Please open your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 2. I want you to know that this is a sermon that I've prepared this week and have studied a great deal on. I think that God has a word that you need to hear this morning. I'm convinced of it. This is something that we don't talk about very often in our day, as a church as a whole. And as we are a church that tries to go through the scripture, we can't avoid certain things. And I think that's a good thing because it doesn't allow for our sin to get in the way. And it allows us to hear the whole counsel of God. And believe me, friends, we need to hear the whole counsel of God in our day. Now, I've started in Isaiah 2, verse 5 for a reason. It's because verse 5 is the only gospel in the entire passage. And it's a transitional verse, and it's important for us to keep it in there. We're going to go through the end of the chapter, and we've read it this morning. The terror of the Lord and the splendor of his majesty is a phrase that is used three times in this text. It's found in verse 10. It's found in verse 19. It's found in verse 21. The day of the Lord is an idea that occurs four different places in chapter 2 and it occurs six more times in the next two chapters. Isaiah cries out in verse 12 these horrible words, For the Lord will have a day of reckoning. On this day we learn that God will be exalted and wicked men will be cast away to live and filth like unclean roads. Oh, how many times I have heard how the God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath, while the God of the New Testament is a God of love, as if somehow either God, who the Bible itself says does not change, has in fact actually changed. Or maybe somehow even worse, that perhaps there are actually two different gods that are presented to us in the pages of the Holy Bible. I'll tell you right now, this sort of thinker is not going to like Isaiah chapter 2. I've also found something very strange. When I tell people that we are preaching through the book of Isaiah in our church, I sometimes get snide remarks that go something like this. Well, you're going to preach wrath to those people. Friends, I want you to be very clear on this. We need to hear about the wrath of God. God never sees it as a bad thing to scare a person out of hell. If you are not terrified of this great day, you should be. Not talking about it isn't going to keep it from coming. And if you're not deeply grieved and troubled to the core of your very being about a church that refuses to talk about this anymore, then you had better quickly ask yourself why it is that you don't care about it. We can no longer afford to keep silent about justice and the day of doom. Because sin is crouching at the door of the church in ways that have not happened in any of our lifetimes, and probably in the lifetimes of many of our fathers before us. We live in extremely dangerous times. Now they are dangerous not because primarily other nations hate us, or even because we are in a war, or because our society is morally a rotten apple, but because we have enraged and provoked the mighty lion to anger with our sin and our rebellion and our foolishness. The Lord roars from Zion and from Jerusalem. He utters his voice. Amos starts out his book. Even as we speak, God roars from his holy hill with a thunderous voice, and he is preparing himself. arousing himself, lifting himself, stretching out his arms, girding his loins, and preparing for battle, preparing for the hunt. He is hungry from waiting so patiently. The nations will not stand when God is goaded, and the Church will not be allowed to continue in her blissful ignorance and marriage with the world forever. Please, Church, For those of you who hear my voice this morning, let us take this lesson from history. Before God drew Gentiles to himself, he had chosen a community that he turned into a mighty nation, though they were the least of all people. They made a pact with God where they swore to uphold his law. Now, Isaiah chapter 2, verses 2 through 4 that we talked about last time, which is really the exact opposite sort of a sermon as this one is, Nation is a very idyllic future. It's a real future and it cannot be stopped. This future must come to pass. In this future, in verse 2, the world is drawn to Zion. In verse 3, to the church and to God's place where he himself resides, the world seeks true spiritual benefit. In this coming time there will be total world peace, in verse 4. And the world wants to know and to obey God and his law. And God will receive the world before his tribunal and holy court in order to pass judgments of goodness upon them. This is the ideal. But there is a present reality for Israel that Isaiah ironically says was the exact opposite of this idyllic future. Isaiah juxtaposes the five things mentioned here with the present truth of the matter for the nation. While the world would be drawn to Zion, God's people were conforming to the world. He says, For you have abandoned your people, the house of Jacob, because they are filled with influences from the east, and they are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they strike bargains with the children of foreigners. And while the world in the future will seek spiritual benefit, Zion is busy seeking the exact opposite, material wealth. Their land has been filled with silver and gold and there is no end to their treasures. And while the world is going to be brought to Zion, Israel presently is busy building up their armaments. The land has been filled with horses and there is no end to the chariots. While the world wants to know and to obey God in the future, God's people are presently busy inventing their own idols. The land has also been filled with idols, Isaiah says. They worship the work of their hands, that which their fenders have made. And while the world is going to be received before God's holy court, God has abandoned His people, and He will deny them forgiveness. because it says, you have abandoned your people. The common man has been humbled. The man of importance has been abased, but do not forget them. Now the prophet Habakkuk spoke of a time in the future. He said, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Isaiah makes it very clear here, four different times in fact, that Judah is filled with everything but God. Verses 6, 7a, 7b, and 9, each state that the land was filled with various forms of corruption. First, we learn that she was filled with influences from the East. Various translations or influences, say customs, or things, superstitions, or diviners. Now going to the east is often times a bad direction to travel in biblical imagery. When Adam was kicked out of the garden, he was placed in the east. Cain went out from the presence of the Lord to the land of Nod, east of Eden. When Lot chose his land, it was in the east. Where? Sodom and Gomorrah. The tabernacle and temple, which are patterns of Eden and of the heavenly realm, had their door on the east side, but in order to get into the temple, holy place, you had to move the opposite direction, to the west. That which is east of Israel is symbolized by each of these words, things that we have seen. And Babylon, which is to the east of Israel, becomes a place where this is most expressed. So, for example, at the very end of the Bible, in Revelation 18, you hear this. Babylon, the great city, will be thrown down with violence. The light of the lamp will not shine in you any longer, and the voice of the bridegroom and bride will not be heard in you any longer, for your merchants were great men of the earth. Because of all the nations were deceived by your sorcery." He says. Israel was, of course, forbidden from taking part in sorcery, but that's exactly what she was doing. So you recall the law over and over. God talks about this. He says in Leviticus 19 verse 26, do not practice divination or sorcery. It doesn't get any more clear than that. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft or cast spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is It's just okay because it's culturally relevant? No! Detestable to the Lord. And because of these detestable practices, the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you. Now each of these things that Israel is filled with is restated in Isaiah's text through the means of poetic parallelism. So in other words, it says, soothsayers, you will become like soothsayers like the Philistines. Well, that's an interpretation of What it means to be filled with sorcery from the East. And you strike bargains with the children of foreigners. That's another way of saying it. Helps explain the fullest possible sense, then, what it means to be influenced by the East. To strike bargains with foreigners. To become soothsayers like the Philistines. And by the way, the Philistines were located where, according to Israel? They were in the West. So in other words, Israel wasn't just going to the East. They were filled with all sorts of things Next, we see that Israel was filled with silver and gold. Now, of course, God is not against silver and gold per se. However, He knows that the love of money is itself a soothsayer of sorts. It speaks soothing lies to our hearts and causes us to trust in it. Is this not why we are told, keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have? This is not why Jesus said, you cannot serve both God and money. Now in the Old Testament, the king was specifically warned about this. It says, the king shall not greatly increase silver or gold for himself. So what Israel was doing was strictly forbidden by the very law that she said that she was going to uphold. And thus it was said to her, there is no end to your treasures. So this nation was extremely wealthy, extremely religious, Extremely prosperous and extremely wicked. She was filled with horses. There was no end to her chariots. These images are meant to show that Israel was not trusting in her warrior God anymore. These are symbols of warcraft. It was not God that was going to go to battle for her, but herself. So she was building up her armaments. She was trusting in man. She was trusting in her power. She was trusting in her own right arm, rather than in God's strong right arm. So these verses, I think, show us a foreshadowing of the very last verse of this chapter, which is, stop trusting in man. Finally, we discover that Judah was filled with idols. Now, that's the question, what is an idol, exactly? Well, the Heidelberg Catechism says it this way. It says, what is idolatry? Idolatry is instead of or besides the one true God who has manifest himself in his word to contrive or have any other object in which men place their trust. This is exactly Isaiah's conclusion. Isaiah says they worship the work of their hands, that which their fingers have made. Now there's a really good word play that goes on in the Hebrew there. You know that the word for God is Elohim in Hebrew. So the word here for idols is Elohim. It literally means no gods. These are no gods. You're trusting not in God, meaning no gods. Now we really need to see both the forest and the trees here, I think. The trees are the superstitions, the wealth, the military might, the idolatry, and these very specific things Israel has placed her trust in man. That's the trees. But there's a forest, and you can't miss it. And that is that Judah was filled up with everything except for God. It's a lot rather like, this is probably a really bad analogy, but it's the only one I could think of. filling up her gas tank with salt water, poison, chocolate syrup, and ketchup. This concoction isn't going to make the engine of the nation run at all, is it? She was a dead heap of rusted-out metal sitting on a highway going to nowhere, and though she didn't know it, an 18-wheeler was barreling down the road straight at her. Now at this point, I want to say this. I wish with all my heart, and I say this from the bottom of my heart, that I knew how to address you which affectionate term I could use. Because I want you to hear how much this comes from the bottom of my heart. Because you need to be acutely aware of the importance of what we're going to talk about now. Because for this hour, in this sermon, I am God's spokesman to you. This is what I have been called to do. I must tell you what God has revealed in his word and I must seek to make it applicable to you today. I believe that the message that comes in Isaiah next needs to be spoken with an urgency that we cannot comprehend. You and I stand on the brink of total disaster in our time. I know that people of every generation say this, but we can actually comprehend how this can happen in ways that past generations have never been able to conceive of before. We can actually blow up the whole world and kill ourselves right now. No other group of people has ever been able to say that. We cannot afford to play games with God's holy word anymore either. It is time for Christians to arise as our great lion king is even now arising. We must cast off our sins and we must throw ourselves upon God's mercy, we must beg Him for repentance, and we must plead with Him for forgiveness. And I really mean this. We can't afford to leave the church today and to go home as if everything is just the same as it was before we came here this morning. If we do not tear our clothes from our bodies and sit in heaps of ashes for our sin, I greatly fear what God is going to do to us. I fear it because I read about it right here in these pages. And I do not like what I see when I read what is going to happen. Now you must understand the words that lie open before you now. You must let them penetrate to the deepest part of your soul. You must not let them escape you until you have acted upon them. You must not delay. Or you will find, as Judah found, that it will be too late. Do you not understand that for God's people the day came in history when they could do nothing about the disaster that was predicted for them? No amount of pleading with God on the day of His fury would help them. There would be only weeping and gnashing of teeth, and a sudden A terrifying destruction that Babylon brought when they rode into Jerusalem, killed their people, raped their women, and what few were left took them into exile into a foreign land. This was God's judgment on His own people. Do you understand that? His wife, His child, His friend. It was God's will for it to happen. And it was God's plan for it to take place. It was God showing the world that he would not be mocked forever, especially by those who call themselves God's people. Do you seriously think that God has changed? Judah's story, the story of the nation falling into captivity, is only a shadow of what will take place in the future. Each time a nation falls, it is a reminder that there will come an end to our days on this earth. The passage from verse 9 to 21 basically teaches that though God has given man his day, his day is very soon to pass away. God will take it upon himself to have his own day. Though God apparently is now inactive, and leads many people to doubt exactly what we're talking about here. The Bible says soon he is going to arise and come to perform his work of judgment. I cannot express to you the horror of the words that are found in verse 9 and verse 12. You have to experience them for yourself. I can't grab into your mind and sort of do some wrenching inside your head to make you go, wow, I can't believe what that says. You have to read it, and you have to let it penetrate into your own heart. And the Holy Spirit has to teach you what you need to know. Fortunately, God says that through the preaching of His Word, God is pleased to come empowered by the Holy Spirit to do just these things. And I'm praying that that is what's going to happen to us this morning. In verse 9, Isaiah is making a prophecy through a command. And he says these words, do not forgive them. The whole passage from verse 6 to verse 9 is really a prayer. It's a lament and an imprecation against the people to God. And so this is what verse 9 says. The common man has been humbled. The man of importance has been abased. But do not forgive them. Now I want you to let those words ring in your ears. The prophet says, pleads to God, do not forgive them. How many people today simply expect that God is going to forgive? Worse yet, how many people please demands upon God that He must forgive or He is not really a God? Worse of all, we demand that God forgive and we demand it even though we refuse to do nothing about our end of things. We continue in our sin, our idolatry, our wealth, our false worship, our superstitions, all the while saying, God will forgive us. You know, I read something, our next door neighbor is part of a religion called Baha'i. Very strange religion. We got a, we went to the Erie Fair yesterday and she gave us a pamphlet from Baha'i. The very last prayer The very last thing that this pamphlet says is it talks about all these things they believe is this. It's a prayer to their God. And it says, O God who is forgiving, forgive us for the things that we do, because you just let them go. In other words, you don't care about your own holiness, your own justice, you just let things go. That's not the God that Isaiah talks about here. He doesn't just let things go. It says God will not forgive. He pleads for God to not forgive him. Now all of this sickening talk about God being love forgets that love is itself just. God must, out of the necessity of his own being, punish sin. If no one else pays for sin, then God is left with only one option, my friend. You will pay for your sin. This is exactly what you deserve. And it is quite a loving thing for God to do this. Because it upholds God's justice and His holiness. And Judah found this out firsthand, did she not? And it left a permanent mark upon this people that exists to this very day. Now it troubles me just how much we take for granted that Jesus Christ has paid for our sins in our day. In some ways, We of course do this rightly. He did take away our sin. He did take God's punishment upon his body. But I fear that even this, for far too many of us, is a way that we go about subtly compromising God's justice. To think that Jesus died for all sin of all people in the world, and yet to think that God is still going to punish some of these same people on the day of the Lord, makes absolutely no sense. It makes a monstrosity out of God's justice. It mocks the payment that was already made. What God is going to continually judge and punish the same sins over and over and over again? What God is going to punish, worse yet, Jesus Christ, the innocent one, when the person for whom Christ died already took the punishment? and then go ahead and punish that person anyways. The love of God is that when God takes away sin, friends, He deals with it. And it will not be punished ever again. And this is our great hope, is it not? There is a reason why Isaiah 2 is particularly important for us here this morning. The punishment. The day of the Lord in this passage is not just for Israel in some past historical thing where she went into captivity. It is future for us, and it is ultimately for all people. Judah's own punishment as a nation was only a small taste of what is to come for this whole world. And we are in this world. And there is not one of you here this morning that can get away with just expecting Jesus Christ to forgive your sins, because He's a God of love. If you do not place your whole heart and trust in the death of Christ to take away your punishment, then all that is left for you here is Isaiah's vision. God will not forgive. To not forgive was, of course, the demand of the law itself. Do you remember Exodus? Moses said, God will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. It's the exact opposite of Baha'i. Visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children as it did grandchildren to the third and fourth generations. Sons will pay for their father's sins. Something that I believe we see happening all around us today. And if the process is not stopped, you can only spin out of control into total chaos and utter ruin. Those who just expect God to forgive have actually undermined the very meaning of mercy. God is not compelled to have mercy upon anyone, let alone compelled to have mercy upon everyone. Mercy is the exact opposite of justice. So if we want God's mercy, the only way we're going to get it is to repent before it's too late. And people in our day don't like to talk like this. Of that I am much too aware. And I know many of you as well are as well, from your own personal experiences, because they hate it when you talk about it. This is true of them. But I'm not the one who is saying this. Consider for a moment the command in verse 10. to flee from the wrath to come. It says, enter a rock and hide from the dust from the terror of the Lord and from the splendor of his majesty. Now, first thing I want you to do is to consider trying to obey this command. How exactly is a rock or dust going to hide you from an omnipresent God? As one commentator said, In preaching as he does here, Isaiah is going contrary to modern psychological theories, which assert that it is unwise and even wrong to use fear as a motive in preaching and teaching. How different God's appraisal of preaching. The last judgment that is in view here is set before us as a terrible reality. He says, hide in the rocks, hide in the dust, hide anywhere you can, if you can, in order to escape the wrath of God that's to come. This is the only motif in preaching that will prevail with sinners. When men might begin to somewhat see and understand the hatred that God has for sin, and to turn from their evil ways to flee to Christ the refuge. The only way to run from God is to run to God. I implore you then, even now, that there is a rock that you may flee to that will hide you from the wrath to come. And His name is Jesus Christ. The psalm calls the rock of ages. He's our cleft to hide us from the presence of a holy God. But it means a total lifestyle change, a thinking change, a way of life change. It is impossible to hide under this rock until one is willing to forsake the pleasures and sins of the world. And if God's love will not compel you, perhaps His wrath will. Isaiah makes it clear here. Verse 12, the Lord of hosts will have a day of reckoning. Now, let that verse sink in. The Lord of hosts, the Lord of armies, will have a day of reckoning. The Bible says that everyone who is proud and lofty will be thrown down, without exception. Everyone who is lifted up, he will be brought low without exception. And do we need to drive this point home more? Is it not enough that the church in our day hates the talk about the wrath of God in the first place? Consider our society and then much of the church in America, especially those dominant ideas that are so rapidly changing our very landscape, in our sanctuaries, in our sermons. Though I do not know When the day of the Lord will come, I do know this. Those things that so captivated Israel have become the morbid fascinations of our society. And it was not always like this. Consider how Americans were trained to read and to write and to think. For scores of years in this land, it was with the Holy Bible. This lasted in public schools until just a few short years ago. But now, we are enamored with influences from the East, both as a society and in the Church. There is no end to our Eastern ways, psychic hotlines, Buddhist temples, Hindu gods, divining the future, meditation techniques that are meant to leave this physical existence behind, worshipping the Earth, sparks of the divine, God in everything, holistic healing. I tell you that at no time in the history of the world has the West made it a point to blend her ways with the East. But it's not just the society, it's the church. New Age philosophy permeates our churches. We hate doctrine. Do you understand that that is an Eastern way of thinking? We love mystery and indeed contradiction. Do you not understand that this is an Eastern way of thinking? It comes straight out of Buddhism, for example. They call them cones. You've heard it. What is the sound of one hand clapping? It's a cone. It's absurd. It doesn't make any sense. The point of it is that you're supposed to just let your mind accept the contradiction, and in doing so, you will somehow come closer to eternal oneness. We hate science. That's an Eastern way of thinking. Should we kill the little critter now, or should we keep on playing? I'm not talking about the worship of science, but science itself, the ability to hypothesize and test and figure out things from the scientific method. Do you realize that it is a particularly Christian gift to the world that science is, and that education and medicine and astronomy, care for the poor and so many other things that we just take for granted in this nation, are things that Christians have done as they've gone into the world to redeem society, It's not something that comes from India, believe me, in the caste system. Keeping people stuck in the wrenches of karma and the things that they deserve from a past life. Our infatuation with Eastern ways is extremely discouraging. Our land and our churches are filled with it, and we do not even know it. Probably because we're, in being filled with it, can't see beyond it to the God that we have replaced. Do I really need to go into the other things that Isaiah mentions here? We all know that Americans and the American church have more wealth than all the world combined. We know we consume more products, that we take in more money, that we export more goods, that we feed more people than anyone else in the world. But I hope we also know that in our great blessing, many of us have become addicted to the sin of loving money. Even as we're addicted to our military strength, to the idols of our age like technology, and news, and tabloids, and celebrity, entertainment, athletics, and sex, and in some ways literal idols that we each have in our homes, on our walls, especially young kids, and on our desks. I mean, what is the fascination that we have with celebrities in our age, if not modern idolatry? What is the desire to have our sanctuaries, if you are blessed enough to be able to afford to make a building, look just like gymnasiums, if not the worship of culture, perhaps even the worship of evangelism rather than the worship of God? How is this not idolatry? What is the replacement of the sermon with short movie clips and sound bites, if not the love of anti-intellectualism and entertainment? How is that not idolatry? Or how about the internet church that I visited this week? I've got to tell you about this. My brother sends me this link. Go to this church. There's a church in England, Beloved Homeland, Methodist Church, that has created a 3D visual interactive church. You can go and you can click on a little button and you can make your little guy cross himself. bow down in front of an altar, you can talk with other people who are in the room, and none of it's real! Do you realize that? It's not even real! It's a total disembodied techno-experience. That's not church. That's Gnostic church. How is this not idolatry? How can we possibly think that the church does not need to repent in our day when everything about us looks exactly like Judah? and God threatened and actually acted upon them in wrath. I do not understand Christians in our day, quite frankly. How can they say they love God and hate His Word? How can they love Isaiah 2, 1-4, but not Isaiah 2, 5-22? How can they take the love without taking the rest of it? Is God some sort of a cafeteria smorgasbord? Where you just ingest any part of Him you like while leaving the rest on your plate? How come it is that we hate doctrine and God tells us that we need to love doctrine? Why do we hate to talk about Him when we're commanded to tell our children about Him all the time? Yes, we live in dangerous times, don't we? God says here that He is going to take all of our worthless idols and He will bring them down. He uses the image of the cedars of Lebanon to suggest the strength of the people. He uses the image of the mountain to show how high, how he will bring down our highest aspirations and set themselves against him. He says the highest towers will not keep him from climbing in to get us, and our strongest walls will not keep God out of our city to destroy us. Our wealth will be brought to nothing as is reflected in the commuter ships the great ships of Tarshish, our idols will completely vanish away. Does this mean that things, and I want to bring this up because I don't understand this too, somehow when the Prophet talks about trees of Lebanon or high mountains or lofty towers or the ships of Tarshish, we somehow demonize these things as if they're bad. Does the God hate these things? Of course he doesn't hate them. Rather, what he hates is the way that we use them and these things that are going to vanish. But ultimately, though, we must not even think of this day as being primarily about us or about man's destruction, because what it's about is God vindicating himself against us. The day of the Lord is terrible, but it is terrible for a reason. Those who hate God cannot stand in the presence, it says three times, of the splendor of his majesty. It always puts this in conjunction with the terror of the Lord. Somehow, then, to be terrified of God is to be terrified not merely because of what he can do to you, but to be terrified of who he is himself. Who is God? He's the all-powerful one. He's able to do anything he wants as long as it does not conflict with his nature. He's able to build and to tear down, to create and to destroy at will. God can do whatever he pleases, whenever he pleases. He is bound by no one. He alone in this universe is completely free of all external restraints. God is the all-knowing one. Be terrified of God, because God knows exactly what you do in secret. Nothing is hidden from His eyes. No one escapes His notice. It only seems like God does not know what is happening, because at the present time, He is being gracious to us, and does not destroy us. So the psalmist said, They have said, The Lord God does not see, nor does the God of Jacob pay any heed. Pay heed, you senseless among the people, and when will you understand, stupid ones? He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see? He who chases the nations, will he not rebuke? Even he who teaches man knowledge, the Lord knows the thoughts of man, that they are a mere breath, and the Lord is the ever-present one. It is much worse than you think. The God just knows what you do in secret because He's actually right there when you do it. How can you not be terrified of such a power and presence as this? How can you sit in your chair and go home to your televisions or your jobs or your families and not be affected by this? We all know that many people are not affected by this. They do not heed this warning because they do not know this God. There is a day coming that will mark the moment in history when God says, I will be exalted. God is going to lift up his name that has been trodden under in the mud for so long. And I praise God that he is not silent forever. The longer I live in this world, the more I long to see true justice take place, to see vengeance carried out by the one who has no hypocrisy. There's nothing more glorious in this world than the fact that God will not let injustice go on forever. If he did, he would not be worthy of worship. For what judge can be called good who never dispenses with punishment for those who murder innocents and preach violence and false peace? The prophets are strange. From one moment to the next, you never know what they're going to say. Will it be a message of total peace? Will he tell us about God's wrath? Will he tell us about ourselves? Will he interject grace in the middle of law or law in the middle of grace? Isaiah chapter 2, verses 5-22 It does take place immediately after the good news of verses 1-5. At least we have hope there. But for these many verses that we look upon today, there is a message that we must be moved by quite apart from grace. There is a time when grace will no longer be available to wicked people. Fortunately for us, today is not that time. Chapter 2 ends with a stern command. God says, stop trusting in man. Why? Why would he say this? The answer is because the breath of life is in his nostrils. Our minds quickly go back to Genesis when we hear this language. Genesis chapter 2 verse 7 says, The Lord God-informed man formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. In other words, man's life is given to him by another. Mankind does not have what theologians call a saiety. of all the reasons that can be given and that have been given for fearing God and not trusting in man, this alone is given by the prophet. Only God is self-existent. Only God necessarily exists. When man is told to hide in the dust, in verse 10, he's being told to go back from where he came. For man is, after all, nothing but dust. God alone gives us breath. Life does not reside in any of us naturally. Think about Job's response and how this ought to be ours. He said, For as long as life is in me, and the breath of God is in my nostrils, my lips certainly will not speak unjustly, nor will my tongue mutter deceit. Job both acknowledged that he is not God, that he himself is finite, and then he acted upon this by not sinning in other ways. That is Isaiah's exact call here. Therefore, Why should we esteem ourselves, the work of our hands, the idols that we make, the religion that we invent, or the ships that we build, the armies that we raise, the walls that we erect, or the towers that we create? Because they are nothing. They are worse than nothing. They are the opposite of God, when that is what we put our trust in. Stop trusting in man, for why should he be esteemed? Instead, we must go back to verse 5. To cease from man is to trust in Christ. Isaiah 2.5 says, Come house of Jacob and let us walk in the light of the Lord. Do you remember what Jesus said? Jesus said, I am the light of the world and he who follows me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life. To cease from man is to enter the rock, not the crags in the hills where you cannot escape but the rock of our salvation. the stone that causes men to stumble, the capstone, the rock of ages. The one who refuses the hiding place in Christ may not find refuge in any other place. Martin Luther, the great reformer, said, The chief point of this chapter is that Christ will reign through the gospel over everything lofty on earth, whether external or internal, whether secular or spiritual. All these things will have to yield and be subject to him with the result that he alone will remain Lord, King, and Priest forever. Let me finish with a verse that I pray the Holy Spirit will place into your own heart. Isaiah later proclaims this message. A man will be as a hiding place from the wind and a cover from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. A man will be as a hiding place. This man is Jesus Christ. The rejection of the light of the gospel leads to the acceptance of darkness. Put no more confidence in the flesh today. As the psalmist prayed, so I pray for each of us. Lead me in the rock that is higher than I, for thou hast been a refuge for me, a tower of strength against the enemy. Let me dwell in thy tent forever. Let me take refuge in the shelter of thy wings. Let us pray.