RTW 2024

Then he takes what’s left
    and makes his god: a carved idol!
He falls down in front of it,
    worshiping and praying to it.
“Rescue me!” he says.
    “You are my god!”
Such stupidity and ignorance!
    Their eyes are closed, and they cannot see.
    Their minds are shut, and they cannot think.‍

Isaiah 44:17-18

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Throughout the ancient Near East the term “shepherd” was often applied to rulers (such as Cyrus).

• Isaiah would have been well acquainted with the idol making practices of his day in the ancient Near East.
• In idol making, the “mouth-opening” ceremony was “a series of ritual acts and incantations, Mesopotamian craftsmen and priest believed that their deities were created and brought to life by means of the animation of the statues’ sensory organs.An inert statue or stone was thus in their view transformed into  living manifestation of the deity it represented.” The Archaeological Study Bible, pg. 1136
• At the end of this Mesopotamian ritual, people believed that the idol came to life as a god without any human participation, that it was the work of the gods alone.
• Isaiah was directly refuting this by stating that the idols never really came to life through activation of its sense, but that the worshiper of the idol instead lost their senses.
• God made us. Not the other way around. “Pay attention, O Jacob, for you are my servant, O Israel. I, the LORD, made you, and I will not forget you.” Isaiah 44:21

What are we giving importance to that is detracting from our ability to see, hear, and know Jesus?