Welcome to this Daily PBJ devotional. Read Numbers 8, Isaiah 33, and Galatians 2 today. This devotional is about Isaiah 33. Woe to you, O destroyer never destroyed! O traitor never betrayed! When you have finished destroying, you will be destroyed. When you have finished betraying, you will be betrayed. O Lord, be gracious to us. We wait for you. Be our strength every morning and our salvation in time of trouble. The peoples flee the thunder of your voice. The nations scatter when you rise. Your spoil, O nations, is gathered as by locusts. Like a swarm of locusts, men sweep over it. The Lord is exalted, for he dwells on high. He has filled Zion with justice and righteousness. He will be the sure foundation for your times, a storehouse of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge. The fear of the Lord is Zion's treasure. Behold, their valiant ones cry aloud in the streets. The envoys of peace weep bitterly. The highways are deserted. Travel has ceased. The treaty has been broken. The witnesses are despised. And human life is disregarded. The land mourns and languishes. Lebanon is ashamed and decayed. Sharon is like a desert. Bashin and Carmel shake off their leaves. Now I will arise, says the Lord. Now I will lift myself up. Now I will be exalted. You conceive chaff. You give birth to stubble. Your breath is a fire that will consume you. The peoples will be burned to ashes, like thorns cut down and set ablaze. You who are far off, hear what I have done. You who are near, acknowledge my might. The sinners in Zion are afraid. Trembling grips the ungodly. Who of us can dwell with a consuming fire? Who of us can dwell with everlasting flames? He who walks righteously and speaks with sincerity, who refuses gain from extortion, whose hand never takes a bribe, who stops his ears against murderous plots and shuts his eyes tightly against evil. He will dwell on the heights, the mountain forces will be his refuge, his food will be provided, and his water assured. Your eyes will see the king in his beauty, and behold a land that stretches afar. Your mind will ponder the former terror. Where is he who tallies? Where is he who weighs? Where is he who counts the towers? You will no longer see the insolent, a people whose speech is unintelligible, whose stammer in a language you cannot understand. Look upon Zion, the city of our appointed feasts. Your eyes will see Jerusalem, a peaceful pasture, a tent that does not wander. Its tent pegs will not be pulled up, nor will any of its cords be broken. But there the Majestic One, our Lord, will be for us a place of rivers and wide canals, where no galley with oars will row, and no majestic vessel will pass. For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our King, it is He who will save us. Your ropes are slack, they cannot secure the mast or spread the sail. Then an abundance of spoils will be divided, and even the lame will carry off the plunder. And no resident of Zion will say, I am sick. The people who dwell there will be forgiven of iniquity. This is God's word. Our society has changed dramatically in the past few years. Actions that were once generally considered and widely considered immoral are now considered acceptable. In some cases, things that were illegal are not only legal now, but they receive special legal protections. Those who are advocating and legalizing these changes do so with much self-righteousness, under the guise of civil rights. And that creates a lot of pressure on the rest of society to celebrate these changes, or conform to them, or at the very least, remain quiet about them. If you have ever wondered why many people have suddenly lost their minds, Isaiah 33, 5 and 6 provide the answer. Verse 5 describes God's exalted state and how His kingdom, which is called Zion, will be filled with justice and righteousness. But this world is not yet his kingdom. Until Christ returns and establishes his kingdom, every human government will become unjust and every society will practice increasing unrighteousness. Why? Verse 6 says, He will be the sure foundation of your times. And so when people believe in God and believe in his definition of righteousness, they have the sure foundation on which to establish right and wrong. Without faith in God, no sure foundation exists. Instead, ideas of righteousness and justice will be redefined by the perverse. and ever-degrading notions of humanity. But verse 6 of our passage continues by saying that the Lord will be a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge. Those are the words of the NIV. As believers who fear the Lord, we can be certain of what we know because it has been revealed to us by someone who knows all things. That was stated in the final line of our passage for today, Isaiah 33 6, the fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure. That's in the NIV. Fearing the Lord means so much in the Old Testament. It means reverencing God in worship, of course, but also it means understanding his greatness and his awesomeness and how undeserving we are of anything from him. Fearing God causes us to reverence what he has revealed in his word, and that leads to repentance and faith. But fearing God and receiving his word also means accepting what his word says about the origin of all things, about the end of all things, about why some things are right and why some things are wrong. It also means accepting why we need salvation and so many other tenets of our faith. Yes, it is true that unbelievers know many things that we believers do not know, and that believers don't know everything. But if you dig a little bit beneath the surface, of an unbeliever's knowledge. You'll find assumptions rather than certainty. This is why right and wrong, which should be obvious to anyone, eventually becomes questioned and then denied in godless societies. When someone cuts himself off from God, he will have no foundation to know anything. That means that anything could be true, which causes us to believe in foolishness. See Romans 1.21 and 29 for more about that. This explains why our culture is increasingly embracing foolishness. But we don't read scripture just to understand the foolishness of this world. We read it to walk with God. So the message for us in this passage is not to cluck our tongues and shake our heads at the depravity and growing insanity around us. Rather, the message for us is not to let the false assumption of this world become our assumptions. Instead, we must fear God and seek Him. In Him, we'll find the rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge that this passage promises. 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