Reminder: I never stick completely to my written sermon. This isn’t a transcript, but the written sermon I was using when I preached.
Friends, listen for a word from God in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, the 30th chapter, verses 1-7.
Woe to the rebellious children, says the Lord,
who carry out a plan but not mine;
who make an alliance but against my will,
adding sin to sin;
who set out to go down to Egypt
without asking for my counsel,
to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh
and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt.
Therefore the protection of Pharaoh shall become your shame,
and the shelter in the shadow of Egypt your humiliation.
For though his officials are at Zoan
and his envoys reach Hanes,
everyone comes to shame
through a people that cannot profit them,
that brings neither help nor profit,
only shame and disgrace.
An oracle concerning the animals of the Negeb.
Through a land of trouble and distress,
of lioness and roaring lion,
of viper and flying serpent,
they carry their riches on the backs of donkeys
and their treasures on the humps of camels
to a people that cannot profit them.
For Egypt’s help is worthless and empty;
therefore I have called her,
“Rahab who sits still.”
This is the word of God for the people of God.
What Rulers Build
Show me what a ruler and the ruling class builds when nobody can stop them, and I’ll show you who they serve.
Pharaohs built pyramids. Caesars built arches. Kings built palaces and churches with their own names carved over the door. Our current president is in the process of building a ballroom and a triumphant arch. And nearly every one of them told the people the same thing. This is for you. This is for the nation. This is for God.
Sometimes it was almost true. Usually, though, it wasn’t.
Tonight we’re reading from Isaiah 30, and a government is building again. Not with stone. With alliances. With envoys, treasure, and a carefully drawn plan. And God’s opening word about it is the sharpest in the chapter.
“Woe to the rebellious children.”
Not “enemies.” Not some “foreign empire.” Children. God’s own children. People who should have known better and kept building regardless.
A Plan That Wasn’t God’s
We meet Isaiah and the Hebrews tonight approximately 700 years before Jesus. Assyria is the primary regional superpower, swallowing the region one city at a time. The northern kingdom of Israel is already gone. Judah, the southern kingdom, is next, and King Hezekiah’s court is panicking. And they do what royal courts and other forms of government do. They get practical, diplomatic, and even transactional. Hezekiah sends a delegation to Egypt to buy a military alliance. Isaiah names two Egyptian cities, Zoan and Hanes, where Hezekiah’s ambassadors are negotiating with the Egyptians. None of these steps are inherently wrong. In fact, they’re prudent. Judah’s military is no match for Assyria. Attempting to take the offensive or digging in for a long defensive is only going to lead to death.
The charge that Isaiah is directing to Judah’s leaders is in one sense more nuanced than that. Yet in another sense it’s also blunter. The leaders are carrying out their own plan, but not God’s plan. They’ve looked at the situation and they’ve chosen a course. But they’ve forgotten to seek God’s counsel and in doing so they’ve placed Egypt, its strength, and their own fortune ahead of God.
Even in the sense of First Temple Judaism, God wasn’t out of reach. The temple stood a short walk from Hezekiah’s palace. They didn’t ask because God might say “no.” Or worse. God might say “wait.”
And Egypt has history for the people. Egypt was the house of bondage; the land God brought their ancestors out of and through the desert. While Egypt might have looked like something of a savior in this particular moment, it was also a wolf always lying in wait, ready to pounce and conquer the Hebrews themselves. Going back down to Egypt for protection isn’t only bad strategy. It’s the Exodus played in reverse. It’s a freed people walking back toward slavery and calling it security. There was no guarantee that having defended Judah from the Assyrians, that the Egyptians would go home.
So, God gives the verdict. Pharaoh’s protection will become the shame of the rulers. The shelter you’re buying will turn into humiliation. The people you’re counting on can only give you disgrace.
Notice the word Isaiah uses for where they’re headed. Shadow. Taking shelter in the shadow of Egypt. Isaiah’s listeners would have caught his reference immediately and perhaps you did too: the Psalms are full of references to seeking shelter in the shadow of God’s wings. That’s where God’s people were supposed to shelter. Instead, they went shopping for what felt like better shade.
The Proud One, Again
Think back to chapter two of the Book of Habakkuk. This is the point when the prophet had resolved to stand on his watchtower, still arguing with God, but now more confident in waiting on an answer because he had finally heard from God in chapter one. “Look at the proud,” God says. Look at the one whose spirit isn’t right within them. Then compare them to the righteous who live by their faithfulness.
Not by certainty, but by faithfulness, and specifically faithfulness under delay. Even though the vision might be slow, you wait because you are waiting on God.
That’s the hinge between these two prophets. Habakkuk waits at his post. Judah’s leaders are the ones who can’t stand to wait and in their impatience they became proud. Habakkuk says that the proud never have enough. They open their mouths wide as the grave. They swallow whole nations and still they aren’t full.
Then comes a visceral image in Habakkuk 2: God pronounces woe on whoever builds a house on unjust gain, setting a nest up high, safe from every hand. God says the stones themselves will cry out from the wall. The woodwork will answer back. The building testifies against the builder. Many of us probably know this image from Psalm 127:1, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” Hold on to that image. We’ll come back to it shortly.
Ballrooms and Arches
Last October, crews began tearing down the East Wing of the White House. Within days, it was decimated. In its place the Trump Administration is constructing a ballroom complete with 90,000 square feet of space, seating for 650, and price tag reported to be at least $400 million, though some estimates put it as high as $600 million. Yes, it’s true that presidents, usually under the direction of their spouses, have the prerogative and even some public money to renovate the White House and introduce their own tastes, preferences, and décor. Jackie Kennedy undertook significant and publicized renovations to the executive mansion, and one need only look at photos of the Oval Office to see how presidents have chosen to decorate perhaps the most famous office in the world.
We’ve been told that the funds for the construction of the ballroom are coming from President Trump and private donors he recruited for the project. You can decide for yourself if you trust the president’s claims to say nothing of what the supposedly private donors are receiving in appreciation for their donations, but the East Wing of the White House was more than office space. Generations of people entered the White House for tours through the East Wing. First and Second Ladies and the only Second Gentleman in US history kept offices there since 1902 and used the space to champion their own causes and support the work of their spouses. Major pieces of domestic policy touching on everything from agriculture to education to public safety were crafted there when it housed the US Domestic Policy Council.
Then came plans for a 250-foot-tall arch, modeled on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, with a golden Lady Liberty on top flanked by eagles, planned for the traffic circle at the foot of Memorial Bridge, between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial. Renderings of the arch depict the words “One Nation Under God” across the top. President Trump has also stated that the arch might serve a police and/or defense purpose with the capability to house and deploy drones, snipers, and anti-aircraft artillery.
While it has been well documented that demolition began on the East Wing before all appropriate and legally necessary permissions had been received and there are still questions about the funding of both projects, Isaiah never asked whether the building was permitted. Isaiah asked whose counsel was consulted.
President Trump even said the quiet part out loud. When a reporter from CBS asked who the arch was for, the president pointed at himself and said, “Me.”
Triumphal arches have a history, and they are almost always rooted in the horrors of war. The Roman Arch of Titus, constructed in 81 CE, commemorates the sacking of Jerusalem in 70 CE by the legions under Titus’s command. Carved into its sides, one can still see soldiers marching out of the Second Temple with menorahs and other sacred relics on their shoulders. That’s the purpose of a triumphal arch. It says we won; you lost. We want people to remember our victory and your defeat. And the shape? It’s a grand arch so that the victorious army could march through it on parade. Ironically for an administration which stands so starkly with the modern State of Israel and has insisted on recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the Arch of Titus inspired the Arc de Triomphe which in turn is inspiring the Arch of Independence.
But the Arch of Independence, also known informally as the Arch of Trump, doesn’t celebrate a military victory. It is being planned because this administration needs to glorify the state and the values of the state to support their agenda. When actual policy and action fail, governments and their leaders often turn to building monuments.
Every modern US president lives in the White House because of their position and role. But the house is no more theirs than the office of president is theirs. They hold the White House like they hold the presidency in trust for the people of the United States to whom the house and the office ultimately belong. So too every king of Judah sat on a throne that supposedly belonged to God. Scripture’s whole political imagination rests on that idea. Rulers are tenants. The earth and everything in it belong to God. A tenant who starts knocking out walls to suit their own taste has forgotten who holds the deed.
We need to ask where this government’s urgency lives. If a presidential administration can summon donors, architects, and excavators within weeks for a monument. What could it summon for the hungry? For the stranger at the border? For our Trans siblings, who just want to live in peace? You can tell what a government believes and what it holds as sacred by what it finds the money, the speed, and the energy to build.
The singer and poet Passenger, the stage name of British artist Mike Rosenberg, has observed: “There’s no money for the homeless, no money for welfare/ No money for schooling or adequate healthcare /There is just no money here, said the rich to the poor /But it’s funny how there’s money when we’re going to war.”
And if the administration’s plans hold, God’s name will be stamped on top of the arch as if God approves and endorses the project. That should make every all of us nervous. We were warned about carrying God’s name to dress up our own ambitions. Remember Habakkuk and remember Psalm 127. The stone cries out from the wall. Every monument built to flatter a ruler eventually testifies against that ruler. The Arch of Titus still stands in Rome today. The Roman Empire, however, fell as all empires eventually do.
The Fool Isn’t Alone
We can’t place all of Judah’s problems on the shoulders of one man. Diplomats had been dispatched to two Egyptian cities and others were preparing to go even further into the territory of their old enemy, so sure they were that any other course would lead to their total destruction. A whole government on the proverbial and literal roads to Egypt. Foolishness at that scale requires support. It needs “yes” people who call it brilliant. It needs donors who write checks in the hope of currying favor. It needs preachers calling it “God’s work” from pulpits and anointing it as holy. It needs people who shrug and turn their heads because the project doesn’t yet affect them directly. It needs people who even in 2026 after the well documented horrors and tragedies of the 20th century still fail to learn the truth of a poem that says, “When they came for someone else, I didn’t do anything because I wasn’t that person, but when they came for me, no one was left.”
Here’s where we have to turn the lamp around, my friends, because Isaiah always does.
If you were hoping that I was going to preach about swapping one set of leaders for another set of leaders, a set more to our political and social liking, I’m sorry, that’s not this message and it certainly isn’t this scripture. Egypt has hosted envoys from every party that’s ever held power. But Egypt isn’t a place on a map. Egypt’s whatever, wherever, or whoever we run to instead of first asking God.
For Judah, it was Pharaoh’s chariots and soldiers. For President Trump, it’s buildings and monuments to himself and how he hopes history will view his presidencies. For many churches, it’s a bigger building, a bigger budget, and a seat close to power. For many preachers, I’m, ashamed to say including me, it’s a bigger platform. For anyone who’s been bullied, shut down, shut out, and legislated against, it’s the pull to trust whoever promises protection this week. For all of us, it’s accepting the protection of any shadow other than God’s shadow.
Assyria was real. The threat Judah faced wasn’t imaginary, and ours aren’t either. Fear isn’t a character flaw. But fear can counsel us into decisions we would never otherwise make.
Like Judah and its leaders, we’re tired, scared people with real emergencies and real plans. That’s what makes these situations so dangerous. No one says, “Let’s defy God today.” We say, “Let’s be realistic.” We say, “We don’t have time to wait.” By the time anyone asks whose plan this is, the Pharoh’s armies are marching to Jerusalem.
Returning to the Text
Let’s go back to tonight’s text. Judah, its royal court, and it’s king are foolish, but not because they’re afraid or because they’ve looked at all their options and chosen the best of many bad choices. They’re foolish because they never consulted God; because in their fear, they’ve failed to wait for God and have instead trusted in themselves alone.
Here’s what I’m asking myself and all of you tonight. What are we building because we’re afraid to wait? What plan are we carrying out that God hasn’t seen? To which Egypt have we already sent envoys?
Ballrooms crumble. Arches become ruins. Psalm 127 told us how this goes. Unless God builds the house, the builders labor in vain.
But notice what God never says. God never says the door’s closed. God says, “You didn’t ask.” That’s an invitation inside the indictment. The conversation’s still open.
Before the next plan, the next alliance, the next monument. Ask God. Then wait for the answer, even when waiting feels like losing. Especially, when the waiting is hard.
The stones are listening.
So is God.