Stop regarding man

Written to my fellow students in a Moody Online course I'm taking on Isaiah.

"Stop regarding man, whose breath of life is in his nostrils; for why should he be esteemed?" (Isaiah 2:22)

I don't know about you all, but I was very struck by that verse and the verses leading up to it (v. 12 and on, especially). It sounds very similar to chapter 40 and is helping me understand the imagery used, of valleys being raised up, and mountains being brought low. The point of this is there is coming a day when all will be on equal footing, all shown to be creatures of an amazing, majestic, holy, wrathful, merciful, sovereign God.

"And in that day men will cast away to the moles and the bats their idols of silver and their idols of gold, which they made for themselves to worship...." (2:20)

All that they had trusted in, the things that they thought brought them satisfaction and hope and good fortune and blessing, they will throw down "Before the terror of the LORD and the splendor of His majesty." (v. 21) I get goosebumps just thinking about that, and I think, "What things in my own life am I trusting in more than the LORD?" I'm just as much an idolater as Judah was.

"Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry." (Colossians 3:5)

So my thinking is, what am I delighting in, trusting in, hoping in, that really needs to be cast away to the moles and bats? Granted, the passage is talking about the end times, but as far as *application* is concerned, this is what has been going through my mind. What is man? Why am I concerned with what men think of me, apart from Christ? Man is nothing, and he'll be hiding in the caves when the LORD arises in majesty and makes the earth tremble. My concern should be like Paul's in Philippians 1, where all he wanted was to lift of the name of Jesus whether by life or by death.