The Pride of the Autonomous Self Text: Isaiah 47:8-11
Introduction: The City of Man
Every generation, every culture, erects its own Babylon. It might be a city of brick and mortar on the plains of Shinar, or it might be a city of electrons and ideologies in the digital ether. But the spirit is always the same. It is the spirit of man, puffed up and proud, sitting securely in his own accomplishments, declaring his own sovereignty. The spirit of Babylon is the spirit of the autonomous self, writ large. It is the societal project of becoming our own gods.
Isaiah here is prophesying against the historical Babylon, that great and terrible empire. But the Spirit of God is doing far more than that. He is diagnosing a terminal condition in the heart of fallen man. Babylon is the archetypal city of man, the great harlot of Revelation, the seductive and sensual power that promises security, pleasure, and wisdom apart from God. She is the world system that says to us, "You can have it all. You can be your own law, your own savior, your own ultimate reality."
The words spoken by Babylon in this passage are not the words of a distant, ancient paganism. They are the creed of modern secularism. "I am, and there is no one besides me." This is the ultimate blasphemy. It is the creature climbing onto the throne of the Creator and claiming His prerogatives. This is the native language of pride. And because our God is a jealous God, and because He loves His people, He will not let such arrogance stand. He will bring it to ruin. The judgment described here is not just for a Mesopotamian empire; it is a standing warning to every individual, every institution, and every nation that builds its house on the sand of its own self-sufficiency.
We must understand that this is not simply a historical lesson. This is a spiritual confrontation. We are all tempted to build our own little Babylons, to trust in our own wisdom, our own wealth, our own enchantments. We are tempted to believe that we are secure, that we have insulated ourselves from disaster. But God promises to pull the rug out from under every false security. He promises that a day is coming when the music will stop, and the bill will come due. And it will come suddenly.
The Text
"So now, hear this, you sensual one, Who sits securely, Who says in your heart, ‘I am, and there is no one besides me. I will not sit as a widow, Nor know loss of children.’ But these two things will come on you suddenly in one day: Loss of children and widowhood. They will come on you in full measure In spite of your many sorceries, In spite of the great might of your spells. You felt secure in your evil and said, ‘No one sees me,’ Your wisdom and your knowledge have turned you astray; So you have said in your heart, ‘I am, and there is no one besides me.’ But evil will come on you Which you will not know how to charm away; And disaster will fall on you For which you cannot atone; And destruction about which you do not know Will come on you suddenly."
(Isaiah 47:8-11 LSB)
The Boast of Self-Deification (v. 8)
We begin with the proud declaration of the "sensual one."
"So now, hear this, you sensual one, Who sits securely, Who says in your heart, ‘I am, and there is no one besides me. I will not sit as a widow, Nor know loss of children.’" (Isaiah 47:8 LSB)
God addresses Babylon as the "sensual one," the one given to pleasures. This is not just about creature comforts. It is a spiritual orientation. It is the pursuit of satisfaction in the creation rather than the Creator. When a culture makes pleasure its highest good, it becomes soft, decadent, and blind to reality. It "sits securely," meaning it has a false sense of invulnerability. It believes its wealth, its military, its technology has made it immune to the consequences of its actions.
And from this place of false security comes the ultimate boast, spoken in the heart: "I am, and there is no one besides me." This is the language of deity. God declares in this same book, "I am the LORD, and there is no other; Besides Me there is no God" (Isaiah 45:5). Babylon, the city of man, usurps the very words of God. This is the original sin of the Garden, the desire to be "like God." Modern man does this every day. When he declares that he is the arbiter of truth, that his feelings define reality, that he can create his own identity, he is saying in his heart, "I am, and there is no one besides me."
This pride leads to a delusional confidence. "I will not sit as a widow, Nor know loss of children." A widow is one who has lost her head, her covering. Loss of children is the loss of a future. Babylon believes she is immortal. She believes her political structures and her posterity are guaranteed. She has made herself the master of her own destiny. This is the central lie of every humanistic project, from the Tower of Babel to the United Nations. It is the belief that man can secure his own future without reference to the God who holds all futures in His hand.
The Sudden and Complete Reversal (v. 9)
God’s response to this arrogance is swift and devastating.
"But these two things will come on you suddenly in one day: Loss of children and widowhood. They will come on you in full measure In spite of your many sorceries, In spite of the great might of your spells." (Isaiah 47:9 LSB)
The judgment is tailored to the boast. You say you will never be a widow? You will be one. You say you will never lose your children? They will be taken from you. And this will not be a gradual decline. It will happen "suddenly in one day." The collapse of proud civilizations often appears to happen overnight. The foundations have been rotting for decades, but the final fall is precipitous. The Berlin Wall falls, the Soviet Union dissolves, the Lehman Brothers collapse. God delights in shattering the illusion of human permanence.
And the judgment will be "in full measure." There will be no mitigating it, no partial escape. God's judgment, when it finally falls, is thorough. But notice the reason given for Babylon's false confidence: her "many sorceries" and the "great might of your spells." What does this mean? In ancient Babylon, this referred to their occult practices, their reliance on astrology and divination to control the future. They believed their secret knowledge and spiritual technologies gave them an edge.
But we must not read this as some dusty, ancient superstition. What are the sorceries of modern Babylon? They are our own technologies of control. Our economic models that promise to eliminate risk. Our political sciences that claim to have mastered the art of social engineering. Our medical technologies that promise to defeat death itself. Our entertainment and media that cast a spell of distraction over the populace. We trust in our "wisdom and knowledge" (v. 10), our data, our experts, our algorithms. These are our spells, our enchantments. And God says they will be utterly useless. The judgment will come "in spite of" all of them. Our hubris in our own knowledge is a form of sorcery, and it will fail spectacularly.
The Security of Wickedness (v. 10)
Verse 10 digs down to the root of the problem: a false security grounded in a false worldview.
"You felt secure in your evil and said, ‘No one sees me,’ Your wisdom and your knowledge have turned you astray; So you have said in your heart, ‘I am, and there is no one besides me.’" (Isaiah 47:10 LSB)
Here is the psychology of sin. First, there is security in evil. The sinner believes his wickedness is a strength, a savvy way of navigating the world. He feels safe in his compromises and his rebellion. Second, this is propped up by a functional atheism: "No one sees me." This is the fool who says in his heart there is no God (Psalm 14:1). He believes he lives in a morally neutral universe with no eye that sees, no record that is kept, and no judge to whom he must give an account. This is the foundational assumption of secularism. It is the great, enabling lie of all sin.
And what produces this blindness? "Your wisdom and your knowledge have turned you astray." It is not ignorance that damns Babylon, but her knowledge. Her sophisticated, godless learning has perverted her. This is a direct shot at the pride of the intellectual class, the technocrats, the experts who believe their education has lifted them above the simple moral truths of God's Word. Paul warns us about this very thing: "Professing to be wise, they became fools" (Romans 1:22). Our universities, our media, our centers of "enlightenment" have become the high temples of this Babylonian wisdom, and they are leading our civilization astray.
And notice how it culminates in the same blasphemous refrain: "I am, and there is no one besides me." A godless epistemology necessarily leads to a deified self. If there is no transcendent God to define reality, then man must do it for himself. He becomes his own ultimate standard. This is the dead-end street of all rebellion against God.
The Inescapable Judgment (v. 11)
Finally, God describes a judgment that is as inescapable as it is sudden.
"But evil will come on you Which you will not know how to charm away; And disaster will fall on you For which you cannot atone; And destruction about which you do not know Will come on you suddenly." (Isaiah 47:11 LSB)
Three waves of destruction are announced here, and each one mocks the pretensions of Babylon. First, an evil you "will not know how to charm away." Your spells, your sorceries, your technologies of control will be useless. The coming disaster will not respond to your expert solutions. You cannot perform a ritual or pass a stimulus bill to ward off the judgment of Almighty God.
Second, a disaster "for which you cannot atone." You will not be able to pay your way out of this. The Hebrew word for atone is kaphar, the same word used for the mercy seat. It means to cover. Babylon will have no covering for her sin. Her wealth cannot buy a reprieve. Her good works cannot offset her evil. Her sacrifices to her false gods are worthless. There is no atonement, no propitiation, outside the one provided by God Himself. This is why the gospel is such a glorious affront to the pride of man. We cannot atone. We must receive an atonement provided for us in the blood of Christ.
Third, a destruction "about which you do not know." It will be a "black swan" event. It will come from a direction you did not anticipate. All your wise men, your intelligence agencies, your predictive models will be blind to it. It will come "suddenly." God's judgments are not always predictable by the world's metrics. He is the Lord of history, and He can write plot twists that leave the proud speechless.
Conclusion: The Tale of Two Cities
The Bible is the story of two cities. There is Babylon, the city of man, founded on pride, pleasure, and self-deification. And there is Jerusalem, the city of God, whose builder and maker is God. Every human being is a citizen of one or the other.
The message of Isaiah 47 is a call to come out of Babylon. It is a call to abandon the false securities of this world. Do not trust in your wealth. Do not trust in your wisdom. Do not trust in the enchantments of our culture. Do not say in your heart, "I am, and there is no one besides me." That is the path to sudden and complete destruction.
Instead, we are called to trust in the one who truly can say, "I AM." We are called to flee to the city of God, the New Jerusalem. How do we do this? We do it by acknowledging that we cannot atone for our own sin. We cannot charm away the disaster that our rebellion deserves. We must flee to the cross of Jesus Christ, where the only true atonement was made.
On that cross, the judgment that Babylon deserves fell upon the Son of God. He became a widower, crying out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He suffered the loss of children, being cut off from the land of the living. The disaster for which we could not atone fell upon Him. He absorbed the full measure of God's wrath, in one day, suddenly.
Therefore, for all who are in Christ, the threat of Babylon is broken. We may live in the midst of it, but we are no longer citizens of it. We are citizens of a heavenly kingdom, a city that cannot be shaken. The pride of man will fall. The towers of our modern Babel will crumble. But the Lord sits on His throne, and His kingdom will have no end. Let us therefore hear the word of the Lord, abandon our false securities, and take refuge in Him alone.