So listen now to the word of the Lord. Isaiah 46 verse one bell bows down. Nebo stoops. Their idols are beasts are on beasts and livestock. These things you carry are born as burdens on weary beasts. They stoop, they bow down together. They cannot save the burden, but themselves go into captivity. Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been born by me from before your birth, carried from the womb. Even to your old age, I am he. And to gray hairs, I will carry you. I have made and I will bear. I will carry and will save. To whom will you liken me and make me equal and compare me that we may be alike. Those who lavish gold from the purse and weigh out silver in the scales hire a goldsmith and he makes it into a god and they fall down in worship. They lift it to their shoulders, they carry it, they set it in its place and it stands there. It cannot move from its place. If one cries to it, it does not answer. or save him from his trouble. This is God's holy word. Let's pray again for his help. Lord, we thank you that your word is perfect, without error, given by you and your Holy Spirit. We pray that you would help us to receive your word with meekness, with the fear of you, And may your word be planted in our hearts by your spirit, that it might grow, that it might bear much fruit. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Maybe you know a children's book that seems to be a classic, because I've seen it at the bookstore at Barnes & Noble, even though it was written in 1986. And so maybe you know it. It's called, I'll Love You Forever. and the book starts out with a mother singing this song to her little baby boy, I'll love you forever. Then the story goes on, the boy gets older, he becomes a two-year-old and drives his mom crazy and yet she sings this song still, I'll love you forever. He gets older and older and continues to drive her crazy and yet she always sings this song. And then the story goes that he becomes a man. And yet even as a grown man, his mom says these words to him, I'll love you forever. And then by the end of the book, by the end of the story, it's just a very short story, it's not only the son who has gotten older, but the mother has also gotten older. And so she is now sick and dying. And so her adult son goes to her and says those very same words. He says to her, I will love you forever. And then after it appears that his mother has died, he goes home and he has his own baby. He picks up his baby out of the crib and he says, I'll love you forever. Well, it's a nice little story. It's a little bit of a tearjerker when you're reading that to your child. It's a good story to communicate the love of a parent to a child, the love of a mother for her child, her son. But The love of a mother and child or a parent and child is really just a shadow, a shadow of a greater love that God the Father has for his own children. And the human family is meant to reflect, to be that shadow of the great love that God has for his own people. And here in Isaiah, God uses imagery of a parent. imagery really mostly focused on mother-like imagery, but imagery in general of a parent who cares and loves and takes care of his child. And Isaiah is trying to get us to see that the love of God the Father is far greater and far more perfect than any love of a human parent for his or her child. In fact, you just think about the words of the story. I'll love you forever. And yet you know that the mother dies. The mother does not live there, at least on earth, to love her son forever. No human parent can be on this earth for the entirety of its child's life. And this is the point of what we're gonna see here in this text. Even the great love of a wonderful mother and a great father cannot last, cannot last as far as the unending love of God the Father. God's love has no end. God's care for His people will never end. And so we can always look to Him, depend upon Him to carry those burdens for us. This is what we want to see here in this chapter or these seven verses, this passage. And we start in this passage with a contrast. So point number one, I've called bowing to the unbearable burden because the contrast is meant to show us how the false gods, the gods of the nations, are not able to carry your burden. and in contrast to God who is able to do this. And so Isaiah begins in chapter 46 with another passage of mockery towards the idols. And we see it in verses 1 to 2, and then he comes back to it, verses 5 to 7. And this mockery of the idols started back in chapter 40, mocking this idea that people would bow down and worship the very things that they know their own hands have created. They look for their salvation to the very own things that they have made. And so Isaiah has over and over pointed out the powerlessness of the gods and the foolishness of seeking to look to these gods for salvation. Well, really, one of the main differences now that we get to in chapter 46 is not so much the theme is different, but here Isaiah names names. He gets specific. He names two particular gods and mocks them by name, Bel and Nebo. These are the two top Babylonian gods. Bel is a reference, the nickname, to Marduk, who was the supreme god, who was seen as the creator god for the Babylonians. So he was the supreme at the top of the pantheon. And Bel is a word that means something like Lord, kind of like the name Baal for the Canaanites. And so this is Marduk, and then Marduk had a son. His son's name was Nebo. And so, Bel, the supreme god, and Nebo, his son, Isaiah is going to mock them as being powerless gods. And you might recognize these names in other names of the Bible that come from Babylon. So think of King Nebuchadnezzar, the beginning of his name, N-E-B-U. It's because he's named after the god Nebo of Babylon. Or also in the book of Daniel, Belshazzar and Belteshazzar. Those kings also are named, or those people also are named after the Babylonian god. So, Isaiah seems to be talking specifically about some situation that's related to Babylon, where the gods, Bel and Nebo, these little statues, are carted off. They are put on the top of a mule, and the mule is leaving the city with these gods. So some people think, well, maybe this is about Cyrus. because the last few chapters have been about Cyrus and Cyrus is going to conquer Babylon. And so some people think this is referring to Cyrus's conquest of Babylon. Others might say that it's King Sennacherib. King Sennacherib, who right after Isaiah died, 689 BC, he conquered Babylon too. And he got the gods out of the city. I don't think it really is all that relevant, particularly which one this particular instance is talking about, but we do know that Babylon does get defeated. And it happened multiple times, and it's going to happen a final time. In fact, in Revelation 18, fallen is Babylon the Great. Babylon is used as a symbol of the great power of the world, and the great powers of the world will be fallen along with all of its gods. And so this is what this text is trying to tell us about. You have to understand that when a nation is defeated, it's seen as if their gods are defeated. And this is why, like in Exodus 12, when God sends the plagues to Egypt, God says, I will execute judgment on all the gods of Egypt. The Passover and the Exodus was a judgment on Egypt's false gods because it shows that they were not powerful enough to save. So whatever the particular historical event this is referring to, Isaiah's point still stands. Babylon's gods cannot save. And he puts it in a very mocking way. The very first words, bell bows down. It's full of irony because you remember what we read last week, what the sermon was last week. Just go up a few verses to verse 23 of chapter 44. The Lord said to me, every knee shall bow. Jesus Christ says that to him every knee shall bow. And so now we have this great image, this great irony, and a few verses later that Bell bows down. Bell is powerless before the Lord Jesus Christ. He bows down, but of course the other part of the metaphor is that Bell is not exactly in this particular story actually bowing down. He's just a statue and the statue is falling. And why is the statue falling? Because it's on the back of a beast. It's on the back of a mule being transported. And yet this idol is so heavy, creates such a burden upon the beast that not even the mule can stand under its weight. And so what's really happening is the mule is falling down. And when it falls, the idol falls and it rolls out of the sack and it falls into a ditch and it sits there muddy. And that's what he's saying. Bell bows down, Nebo stoops. Because God is bringing them to their knees, so to speak. God is showing their powerlessness. And the other part of the metaphor is that it's talking also about the people. The people bow down to these gods. They stoop themselves, they bring themselves so low as to bow down to these weak, pathetic statutes, statues. And when they bow down to these statues. They are putting themselves under a heavy burden. That's why verse two says they cannot save the burden or they cannot escape under the burden. The idols are the burden. The idols create a burden upon the people and they cannot save you from being under the burden that they themselves are creating. So this all shows the powerlessness, the uselessness of these gods to save. He goes on then with the mockery with more in verses five to seven. And he says, to whom will you like in me and make me equal and compare me that we may be alike. Remember he said that in chapter 40, the issue is that God is incomparable. None can be compared to God. There is no God like God. And yet they are trying to make a God like him. They're trying to make a likeness, an image of God. That's what an idol is, a likeness of God. And he says, to who will you compare me? Verse 6 goes on, to those who lavish gold from the purse and weigh out silver in the scales, hire a goldsmith and he makes it into a god. Then they fall down and worship. They lift it to their shoulders. They carry it. They set it in its place, and it stands there. It cannot move from its place. If one cries to it, it does not answer or save him from his trouble. The false god is lifeless. It cannot save. It has to be carried. Therefore, it cannot carry. So we're going to see the contrast between the idols and God. It's using all of these same words. Verse 4, God says, I will bear, I will carry, and will save. These other gods have to be born, be carried, have to put them on the back of something, and they cannot save you from the burden. They will not save you from your trouble. So a God who has to be born, in other words, born with an E, have to be carried on a backpack as a burden, cannot relieve you of your burden. So these gods, they represent, really when it comes down to it, they represent a work's salvation, a work's righteousness. It's about something you do for the God rather than what God does for you. Only Christianity, only the true gospel can save because only true Christianity teaches us that it's not about what we do, but it is all about what God does for us. And this is really the contrast versus three and four, the true God and all that he will do for you. He will love you forever. But the false gods, it's all about what you can do for them. You have to carry them. You have to make them. And then what else do you have to do? Verse six, you have to lavish your gold. You have to pour out your gold. And this is why we get when we think about idolatry, we can think about works based religion. We can think about all the things that we have to do to please an idol, to please a God. And when you think about it that way, you can really think about it as anything in life. Everything in life besides the worship of the true God is idolatry. Think about what we seek to make us happy, what we seek to make us feel secure and safe, What do we do? We lavish gold from the purse. You take out your gold and you set it on the counter. You take out your credit card. You type in your credit card number online. You push the button for your Apple Pay, however you do it. But the things that we seek in life when we face troubles, when we seek to be happy, when we seek security, how does it all come? It comes from money. because either money itself is what you seek or you seek the thing that money can give you. They sought the gold, the God, but to get the God, they needed the gold. What do you do to get gold? You work. And so this is what people do today. Work and work and work to get the gold, to make themselves feel secure, to make themselves feel happy, And so this is why Paul says the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. It's why Paul says in Colossians 3, 5, that we are to put off covetousness, which is idolatry. Paul links covetousness and idolatry. And you can see that it seems as if Isaiah is linking these two things here. Because whatever you want in life, whatever you're looking for to make you happy or secure, you are coveting, and you're coveting the money that makes it possible, and you are loving the money, which then becomes the root of all sorts of evils that you seek. And so Isaiah's conclusion is, at the end of verse seven, if you cry to this God that you lavished all your money on, you spent all your money to get these things that made you happy, you cry out, but it will not answer or save you in the day of trouble. So this is the burden of idolatry. But then we come to the one who bears the burden in verses three and four. So look again at these verses in the contrast to the idols. Verse three says, listen to me, O house of Jacob. all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been born by me from before your birth, carried from the womb. Even to your old age, I am he. And to gray hairs, I will carry you. I have made and I will bear. I will carry and will save." Think about Jacob Here in verse three, the house of Jacob and the remnants of the house of Israel. There's only a remnant left. And so God is speaking, you could think first of the context to the whole nation. Think of the nation of the people of Judah and Israel. God has spoken of Israel as being like his son. He calls him his son in Exodus four. And so you can think of how God could be saying that he has been with Israel from their inception. He has, has carried them. He has borne them from before their birth. He brought them out of Egypt, out of this womb of Egypt, and he carried them through the wilderness and protected them. He says in chapter 19 of Exodus, I bore you on Eagle's wings. I carried you. I'm the one who brought you out. And the exodus and the wilderness wandering is compared in the Bible to parenting and giving birth. Moses in Numbers chapter 11, verse 12, when he's complaining, because the people are complaining, so Moses complains about the people's complaining to God. And when Moses is complaining to God, he says, Numbers 11, 12, did I conceive all this people? Did I give them birth? that you should say to me, carry them in your bosom as a nurse carries a nursing child to the land that you swore to give to their fathers. So in other words, Moses is putting the burden, the blame upon God. And he's describing these actions. He says, God, I didn't do all this. You did this. So this is what Moses is saying. God, you conceived these people. You gave them birth. You're the one that said you would carry them in your bosom as a nurse carries a nursing child to the land you swore to give to their fathers. The exodus, the wilderness wandering, is God's mothering and protecting and caring for his nation. Well, we think about the nation of Israel. But then there's probably also here of reference to the person himself, the patriarch, Jacob. Listen to me, O house of Jacob. Because not only have I carried you as the nation, but it started with your father. It started with Jacob himself. When Jacob was in the womb, He had a twin brother. And yet God looked upon not the brother Esau, but he looked upon Jacob. And he said, Jacob, I love you. God had a special electing love for the patriarch Jacob, even while he was in the womb, before he had done anything good or bad. God said, you're going to be mine and I'm going to take care of you and I'm going to cause you to be born and live and grow up and die in a good old age. And this is what happened. In Genesis 48, 15, when Jacob is at the end of his life, he's on his deathbed and he's wanting to bless his sons and he calls Joseph. He wants to bless Ephraim and Manasseh. As he's blessing Joseph, he says, he says, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day, bless your sons. Jacob testifies. God knew him from the womb. And God had been his shepherd all his life long. You know, you know, his life, his life was full of ups and downs, full of lots of crazy things, lots of sin. He was a great sinner. And yet he comes to the end of his life and he can say, God has been my shepherd all my life long to this day. God carried the patriarch even to the very end of his life. And so, as we think about these verses, we can think about them for ourselves. If all of the promises of God are yes and amen for us in Christ Jesus, we can put ourselves into these two verses. God says, if you are his elect, if you are his child, I have born you from before your birth, and carried you from the womb and even to your old age, I am he. From the moment of conception, God has cared for us, his children. That doesn't mean that we're saved in those moments. That doesn't mean, you know, you have to come up with this stuff about being a covenant child and God cares for the covenant child as long as one of your parents is a Christian. That's not what it's talking about. Here's the basics of all it's saying. If you're a Christian, if God saved you, then God had to take care of you from the moment you existed so that you would be saved. Because it's not hard to figure out you can't be saved if you don't exist. So you had to exist And God, because He had chosen you and He desired to save you, God was watching over you from your conception. He was watching over you in the womb. He watches over you as you grow and He is working all things in your life so that you might come to faith in Him through Jesus Christ. God carried you. He carried you from before birth, from the womb, and even to old age. Now notice what he says about what he is for us in old age. He says, to old age, I am he. I am he. Before he tells us about all that he will do, He says who he is. I am he. Because we need to know who he is so that we can know for sure, be able to depend upon what he is able to do. He is he. Probably this is a reference to his revelation of himself in Exodus 3, 14, that he is, I am who I am. He is the I am. He is the eternal, self-existent, all powerful. Infinite God, God is a spirit, infinite, eternal and unchanging and all of his attributes and all of his power. It's because of who he is that he is able to do all of these things. We need to know this God. We need to know who he is. We need to understand what he has revealed about himself. We need to understand his infinite power. Now He is a God who is not like us, so that we will be able to trust Him and depend upon Him, to know that He is actually able to bear even us. I am He, God says. And so He says, even to your old age and to gray hair, I will carry you. Now, as we look at verse 4 and we see the reference to old age and gray hairs, you might think, well, this is just a parallel. Old age, gray hair, you know, they're basically the same thing. But actually, it's more likely what happens often in poetry is that the second line is intensifying or completing the first line. And so, you see it in verse 3, before your birth, even from the womb. So there's an intensifying, there's a furthering. So there's one and there's even more this. And that's what's happening with old age and gray hairs. I am he in old age and even more so intensifying to even gray hairs. And this makes sense of why in the Jewish tradition, rabbis, they taught, the way they explained it was that old age was considered 60 years old. And gray hairs was considered 70 years old. And so 70 years, they called that a good old age. And they based that from the Bible, from King David. When David dies, David dies at 70 years old in 1 Chronicles 29, 28. It says he died at a good age, full of days. The fullness of days. So 60 is old age. 70 is the good age, full of days. And then they would say, based on Psalm 90, that 80 is your days of strength, which is what Psalm 90 says. So don't think old age and gray hairs here just means the same thing. He's saying that I will be with you to old age and even to the fullness of your days. In other words, the gray hair is not just speaking of being older, but the gray hair is speaking about the end of your life. I will be God to you. I will carry you even to the end of your life. And so we started out, verse three, inside the wool. And then we went to the birth. and then we went to 60, and then we went to the end of life. From the womb to the tomb, God carries us. This is what we sang about in this song in the third stanza, using that phrase, from womb to tomb. So this passage is really relevant to all of us. It's not just for those who are older. This is relevant to all of us, all of us who are in Christ, who are God's people. We can claim these words for ourselves. That God has been faithful to us and he has carried us from conception to birth and to whatever point you are now in your life, and he will carry you to old age and he will carry you even to the end of your life. And you can depend upon your God to give you this grace. So as I started out. The reason that Isaiah says it this way, God speaking through Isaiah, is because he's using this image of a mother. A mother carries her child in the womb. A mother takes care of her child. A mother is with her child. A mother cares and loves her child because she is the one given to give him her life and to care for him. But. Will a mother? care for her child to old age and gray hairs. You mothers, you love your children. You love them as they grow older. You love them as they become adults. You still, maybe you feel like you have that mothering protection and care for them. And so you say, text me when you get home, even though they're like 45 years old, but you still want them to text you to make sure they get home safely. Because mothers love their children. But let's say for those of you now who maybe you're in your 70s. Are your parents there? Your parents here to care for you? Do your parents check in on you? No, because the most loving mother will one day be gone. God is saying that he can be for a child much more than what the most loving mother can be. John Gill, he puts it this way. God is doing more than the most tender parent does or can do. No mother can take care of us into our 70s and into our old age and even unto our death. But God is greater than any mother or father. So there's a exhortation from this that we can take and encouragement that we can take. One thing for us to remember as parents is we need to remember from this that we're not our children's savior. We are not the ones ultimately who can fix all our children's problems. We want to help. We want to fix. We worry. We're anxious. We want them to do what is right, especially we want them to know Christ and to know the Lord. but we must remember that there is only one who can truly care for them. There is one who can care for them much better than we can and who will care for them and can do more for them than any parent does or can do. And so we need to always entrust our children to the Lord. Always put our children in the Lord's hands. Always look to him and look to his power when he says, I am he. I can bury them, I can carry them, I can save them. Look to God to care for our children. But this is also an encouragement. That even when you are gone, God can save. When you are gone, the God who made them can continue to take care of them. The God who created them can save them. What an encouragement that we would always hold on to this hope that we are not the salvation of our children. We are not the hope for our children. It is the Lord. And the Lord has the power. The Lord has the ability to carry and to save. So may we entrust our children to the Lord. Well, we think about that for children, but we also think about this for ourselves. God is the one who carries, bears, and saves. He does that for us. I don't know if you have heard many of the spiritual songs that were sung during the 1800s, the times of slavery. I know you're not from the South, so you might not know a lot of them, but there are these good spiritual songs like, Were You There When They Crucified My Lord? That's probably my favorite. But there's another one. It's, you know, the spirituals, they are just a few lines, and the lines are repeated over and over again. And so this one goes like this. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child. And they sing that line over and over again. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child. When you hear somebody singing that, you can picture a girl in the South, ripped away from her mother, taken into slavery. You can picture a woman working in the field by herself, never having seen her mom for years and not having any hope of ever seeing her mother again. Working there in the field saying, sometimes I feel like a motherless child. But then there's only one other line to the song. It goes, sometimes I feel like a motherless child. Then I get down and pray. Then I get down and pray. Then I get down and pray. And that spiritual is expressing the reality of this verse, the reality of what those people experienced. Mom is gone. You're a motherless child. But there's only one place to go. There's only one place to look. There's only one who can help you. There's only one who can listen to you. There's only one who will deliver you and answer you when you cry out to him. You can cry out for your mother, but she's not there. She can't hear you. She's gone. But the Lord can do more than the most tender parent can do. So as you go through life, as you get older, you face more loss. Your friends go, your friends die. Perhaps you even lose a child of your own. Or you lose your spouse and so you sit there in your home, lonely and by yourself. As you grow older, as you get up in age, as you go to the fullness of days of the age of gray hairs of the 70 years old. More and more people. Are gone out of your life that you loved. But what does God say here? Notice. The pronoun that is used five times. I am he. I will carry, I have made, I will bear, I will carry and will save. The focus is on the I, what God says about himself. In contrast to those who die, who cannot care for you, God says I can do what no one else can do. God is the one who can carry and bear. God bears us. The idols cannot bear even their own burden. The people cannot bear the burden. The mule cannot bear the burden of the idol. But God can bear us. So this teaches us to cast our burdens on the Lord. When there are no friends around, when you may have lost your spouse, you may have lost a child, you can cast all of these burdens upon the Lord. Your family may not be there to bear your burden. Your mother may not answer when you call, but you can cast your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you. 1 Peter 5 verse 7, cast all of your cares, all of your anxieties, all of your burdens upon Him for He cares for you. And then one more point. Because these gray hairs here are not just about being older, but they're about the end of your life, we need to remember that God is with us even unto death. This is what Psalm 48 verse 14 says, that God will be our guide even unto death. Whether you die at 40, 60 or 100, all of us has to die alone. Everyone dies alone. You may die with your spouse holding your hand. You may die with your great-grandchildren surrounding your bedside, but they can't go with you into that place of death. They are with you there by the hospice bed. They're with you there in your home. But you're still alive. They cannot cross over that river of death with you. No matter who you have in your life, no matter who is taking care of you, no matter if you have your own mother or father still there right by your side, you die alone. But God, is our guide even unto death, even to gray hairs. In other words, even for King David, that last day of his life. And as he crossed over into death, even to that day, God carried him to that day of your death. And through death, God says, I will carry you. The Lord. Will bring you into his presence. with great joy. The Lord. Not your father, your mother, your spouse or your child, but the Lord will bring you into his presence with great joy. Look only to him as your ultimate hope. Depend only on him for your life and salvation and to carry you, because only he is with you, even crossing through death. And as we die, as long as the Lord Jesus does not return, even those who die before the return of Christ still await the resurrection of the body. Even when we die and our souls go to be with the Lord, our bodies lay there in the ground How is it that there is a bodily resurrection that that we believe in, that we confess in a creed, that we say is our hope? We believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Why is that so important to us? Because it shows God's special care for each one of his children. God cares for us even as our bodies are lying in the grave. He doesn't forget them. He doesn't forget about us. But he has a great promise for us. That one day, our souls will be reunited with our bodies. One day, that body that went into the dust will rise up out of the grave. And it's because of promises like these. Even to your old age, I am he. I have the power to raise the dead. Even to gray hairs, I will carry you. I made your body, I will bear your body, I will carry your body, and I will save your body from death. One day, you will be resurrected to life everlasting because of God's gift to you in Jesus Christ. This is the hope we have. This is the only hope we have. We have it through Jesus Christ, our Savior. Let's pray. God, we thank you that your promises are precious to us, and they are great promises that no man can fulfill. We thank you that you are the God who is able to fulfill your word. And so, God, we cast ourselves down before you, calling upon you for help, knowing that we need your grace. We pray, Lord, that you would carry us and you would bear us and you would save us. We pray, Lord, that your love would go to those who do not know you, who have heard the gospel, that they would not trust in gods who create burdens and cannot save, that they would call upon you and you would answer them in the day of trouble. We pray through Jesus Christ, Amen.