Isaiah 47:10b Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee; and thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me.
Recently my family and I were watching an old western on television. It’s been a long time since I watched traditional, conventional television so I haven’t seen many ads recently, but every time ads would come on it was obvious the kind of crowd that the station was marketing to. They were all ads for medications, life insurance, and things to make it easier when you get older. Most of them were products that young people cannot afford and don’t need. The bottom line is that your money may increase, but your youth never will.
In Isaiah 47, God is addressing Babylon, that mighty empire He had used as a tool to chasten His people Israel. We often hear about rags-to-riches stories, but this is a story of riches to rags. Right out of the box in chapter 47 God says to Babylon, “Sit on the ground: there is no throne.” So, Babylon was going to be diminished and come down. She considered herself the “lady of kingdoms,” a lady forever, and God says, “No, you are going to sit on the ground because you have trusted in yourself and have ignored Me.” Sometimes it is our strengths that lead us to destruction.
In verse 10 God says to Babylon, “Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee; and thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me.” It was their wisdom, knowledge, and strength that had perverted them. The word “pervert” there means “to turn back,” specifically from God. They had said, “Hey, I’m the only one there is. There is no one else.” That flies directly in the face of something we find repeatedly stated in the prophecies of Isaiah, which is God saying, “I am, and there is none else.” Here is Babylon saying the same thing about themselves. They had set themselves up as God.
We all know about our weaknesses and try to avoid them, but sometimes it is our strengths that lead us to destruction because we depend on them and not on God. When do our strengths destroy us? First, they destroy us when they make us forget Who God is. Verse 4 says, “As for our redeemer, the LORD of hosts is his name, the Holy One of Israel.” So, He was Israel’s redeemer, but He was also the Lord of hosts, which is a military term. In other words, for God to be the redeemer of Israel and to show Israel mercy, it meant He had to be the Lord of hosts to Babylon. He had to punish Babylon.
I never want to set myself up in a place where I am so trusting my strength that in order for God to give mercy to someone, He has to give judgment to me. Here is someone who is beating his wife. If God is going to give her mercy, that probably means He is going to have to give that man judgment. So, our strengths lead us to destruction when they make us forget Who God is.
Second, our strengths lead to destruction when they make us forget the brevity of our own strength and the end of things. Verse 7 says, “Thou didst not lay these things to thy heart, neither didst remember the latter end of it.” He is saying to Babylon, “You can see all that is great and mighty in yourself. You think you are the lady of kingdoms forever, but you don’t consider the end. In the end none shall save you.” The strength of each of us is diminishing every day. When we trust in our strength, we are trusting in a depreciating item. It is kind of like buying a car as an investment. A car isn’t an investment. It loses money the moment you drive it off the lot. We are born dying, but God is eternal, strong, and worthy of our trust.
Finally, sometimes it is our strengths that lead us to destruction when they take the place of God. In verse 10 God says, “For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness: thou hast said, None seeth me.” They trusted in their wickedness. They had said, “There is no one beside me,” and at the end of the chapter God said, “There is no one to save you.” They had “wisdom and knowledge” which for them was their astrologers, whom they believed could foresee the future and give supernatural wisdom, yet none of those astrologers were prescient or could really know the future. It is only Jehovah God that stands in the future and knows the beginning from the end. God says in verse 12, “Stand now with thine enchantments.” Verse 13 says, “Let now the astrologers…stand up, and save thee…” But verse 15 concludes, “None shall save thee.”
So, you may be young or old, with money or energy, but in every case do not let your strengths turn you from the God Who is by definition strength.