The Outcome of Self-Worship
Isaiah 14:13-19 You always told yourself … I will be like God most high. But that did not happen. You were brought down to the deep pit—Sheol, the place of death. People will come to look at your dead body. They will think about you and say, “Is this the same man who caused great fear in all the kingdoms on earth, who destroyed cities and turned the land into a desert, who captured people in war and would not let them go home?” … You are like a dead man who fell in battle, trampled under the feet of other soldiers. Now you look like any other dead man wrapped in burial clothes.
Yesterday we explored the not unreasonable assertion that self-worship is the world’s fastest growing religion. Everyone, it seems, is taking “selfies”. And as it turns out, there are terrible consequences.
Sure, we all want to put our best foot forward, for others to think well of us. But these days, fuelled by social media, we’ve taken this self-promotion, self-worship thing to dangerous extremes.
And even if you’re not caught up in social media, as we place more and more emphasis on our rights, our feelings, our ideas, we’re ever cranking ourselves upward and upward in our own estimation. So the thinking goes … I am the most important person on the planet.
As we saw yesterday, there’s nothing new in any of that.
But now, let’s turn to the consequences of self-worship in the next few verses of that chapter of the Book of Isaiah, through the vivid picture language of the Hebrew culture.
Isaiah 14:15-19 You always told yourself … I will be like God most high. But that did not happen. You were brought down to the deep pit—Sheol, the place of death. People will come to look at your dead body. They will think about you and say, “Is this the same man who caused great fear in all the kingdoms on earth, who destroyed cities and turned the land into a desert, who captured people in war and would not let them go home?” … You are like a dead man who fell in battle, trampled under the feet of other soldiers. Now you look like any other dead man wrapped in burial clothes.
Don’t get sucked into self-worship. There are terrible consequences.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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