13 Thus the Lord said to me, “Go and buy yourself a linen waistband and put it around your waist, but do not put it in water.” 2 So I bought the waistband in accordance with the word of the Lord and put it around my waist. 3 Then the word of the Lord came to me a second time, saying, 4 “Take the waistband that you have bought, which is around your waist, and arise, go to [a]the Euphrates and hide it there in a crevice of the rock.” 5 So I went and hid it by the Euphrates, as the Lord had commanded me. 6 After many days the Lord said to me, “Arise, go to the Euphrates and take from there the waistband which I commanded you to hide there.” 7 Then I went to the Euphrates and dug, and I took the waistband from the place where I had hidden it; and lo, the waistband was ruined, it was totally worthless.
8 Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 9 “Thus says the Lord, ‘Just so will I destroy the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. 10 This wicked people, who refuse to listen to My words, who walk in the stubbornness of their hearts and have gone after other gods to serve them and to bow down to them, let them be just like this waistband which is totally worthless. 11 For as the waistband clings to the waist of a man, so I made the whole household of Israel and the whole household of Judah cling to Me,’ declares the Lord, ‘that they might be for Me a people, for [b]renown, for praise and for glory; but they did not listen.’
Captivity Threatened
12 “Therefore you are to speak this word to them, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “Every jug is to be filled with wine.”’ And when they say to you, ‘Do we not very well know that every jug is to be filled with wine?’ 13 then say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Behold I am about to fill all the inhabitants of this land—the kings that sit for David on his throne, the priests, the prophets and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem—with drunkenness! 14 I will dash them against each other, both the fathers and the sons together,” declares the Lord. “I will not show pity nor be sorry nor have compassion so as not to destroy them.”’”
God here compares the deeds of Judah, in which they took great pride, to a dirty and worthless waistband. Similarly, Isaiah had written that “all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags”. Yet, does not God call us to good works. James would later write that faith without works is useless. And God himself in this passage says, “I made the whole household of Israel cling to Me… for renown, for praise and for glory…”
Yet God notes that they did not listen; anything they were doing, was for their own glory, and there we see the root of the problem. First, they weren’t going what God had asked, and second, what they did do was for their own sake, and not for others and certainly not for God’s glory.
Some have taken this idea of filthy rags too far, and wondered, “Are all our good deeds worthless?” Certainly, we are not saved by our works. They cannot overcome the gulf that our sin has created to separate us from God. It is indeed by faith we are saved, and by Jesus’ sacrifice in our place that we are made righteous once more.
We should then apply two questions to all the good we endeavor to do. First, are we doing what God has asked of us, or what we want to do? Second, are we doing good for God’s gain and to build His kingdom, or are we trying to build our own little “kingdom” instead? We can easily get caught up in doing good, and be swept up in the praise of others, but it isn’t about that.
There’s nothing wrong with the encouragement of others, I think we need that to help us know when we are on the right track. But if that’s all we seek, we might as well sit on our hands and do nothing–and we shouldn’t do that either. Show your faith by your works, but not just any ol’ works. Do the work your Father has called you to, thinking nothing of your own ambition, but only of His glory.