The Burden of False Gods Text: Isaiah 46:1-2
Introduction: The Weight of Nothing
We live in an age that prides itself on its liberation. We have thrown off the shackles of ancient superstitions, or so we are told. We are sophisticated, enlightened, and above all, unburdened by the gods of our fathers. But this is a profound delusion. Man is a worshiping creature; it is not a question of whether he will worship, but what. And when a man or a culture rejects the living God, they do not thereafter worship nothing. They fall into the worship of anything and everything. They simply trade the glorious liberty of the sons of God for the back-breaking service of idols.
And the first thing we must understand about these new gods, which are really just the old gods with a fresh coat of paint, is that they are heavy. They are a burden. The service of Molech, the god of child sacrifice, is with us today in the sterile clinics of Planned Parenthood. The service of Mammon is with us in the frantic pursuit of wealth that leaves men hollowed out and families in ruins. The service of Aphrodite is with us in the sexual chaos that promises freedom but delivers only bondage and disease. Our world is filled with weary beasts, men and women, groaning under the weight of their chosen deities. They think they are carrying their iPhones and their ambitions and their ideologies, but what they are really carrying are their gods.
Isaiah, in this magnificent portion of his prophecy, brings this reality into sharp, satirical focus. He is speaking to a people, Israel, who are about to be carted off to Babylon, the very epicenter of sophisticated, powerful, and intimidating idolatry. And God, through the prophet, gives them a preview of the end of the story. He shows them the utter futility and dead weight of the Babylonian gods. This is not just a historical account; it is a timeless theological principle. The gods you have to carry will, in the end, be carried away themselves into captivity.
The contrast God will draw in the subsequent verses is between the gods you must carry and the God who carries you. This is the fundamental difference between every man-made religion and the glorious truth of the gospel. All other religions are about what man must do to carry himself, and his gods, to some imagined salvation. Christianity is about the God who stoops to carry His people, burdens and all, into His everlasting kingdom.
The Text
Bel has bowed down, Nebo stoops over;
Their images are on the beasts and the cattle.
The things that you carry are burdensome,
A load for the weary beast.
They stooped over, they have bowed down together;
They could not rescue the load,
But have themselves gone into captivity.
(Isaiah 46:1-2 LSB)
The Collapse of the Pantheon (v. 1a)
We begin with the ignominious posture of these so-called gods.
"Bel has bowed down, Nebo stoops over..." (Isaiah 46:1a)
Bel, another name for Marduk, was the chief god of Babylon. He was the king of the gods, the great creator figure in their mythology. Nebo was his son, the god of wisdom and writing. These were the top-tier deities. This was the executive branch of the Babylonian pantheon. If you were a Babylonian, your entire world, your military might, your cultural achievements, all of it was under the patronage of these two. They were the guarantors of your success.
And here, the prophet Isaiah, speaking some 150 years before Babylon falls to the Persians under Cyrus, declares their fate with utter certainty. They are not standing in triumph; they are bowing and stooping. This is the posture of defeat, of submission, of utter collapse. The God of Israel, the God who declares the end from the beginning (Is. 46:10), is taunting these pretenders. He is not just predicting the future; He is announcing His decree. He is the author of the story, and He is telling us how this chapter ends for the gods of the empire.
This is a direct assault on the foundational belief of the pagan world, which is that the gods are tied to the fate of their nations. If Babylon is strong, Marduk must be strong. But the God of the Bible is transcendent. He is not the tribal deity of Israel in the same way Bel was the tribal deity of Babylon. He is the Creator of heaven and earth, the king over all nations, and He uses nations like Babylon as a rod to chastise His people, and then, when He is finished, He breaks the rod and throws it into the fire.
From Objects of Worship to Burdensome Freight (v. 1b)
The prophet then describes the ludicrous scene of their downfall.
"Their images are on the beasts and the cattle. The things that you carry are burdensome, A load for the weary beast." (Isaiah 46:1b)
The scene is a refugee caravan. The city is falling, and the priests are frantically trying to save their gods. These idols, once carried in triumphant festival processions through the streets of Babylon, are now unceremoniously strapped to the backs of pack animals. The objects of worship have become mere freight. They are not carrying their people; they are being carried by their people, who are in turn loading them onto exhausted livestock.
Notice the biting irony. The word for "images" is the same word used for idols, but the context strips them of all dignity. And the phrase "the things that you carry" refers to these very idols. You used to carry them in honor; now you carry them as dead weight. They have become a burden, a load. This is the nature of all idolatry. It promises to lift you up, but it only ever weighs you down. Whether your idol is a golden statue or a political ideology, the end result is the same: you end up serving it, carrying it, and it makes you weary.
The beast is weary. This is a picture of the entire system of idolatry. It exhausts everyone involved. It exhausts the worshiper, who must pour his life, his money, and his children into the service of a god who cannot hear or speak or save. It exhausts the culture. It exhausts the very animals. The whole creation groans under the weight of man's rebellion against the true God.
The Impotent Deliverers (v. 2)
Verse two drives the point home with devastating finality.
"They stooped over, they have bowed down together; They could not rescue the load, But have themselves gone into captivity." (Isaiah 46:2)
The repetition of "stooped" and "bowed down" emphasizes their complete and total defeat. They do it "together," because there is no strength in numbers for false gods. A million zeros still add up to zero. They are all collapsing in a heap.
And here is the punchline: "They could not rescue the load." The "load" here is not the idols themselves, but the people who are carrying them, the weary beasts, the whole collapsing caravan of their civilization. The job of a god is to deliver, to save. That is the whole point. But these gods cannot even save themselves, let alone their worshipers. They cannot rescue the very people who are trying to rescue them. The folly is breathtaking. The deliverers need delivering.
And so, the final verdict is pronounced: they "have themselves gone into captivity." The god who was supposed to guarantee Babylon's freedom is now a prisoner of war. He is loot. He is a trophy for Cyrus the Persian, who, as Isaiah has already told us, is God's anointed shepherd, called to do God's will (Is. 44:28, 45:1). The idol is not a spiritual force being defeated; it is a lump of metal being carted off to the victor's treasury. As Paul would later say, "we know that an idol is nothing in the world" (1 Cor. 8:4).
The Gospel Contrast
This entire passage is designed to throw into sharp relief the glory of the God who is to come. In the very next verses, God will say, "Listen to Me, O house of Jacob... who have been borne by Me from birth, And have been carried from the womb" (Is. 46:3). The contrast could not be more stark.
The false gods are a burden you must carry. The true God is the one who carries you.
This is the gospel in miniature. Every other religious system, every secular philosophy of self-improvement, is a burden. It is a load of rules, rituals, or requirements that you must carry in order to achieve righteousness or enlightenment or whatever goal is being promised. It is you, strapping the idol of your performance to your back, and trying to haul it up the mountain. And it will make you weary. It will crush you.
But the gospel is the announcement of a God who does the carrying. We are the weary beasts, collapsing under a load we cannot bear, the load of our sin. And God does not give us instructions on how to carry it better. He comes down in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, and He takes the load upon Himself. "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24). He is the great beast of burden who carries the weight of our iniquity away.
The gods of Babylon went into captivity. But our God, in Christ, willingly went into the captivity of death for us. He bowed down and stooped over on the cross. He was loaded onto a cart, as it were, and placed in a tomb. But unlike Bel and Nebo, He did not stay there. He could not be held captive by death. He rose again, demonstrating that He is the God who not only carries His people, but who has conquered sin, death, and every false god that would dare to challenge His throne.
Therefore, the call to us is simple. What are you carrying? What idol have you strapped to your back? What burden is making your soul weary? Is it the approval of men? Is it your own righteousness? Is it your political tribe? Whatever it is, see it for what Isaiah shows it to be: a collapsing, captive, dead thing. And then, hear the call of the one true God, mediated through His Son: "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28). Stop carrying your gods, and let the true God carry you.