The Aftermath of Glory

Isaiah 2:17-19 English Standard Version (ESV)
17 And the haughtiness of man shall be humbled,
    and the lofty pride of men shall be brought low,
    and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.
18 And the idols shall utterly pass away.
19 And people shall enter the caves of the rocks
    and the holes of the ground,
from before the terror of the Lord,
    and from the splendor of his majesty,
    when he rises to terrify the earth

"God's holiness," warns Tim Keller in Songs of Jesus' entry on Psalm 93, "is more threatening than the stormy sea."

Accordingly, in Isaiah 2:17-19, the waves stirred up by the storm of His glory reach inland to submerge all rivals. As He begins to display His character more fully, pretenses to comparison are exposed for their ridiculousness. Bring arrogance, questions Isaiah 2:17? He punctures it and enforces humility. Pride is groundless. Idols were not alive to begin with because only God can grant the breath of life. Nevertheless, the life with which men tend to imbue near things, THAT illusion of life shall pass away.

So what is the overriding, predominant response of men to the grace of disillusionment? Verse 19 marks out that the highway to hide elsewhere is much more broad than the footpath to grateful repentance. Deprived of fashioned idols, the protection of rocks will do before most men will hide themselves in the Rock of Ages. Resistant to true, reverent fear of the Lord which draws the remnant near on His terms, most will prefer to close ourselves in persistent, unproductive, condemning anxiety.

The choice, at least from our myopic perspective, is ours. Bifurcates Mark Buchanan in Holy Wild, "The fire of God is his holiness, and it either destroys us, or cleanses us." We can marvel that He created things and gave them for our use, or we can, as soon as He passes, begin to grant them more powers than their Creator ever did.

As soon a particular sense of His awe recedes, we can use our language, even our strut, to hollow out haughtiness as before, or our faces can ever after reflect God's glory. The caves life presents can either, as with Moses and David, the settings of momentary reflection and protection, or we can pretend to make them our permanent address.

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