The Danger of Misplaced Trust

What would you say is something that you trusted in or believed was going to work out well, but ended up backfiring?

Well, today I want us to take a few moment to look at the danger of misplaced trust in Isaiah 22

As we look in Isaiah 22, we find that the people of Jerusalem are rejoicing and Isaiah has no clue why. He begins this chapter by calling it, “A valley of vision.” We don’t really know why, it could be that he was in a valley when he got the vision or that the vision he receives was deep and discouraging. Regardless, this chapter is a discouraging one to look at.

What we find in the first 1-3 verses is that Jerusalem is having a party. They’re standing on the roofs and celebrating and Isaiah thinks to himself, “What is wrong with you people!” He tells of all the destruction brought throughout all of the nation and cannot believe that Jersualem is celebrating because a few of them are safe. They totally disregard the suffering of their nation and the attack to come and because of this Isaiah, in verse 4, weeps bitterly because the vision he has is one of destruction f they do not turn to the Lord. Gary Smith writes, “With the key defensive cities now destroyed, Jerusalem had no protection from the invading Assyrians.

What I want us to consider here for a moment is point 1 which is

Reality Ignored

We live in a world today where reality is often ignored. We have girls thinking their boys, boys thinking they’re girls and even people identifying as animals now. Society has lost it’s mind and refuses to recognize reality. But it’s not just hyper-liberal minds that have lost sight of reality, it can even be those sitting with us in the pew, it could even be ourselves.

Here in Isaiah 22, the reality is that the situation looks grim and that there is no hope for these people. And in a situation like that, you would expect someone to consider eternity and the God who controls all things; but that’s not the case here is it? No, instead they’re on the rooftops celebrating and in response to that, Isaiah describes how the leaders have surrendered and the people have been captured and the reality of how grim this situation is breaks the hearts of one person it seems and that is Isaiah. Well, in verse 5 Isaiah begins describing how those sounds of celebration will soon be replaced with the noise of the enemy. Why? because in verse 8 God tells us he has removed their protection. But they don’t care and that’s what leads us to point two which is

Misplaced Trusts

You would think that a nation like Israel who has seen God deliver them time and time again would be quick to listen when He says, “Yeah, my protection is off of you.” But they don’t. Instead, verse 8 tells us that they begin to look to the weapons of the House of the Forest. This is a 150 x 75 foot building in the woods that is stocked with weapons. So they believe they’ve got fire power.

Next, in verse 9-10, they look at the walls and notice cracks in them so not only do they repair the walls, but they begin tearing peoples houses down to build a second line of walls around them. So they believe that they’ve got defense taken care of.

In verse 9 they dug a tunnel to carry water from a spring outside of the city to a new pool inside and they also build a reservoir in verse 11 to provide sufficient water for them.

And in all of this, Isaiah says in verse 11, “You did not look to the one who made it, or consider they one who created it long ago.” In Hebrew it could be taken as Isaiah saying in verse 8 and 11 they were, “looking to, or paying attention to themselves for protection instead of looking to or paying attention to God for His deliverance from their enemies” as he uses the word wattabbet. And in verse 9 and 11 he does another play on words as though to say, They could see the importance of the breaches in the walls, but they couldn’t see the importance of the plans of God.

In verse 11 Isaiah is calling for them to look to the God who created all things and planned all things for His glory. Now, if your God is the one who controls all things for His glory, why would you not want to call upon Him and seek His face in the presence of likely defeat? The reason is because they fooled themselves into think that their efforts could save them, not God. And because of that we see our last point

Approaching Judgment

In verse 12, God calls for weeping, wailing and shaved heads which are outward signs of repentance. He wants them to turn to Him, instead they are full of joy and happiness. They were surrounded by the enemy and would need to save food but here they are butchering cattle and eating like there’s no problem and instead of encouraging one another to turn to God to preserve them, they are saying, “Let’s live it up, today could be our last.”

These people are blind and they have no clue how foolishly they are behaving. Judgement is literally right there and they don’t care, it seems they’d rather just die than turn to God and what’s incredible is that they’ve almost accepted their death and don’t even consider that on the other side of death, they’ll have to face God.

Because of this attitude, God ends this message by essentially saying, If you do not repent of your sins and seek atonement, you have absolutely no hope. What is beautiful there is that even in the midst of their horrible rebellion and ignoring of God, He still offers forgiveness to them.

Conclusion:

The reality is that if we ignore the call of God to repent of our sins and look to Christ, who has satisfied His wrath for us, we will face judgment. It’s not maybe coming, it is coming; and it doesn’t matter if we ignore it or place our trust in falsehoods, it will come no matter what. The book of Hebrews says, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?”

Guys, what are you trusting in? Yeah, you come to church and all, but are you trusting in Jesus Christ as your only hope? Yeah, you’re a nice person, but are you saved? It doesn’t matter how hard you work, if you are not saved by the grace of God, there is no hope for you. And even in the midst of today’s sinfulness, God is still calling sinners to Himself. Is He calling you today? If you believe He is, you must run to Him and call on Him for forgiveness. I’d be happy to talk with you after class if you have questions

For discussion I want to ask, “What are some ways people try to ignore the truth?”

Also, “What are some things that wrongly place their trust in? Or what was something you wrongly trusted before God saved you?”