LEARNING DAILY

 

Isaiah 40:18, To whom then will you liken God?  Or what likeness will you compare to Him?

 

When you think of God how do you picture Him in your mind?  If you were to try to draw a picture of Him what would His image be like?  Jesus said, that anyone who had seen Him had seen the Father.  How do you capture the holiness, the perfection of the Creator of all things? They couldn’t.  instead, they chose to make images of idols that they thought would aid them in living their lives.  They made graven images, the works of their own hands, to worship.

 

To understand the questions presented to Isaiah we must remember that Israel followed the pagan people they lived with in the worship of idols or images they gave to their many gods.  Those images came in many forms depending on what the god was supposed to do for them.  The challenge God gave the people through Isaiah was to contrast Him with the idols they worshipped.  God mocked the people’s idols.  Read verses 12-31.  These verses “emphasize God’s wisdom, greatness, majesty, and creative power.  The truths expressed here inspire His people to trust in Him, the only One who could deliver them and establish His kingdom forever.” (LSSB). 

 

These verses draw each of us to the foolishness of idolatry because absolutely nothing can be compared to God!  Think about this for a moment.  Can an idol think, see, speak, feel, or know anything?  Can an idol, move or do anything? No.  It is absolutely ridiculous to put one’s faith in something made out of stone or wood.  John Ritenbaugh has said, “God is unique; nothing compares to Him.  There is no point of contact, no physical reference, to which a human being can compare Him, revealing the absolute folly of image-making. Even Jesus’ declarations regarding God are never about what He looks like, but are all about His authority, position, purpose, character, and attributes.”  We do not need to know what God looks like; He only cares that we know His character, His attributes, His power and His plan for each of us.  He only cares that we come to know and accept His plan of salvation through Jesus Christ; He wants us to get on and stay on the narrow way that leads to His kingdom and eternal life.

 

The questions asked in Isaiah 40:18 need to be answered by each of us. “To whom then will you

liken God?  Or what likeness will you compare to Him?”  Anything we place equal to God in our reverence becomes an idol to us.  The answers to the questions must be a resounding nothing can compare to God and we do not need to know what He looks like.  Believers are to only to acknowledge that He is great, holy, righteous and worthy of our confidence, our trust and our faith.  To place your worship in anything else is pointless!

 

 

From now on DJSB will be used to note information or quotes from the David Jeremiah Study Bible and LSSB will refer to information and quotes from the Life in the Spirit Study Bible.  I have added Jimmy Swaggart’s Expositor’s Study Bible to be referred to from now on as JSESB.