No Room for Pride

DEVOTION

ISAIAH

NO ROOM FOR PRIDE

Isa 2:5-11

5 Come, O house of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the LORD.

6 You have abandoned your people, the house of Jacob. They are full of superstitions from the East; they practice divination like the Philistines and clasp hands with pagans. 7 Their land is full of silver and gold; there is no end to their treasures. Their land is full of horses; there is no end to their chariots. 8 Their land is full of idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their fingers have made. 9 So man will be brought low and mankind humbled — do not forgive them.  

10 Go into the rocks, hide in the ground from dread of the LORD and the splendor of his majesty! 11 The eyes of the arrogant man will be humbled and the pride of men brought low; the LORD alone will be exalted in that day.

NIV

A call to walk in the light if the Lord falls on deaf ears as we can see how Israel responded. Instead of being an influence upon the people who lived near them or traveled through their land on the trade routes which crossed right through the land of Israel, they allowed these foreign people to influence them. They took on the superstitions of the East, these divination of the Philistines and they joined hands with pagans. It appears their lives were all about storing up wealth and possessions as well as idol worship, which could have been their gold, silver, horses and chariots. They could have worshipped the things of the world rather than God. There is the temptation today for the people of God to get distracted in the same way. We have the same choice to either an influence on our culture, our society or allow it to influence us. We see how so many churches have gone the way of the world, changing, morphing into whatever is needed to bring numbers into the church. But those numbers are not hearing the truth of the gospel. It looks sort of like worship, but the true worship happens in the hearts of the people. We have to be careful not to allow the world to influence our thinking, our worship. We should not be storing up gold and silver or loving our brand new horse and chariot, all our possessions, putting our trust in the things we make with our hands, our wealth. If we listen to the commercials on some of the radio and television stations, we would think money is the most important commodity in the land. “Do you have enough to retire?” Do you have enough to stay retired?” “But gold to secure your future” “We will review your investment to see if you are on target to retire” There is even talk shows that deal with “saving you more money”. The world has gone crazy over the concept of storing up so we can sit back and do nothing, enjoy life and take it easy, much like the rich foolish farmer who build all those bigger barns. We saw how the Lord humbled Israel, allowing it to be captured by foreign kings and all its wealth carried off and the people into bondage. When we start to think is it all about us, our efforts, our strategies to build a bigger church, our plans for our future, we are arrogant in the eyes of the Lord. What ever happened to trusting in Jesus? He said that he would build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against her. This life we have is not for us to spend it one ourselves, but to bring honor and glory to the Lord Almighty. When we focus our heart on our lives, our plans, our ideas, our strategies, our ambitions, and our desires, we have allow the ideologies of the world to infiltrate our heart and mind. We have forsaken our sacred task to be an influence in a lost and dying world. We are called the salt of the world, the light of the world, to have an effect on it, to make a difference in the world. Let us pray this is our life, and not the other, for God will humble the arrogant, he will bring them down. There is no room for pride in the life of a believer, even being proud of how spiritual we think we are, or how many good deeds we think we do. There simply is no room for pride. Let us walk in the light of the Lord.