May 31 2026

Frankie / General Adult

1.1 It was 1999, and I had joined a three-day prayer meeting. I remember being curious — almost puzzled. People around me were praying with such intensity, such eagerness. At that time, I did not really know how to pray, even though I had been attending church for ten years. So I listened carefully to the prayers around me.

1.2 And what I noticed was this: most of the prayers were not really about God, or about His kingdom. They were about needs. About fulfillment. About children's futures, about success, about breakthrough. Even though I did not yet know God well, I had sat through enough Sunday school lessons and sermons to know that the Bible speaks about God and His kingdom. But somehow, in that prayer room, the focus had shifted — to receiving blessing, to gaining wealth, to achieving dreams. When I asked people about it afterward, no one could really give me a clear answer. It was only later, as I began to read the Bible for myself, that I realized something. And I want to say it carefully, because it troubles me even now:

1.3 When prayer becomes only about our needs — when worship itself becomes shaped entirely by what is familiar to us, by what we want, by what fits our situation — something quiet and terrible begins to happen. The heart goes out of it. And once the heart is gone, even the most sincere religious act becomes, in its inner shape, no different from what Isaiah will call idolatry.

1.4 This is the question I want us to sit with this morning. Not as accusation, but as honest wondering, because I am asking it of myself as much as of anyone:

When we come to pray, when we gather to worship, are we approaching God? Or are we approaching Him through what is already familiar to us, in shapes we have already built?

1.5 Isaiah, in his own way, is asking the same question. And the answer he gives is more unsettling, and more freeing, than we might expect. Let us read Isaiah 44:9-20.

Isaiah 44:9–20 ESV

All who fashion idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit. Their witnesses neither see nor know, that they may be put to shame. Who fashions a god or casts an idol that is profitable for nothing? Behold, all his companions shall be put to shame, and the craftsmen are only human. Let them all assemble, let them stand forth. They shall be terrified; they shall be put to shame together.

The ironsmith takes a cutting tool and works it over the coals. He fashions it with hammers and works it with his strong arm. He becomes hungry, and his strength fails; he drinks no water and is faint. The carpenter stretches a line; he marks it out with a pencil. He shapes it with planes and marks it with a compass. He shapes it into the figure of a man, with the beauty of a man, to dwell in a house. He cuts down cedars, or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest.

He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, “Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!” And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god!”

They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand. No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, “Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten. And shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?” He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?”

2.1 Before the prophet says anything about idols, he lets God speak for Himself.

Isaiah 44:6–7 NLT

This is what the Lord says—Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies: “I am the First and the Last; there is no other God. Who is like me? Let him step forward and prove to you his power. Let him do as I have done since ancient times when I established a people and explained its future.

The God Who Will Not Be Resized (vv. 6–8)

2.2 God, Yahweh introduces Himself with overlapping titles, King of Israel, LORD of hosts, Rock. And then, woven among these titles, one word that we must not pass over too quickly: Redeemer. In Hebrew, Goel.

2.3 This word Goel comes from the ancient practice of the kinsman-redeemer. When a family member fell into debt, into slavery, into a crisis they could not escape on their own, the Goel was the one who stepped in, not by issuing a command, not by demanding payment from someone else, but by spending his own resources, by giving up something of his own, to buy his loved one back into freedom. The example of Goel in Hebrew appears in the book of Ruth, especially Boaz.

2.4 Pause here for a moment. Because this is something no other god in the ancient world ever claimed to do. The gods of Babylon, the gods of the surrounding nations, they demanded. They received sacrifices. They required offerings. Worshippers came to them with hands full, hoping to get something in return. But Isarel’s God, Yahweh introduces Himself as the God who does the opposite: He is the One who gives of Himself to redeem those who cannot save themselves.

2.5 This is not a small detail. This is the deepest signature of who God is. And it is the signature we will see fully written, centuries later, on a cross where the Goel gave not silver, not gold, but His own Son, to buy back a people who had wandered into a slavery they could not escape on their own.

2.6 So when Yahweh says here, "Besides me there is no god,” He is not only claiming uniqueness of power. He is claiming uniqueness of direction. Other gods receive. This God gives. Other gods demand to be served. This God serves by redeeming. And this is why He cannot be resized. He is not a category we can fit into our existing frameworks. He is the One who declares the future before it happens. He holds all of history in His hand. He is not a larger version of what we already know. He is something else entirely — a God whose very being moves toward us at His own cost.

2.7 And here is the quiet warning hidden in these verses: anything we approach as God that can be resized — anything we approach as God that mainly receives from us rather than gives Himself to us — is, by definition, not this God.

How the Idol Was Actually Made (vv. 9–20)

3.1 Now the prophet does something remarkable. He does not show us a wicked person sneaking off to build an idol. He shows us an ordinary craftsman doing ordinary work.

3.2 Watch carefully what happens in verses 14 through 17. The carpenter goes into the forest. His forest. He chooses a tree he himself planted, watered by rain he himself has known. He cuts it down. Half of the wood he uses to cook his dinner and warm his body, completely honest, completely necessary, completely good. And then, with the remaining piece of the same tree, something shifts. He shapes it. He bows down. He cries out, "Deliver me, for you are my god!"

3.3 Notice what the text does not say. It does not say he went looking for a god. It does not say he made an intentional decision to commit idolatry. The idol emerged, naturally, gradually, out of what was already familiar to him.

The carpenter did not go to the forest to make a god. He went to gather firewood. The idol came afterward, in the natural flow of the familiar.

3.4 This is the prophet's deepest exposure. Idolatry, at its most dangerous, is not chosen. It is grown, out of materials we already trust, in spaces we already inhabit, through habits we already practice.

3.5 And then comes verse 20: his heart is "smeared over." He cannot see the lie in his own right hand. Not because he is stupid. But because the familiar had quietly wrapped itself around his eyes, and once that happens, even the heart simply leaves.

Isaiah 44:20 ESV

He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?”

The Mirror Turns Toward Us

4.1 If we stop here and say, "How foolish that carpenter was" — we have missed the sermon. Because the question Isaiah puts before us is not was he foolish? The question is how did he get there? And the answer is: through familiarity. Through approach. Through the slow, unintentional drift of using what is near to construct what is ultimate. So let us ask, together and honestly:

What are the familiar materials in our lives, the things we did not choose as gods, but which have slowly become the lens through which we approach God?

4.2 Perhaps it is the predictable rhythm of our weeks. Perhaps it is the theological language we have always spoken. Perhaps it is the form of worship we have always known. Perhaps it is even this community itself; the gift of belonging that we have built together over years.

4.3Notice: none of these things is wrong. The carpenter's tree was not wrong. The fire was not wrong. The warm meal was not wrong. What was wrong was the way he approached. The moment a familiar good becomes the way we access God, the God we meet there is no longer God. He is the resized shape that fits the familiar.

4.4 Think of Aaron's golden calf in Exodus 32. Aaron was not trying to introduce a foreign god. He was trying to represent Yahweh — the God who had just brought Israel out of Egypt. But he represented Him through what was familiar: familiar materials, familiar imagery. And even though the calf was finished with the most precious substance available — gold, the costliest thing they had — it still emerged in the shape of a created thing, the figure of a young bull. The best of what they owned, shaped by the most familiar of what they knew, became an idol. Not because they meant it to. Because that is what happens when the familiar becomes the way we approach God.

This is not a sin we decide to commit. It is the orientation that quietly forms when we stop noticing how we are approaching.

Romans 1:21–23 CEB

Although they knew God, they didn’t honor God as God or thank him. Instead, their reasoning became pointless, and their foolish hearts were darkened. While they were claiming to be wise, they made fools of themselves. They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images that look like mortal humans: birds, animals, and reptiles.

The Word That Turns Us (vv. 21–22)

And here is where the text does something we might not expect. God does not say, "Destroy what you have made." He does not give the carpenter a program of idol-demolition. He says something else entirely:

Isaiah 44:21–22 NIV

“Remember these things, Jacob, for you, Israel, are my servant. I have made you, you are my servant; Israel, I will not forget you. I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you.”

5.1 The Hebrew here is striking. The conjunction kî (for) places redemption in the completed past. Return to me, because I have already redeemed you. The redemption is not the reward of our return. It is the ground of it.

5.2 This is the turning point, and notice what kind of turning it is. It is not first a turning away from the idol. It is a turning toward the One who has already acted.

5.3 The problem was never primarily that the wrong god was made. The problem was the direction of approach. And the solution is not first to tear down. Rather, it is to turn toward. When we turn toward the One who has already redeemed us, the resized gods fall away on their own, because they were only ever the shape of our misdirected approach.

5.4 And what Isaiah glimpses here, the New Testament will speak openly. When Paul writes to the Romans, he does not say, "Clean yourselves up, and then God will love you." He says the opposite. "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" 

Romans 5:8 ESV

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

5.5 The cross is not the reward of our return. The cross is the ground of it. Before we turned, before we even knew we needed to turn, the Goel had already spent everything to buy us back. This is why Paul can say, 

Ephesians 2:8–9 NRSV

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast.

5.6 The grammar matches Isaiah's grammar. Salvation in the completed past. Faith as response, not as currency. The Goel gave Himself first, and only then do we find ourselves able to turn. 

5.7 So when we hear Isaiah's voice this morning — "Return to me, for I have redeemed you,” we hear it through the cross of Christ. The redemption is not a hope we are reaching for. It is a finished work we are turning toward. 

5.8 This is grace as reorientation. Not "try harder to avoid idols." But: look here. Look toward the One who has already done everything. Let your approach itself be transformed.

The Song We Are Invited Into (v. 23)

6.1 The text does not close with a command. It closes with a song.

Isaiah 44:23 NKJV

Sing, O heavens, for the Lord has done it! Shout, you lower parts of the earth; Break forth into singing, you mountains, O forest, and every tree in it! For the Lord has redeemed Jacob, And glorified Himself in Israel.

7.1 Notice the irony, even tender humor in this final image. The forest itself, the same forest from which the carpenter took his tree, is now singing. The trees that were cut down to become idols are now lifting their voices in praise of the true Redeemer. Creation itself, when approached rightly, becomes worship rather than idol.

7.2 And we are invited into this song. Not as those who have finally gotten it right. But as those who are learning, slowly, to turn, and to keep turning.

Closing: A Question We Carry Home

8.1 I will not end this sermon with a list of action steps. The text does not, and I will not either. But I will leave us with a question. Carry it with you this week. Let it sit in your ordinary, familiar spaces:

When I approach God this week — in prayer, in worship, in the quiet of my own thoughts — am I approaching the God who is? Or am I approaching Him through the familiar shapes I have already built?

8.2 And then, the harder question, the one we must ask together as a community:

What familiar shapes have we built here, among us, that may have begun to stand between us and the God who refuses to be resized?

8.3 And if either of these questions has begun to trouble you this morning — even a little — do not rush past that trouble. That quiet discomfort is not condemnation. It is the first movement of the heart turning back toward the One who has already turned toward us.

8.4 These are not questions to answer this morning. They are questions to live with. Questions that, if we hold them honestly, will begin to do their own quiet work.

8.5 For the One who calls us is already singing over us. The redemption is already accomplished. And the forest —even the forest from which our idols were once cut — is being invited into the song. May we be turned, gently and truly, toward Him.