Isaiah 28:1-29

God wants His people to trust in Him.  That statement is at the heart of our relationship with God.  Faith is the key to our relationship with God and the only means by which we can be rightly related to Him.  Due to our sinful and rebellious nature, our tendency is to trust in ourselves or in other men instead of trusting God.  This attitude of pride and misplaced trust will bring us into condemnation and judgment before the Lord.  We must learn to trust God, obey His Word and rest in His provision if we are going to please Him.  Israel is being threatened by the Assyrians, but instead of trusting God and turning to Him for deliverance; Israel proudly things she is too important to fall and Jerusalem places her assurance on an alliance that has been made with Egypt.  When we face trials we must learn to depend on the Lord instead of ourselves and others.

GOD WILL JUDGE ISRAEL FOR HER ARROGANCE: Israel, in this passage called Ephraim, is marked by pride and drunkenness.  God has made glorious promises to Israel and He has done glorious deeds in Israel.  These blessings of the past should have produced a heart of gratitude and a dependence upon the Lord.  Instead the nation has become arrogant and disobedient.  Pride has taken the place of gratitude and drunkenness has taken the place of worship.  God simply will not tolerate this kind of rebellion from His people.  He promises to bring in a nation that is mighty and strong to sweep away the pride and pollution that has infected His nation.  It is a very dangerous thing to begin living in light of the glories of the past.  The past only produces a sense of pride that can draw our hearts away from God.  Pride in our hearts will always invite the judgment of God in our lives.  The leaders of Israel did not take their position seriously and began to live in a drunken stupor.  The prophets and priests were not listening to the voice of God or studying the Word of God, they were simply living in a drunken state to the point that there tables were all covered in vomit.  God wants us to be filled with His Word studying every principle and commandment of Scripture.  Pride and pleasure make us ignorant of and oblivious to the Word of God.

GOD WILL JUDGE JERUSALEM FOR HER ASSURANCE: The leaders in Jerusalem are aware that they are about to be under siege.  They know that they are in danger, but they are looking for help and finding assurance in all the wrong places.  Instead of renewing a covenant with God, turning to Him in repentance and placing their trust in Him, they have made what God calls a covenant with death.  They have made and alliance with Egypt that they think will give them the protection they need from the Assyrian army.  God is a jealous God and it is beyond comprehension that His people would look to the nation from which God had released them from slavery as their source of protection.  God is the one who has established Israel in the land not Egypt.  Because of this false assurance in a foreign nation God is about to pass judgment on Israel and she will experience the wrath of God.  God is promising to bring judgment on the nation and the people would do well to pay close attention.  Just as there are various means of harvesting various grains, God has various means of judging His people and He knows how to use them with great expertise.  We must learn to trust the Lord in times of trial and not look to ourselves or others. He must be our fortress and the only object of our faith.