Who Made Who
Isaiah 43:7
Even every one that is called by My name: for I have created him for My glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him.
“Who made who, who made you? Who made who, ain't nobody told you? Who made who, who made you? If you made them and they made you who picked up the bill, and who made who? Yeah
who made who, who turned the screw?” When Stephen King wrote and directed the movie “Maximum Overdrive” from one of his short stories named “Trucks”, he asked the rock band AC/DC to record the soundtrack, the song “Who Made Who’ was one of the songs written for the movie and I read the lyrics from the refrain. You might be thinking “How is this guy going to work AC/DC and Stephen King into a sermon?” Actually I’m kinda wondering that myself. Let’s see if I can do it.
The short story and the movie are about machines that have gained a certain amount of intelligence and have revolted against mankind. The machines still perform the tasks they were built for but they now perform these tasks without humans at the controls. The lyrics to the song brought up a couple of machines and the role they play in human life but asked the question. “who made who?” Did people make the machines to use or did the machines make the people to serve them? Which one is in control?
In our reading today, God told Isaiah that He made all people for His glory, that He formed and created everyone. In Revelations 4:11 we are told, “Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created”, and in Ephesians 2:10; “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them”. All three verses clearly state that God has created all people; that He formed us. Our creation was done for God’s glory, for God’s purpose and to do certain tasks, certain good works, which we are expected to do for the glory and honor or God. It is God’s will, God’s desire that we have been made and because of this we should do what is right and just and honor God and give Him the glory, or the credit, for that we have, all that we know, and all that we can do.
It is so simple, God is the Creator, we are the created, but this truth is not often recognized or even acknowledged by those God created. Throughout history we have found that the ancient cultures have made up various deities to help explain the different aspects of nature and human personality. Without exception, these religions, these mythos, are polytheistic or have many different gods. Baal, Chemosh, Dagon, the Golden Calf, Tammuz, Moloch, and Asherah are but a few that are mentioned in the Bible, the history records name many hundreds more. But in all of them, they have human frailties and human tendencies regardless of their power and knowledge. In all of them, man made the gods in their image and for man’s purpose.
As Christianity began spreading and the concept of a monotheistic, or single deity concept, began to become accepted, people began creating a single god for them to worship. One of the big knocks against Judaism and Christianity in ancient times was the fact that these are a single God in the religion. For some reason, the thought of a monotheistic religion was seen as suspicious in the ancient world. We know most of the single deities out there; Jehovah of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the god of the Mormons, and Allah of Islam are among them. In all of these, the god is supreme without the human faults we found in the ancients religion. But also in all of these, their god satisfies the group’s particular human sensibilities. The gods, created by people, act in accordance to human desires and human wants and needs.
Even the Jews, God’s chosen people, the ones that looked so forward to the coming Savior have denied the Savior had come and in some instances even deny there ever would be a Savior. The Jews believe that the Christian translations of the old Hebrew texts are not correct and what Christians believe is not what God had originally said. One of the statements the Jews rely on is that the Savior is to bring peace, and since there are still wars, the Savior cannot yet have come. They also believe God is one and not the Trinity of Christian belief. The Jews are teaching a concept of God that denies what He has said about Himself.
In all of these monotheistic religions, men redefined God and made Him a more palatable being, something more to their liking. As long as men can make their gods, then the gods will have no choice but to allow and accept whatever behavior people display. If people wish to allow gambling, all they need to do is make a god of gambling or to have their god state that a particular form or even all forms of gambling is allowed. If a particular action was taboo in the past but has now become acceptable, say living together without being married, all people have to do is declare a “new revelation” and allow the taboo action. Because man made the god the god is subject to the will of the people. When asked “Who made who”, people can say to the god, “We made you”.
While researching a topic for a Bible study, I found a web site devoted to the modern day worship of the Greek gods—that’s right, modern day worship. I’ll give you a moment to pick your jaw up off the floor. These gods now, at least at this site, are identified with the different parts of nature and bear little to no resemblance to the gods worshipped by the ancient Greeks. So even the gods that have been created by men and everyone knows to be false, that haven’t been worshipped in hundreds of years, can be brought back to life and made to fit into whatever mold modern day people want or need them to fit. Without a doubt, it was man who made, and then remade, these gods.
We read in Genesis 1:26 “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”. So it was God intention, His original design that we should be in His image. And the image of God is that of perfection. That image is one without the stench of sin or the stain of disobedience. But that image was lost in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve listened to the serpent and violated God’s command against eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Once they defied God, sin infected everything God had made and it became imperfect.
It is this imperfection, this sin that caused God to proclaim His curse and tell us that from dust we were made, and to dust we will return. We were told that we were to die a physical death, for we had already died spiritually when the first sin was committed. The judgment handed down was perfect and righteous, because it wasn’t God who did wrong. It may not have been you or me who made that first sin, but we have done enough on our own to justify God’s sentence of death, which includes eternity in hell forever separated from Him.
But God loves His creation too much for that to happen; which is why He made a way for us to regain our perfection. God planned for His Son to take our place in punishment. He endured the wrath and punishment we should endure. He served the sentence in hell that we deserve. The Son, the Savior Jesus Christ, took our sins and made them His own. As it is recorded for us in 2 Corinthians 5:21 “For He hath made Him to be sin for us, Who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him”. The Father made Jesus to become sin for us, and once the punishment for sin had been executed, our sins and sinfulness has been forgiven. Our sins no longer count against us. And Jesus, being God, lived the perfect life we were made to live and He gives that life to us. We are now seen by God as we were meant to be, perfect.
We can see that God made us to do His will and the work He would have us do, so does that mean everyone or only those that follow Him does what He wants us to do. In the movie and the story written by Stephen King, the machines still did what they were originally built to do; trucks still drove the roads to deliver the material they carried, lawn mowers still mowed lawns, coffee machines still made coffee; even though the machines had rejected their creator, they still did the work of the creator. This holds true for people today; even though those who have rejected God go on with their lives believing they are acting to their own will, God is still in control and all people act to the will of the Lord. God told Moses that He would harden Pharaoh’s heart to not let the Israelite people go, and yet we can trust that Pharaoh believed it was his decision to not listen to Moses. The priests of Baal thought it was a good idea to accept Elijah’s challenge to a contest about which God would burn their particular sacrifice. Really? Both Elijah and the priests of Baal followed the will of God, and the outcome showed the reality and power of the one true God.
And now we come to an important question; could there be other gods out there. Perhaps the ancient people and those of Islam and the Mormons and the others were merely listening to the voice of another being, another god. God told Isaiah which is recorded in 45:5 “I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me”. God has told us there is no other deity other than Him. If anyone worships anything other than the one God, they worship an idol, a false god, something someone has created for their own purpose. All Christendom, and all people, are told there is only one Creator, and only One who’s will we follow, either voluntarily or involuntarily. No one, despite what they believe or want to have happen in their life, can escape this fact.
We can see there is only one Creator, one Supreme Being, one God. This God has made Himself known to all people through His Word contained within the pages of the Bible. It is this one God that rules all creation, and it is to this Creator’s will that all creation moves. Those in faith to this God find a comforting and meaningful fulfillment to this; for those out of faith, they find a yoke they wish to remove, but one they never can. And even this should give us a measure of reassurance, even those who oppose and stand against us do so according to God’s will; this is done for His glory and purpose. Without a doubt we have a God that is still interested and moves His creation and without a doubt, we know Who made who. Amen.
