Isai. xlv. 21. There is no God else beside me ; a just God and a Saviour ; there is none beside me.
TO us, who have been habituated from our infancy to hear of none but the true and living God, it seems incredible that man should be so stupid and selfish as to bow down to stocks and stones, and to worship them as gods. But not only is mankind in general prone to idolatry, but even the people of God them- selves, who had seen all the wonders wrought by Jehovah in Egypt, were ever ready to turn aside from him, and to worship the work of their own hands. Hence we see so much in the prophetic writings on the subject of idolatry, and in vindication of Jehovah as the only true God. In the passage before us, God has appealed to the evidence which he had given of his exclusive right to the regards of his people ; in that he had foretold future events, which came to pass agreeably to his predictions ; whilst none of the gods of the heathen had ever pretended to any such power. And in the words before us he maintains his own supremacy, by a further statement of his cha- racter as a just God and a Saviour.
Let us consider,
I. The character of God as here stated —
We shall consider it,
1. As contrasted with that of all the heathen deities —
[Whatever their poor deluded votaries might imagine, it was not in their power either to inflict or to avert evil. This is put in a striking point of view by the Prophet Jeremiah : " The customs of the people are vain : for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with an axe. They deck it with silver and with gold : they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. They are upright as the palm-tree, but speak not : they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them : for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to gooda."
a Jer. x. 3 — 5.