“I will declare your righteousness And your works, For they will not profit you. When you cry out, Let your collection of idols deliver you. But the wind will carry them all away, A breath will take them. But he who puts his trust in Me shall possess the land, And shall inherit My holy mountain.”” Isaiah 57:12-13 NKJV
Reflection: how can you know what it is that you put your your trust in?
Yesterday I boarded a plane in Amsterdam, headed for Minneapolis, which is about a nine hour trip confined in that plane. When you decide to step onboard a plane, whether it is a short trip to another city, or across vast oceans, you exercise an enormous amount of trust. You literally are putting your life on the line, in the hands of others not necessarily understanding much about what they do, nor how they do it. You just fully trust that they will get you to your destination. And, once you are on the plane, there is not much you can do or help with, to get you to the destination. This exercise of trust as a passenger on a plane in something we don’t understand, but we choose to do it, is really not that different in concept than putting our trust in the Lord for salvation. We clearly don’t fully understand how, but we still have to choose to “go onboard”, meaning to turn to the Lord for salvation, and then fully trust that He will “cover and protect us” and take us on this journey through all sorts of “weather” in life, and safely get us to the destination.
We can see all around us people who either turn to idols, or try to “assist” the Lord for their “righteousness”, not recognizing that what they are doing will lead to their own demise. Who we actually put our trust, our faith in, is the central topic in the focus verses today. It starts with the Lord making a declaration of what will happen to people based on what their are putting their trust in. He says “I will declare your righteousness”, meaning, it isn’t up to us to determine how righteous we are. It is God that declares our righteousness. And, perhaps to keep things very simple for our limited capacity, the Lord divides people into three categories, based on their choices of who and what they put their trust in.
1) Self, 2) Idols and 3) the Lord God.
Starting out with those who trust in their own works, the Lord makes almost a funny statement about it, saying “And your works, For they will not profit you.” Basically saying, whether you are trying to do this all by yourself, or even just a help a little bit, like what many religions and even some Christian denominations proclaim, the Lord says it will not work. It is as silly as trying to help pilot a plane mid-air over the Atlantic, having no knowledge of flying. It is utmost conceited, and offensive to those who can fly the plane. Similarly, if we try to assist the Lord for our righteousness, it is offensive and blasphemous to what He did. The second category of people are those who put their trust in idols (remember that can be many things very relevant to even today, including an image, a man made thing, money, power, government, nations, church, or even a man), the Lord says “Let your collection of idols deliver you. But the wind will carry them all away, A breath will take them.” Isaiah 57:13a NKJV. They cannot save.
And finally, the third category are those who put ALL their trust in the Lord. He says “But he who puts his trust in Me shall possess the land, And shall inherit My holy mountain.”” Isaiah 57:13b NKJV. We see here no reference to gender, race, culture, denomination, etc, or anything that the enemy so often uses to split humanity. He simply says to put our full trust and faith in the only one who can actually save us as He demonstrated and fulfilled through Jesus Christ. It is only the Lord God Jehovah. There is no one else, or nothing else, that can save us. We cannot combine our trust in the Lord, and also our good works (which is pretty common). Or the Lord and anything else. He says those who trust in Him alone are the ones who “shall possess the land, And shall inherit My holy mountain.” Isaiah 57:13b NKJV.
It really is that simple.
