The Rock and the Absurdity Text: Isaiah 44:6-8
Introduction: The Unavoidable Confrontation
We live in a soft age, an age that prizes therapeutic niceties over hard-edged truth. Our culture wants a god, to be sure, but it wants a god who is more of a celestial butler, a divine affirmation machine. The modern sensibility demands a god who is inclusive, tolerant, and above all, not exclusive. The one unforgivable sin in our pluralistic pantheon is the sin of claiming to be the only true God. And it is precisely this claim, this glorious, offensive, rock-solid claim, that Yahweh makes in our text today.
Isaiah is writing to a people in exile, a people surrounded by the towering ziggurats and imposing idols of Babylon. They were tempted to think that perhaps Yahweh was just a regional deity, a tribal god who had lost a cosmic turf war with Marduk. Into this atmosphere of doubt and accommodation, God speaks through His prophet, and what He says is not designed to soothe pagan feelings. It is a direct, frontal assault on the entire edifice of idolatry, both ancient and modern. God does not enter into a polite dialogue with false gods; He mocks them. He does not ask for a seat at the table of world religions; He kicks the table over.
This passage is a divine ultimatum. It is God throwing down the gauntlet, not just to the carved idols of Babylon, but to the more sophisticated idols of our own day: the idols of secular humanism, materialism, self-worship, and political utopianism. Every worldview that is not grounded in the absolute sovereignty of the one true God is, at its root, idolatry. And God's challenge here is designed to expose the utter absurdity of it all. He is about to put the universe on the witness stand and cross-examine it.
The Text
“Thus says Yahweh, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, Yahweh of hosts: ‘I am the first, and I am the last, And there is no God besides Me. Who is like Me? Let him call out and declare it; And let him tell it to Me in order, From the time that I established the ancient people. And let them declare to them the things that are to come And the events that are going to take place. Do not be in dread and do not be afraid; Have I not long since caused it to be heard to you and declared it? And you are My witnesses. Is there any God besides Me, Or is there any other Rock? I know of none.’ ” (Isaiah 44:6-8 LSB)
The Divine Declaration (v. 6)
God begins by identifying Himself, and His titles are His argument.
"Thus says Yahweh, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, Yahweh of hosts: ‘I am the first, and I am the last, And there is no God besides Me." (Isaiah 44:6)
First, He is Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God, the great I AM. This is not a generic deity. This is the God who revealed Himself to Moses, the God who makes and keeps promises. He is the King of Israel, their sovereign ruler, and their Redeemer, the one who buys them back from slavery, whether in Egypt or Babylon. He is Yahweh of hosts, the commander of the armies of Heaven. Before a word of His central claim is uttered, He has already established His authority, His covenant faithfulness, and His cosmic power.
Then comes the thunderclap: "I am the first, and I am the last." This is the ultimate statement of absolute sovereignty over time and reality. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the A and the Z. Before anything was, He was. After everything is gone, He will be. He is not a character in the story of history; He is the Author of it. He writes the first line and He writes the last. This title, incidentally, is one that the Lord Jesus Christ takes for Himself in the book of Revelation (Rev. 1:17, 22:13), which is a breathtaking claim to full deity. If Yahweh is the first and the last, and Jesus is the first and the last, then the conclusion is inescapable.
From this premise, the conclusion is logically necessary: "And there is no God besides Me." This is not just a statement of superiority, as though He were the chairman of the board of gods. It is a statement of exclusive reality. It is not that other gods are weaker; it is that they are nothing. They are zeroes with the rims knocked off. They are figments of the rebellious human imagination. This is bare-knuckle monotheism, and it leaves no room for the religious pluralism that our culture holds so dear. God does not grade on a curve.
The Divine Challenge (v. 7)
Having made His declaration, God now issues a challenge to any would-be contenders for His throne.
"Who is like Me? Let him call out and declare it; And let him tell it to Me in order, From the time that I established the ancient people. And let them declare to them the things that are to come And the events that are going to take place." (Isaiah 44:7)
This is a divine taunt. It is cosmic trash-talk from the throne of the universe. God says, "If there is another god out there, let him step into the ring. Let's see his credentials." The test He proposes is the test of prophecy. The proof of deity is the ability to declare the end from the beginning. Any idol, any philosophy, any worldview that wants to claim the title of "god" must be able to do what only God can do: tell the future, not in vague, Nostradamus-like riddles, but with specific, verifiable accuracy.
God’s challenge is simple: "Let him tell it to Me in order." In other words, lay out the course of history. Explain the pattern. Tell me what is coming. Of course, the idols are silent. A block of wood cannot predict next Tuesday's weather, let alone the rise and fall of empires. The idols of our day are just as mute. The god of random chance, worshipped by the materialists, can declare nothing because it has no mind. The god of the self, worshipped by the therapeutic culture, can declare nothing because its whims change with its blood sugar. Only the sovereign God who has decreed all of history can declare all of history.
This is the foundation of Christian apologetics. The Bible is not just a book of good moral advice; it is a book of fulfilled prophecy. God told Abraham what would happen to his descendants. He told Isaiah that a pagan king named Cyrus would deliver Israel, a hundred and fifty years before Cyrus was born (Isaiah 44:28). He laid out the future of world empires in the book of Daniel. And He gave us hundreds of specific prophecies about the life, death, and resurrection of His Son. The challenge God issues here is one He has already triumphantly met.
The Divine Comfort (v. 8)
The purpose of this grand declaration and challenge is not to win a philosophical debate. It is to comfort and strengthen the hearts of His people.
"Do not be in dread and do not be afraid; Have I not long since caused it to be heard to you and declared it? And you are My witnesses. Is there any God besides Me, Or is there any other Rock? I know of none.’ ” (Isaiah 44:8)
Theology always has consequences. Right doctrine leads to right living and right feeling. Because God is the sovereign, exclusive, all-knowing ruler of the cosmos, His people have no reason to fear. "Do not be in dread and do not be afraid." Why? Because the future that terrifies us is the future that He has already written and declared. The Babylonians are not in charge. The politicians are not in charge. Your circumstances are not in charge. Yahweh of hosts is in charge, and He has told you how the story ends.
And then He gives us our job description: "And you are My witnesses." A witness is someone who testifies to what he has seen and heard. We are not called to invent a message or to market a product. We are called to bear witness to the reality of who God is and what He has done. We are to point to the evidence: to fulfilled prophecy, to the created order, to the changed lives of His saints, and above all, to the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Our task is to stand in the public square and say, "This God of the Bible is the only God there is. We have seen the evidence."
God concludes with a final, rhetorical question that drives the point home like a railroad spike. "Is there any God besides Me, Or is there any other Rock? I know of none." The image of God as a Rock is one of absolute stability, strength, and immutability. In a world of shifting sands, of fleeting fads and crumbling empires, God is the one firm place to stand. Everything else is sinking sand. And then, with what can only be described as divine irony, God says, "I know of none." The omniscient God, who knows everything, has searched the universe for a rival, for another Rock, and has come up empty. If He doesn't know of one, it is because there is not one to be known.
Conclusion: The Only Place to Stand
This passage forces a decision upon us. There is no middle ground, no room for compromise. Either Yahweh is the only God, the first and the last, the sovereign Lord of history, or He is a liar. Either He is the Rock, or He is nothing.
Our culture has built its house on the sand of relativism. It has constructed a host of modern idols, idols of comfort, autonomy, political power, and sexual freedom, and it bows down to them, praying to gods that cannot save. It is a world adrift, without a foundation, and it is terrified. The anxiety and dread that God tells His people to forsake is the very air that our world breathes.
The message of Isaiah 44 is our message. We are God's witnesses. We are to stand on this Rock and declare to a sinking world that there is a firm place to stand. The God who declared the end from the beginning has declared His plan of redemption in His Son, Jesus. He is the Rock of our salvation, the cornerstone that the builders rejected. Every other ground is sinking sand.
Therefore, do not be in dread. Do not be afraid of the sneers of the sophisticated, or the threats of the powerful. The God who knows of no other Rock is your God. He is your King and your Redeemer. He has spoken, He has acted, and He has called you to be His witness. Stand on the Rock, speak the truth, and watch the idols fall.