Those Who Have Lost Their Trembling

[Isa 66:2, ESV] All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.

Introduction

Let me start with a strange question. Have you ever ignored your sat-nav, even when it was showing you the safest and quickest route, and taken a different road anyway? Why do we do that? It is not because we do not know the way. It is because that road does not suit us, or because we want to hold the wheel ourselves.

This is exactly the question our passage raises. God kept speaking to Israel, kept making promises. He said that if they obeyed, He would bless them and make them prosper. The road was already laid out clearly. And yet Israel kept wandering off that road. Why?

Look together at Isaiah 66:1–3. God begins by saying, "Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what kind of house would you build for me?" (66:1).

Then, immediately after, He tells those offering sacrifices at the temple that their sacrifices are no different from killing a man or breaking a dog's neck (66:3). Worship was still happening. But God was rejecting it.

Right in between those two statements sits our verse, verse 2: "This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word." Here we find the answer. The problem was not a lack of religious activity. They went to the temple, they offered sacrifices, they were religiously very busy. The problem was religion without trembling.

Chared (חָרֵד)

The Hebrew word translated "trembles" is chared. It does not simply mean fear. It describes a person who, standing before God's word, lays down their own will completely. It is letting go of the wheel. The opposite of this is offering God plenty of outward sacrifice while still gripping the wheel of your own life. That is precisely why Israel wandered from the good road even though they knew it well.

Why Do We Choose Another Road When the Good One Is Guaranteed?

The theological answer — total depravity — is correct. But to be more specific, the root of sin is always a longing for autonomy. Remember the serpent's temptation to Eve in Genesis 3. It was the desire to be like God, the desire to decide good and evil for herself. Israel left God's promised road for the same reason. God's road is good, but on that road, God holds the wheel, not us. We want the good outcome, but we do not want to give up control.

So Israel did not abandon temple worship altogether. Instead, they chose to keep worship on their own terms — worshipping God, but without trembling. This is the compromise human beings love to find.

This is not only Israel's story. We too can worship, pray, and read our Bibles, and yet fail to tremble before God's word. In the places where we should obey, we may still hold on to the final decision ourselves, giving God only as much room as we find manageable. Religious activity without trembling — this may well be our own portrait today.

Conclusion: The One Who Trembled Completely

Across the whole of Scripture, there is only one person who trembled completely before God's word and laid down His own will entirely. That person is Jesus Christ. In the Garden of Gethsemane, He prayed, "Not as I will, but as you will" (Matthew 26:39). He walked the very road every human being longs most to avoid — the road to the cross. The wheel we can never fully let go of, Christ let go of completely, in our place.

So let me ask you: is there trembling in your worship and your walk with God today, or is it a managed religion where you are still holding the wheel? Resting on the obedience Christ laid down completely, will you hand Him your wheel right now?