What’s Your Idol? January 4, 2026

What’s Your Idol?
Isaiah 46:3-13
St. Peter’s Anglican Church
January 4, 2026

A new year has dawned. It seems like just yesterday we were concerned about Y2K … and if you don’t know about that … Google it!

We had the New Year’s Eve shows on the TV … and for the first time in years … Lilah and I watched one … and I have to honest … it seems like there was 3 minutes of show and then 3 minutes of commercials.

The other thing that the new year brought was the College Football Playoffs and the setting of the stage for the NFL playoffs.

And … again … the multitude of TV commercials!

I have to tell you … I don’t watch a lot of TV with commercials.

Normally, I either watch programs on Prime or other streaming services … or network shows that I have recorded where I can fast forward through the commercials!

… so … the only time I really watch commercials are during live sporting events.

Most of the commercials are aimed at one thing … telling you that you cannot live without the product that they are selling … or that you won’t be happy unless you have whatever …

People are always looking for some type of fulfillment … through various means … and that’s what the TV ads are for … to tell you that what they are selling … will be fulfilling for you.

But others turn to other things … alcohol … drugs … sex … gadgets … buying the latest car … the latest TV and other technology …

All in the search filling a hole in our being of some kind … trying to get some type of satisfaction.

However, Saint Augustine said: “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”

Let me repeat that: “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”

In other words … God and a relationship to Him … is the only way to fill a restless heart.

This is exactly what we see in our Old Testament Lesson from Isaiah 46 … where we see the clear contrast between God and the futility of idols … whatever type they may be … and trying to fill this quest for a restless heart.

Consider how the prophet describes this futility in verses 5-7:

““To whom will you liken Me, and make Me equal And compare Me, that we should be alike?
They lavish gold out of the bag, And weigh silver on the scales; They hire a goldsmith, and he makes it a god; They prostrate themselves, yes, they worship. They bear it on the shoulder, they carry it And set it in its place, and it stands; From its place it shall not move. Though one cries out to it, yet it cannot answer Nor save him out of his trouble.””

It is obvious … the idols that are made with hands are useless!

I don’t think it is a stretch to say that anything that replaces God … or tries to replace God is an idol.

Jesus made this clear in the Sermon of the Mount in Matthew 6:

““Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal … No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.””

We see here in Isaiah 46 that God challenges His people — 46:5 … ““To whom will you liken Me, and make Me equal And compare Me, that we should be alike?”

God is asking … you want to compare me with something that you make with your own hands?

Two chapters earlier, Isaiah 44:14-17, we read something similar:

“He cuts down cedars for himself,
And takes the cypress and the oak;
He secures it for himself among the trees of the forest.
He plants a pine, and the rain nourishes it.
Then it shall be for a man to burn,
For he will take some of it and warm himself;
Yes, he kindles it and bakes bread;
Indeed he makes a god and worships it;
He makes it a carved image, and falls down to it.
He burns half of it in the fire;
With this half he eats meat;
He roasts a roast, and is satisfied.
He even warms himself and says,
“Ah! I am warm,
I have seen the fire.”
And the rest of it he makes into a god,
His carved image.
He falls down before it and worships it,
Prays to it and says,
“Deliver me, for you are my god!”

If we are honest with ourselves … we should be asking … what’s wrong with these pictures?

Again … isn’t it kind of obvious … that any type of idol is useless and will not fulfill any need … or emptiness that one might have.

Basically … it’s … I cut down a tree … cook my dinner with some of it … and then make an idol with the rest of it and think it’s going to deliver me and answer my prayers!
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God not only challenges His people … but He reminds them of the past.

““Listen to Me, O house of Jacob, And all the remnant of the house of Israel, Who have been upheld by Me from birth, Who have been carried from the womb: Even to your old age, I am He, And even to gray hairs I will carry you! I have made, and I will bear; Even I will carry, and will deliver you.””

God says … “Listen to me, O house of Jacob” … these are the descendants of those who God chose … starting with Abraham.

As God’s chosen people were about to enter the Promised Land … Moses reminded them of what God had done for them … Deuteronomy 7:6-7:

““For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples;”

In other words … God chose them because of He loved them first.

As Christians … that should sound familiar to us … because the Apostle John tells us: ““We love Him because He first loved us.””

I dismiss you from the communion rail with: ““Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!””

God loved us first!

My father was the oldest of 5 brothers … they were basically a typical Italian family … the joke is they went to church 3 times in their lives …

… to be baptized … to be married … and to be buried … we call it … hatched, matched and dispatched.

In other words … they weren’t even good Roman Catholics.

When my father wanted to marry my mother at 27 years old … he hadn’t even been confirmed or had his First Communion … so he had to take his Roman Catholic instruction before he could marry my mother.

In the providence of God my father worked at a company where the owner was an elder at10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia … and there was a voluntary Bible study before work that my father attended … where he heard the Gospel …

By the grace of God … he responded to that Gospel … where the Lord God called him out of darkness and into the light of His salvation.

Consequently my brother and I were raised in a Christian home.

““We love Him because He first loved us.””
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When I read these words from Isaiah … I am reminded that we can call God our Father and Jesus Christ our Savior because of what HE has done.

““Listen to Me, O house of Jacob, And all the remnant of the house of Israel, Who have been upheld by Me from birth, …”

We — as 21st Century Christians — are the remnant of the house of Israel.

And so again … we have the words of John … ““We love Him because He first loved us.””

When we talk about our salvation … and the fact of our salvation … it should never be in the first person … I did this … I raised my hand … I went forward to an altar call or something like that …

No … when we talk about our salvation … it should be in the 3rd person … because He … God has done it.

As Isaiah continues he reminds us of this.

““Remember the former things of old, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done, Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure,’””

The Apostle Paul echoes these words in Ephesians 1:

““Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.””

We know Christ as Savior and Lord because … as we read … ““just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.””

Or … as Isaiah said: “““Listen to Me, O house of Jacob, And all the remnant of the house of Israel, Who have been upheld by Me from birth, Who have been carried from the womb: Even to your old age, I am He, And even to gray hairs I will carry you! I have made, and I will bear; Even I will carry, and will deliver you.””
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We begin the new year … if there’s one thing that we can be absolutely sure of … and that is the fact that we don’t know what God has in store for us — His children — this year.

We don’t know what plan God has for our nation and the world.

As usual … I woke up in the middle of the night … checked my phone to see what time is was … and I say the headlines about Venezuela.

… who knew that we would wake up Saturday morning with the news of the military action in Venezuela and the arrest of the President and his wife.

It was surprising to us … but not to God …

As we read: ““For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done, Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure,’””

… ““My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure, …””

I don’t know about you … but I take great comfort in the fact that I love and serve a God who is in complete and absolute control … He knows the end from the beginning …

So … I must ask … and I have to ask myself first … what are the idols that I have … what are the idols that you have … what prevents us from having a close relationship to God through the Lord Jesus Christ?

What prevents us from resting in the love and plan of God? What’s in the way??

And so … as the this new year unfolds … let us examine ourselves today to see what stands in our way … and let us strive to put away those things … so that we can say with Saint Augustine that we rest in God … and His perfect plan for us and the world that He has created.