Sharon Reformed Presbyterian Church · Sermon study sheet

Womb to Tomb

Bryan Schneider · September 28, 2022

Isaiah 46

sharonrpc.org/sermons/womb-to-tomb

Summary

Isaiah contrasts powerless idols that must be loaded onto weary animals with the living God who carries his people from the womb into old age.
False gods cannot move, answer prayer, bear burdens, or deliver worshipers; they and the creatures carrying them are swept into captivity.
God has upheld his covenant people from birth and promises that even with gray hair and declining strength he will continue to bear, carry, and deliver them.
Ancient carved idols remain common in parts of the world, while American covetousness, materialism, possessions, comfort, and status reveal the same idolatrous heart.
The remedy is to remember the incomparable God: there is no other, his knowledge is complete, and he declares the end from the beginning.
God's counsel certainly stands because his omniscience and omnipotence are perfectly joined to his holy character; he does all that pleases him without learning, improving, or failing.
Honest self-knowledge recognizes stubborn hearts far from righteousness, unable to produce the obedience they know God requires.
God brings his righteousness and salvation near in Jesus Christ, and the same faithful Lord who began his people's life will complete their sanctification and bring them to glory.

What contrast does Isaiah draw between idols people carry and the God who carries his people?
How has God cared for his people from birth through old age?
Which modern desires function as idols even without carved images?
Why does Isaiah command transgressors to remember the former things?
What does it mean that God declares the end from the beginning?
Why must divine omniscience and omnipotence be understood together with holiness?
What does your inability to attain righteousness reveal about the human heart?
How does God bring his own righteousness and salvation near?
Why can aging Christians trust that God will finish the work he began?

Idolatry: Giving worship, trust, desire, or ultimate allegiance to a created object, possession, status, or pleasure instead of God.
Covetousness: Discontented desire for what belongs to another, identified in Scripture as a form of idolatry.
Providence: God's holy, wise, and powerful preservation and government of every creature, action, and event.
Omniscience: God's perfect and exhaustive knowledge, by which nothing past, present, or future is uncertain to him.
Omnipotence: God's unlimited power to accomplish everything consistent with his holy will.
Immutable counsel: God's purpose that does not change, fail, or depend upon discovering new information.
Glorification: God's completion of his saving work when believers are made perfectly holy and brought into his unveiled presence.