Bible reading: Isaiah 44:6-20.

Every Sunday, millions of Christian around the world, perhaps using thousands of different languages, say these words as they recite the Apostles’ Creed in their worship; “I believe in God”. To be honest, most of them probably take the familiar words for granted and are unlikely to pause and think about them: they are simply the introduction to this great and ancient declaration of faith. (The complications come later, when they get to the bits about Jesus and the Holy Spirit). Yet those four simple words, which we find so basic and obvious, are in fact quite remarkable. Even today, huge numbers of religious or believing people would find them very strange.

Let’s cast our mind back to where this belief in one God comes from. We might say that it started with the first of the Ten Commandments, when Moses proclaimed the great shema which still forms part of Jewish daily prayers: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One”. We might wish to go back further, to the interactions that God had with Abraham; or even to the myths of prehistory and God speaking to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. All along there is this underlying assumption that there is only one God, known as Adonai, Yahweh or – as he says to Moses at the burning bush – I AM.

As I’ve hinted, we who’ve been raised on Christianity since birth don’t think twice about this. But in the ancient world it was a revolutionary idea. Just think of the gods and goddesses which have appeared (and vanished) around the world and through history: Nebo, Ra, Moloch, Xipe Totec Baal, Zeus, Apollos, Shiva, Jupiter, Inti, the Great Spirit, Mother Earth, Vishnu, Shango and Apu to name but a few, from many times and places.  They have been gods of war, of weather, of fertility, of love: in fact gods to cover every aspect of human life. Most societies and cultures have regarded them as the deities who control the world, so they have been worshipped and, when necessary, appeased. Any notions of a “high god” ruling over everything have been at best vague and unformed, so very different from the Jewish and Christian God who speaks to and takes an interest in nations and even individuals.

This morning we are looking at one of the greatest, but also the funniest, passages of the Old Testament. But, as so often, it only makes sense if we place it in its proper context. That means we need to know several things. The first is that it is set fairly late on in Israel’s Old Testament history: we’re well over 1000 years from Abraham, over 500 years from King David and a similar amount of time before Jesus. During that time the Jewish understanding of God has not been static: it has developed and grown more sophisticated. The people’s mental picture of God has become more abstract, less and less like the pagan beliefs held by the tribes and nations around them and more like the notions of God we hold today. Isaiah – who, as we remember, had a life-changing experience of God at the start of his ministry – is taking us to the very summit of ancient Jewish theology. However many of his fellow Jews have not yet got that far.

That’s one basic point we need to remember. Here’s another: the foundation of Israel’s life was (and is) the Law, in particular, the Ten Commandments. And, if the first Law said that they should have no gods except Yahweh, the second said that they must not worship graven images. It’s clear that God was not only well aware that every nation around them did precisely that, but also that it is far easier to focus our worship on something tangible, such as a carving or a totem, than a being who only exists as a hard-to-describe spirit. Indeed we see this as, even while Moses is still on Mount Sinai, the people below make a golden calf and declare that it is an image of God – which, Moses angrily declares when he sees it, it very definitely is not! But we can see the temptation: it’s so much easier to “get a handle” on your god if there’s an object before you which you can see and touch. That’s still a temptation for Christians today: it’s all-too-easy to start venerating a statue, an icon, a style of worship, the bread and wine of the Eucharist, even the Bible – although the purpose of these things is, of course, to lead our minds beyond them, to God himself.

The final point I must make in order to put this passage in context is that Jewish history, as described in the Old Testament, has its ups and downs. One particular “up” (although it does make us ask some awkward questions today) occurs when the people leave slavery in Egypt, miraculously cross the Red Sea and the River Jordan, and conquer Canaan. After a bumpy ride for the next few centuries, the nation reaches its glory days under Kings David and Solomon. After that, things generally go downhill. Many of the kings are poor, Israel suffers economic decline and military defeated, it loses the greater part of its land. Eventually, by around 600BC, what’s left is only a shadow of its former self – but the Hebrews can still cling on to the belief that they are a chosen nation, that God will not abandon them.

And then their world collapses. Judah is invaded, Jerusalem – and, in particular, the Temple – is razed to the ground. Able people such as Daniel are carted off to work in Babylon while everyone else is left to scratch out an existence as best they can. As the prophet Jeremiah wrote, “There were no people; every bird in the sky had flown away. I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert; all its towns lay in ruins”. Now the prophets made it clear that the responsibility for this disaster lay fairly and squarely with the people who had broken their covenant with God by disobeying his commandments and even worshipping pagan gods. But most folk wouldn’t have seen things in that way: instead, they must have had grave doubts about God’s power to save his people. That’s because the common belief in the Ancient Near East was that, when nations fought, their gods also engaged in battle. So, seeing what had happened to their city and its Temple, the Jews’ logical conclusion would have been that Yahweh had been defeated by Marduk, the Babylonian war deity. He no longer inspired confidence.

So we have Isaiah, whose words are both magnificent and scathing. And we mustn’t think that he’s talking to pagans; no, he’s talking to his own people who are supposed to be devout followers of Yahweh. What’s happened is that many of them not only believe that God has let them down by failing to protect them, but that some of their pagan neighbours’ gods offer a more attractive option for their devotion – so why not give them a try? The prophet simply cannot understand this behaviour which, to him, is both senseless and shocking. How can they possibly think that these other so-called gods have any power at all, how can they possibly prefer them to the mighty God of Israel who has done so much for the nation in the past? The other gods are no more than man-made statues, but Yahweh created the universe.

And so Isaiah sets off in two directions. First, he asks his listeners to reflect on what God has done for Israel. He doesn’t actually spell it out but we know there are many other passages where that is done. Perhaps the most comprehensive is Psalm 136 which first speaks of God as the Creator of heaven and earth, sun and stars; then reminds Israel of its escape from Egypt and journey through the wilderness (the greatest defining event in national history); asserts that he aided the Hebrews to conquer kings and armies who should have defeated them; and closes by saying that he gives everyone food to sustain life. And Isaiah doesn’t finish there: he says, “That’s what God has already done for you; he also knows the future and will guide you through it. So sit down and have a good think: have you really forgotten all that?”

But then he does something different. In a brilliant piece of satire, Isaiah mocks and belittles idols. He talks of a blacksmith who pounds metal into shape, getting hot and tired in the process. And he talks of a carpenter who chops down a tree and cuts his piece of wood in two. He carefully crafts one half into a human figure; when it’s finished he says, “This is my god” and prays to it for help. However the man just chops the other half into firewood and warms him on a cold day. That is absolutely ludicrous and bizarre to Isaiah, who embarks on a rant: “These people are too stupid to realise what they are doing. They’ve closed their eyes and their minds to the truth. The idol maker hasn’t the wit or the sense to see that he’s bowing down to nothing more than a block of wood, he won’t admit that the idol he holds in his hand is not a god at all”. As far as the prophet is concerned, people who worship these pagan effigies are ignorant idiots. Their so-called gods are nothing, they can’t hear you or do anything. What a contrast to Yahweh – surely the only logical thing is to worship and serve him!”

At the risk of prolonging things, I must tell you that Isaiah wasn’t the only prophet to ridicule idolatry; Jeremiah also had a go. This is what he said: “The practices of the peoples are worthless. They cut a tree out of the forest and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel. They adorn it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so it will not totter. Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field, their idols cannot speak; they must be carried because they cannot walk. They can do no harm nor can they do any good”. And then comes the contrast: “No-one is like you, Lord; you are great, and your name is mighty in power. Who should not fear you, King of the nations? This is your due”. Once again an Old Testament prophet is showing his amazement that anyone should want to follow any god except Yahweh. He is unique.

I’ve only ever read one book by Joy Davidman, who became the wife of C.S. Lewis towards the end of his life. She was an American from a secular Jewish background, who later converted to Christianity. The book is “Smoke on the Mountain”, it’s about the Ten Commandments and, although a bit dated today, I think it’s rather good. Davidman says this about idolatry which, she believes, sprang from a healthy impulse to portray God: “The inventors of idols must have had minds seething with the idea of God. Creator, Helper, Destroyer, he was all around them; the trees whispered and the animals cried aloud of him; the life-giving sun and death-dealing thunder spoke of the Most High. What was he like? How put him into words? They had no words: their language was at best a clumsy tool, incapable of abstractions. But they had mind-pictures and they had comparisons. His strength was as an elephant, his knowledge like the hawk’s keen eye, his sudden anger like the crocodile striking unseen in the water. All these were forms and symbols of him. Musing, they felt that they knew what the Power was like; felt too the inexorable urge of all men to communicate their thoughts to others. They made an image of their thoughts”.

So far, so good; but then things go awry: “The idol maker may know, more or less clearly, that he is only giving shape to the half-formed concept of God in his head; that his images are solid metaphors, what we call symbols … Yet the idolater persists in losing sight of the forest for the trees, and the god for the image. The gold and ivory statue becomes holy in itself, an answerer of prayer, a mysterious source of power, a material object somehow different from other objects … Worse yet, the god confined in an image is a shrunken and powerless god” – and that was exactly Isaiah’s criticism, all those centuries ago.

Of course we live in a very different world to Isaiah’s, and we might well think that his caustic comments don’t apply to us. After all, I don’t think that any of us would ever be tempted to set up and bow down to a home-made god in our back garden or in a little niche in the corner of our living room! That time has passed for ever. But, of course, the tendency to idolatry is still present within us although it takes different forms. So there are some people who seem to worship pop idols, Hollywood stars or even football players. These devotions are usually little more than teenage crushes; but there are far more significant modern idols which often seem to dominate peoples’ lives.

For instance, some people are obsessed by the desire to gain status, often defined by the possessions we purchase or the clothes we wear, all of which aim to demonstrate our success to our neighbours. There are the twin idols of sexual gratification and perfect relationships: many people seem to believe that their lives will be “sorted” if they get these things right, but they are actually chasing the unreachable pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Alongside these are other gods of perfect health, of sports and hobbies and the arts, of dedication to a political cause, or simply of the pursuit of pleasure. In some countries such as the United States the nation and its flag almost seem to have become idols; while Christians can find the Church itself substituting for God. And – of course – there is the hugely seductive god of wealth, so often the dominant force in today’s world. None of these things are bad in themselves; but all of them must be kept in check because – although in a sense powerless – they have the ability to rule our lives and take the place of the one God, our Creator and Lord.

For we are always tempted, as St. Paul knew, to “exchange the glory of the immortal God” for the image of something else: not necessarily a statue or an image but an ideology, a hobby, an activity, even an institution which in itself may be admirable but which distracts us from the worship and service of God. That can never be right, as these things cannot offer us eternal salvation. I finish simply by quoting the final words of St. John’s first letter: “We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding …; he is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols”.