WOE TO THE SELF RELIANT

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.

Isaiah 5:21

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

A deep expression of grief, regret, or distress.

A deep suffering from misfortune, affliction, or grief.

Ruinous trouble.

Those who experience woe go through any or all of these as they are indeed the definition of the word.

Looking back to the Israelites of the Old Testament, they could certainly attest to the validity of these meanings as they lived them out after their stubborn reluctance to turn from their sinful ways, disrespecting and disregarding the Lord God Almighty along the way, led to His judgment and punishment being unleashed upon them, a penalty of 70 years living in oppression in a foreign land.

Think about it. If you had experienced that kind of consequence from God and the accompanying troubles it brought, you would be expressing deep grief and regret in the midst of your distress and suffering. And you would fully know that you ended up in that place of misfortune, the place of ruinous trouble, because of what you did, not what God did in response to your wicked behavior.

Woe. As we have seen in the fifth chapter of Isaiah, it comes on the greedy and the abusers of alcohol. It comes on the unrepentant sinners and evildoers. And as we will see today, it also comes on those who are self-reliant, those who live in a way that sends the message, “I don’t need God because I can handle life on my own.” Look again at today’s verse:

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight. V. 21

Proverbs, long renowned as the book of wisdom, shares the following basic principle, well before it gets into a litany of individual exhortations on how to (and not to) live:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5

The guidance is very fundamental, easy enough for anyone to comprehend. You don’t need a PhD or any degree for that matter. You don’t even need a high school education to get the main points here which include:

1. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. 

When we trust someone, we have faith in the fact they will do what we know they can do, faith that they will do what they promised they would do. In our relationship with God, we’re to place our full confidence in Him because the word of Jesus assure us that nothing is impossible with Him (Matthew 19:26). With that, why would we choose to rely on anyone else?

Just one additional point to add because note we aren’t to have a wishy-washy faith in God, one that is steadfast one moment and non-existent the next. We’re not to trust Him with a part of ourselves or when it’s convenient. No, we’re to trust Him with all our heart, all of it, all of the time.

2. Lean not on your own understanding.

We are not to be wise in our own eyes or clever in our own sight. We’re not to lean on our own understanding. Instead, we’re to look to the Lord as we trust Him with all our heart and as we do, He will impart His will and way on you and your life. Your understanding will always be right because it will come from the One who is perfectly right and righteous in every way. He and He alone will always lead you to the truth. He and He alone will always lead you to wisdom. And this leads to the final point:

3. In all your ways, submit to Him and He will make your paths straight.

Note again here that we are to submit ALL our ways to Him, not just the ones we want to. This means that we seek His desires fully, making them ours. All we do is all in and through Him. When we do that, then and only then can we reap the full benefit of life that the Lord longs to provide us, only then can we ensure we are living in a way where our Christian walk in on the straight and narrow path, the path to true life, now and forever.

This is why I write every day, to honor and glorify God, using the gifts He has given me and to help others learn to submit to God and lean on His understanding in life, seeing that they have no real wisdom or cleverness apart from Him.

I pray that I will be a success in this, saving many from potential woe.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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