration of pardoning
!!! *8** Hymn no 385: ** *“What shall I do my God to love?”
!!! *8** Bible Reading: *New Testament: 1Corinthians 10:6-22 *8** *at verse 21
8 Offering and Dedication
8 Prayer of Intercession
*8** Bible Reading: *Old Testament: / Isaiah 2:6-9; 22 /; *8* at verse 8
!!! *8** Singing: */“These are the facts” (Screen)/
8 Sermon /Autonomous man’s desire to control : idolatry /
!! Introduction
Dear Brother and Sister in the Lord,
Just a quick look once again at the paragraph of Isa 2:6-9.
We hear repeated in these verses the phrase: “their land is full of …” *8** * This tells the story of man who wants to be autonomous.
*8* Man wants to be a law unto himself.
*8* A desire to /know/ his own future: /Superstition.
/*8* A desire to/ secure /his own future/: Money/.
*8** * A desire to/ defend /his own future/: Power./
And lastly, according to our text: *8* A desire to /control/ his own future: /Idols./
If we sum it up, we way say:
• *8** *In his arrogance man wants to cut himself loose from God.
He substitutes God with something else in an effort to become his own god.
• *8* But God will rise up against arrogant man and destroy him and what he put his trust into.
• */8/**/ /*/ Stop trusting in man, who has but a breath in his nostrils.
Of what account is he?// (Isaiah 2:22)/
There is a philosophy as old as Time.
In our day it has been given a name.
This destructive philosophy is called *8* Humanism.
It was only during the period of the Renaissance that it was given its name.
*8* This destructive philosophy makes of man an independent being with supposedly unlimited possibilities within himself that needs to be explored.
Man stands in the centre of his own existence.
*8** * His own reason, his own intellect and his own standard form the pivot of his existence.
What he cannot work out or understand by means of his own reasoning, does not count.
There is no room for the metaphysical, because it cannot be proven by science.
*8* Science is the new yardstick, the new religion, the new god.
Education is seen is the means of liberating man.
Man believes in himself, his potential, his natural goodness, in his perpetual development through science.
By his own development *8** *man does not discover meaning in this world; no, man ascribe meaning to his environment.
In his freedom as human being, he selects what meaning and significance he wants to bestow on certain things, *8* and while doing this he finds freedom.
Anyone standing in his way to find this fulfilment stands in the way of human dignity and human rights.
In his search for human rights and freedom, humanistic *8* man does not want to be bound by laws, at least not God’s law, the law of the Bible, because man is a law unto himself.
He is his own god.
He is in control.
He is autonomous.
*8* Autonomous man wants an autonomous universe: the goal is the independence of all things from God, and from one another.
*8* Sir Francis Bacon writes of the humanistic mind:
“When his negotiations are finished, the universe – the world of things – is in business for itself.
We will shape, experience, and know it at our pleasure – let God be circumspect in His complaints.”
• *8* Paul Kurtz /(“Humanist Manifesto 2000 : A Call for New Planetary Humanism”)/
– *8* We believe “that man is part of nature and that he has emerged as the result of continuous process” [evolution]
– *8** *“Ethics is autonomous and situational, needing no theological or ideological sanction”
Our study of Isaiah 2:6-8 reveals something of this age-old rebellion against everything God has made and given.
It tells of man who wanted to be his own god.
Man wants to /shape/ his life and destiny.
He wants to be in control as he wants to get rid of God and place himself in God’s place.
*8* In Isa 2:8 we read:
Their land is full of idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their fingers have made.
(Isaiah 2:8)
Further down the book of Isaiah, in more than one chapter, the prophet comes back to this theme.
He compares these idols with God.
For instance, in Chapter 40:19-20 and 41:22
*8* As for an idol, a craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and fashions silver chains for it.
A man too poor to present such an offering selects wood that will not rot.
He looks for a skilled craftsman to set up an idol that will not topple.
(Isaiah 40:19-20)
*8* “Bring in your idols to tell us what is going to happen.
Tell us what the former things were, so that we may consider them and know their final outcome.
Or declare to us the things to come, tell us what the future holds, so we may know that you are gods.
Do something, whether good or bad, so that we will be dismayed and filled with fear.
But you are less than nothing and your works are utterly worthless; he who chooses you is detestable.
(Isaiah 41:22-24)
!!! *The sin of Idolatry *
Idolatry is forbidden by the Law of God.
Exodus 20:2
*8* “You shall have no other gods before me.
\\ “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.
(Exodus 20:3-4)
In our New Testament Scripture of this morning we are warned not to be like some of the fathers of the Old Testament who were idolaters.
In that paragraph, in 1Corinthians 7-10 we are told of some episodes in its history when God struck down thousands of Israelites because of their idolatry.
On the surface, what they did, some of these episodes do not look like idolatry.
!!! *8** Localisation and manipulation*
The first instance is idolatry in its purest form.
It’s easy to define.
Moses was on the mountain in the presence of God, receiving the Ten Commandments.
He stayed away, and they felt themselves lost in the desert without their leader and without God.
Very soon they forgot about the commandment not make any idol for themselves.
So went to Aaron with the request:
*8* “Come, make us gods who will go before us.
As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”
(Exodus 32:1)
They took every gold they had, gave it to Aaron, and he made them a golden calf.
This calf reminded them of the power of the Egyptian bull-god Apis.
They worshipped this idol as the god who brought them out of Egypt.
In other words, they made something themselves and ascribed to it the power of their delivery.
They made themselves, not God, the center of their salvation.
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