Isaiah on Tuesday - Who Do You Worship?

Per my previous post, I'm structuring my posts so now on Wednesday, there will be Wednesday's Big Idea and Tuesdays will be Isaiah on Tuesday. Isaiah's a pretty big book so I think I'll be going for a while, but this will keep the posts more orderly and less sporadic. Clicking on the headline will open up the passage for reference.

Today I continue with Isaiah 2. The first part is a revelation of things to come when all nations come to the Mountain of the Lord and train for war no more. A vision of being in one accord is a great place to linger, but Isaiah soon moves back into judgment mode, leveling a blistering indictment of the nation of Israel. What is this indictment? It is that they have chosen to worship things other than God, things made by their own hands. The nation has grown wealthy, bloated and lost, forgetting that it is not man who provides all things, but God.

Isaiah pronounces judgment on the proud and haughty, those that look to themselves as saviors, who think they can create gods of silver and gold who will hear their prayers and protect them from harm. When "God rises to shake the earth" those who have trusted in these things will toss them away recognizing that they are imitations - deaf and mute objects which have no power and pale in comparison to the glory and power of God.

Isaiah's closing statement sums up the entire section: "Stop trusting in man, who has but a breath in his nostrils. Of what account is he?" The Israelites had turned to trusting in temporal man whose power is limited and fleeting. Only when contrasted with "the splendor of his majesty" would it come apparent who they were trusting in.

For us, it should be easy to draw a line from Isaiah's fiery pronouncements to our own 21st century lives. Many things vie for our attention and it's easy to look to ourselves or our creations to find salvation. Media, technological advancement or governmental systems will not lead to salvation. The best they can do is make life a bit more comfortable, but these are only tools created by humans. Our worship must be directed appropriately, not to the tools or the humans who create them, but to the creator of all things, the one "in whom we live and breathe and have our being." Anything less brings us perilously close to that place of pride occupied by that ancient House of Jacob.