Where is Your Hope?

Isaiah 22:5-14 (NLT)
Oh, what a day of crushing trouble! What a day of confusion and terror the Lord, the Lord Almighty, has brought upon the Valley of Vision! The walls of Jerusalem have been broken, and cries of death echo from the mountainsides. Elamites are the archers; Arameans drive the chariots. The men of Kir hold up the shields. They fill your beautiful valleys and crowd against your gates. Judah's defenses have been stripped away. You run to the armory for your weapons. You inspect the walls of Jerusalem to see what needs to be repaired. You store up water in the lower pool. You check the houses and tear some down to get stone to fix the walls. Between the city walls, you build a reservoir for water from the old pool. But all your feverish plans are to no avail because you never ask God for help. He is the one who planned this long ago.
The Lord, the Lord Almighty, called you to weep and mourn. He told you to shave your heads in sorrow for your sins and to wear clothes of sackcloth to show your remorse. But instead, you dance and play; you slaughter sacrificial animals, feast on meat, and drink wine. "Let's eat, drink, and be merry," you say. "What's the difference, for tomorrow we die." The Lord Almighty has revealed to me that this sin will never be forgiven you until the day you die. That is the judgment of the Lord, the Lord Almighty.



The leaders did what they could to prepare for war: they got weapons, inspected the walls, and stored up water in a reservoir. But all their work was pointless because they never asked God for help. Too often we take steps that, though good in themselves, really won’t give us the help we need. We must get the weapons and inspect the walls, but God must guide the work.

The people said, “Let us eat and drink,” because they had given up hope. Attacked on every side (Isaiah 22:7), they should have repented (Isaiah 22:12), but they chose to feast instead. The root problem was that Judah did not trust God’s power or his promises (see Isaiah 56:12; 1 Cor. 15:32). When you face difficulties, turn to God. Today we still see people giving up hope. There are two common responses to hopelessness: despair and self-indulgence. But this life is not all there is, so we are not to act as if we had no hope. Our proper response should be to trust God and his promise to include us in the perfect and just new world that he will create