Isaiah 3:1-4:1 - Not Worthy of Trust

Our Bible and go to the book of Isaiah.

Isaiah chapter three will be in chapter two and three.

If you don't have a Bible, you can find one in front of you and you can turn to page 601.

In the Chronicles of Nardia, there was a boy by the name of Eustace who found a treasure trove, a dragon's treasury.

He was so excited that he was the one who found it, and he reveled in all the wealth and riches that were there.

His heart began to go greedy and sort of wanting to possess it.

And as he examined what he claimed as his own, he fell asleep.

And when he woke up the next day, he found he himself had turned into a dragon.

It was a miserable condition for him to be in.

And eventually, as the story goes on, he finds himself wanting to be rid of this new identity as a dragon.

And as try as he might, he could never get the scales off of him sufficiently.

Every time he pulled them off, they'd be there again.

He could not rid himself of this dragon personality that he was.

And eventually he went to Aslan and sought for a way to be relieved of being a dragon.

And Aslan told him that what he needed to do was to lie down, and that Aslan alone could help him, and that Aslan would take the dragon scales off of him.

And Eustace describes this operation.

He says there, he said, the first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart.

And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I had ever felt.

This morning we're going to hear from God's word, and it's going to feel like getting dragon scales ripped off of our skin.

This is not an easy passage of scripture.

It is filled with biting indictments, with sarcasm, and it takes us well outside the norms of our comfort level in every way possible.

It is a challenging, challenging message because it deals with something that is so central to us, it could be called the very root and substance, not only of the first sin against God by humanity, but of all other sins against humanity.

And it is the sin of pride, the sin of pride.

Benjamin Franklin wrote in his autobiography about pride.

He said, There's no natural passion so hard to subdue as pride.

Beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as I please, it's still alive.

Even if I could conceive that I'd completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.

Someone said that pride is the only disease that makes everybody else sick except for the person who has it.

There was one preacher who was lauded one Sunday as the most humble pastor in the world, and so his church gave him a medal, and then they fired him the next week because he wore it to church.

G.K.

Chesterton said, he said, if I had but one sermon to preach my whole life, I would preach it about pride.

That's a rather powerful statement.

Pride is a tough one for us.

Yes, there are legitimate places where we can be encouraged and satisfied and perhaps even boastful.

I'm looking for the day when I can be proud about my grandson's first finger painting, for instance.

We can be satisfied with a job well done.

There are certain things that we can be legitimately proud about.

But then there's that battling, consuming, self-centered pride that all of us express.

The Word of God teaches us something about both of those.

Paul uses words like boasting.

He talked to the Philippians and he said to them, he said, if you stand firm in the words of life, then I'll be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain.

Now it wasn't Paul's boasting of himself, but of the genuine ministry of the gospel working through him in the lives of others.

He could boast in what God was doing through the message that he proclaimed.

Scriptures talk about pride in a lot of different ways, talks about an inordinate self-esteem.

It talks about boasting, of course, talks about rebellion, it talks about arrogance and all other sorts of things.

And we can find those in pithy little statements like the Proverbs.

Proverbs 16, pride comes before destruction, and an arrogant spirit before a fall.

Proverbs 26, do you see a man wise in his own eyes?

There's more hope for a fool than of him.

These passages tell us about the folly of pride, of the self-deception that comes, of us not being able to really understand reality with clarity.

And we measure ourselves all too highly.

And the giraffe did.

And then he went to the zebras or zebras and he said, I am the king of the savannah.

I am the king of beasts.

You will bow before me.

And the zebra did.

And then he went to the elephant and he said, I am the king of the beasts.

You will bow before me.

And then the elephant grabbed the lion by the tail and threw him up into the trees.

And the lion finally climbed down.

And then the elephant grabbed him again and slammed him onto the ground and stomped on him four or five times and then tossed him into the river.

And broken and dripping wet, the lion came out and he said, You don't have to be so upset about being wrong.

Arrogance, haughtiness, pride, lack of perception about ourselves.

But the scriptures don't just tell us little pithy statements about pride.

They also tell us stories about pride.

They flesh it out because it wants to get into the heart of us, deep down into the inside of us.

And for us to realize that pride really is any attempt for us to stand against God with our ideas is better than his.

Yes, it was painful.

But God is more concerned about our holiness than he is our happiness.

He is more interested in bringing us free of sin than to leave us satisfied in it.

And when God speaks to us, sometimes he speaks to us with striking strong words.

They're not meant to simply belittle and crush us and leave us in the dust.

They're meant to be wholesome healing words by causing us to be aware of reality because sin has deceived us into thinking something else other than it.

And he goes on from this title to begin to expose the folly of their misplaced trusts.

And we looked at this last week, but in chapter two, there's this list of different things that they're doing.

In verse 6 of Isaiah 2, you've abandoned your people, the house of Jacob, because they're full of divination from the East and of fortune tellers.

They think that they can somehow gain the mind of God by manipulation and magic through superstition and divination.

In verse 7, they think they're plenty wealthy enough to live a life of ease.

Their land is full of silver and gold, no limit to their treasures.

They think that security is found in impressive military arsenals.

Their land is full of horses, and there's no limit to their chariots.

They've negotiated with the Egyptians.

They've gotten their weaponry.

They've worked out all the alliances that they need.

They've amassed themselves with wealth.

They've got the mind of God through all of their manipulation and magic and superstition.

What are they doing?

They're building up a tower of self-importance.

They're building up a tower in which they feel like once we attain all of this, we're secure.

We're safe.

Nothing can harm us.

We can take down any enemies.

We've got strength in our arms and legs.

Life could be the best for us.

But the scriptures tell us at the beginning of chapter two that God is going to lift himself up to the highest hill.

And that he's going to oppose human projects that seek to rival his.

That he alone will be exalted in that day.

And there will be no room for boasting about your wealth or boasting about your power or boasting about your insider knowledge or boasting about your alliances.

Because those places are not eternal places of security.

And he goes on at the very end to tell us what the heart of the issue really is.

At the very end of chapter two, he says this put no more trust in a mere human who has only the breath in his nostrils.

What is he really worth?

God is calling us to a security outside of the human dimension, calling us to a security outside of our wealth, outside of our power, outside of our intellect, outside of our alliances, outside of our knowledge.

Because at the end of the day, there's an end to all of that.

It is a telling message to the people in that day, and it is a very applicable message to us today.

Because we somehow construct the same rubble of the Tower of Babel over and over and over again.

We put a brick of self-reliance on top of a brick of alliance, on top of a brick of knowledge, on a brick atop of strength, on a brick atop of wealth, until we think we've constructed our security.

God says, don't do that.

Don't do that.

Because the fundamental issue is that sense of self-reliance that comes from pride, that arrogant first sin of saying, God, I know better than you what's best for me and what's right and good.

So Isaiah is calling us here to a reassessment of what's real and right, and to recognize that all of our strengths are no places of eternal trust.

That humans, including ourselves, don't deserve that level of trust.

And then in this indictment, he gets personal.

He uses a title for all of the people, House of Jacob.

He begins to expose their areas of misplaced trust, but then he gets right into these very clear statements of two different groups of people, the leaders and the ladies, in chapter three.

Chapter two, he talks about the ruin of human schemes, but now he's going to talk about the hopelessness of actually trusting human leaders in Judah.

Look at the first three verses.

Chapter three.

Heroes and warriors, judges and prophets, fortune tellers and elders, commanders of fifties and dignitaries, counselors, cunning magicians and necromancers.

The whole leadership structure, every place of security is going to be wiped away.

When Israel first sought a king, Samuel warned them that they were going to get more than they were asking for.

That along with having a king, there was going to come some trouble to them.

And they said, No, we really want a king.

And the Lord told Samuel to inform the people of just what they were going to get: a full disclosure in this contract.

If you want to make this contract up, let's read the details.

And so Samuel reads the details to them that this king that you're asking for, this king is going to take your sons and use them for his chariots, or for his horses, or for running in front of his entourage.

He's going to use your sons to plow his ground and to reap his harvest.

He's going to take your daughters to make them perfumers and cooks and bakers.

He's going to take your best fields and your vineyards and your olive orchards and he's going to give them to those that he pleases.

He's going to take a tenth of your grain and your vineyards and use them to make alliances with other people.

Yeah, we yeah, yeah, where do I sign?

Right?

We want to be like all the other nations.

Our king will judge us.

Our king will go out before us.

Our king will fight our battles.

They were looking for a king because they were looking for security.

And establishing this system of a king, they were saying, we'd rather depend on him than you, God.

Now, in the first three verses of Isaiah three, there's some legitimate offices, and there's some, well, illegitimate offices.

Some of these things are appointed places that God would establish.

Judges and prophets, of course, heroes and warriors, those are all legitimate things.

Fortune tellers, no.

No, necromancers, no.

Cunning magicians, no.

But whether they were legitimate or illegitimate, they were still objects of people's trusts rather than God.

And because of that, God was going to take it all away.

Can I say that two days before we have an election?

I don't care who you vote for.

We should not put our trust in human leaders because they cannot solve our problems, because they don't have everlasting solutions.

They will die just like we do.

Here we find that people had placed ultimate trust in mortal man.

And God was going to remove this life support system.

He was going to remove everything that supported the social order.

He was going to remove military figures, the warriors, the heroes, the commanders of the fifty.

He was going to remove political figures, the judges and the elders and the dignitaries and the counselors.

He was going to remove the religious leaders, the prophets, and even the false ones, the fortune-tellers and necromancers.

And he was going to remove the economic powers.

That cunning magician has also translated skillful craftsman.

So no matter how you looked at society, whether you looked at military might or political might or religious might or economic might, God was going to bring down every structure, every single one of them, and all the natural resources, food and water.

He was going to strip it all away and leave them with poverty and brutality.

This situation is tragic.

The people who had constructed the Tower of Babel of self-reliance and pride were going to fall headlong off of that tower and find it crashing down on their heads as they spiraled back down to the ground.

And this was not just some accident.

Take a look at verse one.

God, where are you when our military fails?

God, where are you when our politicians fail?

God, where are you when our religious leaders fail?

God, where are you when Wall Street falls apart?

I'm doing it.

I'm doing it.

Because you've put trust in something you should never trust.

The crushing indictment goes to the leaders of the people and shows them for just how foolish it really, really is.

And he steps into this painful little section of ridicule here.

Not just ruin, but ridicule.

Take a look at this.

The people will oppress one another, man against man, neighbor against neighbor.

The young will act arrogantly toward the old and the worthless toward the honorable.

It's horrible.

But in verse 6, a man will seize his brother in his father's house and saying, You have a cloak, you be our leader.

What?

They've been so reduced to shame that the only thing that they can think of is to find somebody with a coat as the qualification for being the leader.

But even those with this minimal, even ridiculous qualification are going to say this on that day, verse 7, he'll cry out saying, I'm not a healer.

I don't even have food or clothing in my house.

Don't make me the leader of the people.

The people are going to resist leadership so much that those who are put into the place are the least qualified to be there.

That's how shameful this is going to get.

The look on their faces testifies against them, and like Sodom, they flaunt their sin.

They do not conceal it.

Woe to them, for they have brought disaster on themselves.

There's no rebuttal.

Verse 13 gets into the reasons, gets into the particulars of this indictment.

Verse 13 to 15.

The Lord rises to argue the case and stand to judge the people.

The Lord brings this charge against the elders and leaders of his people.

You have devastated the vineyard.

The plunder from the poor is in your houses.

Why do you crush my people and grind the faces of the poor?

This is the declaration of the Lord God of armies.

And this idea of rising up and putting down, of rising up and putting down, is brought right here.

And it's calling to these leaders who had been elevated to places of leadership so that they could reach down to the cast down and lift them up.

That they were in places of leadership to guarantee order and security in society to those who couldn't take care of themselves.

But instead of taking care of them by reaching down and lifting up, they stepped them down as they put themselves up, by grinding and crushing the poor underneath their feet as they stepped on top of them to elevate themselves.

What was it showing us?

These people were using leadership, military leadership, political leadership, religious leadership, economic leadership for their own security, to the destruction of others.

They were irresponsible, selfish, mean-spirited, and proud.

And the Lord was not going to stand for that.

And so, verse 13 says, the Lord stood up.

The Lord rises to argue the case and stands to judge the people.

He stands against those people who were responsible to lead people to follow God's instructions, who were responsible to take care that everybody enjoyed the benefits of God's blessings, who were responsible to defend the powerless and poor, to set a place in society where those could be healthy and whole and happy.

Which is why Paul tells us to pray for those who are in leadership that we may live peaceable lives in all godliness and sincerity.

That God's call for governance is the same as it was then, to establish a place where society could be ordered and secure and safe, to where individual liberties could increase and flourish, and where true heartfelt care for others could go forward.

God still has high standards for people in positions of leadership.

He still calls for government to be in place, for businesses to be working, for family units to show structure, and for the church to have in place leadership.

Without servant leadership, political structures, business entities fall into disaster and destruction.

Without responsible political leadership, society will fall into disarray.

But even more serious for us particularly, and more applicable to us particularly, is when there is abuse of authority in the church.

Our Lord Jesus Christ said that he came to seek and to save, to give himself as a ransom for many.

He took the basin and the towel and grabbed the dirt-taped feet of his disciples and washed them and said, This is an example.

He said, The greatest of you among you shall be the servant of all.

The apostle Paul, when he would write to the churches, would often say, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, a bond slave of God.

I'm just an oar-rowing man chained to the service of the gospel.

He calls those who are in leadership positions to be humble people, to be servants.

But he calls each and every one of us to condescend of men of low estate, to not think more highly of ourselves than we ought, to let this mind be in you, which is also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not something to be grasped, but rather humbled himself to fulfill the needs of people who couldn't.

To be like our Lord when we care for one another.

And here are the people of God, the ones that He's been, He's brought into covenant relationship with Himself.

And this indictment stands against them strong.

It's full of ridicule and ruin.

Because inside their heart resides this heart of pride and self-centeredness and self-assurance.

You can see just how pervasive it is when you look at the next section, because he he centers in not on the leaders, but to the ladies.

And it's an odd move away from the leadership, but there's a connection.

Verse 16: the Lord also says, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, walking with heads held high and seductive eyes, prancing along, jingling their ankle bracelets.

God will judge the proud, wealthy women of Jerusalem and Judah.

You can feel the dripping accusations of this indictment as he condemns them for their behavior.

Yes, they're self-engrossed and proud and haughty, but that pompous manner is seen even in their movement and how they hold their head and how they walk, how what they sound like when they move down the street.

With their heads, as it says here, held high, and really it's more their heads turned over to the side as they coily look about to see who's noticing their well-dressed manner.

To see if anybody's noticing their elegance, as they breathe out their sophistication.

They look from side to side to see who might affirm that or be jealous of it, as they look down their noses as those who are not dressed quite so well as they.

Ankle bracelets, headbands, crescents, pennants, bracelets, veils, headdresses, ankle jewelry, sashes, perfume bottles, amulets.

I'm not even halfway done.

Signet rings, nose rings, festive robes, capes, cloaks, purses, garments, linen clothes, turbans, shawls, perfumes, belts, ropes, styled hair, fine clothes, beauty.

Wow.

Here are these people broldly strutting away in their finest attire, displaying their proud heart.

Their wealth, where did it come from?

In this society, their wealth would have come from their husbands.

Guess who their husbands were?

The people in verses 14 and 15.

You have devastated the vineyard.

The plunder from the poor is in your houses.

Why do you crush my people and grind the faces of the poor?

The pride of these ladies, the appearance of these ladies, was the consequence of their husbands crushing down the rest of society to gain their wealth.

They were living in the lap of luxury, much like perhaps the wife of a drug dealer might.

There's nothing to be proud of here.

And what's even worse, another name, daughters of Zion.

What is Zion?

That is the place where Yahweh lives.

This is where God manifests himself.

And the inhabitants of the place where God shows his presence ought to be populated with people who are fitting for his presence.

And in his search he finds none of them.

This place, Zion, was the last place these daughters should be lifting themselves up as spectacles to behold.

And so verse 18 says that they will be stripped of the things that they're proud about.

On that day he will strip away.

And then there's the litany of all those things.

All the objects of their pride are going to be gone.

God will mercilessly and totally remove everything that they use to make themselves look important, including their hair.

And they will be humiliated.

Verse 25.

So all of their dressing to impress will be exchanged for loss that the warfare that's coming is going to bring upon them.

Instead of looking like stately beauty queens fresh from the beauty parlor, they're going to be humiliated women displaying ugly scabs and uncovered foreheads.

Instead of wafting fragrant perfume in their passing, derived from the balsam trees, as prisoners of war, they're going to be in places where they cannot bathe and their body will begin to gain a stench.

Instead of having decorative sashes and belts to wrap around their fine linens, they're going to be tied up with a rope.

Instead of the white, beautiful cloth that they once wore, they're now going to be wearing sackcloth as a sign of their brokenness and their mourning.

And instead of having beautiful makeup to wear, they're going to be marked with a painful brand as a prisoner of war.

And in one last display of desperation, in chapter 4 and verse 1, on that day, seven women will seize one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, we'll provide our own clothing, just let us bear your name.

Take away our disgrace.

They'll be deprived not only of all of their possessions, but all of their dignity, all of their social status, and all of their security.

So many men will die in that coming war that seven women will pursue one guy to try to convince him to be their husband.

And they'll be glad to share him with six others if only they could be marked by his name and perhaps have children by him, making a mockery of family and marriage and society as it should be.

What a horrible description this is.

This is the indictment against pride that has pervasively infiltrated every aspect of society.

And it's not pretty at all.

It's ruinous.

But this is the length to which God will go to eradicate pride out of the human heart in order to alarm us to what is ruinous for us.

That he calls us to double-check ourselves and to see whether or not we are in a position of being right with him rather than looking good with our neighbor.

And so there's an invitation.

Amidst all of this are just some little words of hope.

Take a look at verse five of chapter two.

House of Jacob?

House of Jacob.

Come, let's walk in the Lord's light.

The verses before that talk about God pointing to a future in which he will be exalted and people will stream to his presence gladly, worshipfully, with joy and interest and a desire to learn and to have their ways of warfare turned into peace.

And he's saying, Let the future invade your present.

Walk in the light.

Move toward that light which is coming.

Let God's future cast itself a brilliant light into your present.

Seek Him rather than the things that you think you need for security.

And then in chapter three and verse ten, tell the righteous that it will go well for them, for they will eat the fruit of their labor.

Woe to the wicked, for it will go badly for them, for what they have done will be done to them.

Is there any hope?

Yes, there is.

There is hope.

But the hope comes by following that exhortation, that command at the end of chapter two.

Put no more trust in a mere human who only has the breath of his nostrils.

What is he really worth?

Turn away from trusting yourself, turn away from trusting others.

Don't seek your security in the things or the people or the structures of this world.

Don't think you're going to find a satisfactory answer by going to a powerful military or to a strong government or to a secure business or any such thing.

Find your security and source in God and God alone.

We need to hear this message.

Because how often do we project our security in our careers?

Or how much money and value our house has gained since we bought it, or what our bank balance might be, or how persuasive and charming I really am to be able to get forward in this life.

No, Isaiah is telling us to realize that all those things are just powerless.

They may be gifts of God to you, but they're not places of security for you.

We should be as the Apostle Paul when he examined his life and those things that he thought were things upon which he could build his security, being Jewish, being born in a particular tribe, being eager to know the law of God, being scrupulous about how he behaved himself.

When he started to add those things up, he thought, I am right with God.

Then he realized that none of it mattered.

And he said, I count all of this as rubbish.

It has no valuation before a holy God who sees me as a sinner.

And he said, I am going to rid myself of everything that I've counted down my plus side of my account in order that I might be at a loss and being at a loss freely, being able to receive the gift of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ our Lord.

We live in the same kind of world the 8th century BC, Jerusalem did.

We live in a world filled with pride of looks or pride of luxuries or pride of ideas or pride of innovations or pride of alliances.

We need to preach this message to ourselves.

And to realize our only hope is in the grace of God, the grace of God of a Redeemer, who was obedient for the purpose of saving the disobedient, who was faithful for the purposes of saving the faithless, and who was humble in order to save the proud.

Let's pray.

Father, Lord, this is a biting, biting passage of Scripture.

But Lord, just as Eustace said he couldn't, he couldn't get the scales off of himself.

And Lord, simply trying to address ourselves with these things, it's not going to work.

We need the operation of the lion of the tribe of Judah, Jesus Himself, to do a heart surgery on us.

And we thank you that your word has done that.

That it showed us where we've placed a false sense of trust.

It showed us where we've lifted ourselves up with a false perspective of importance.

It showed us that we have relied too much upon others.

Lord, we thank you that your surgery has occurred through the Spirit, bringing conviction to our hearts.

We pray that that surgery would run so deep within us that it would rid us of these scales of pride and that it would make us something different than a dragon.

And we pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.