The rulers of Jerusalem had imagined they could make a covenant with Death – or, with the metaphor we would use today, they wanted to make a deal with the Devil. The notion was that when the great disaster came along that would overwhelm everyone else, they would still be OK. Isaiah reports to us that these leaders imagined they’d have a refuge to keep them safe from the destruction – they said “when the overwhelming scourge passes through it will not come to us” – yet this shelter they wanted to count on would turn out to be a lie (Isaiah 28:15).

Those officials were counting on a strategy that could not work. What good could it do for them to pretend to believe it? Since they were the ones who were making up the lie, they had to have known that their falsehood would not turn out to be true. And yet, perhaps, they did not. Perhaps they had set forth the lie with enough fervor, with enough soul force, that in the end they had even persuaded themselves that all would be well for them, if not for everyone.

But the day of reckoning was coming. On that day, Isaiah declared, God would show them that their deal was no good, annulling their covenant with Death. God’s righteousness “will sweep away the refuge of lies, and waters will overwhelm the shelter … when the overwhelming scourge passes through you will be beaten down by it” (28:17-18). All of those things that we think might save us will fail.

It would be easy to apply this to whichever political leader we don’t happen to like; it would be equally easy to apply it to corporate CEOs or to protesters in the streets, to the intelligentsia or to the survivalists, to the baby boomers who have not adequately funded their IRAs or to the boomers who have. Or to my own life, with the lies I tell myself. In the end, the only sure foundation is the solid rock established by God; only the person who trusts in what God has provided will avoid the shame or the panic (28:16).

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Save us, O God, from our rush to believe the lies about where the answer might be found: in the economy, or the environment, or politics; or in a big bank account, or in being self-reliant. These are all false hopes: you alone are the answer, O Lord, and it is in you alone that we can trust.