“This is the carefree city that lived in safety. She said to herself, ‘I am, and there is none besides me’” (Zephaniah 2:15). The Assyrians were saying this about themselves. Let’s call their thinking: carnal security. It’s a stupefied approach to life that is satisfied with self.
The prophet Obadiah observed it in the Edomites of his day: “The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks and make your home on the heights, you who say to yourself, ‘Who can bring me down to the ground’” (Obadiah 3). The prophet Jeremiah warned those falsely living secure in Judah with a message from God: “I am against you…who live above this valley on the rocky plateau, declares the Lord—you who say, ‘Who can come against us? Who can enter our refuge?’” (Jeremiah 21:13). The prophet Isaiah had a message from God for the Babylonians; a people stuffed full of carnal security: “You said, ‘I will continue forever—the eternal queen!’ But you did not consider these things or reflect on what might happen. Now then, listen, you wanton creature, lounging in your security and saying to yourself, ‘I am, and there is none beside me’” (Isaiah 47:7-8).
The Christian certainly has security; but it is not of the carnal variety. Our security is in the One who redeemed us: “In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you…” (1 Peter 1:3-4). In other words, our security doesn’t rest upon the carnal, it rests upon the divine.
That is why Christianity is a humbling religion; our salvation and security doesn’t come from within, it comes from Another. We can never say “there is none beside me,” only God can—and He does: “From the rising of the sun to the place of its setting men may know there is none besides Me” (Isaiah 45:6).
A great misconception the world has of Christians is that they think we think we are “good” and that we think they are “bad”. Truth be told, we know we are “bad”; it is they, however, who think they are “good”. We know we are not the “eternal queen” who can lounge in our security; we know that as a pauper our security rests only upon the righteousness of Another (Romans 4:22-25).
There is only one way to lounge. It isn’t by saying “there is none besides me”; it’s by knowing and trusting the only One who can say such a brash thing: “There is none besides Me.” There is a divine difference between the two.
Pastor Rich Hamlin August 16, 2012