Where Do You Put Your Trust? Series

Where do you put your trust? Without any exaggeration at all, that’s the most important question of our life: Who to trust? What do you seek for the security, confidence, the peace and rest that you need? And this is the only right answer: ‘I trust in God. I wait on him. My faith is in the Lord alone.’

Everyone here is going to agree with that. That is, probably everyone will say, ‘I try to trust in God. But I don’t trust in him nearly as much as I should. My faith can be a pretty weak.’ Because it’s really a question that we answer by our actions. Where do you put your trust? We prove that not by our words (which are easy), but by the things we do.

What I mean is, if you really trust in God, do you pray to him like you should pray, in a spirit of humility, with something like consistency, and sincerity? And if you trust in God, how do you respond to troubles in your life, a bit of uncertainty or hardship? Do you fall into a heap of worries and anxieties? Do you trust? And we also show our trust by what gives us our daily confidence. If I say that I trust in God, then is it really God who is who at the root of my security? Or am I just feeling good about myself today, my abilities, my status, my financial position? Then that’s not really a whole-hearted trust in God.

This is the hard struggle for the children of God, living out this most important question of who has our trust. And the struggle isn’t new. Today we turn to Isaiah 30, where the prophet confronts Judah with her faithlessness. They knew the LORD very well, boldly affirmed that they trusted in him, but their actions showed something different.

It was a time of political instability, and Judah’s leaders were tempted to form alliances. In their hour of need against the Assyrians, maybe Pharaoh’s armies would be able to assist. But Isaiah tells them that Egypt can’t offer any real help. Instead, let God’s people trust in him, the LORD who is our only sure refuge and shelter. I preach God’s Word from Isaiah 30,

God warns His people against putting confidence in Egypt:

1) they were trusting in shadows

2) they were ignoring the Word

3) they were called to return and to rest

1) they were trusting in shadows: You can hear the hurt in the Lord’s opening words, “Woe to the rebellious children,” says the LORD (v 1). God is warning them, condemning them for their lack of faith—and it’s a sad day, because they are his ‘children.’ God has carefully reared them, taught his sons and daughters to know him as LORD, but they’re rebellious. It always brings deep pain to parents to see a child reject their good instruction, to break trust with Dad and Mom. So for Judah: they’re taking their own path.

In their pride, God says, they “take counsel, but not of me” (v 1). Judah was hatching new ideas, working out clever strategies, but not by the Lord’s direction. As a result, they’re going to do the very thing God told them not to.

Let’s notice already in verse 1 what’s at the heart of Judah’s problem, the core reason for their coming ruin: they will not listen to God. It had always been their fundamental problem. To be sure, God had taught them—we’ll see that in the next point. Through his laws, by the prophets, through righteous kings and wise men, God told his people everything they needed to know. His word should’ve been sufficient. But they were unwilling to listen.

And not listening to God’s Word always comes at a price. There’s a consequence, if not now, then soon, or a bit later. For Judah, Isaiah has already announced that foreign armies will come, destroy the city of God, and drag her populations away into exile.

Everyone in Judah was living in the dread of invasion, so of course they wanted to try avoid it. And what was their answer? You’d think the answer to their trouble would be to start paying attention to God. That’s what we would do, right?! Instead, they “add sin to sin” (v 1). They compound their sins of idolatry and injustice with the sin of unbelief. Judah dreams up their own solution: they’ll form a coalition against the Assyrians, try to buy time so they can shore up the defences at home.

God denounces the people, for they “walk to go down to Egypt and have not asked my advice” (v 2). Yes, they’d sooner go to Egypt for help than go to God. Sounds awful, but let’s just appreciate why Judah would’ve done this. From a human perspective, it made sense to go to Egypt. Because theirs was an impressive power: a decent army, all the wealth of the Nile, and the great Pharaoh. When you looked around the Middle East, no other nation could give help against the Assyrians. It was Egypt, or it was no one.