Isaiah’s time saw Israel in a serious love affair with idols.  In this chapter, the people are invited to give a defense for these illicit relationships:

²¹ “Present the case for your idols,” says the Lord.
“Let them show what they can do,” says the King of Israel.
²² “Let them try to tell us what happened long ago so that we may consider the evidence.
Or let them tell us what the future holds,
so we can know what’s going to happen.
²³ Yes, tell us what will occur in the days ahead.
Then we will know you are gods.
In fact, do anything—good or bad!
Do something that will amaze and frighten us.
²⁴ But no! You are less than nothing and can do nothing at all.
Those who choose you pollute themselves.

God calls to the stage those who are stealing His people’s affections.  Show off!  Give a display of your power!  He invites a pageant.  His rhetorical challenge makes His point: The people waste themselves in these quests.  In fact, it is worse than “waste”.  It is a pollution of the soul to give oneself to something with no value.

Statues of gold and wood aside, that last line should likely cause a pause for all of us.

I nominate this chapter of Scripture as one of the very best.  The child in me quickly feels my imagination take off as image after immense image depict the matchless greatness of God.

He gets it, that we don’t!  We shrink Him down and even dare to manage Him.  And like a volcano, He erupts, making it abundantly clear that the Divine is not to be managed.  It is to be pursued and sought and revered.

These words from Isaiah 40 do that for me almost immediately, every time I sit quietly and slowly with them:

¹² Who else has held the oceans in his hand?
Who has measured off the heavens with his fingers?
Who else knows the weight of the earth
or has weighed the mountains and hills on a scale?
¹³ Who is able to advise the Spirit of the Lord?
Who knows enough to give him advice or teach him?
¹⁴ Has the Lord ever needed anyone’s advice?
Does he need instruction about what is good?
Did someone teach him what is right
or show him the path of justice?

¹⁵ No, for all the nations of the world
are but a drop in the bucket.
They are nothing more
than dust on the scales.
He picks up the whole earth
as though it were a grain of sand.
¹⁶ All the wood in Lebanon’s forests
and all Lebanon’s animals would not be enough
to make a burnt offering worthy of our God.
¹⁷ The nations of the world are worth nothing to him.
In his eyes they count for less than nothing—
mere emptiness and froth.

This morning’s reading includes this odd image:

¹⁴ But thank God! He has made us his captives and continues to lead us along in Christ’s triumphal procession. Now he uses us to spread the knowledge of Christ everywhere, like a sweet perfume.

A king marches through the streets.  He’s been victorious, and behind him in tow are all those he has captured in battle.  This parade displays his victory and his rule in this place.  Watch any movie about ancient kingdoms or empires, and you can likely see this scene.

But these captives don’t appear to walk with hung heads.  They cling to no crushed freedoms; they have not suffered loss in the defeat.  To be certain, things have been taken from them.  Plans have been changed and life has been disrupted.  But they know they’ve never been part of something so sweet as this victory walk.  Their loss has become their victory, and their new king is the finest master they’ve ever known–even if they needed to be “persuaded” of that by his takeover of their lives.

And now they wish to see their lives carry that message, as a sweet aroma floats through the air.

So today, I hope you smell!

And I hope others smell your scent.

No doubt our lives always smell of something–let today be a day when the fragrance draws “sniffers” to notice the king at the front of our procession.