Isaiah Week 1, Day 5: Isaiah 2:6-22

Day 5

Isaiah 2:6-22

1. The Lord will reject his people because "they are full of things from the east, of fortune tellers, and they strike hands with foreigners (made alliances with pagans). (v 6) Their land is full of idols (v.8).

They may set a king over them but not a foreigner, and he should not acquire many horses or wives, or too much wealth (lest his heart turn away).  Deuteronomy 14:14-17

When you see armies, horses, and chariots bigger than you--don't be afraid.  -Deuteronomy 20:1
Don't come to trust in the army and its resources more than the Lord--look to the Lord.  Isaiah 31:1
Trust in name of the Lord, not chariots or horses.  Psalm 20:7

"A sad sequence--money leading to idolatry." -BI

2. For those who do not repent, each man is brought low and will be humbled (Isaiah 2:12), people shall enter the caves of the rocks (Isaiah 2:19), they will cast away their idols to the moles and the bats (Isaiah 2:20),

3. They must cast away idols

4. The exhortation is "stop regarding man."

Isa 2:22  Stop regarding man in whose nostrils is breath, for of what account is he?

Isa 2:22  Don't put your trust in mere humans. They are as frail as breath. What good are they? 

“His breath is in his nostrils,” puffed out every moment, soon gone for good and all. Man is a dying creature, and may die quickly; our nostrils, in which our breath is, are of the outward parts of the body; what is there is like one standing at the door ready to depart. Nay, the doors of the nostrils are always open; the breath in them may slip away, ere we are aware, in a moment; wherein then is man to be accounted of? Alas, no reckoning is to be made of him; for he is not what he seems to be,—what he pretends to be, what we fancy him to be." Matthew Henry

"Every man must cease from himself first, and then from all men, as his hope and his trust, because neither ourselves nor others are worthy of such confidence. “Wherein is he to be accounted of?” Compared with God man is less than nothing and vanity. Reckon him so, and act upon the reckoning." C. H. Spurgeon.

Once more, cease from being worried about men. We ought to do all we can for our fellow men to set them right and keep them right, both by teaching and by example; but certain folks think that everything must go according to their wishes, and if we cannot see eye to eye with them, they worry themselves and us. Let us not be unduly cast down if we cannot set everybody right. The body politic, common society, and especially the Church, may cause us great anxiety; but still the Lord reigneth, and we are not to let ourselves die of grief. He only requires of us what He enables us to do. -C.H. Spurgeon

"God, the Verity of verities--Care nothing for the vanity of vanities, but trust in the Verity of verities." C. H. Spurgeon

“But they say.” What do they say? Let them say. It will not hurt you if you can only gird up the loins of your mind, and cease from man. “Oh, but they have accused me of this and that.” Is it true? “No, sir, it is not true, and that is why it grieves me.” If it were true it ought to trouble you; but if it is not true let it alone. Nine times out of ten if a boy makes a blot in his copy book and borrows a knife to take it out, he makes the mess ten times worse; and as in your case there is no blot after all, you need not make one by attempting to remove what is not there. All the dirt that falls upon a good man will brush off when it is dry: but let him wait till it is dry, and not dirty his hands with wet mud. Let us think more of God and less of man. Come, let the Lord our God fill the whole horizon of our thoughts. Let our love go forth to Him; let us delight ourselves in Him. Let us trust in Him that liveth forever, in Him whose promise never faileth. Cease ye from man because you have come to know the best of men, who is more than man, even the Lord Jesus Christ, and He has so fully become the beloved of your souls, that none can compare with Him. Rest also in the great Father as to your providential cares: why rest in men when He careth for you?" -C.H. Spurgeon

Lovely commentary here from BI:

Man is made up, as the old writers used to say, of soul and soil. Alas, the soil terribly soils his soul! “My soul cleaveth to the dust” might be the confession of every man in one sense or another. (C. H.Spurgeon.)

Two things are indispensable to undisturbed tranquility of mind, namely, humble and distrustful views of ourselves, and supreme and unfaltering reliance on God.  So long as a man depends on his own wisdom, power, and goodness, he must be disquieted and unhappy. We can attain to substantial quiet only when we feel that our dependence is on a Being omnipotent, independent, and supreme, as well as abundant in truth and love (Isa_26:3).

"You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you." Isaiah 26:3

Additional Thoughts:

Union of the Natural World and Humans:

"In order to understand the prophet we must bear in mind what sacred Scripture assumes throughout, that all nature is joined with man to form one common history; that man and the whole world of nature are inseparably connected as centre and circumference -F. Delitzsch

Unnatural blur of nature and God in paganism:

 "In heathen systems of religion, God and nature are not kept distinct. His personality, also, is confounded."  -BI Homelitic Review

The natural world is impacted by man's sin and fallen nature.  Both man and nature are God's creation and under his provision and control.  In contrast, paganism unites the natural world with God so that they are indistinguishable.