Isaiah 50 has a wonderful series of verses on trusting in God alone for salvation verses trusting in human religious activity. God is talking about walking in spiritual darkness, and lighting torches and trying to walk by them is human effort with God declaring they will end up in hell. God being perfect, good and just, just can’t let sin go unpunished. It would be like if someone killed your spouse and the judge just set them free. Would you think the judge was just? And all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and none are good. No human effort can wipe our slates clean and restore our relationship with God. But in God’s love for his creation and those that love Him, He came into His creation as one of us human beings and took our punishment so we could be saved, credited with righteousness, reconciled to God, and have eternal life with Him. No human works or effort will ever restore the relationship with God or get you eternal life, but only trusting in God and what He did for us on the cross, a gift of grace.
Isaiah 50:10–11
[10] Who among you fears the LORD
and obeys the voice of his servant?
Let him who walks in darkness
and has no light
trust in the name of the LORD
and rely on his God.
[11] Behold, all you who kindle a fire,
who equip yourselves with burning torches!
Walk by the light of your fire,
and by the torches that you have kindled!
This you have from my hand:
you shall lie down in torment. (ESV)And this wonderful series of verses show the relationship of the God man who set aside His deity as a human to fulfill the will of God as a faithful servant. This was prophetically declared long before God walked the earth as one of us. While we were still enemies of God, the God man died in our place so we could be reconciled to God and have eternal life and by His stripes we were healed.
Isaiah 50:4–7
[4] The Lord GOD has given me
the tongue of those who are taught,
that I may know how to sustain with a word
him who is weary.
Morning by morning he awakens;
he awakens my ear
to hear as those who are taught.
[5] The Lord GOD has opened my ear,
and I was not rebellious;
I turned not backward.
[6] I gave my back to those who strike,
and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard;
I hid not my face
from disgrace and spitting. (ESV)So as the world is being prepared for antichrist with more and more people denying our God and pursuing sin, turned over as in Romans 1 to all kinds of evil, remember that the time of our being snatched out of the world grows ever closer, and we will see our Savior and God spending eternity with Him. Maranatha!