Make Shame Great Again
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
Shame is a God-given response for when things are not right.
It’s a like pain: no-one want to feel pain, but when your hand is on the stove, pain drives you to take it off again. Pain is a good thing to prevent further pain and suffering.
No-one want to feel shame, but when you are in a bad situation, shame drives you to fix the issue, to look for a solution. Shame is a good thing to prevent further shame and suffering.
Shame is a feeling of guilt and embarrassment for failures. Sometimes you will feel shame 2nd hand, based on what someone else has done, like when an Aussie tries to break-dance at the Olympics. However we also do, or at least should, feel great shame when we have failed in our own action or inaction.
Sometimes we feel shame in a neutral way, such as when we’re beaten in a race, especially if we know we could have dome better. It’s not sinful shame necessarily but it is embarrassment.
Sometimes shame is sinful; if we are ashamed of the name of Jesus and the Gospel of Life, then that is a bad thing. We should feel ashamed for being ashamed!
Of relevance to us today, is the good aspect of shame; we should feel shame in our sin and rebellion against God. It is good to feel shame, because it helps us recognize that we have sinned, and helps us feel the weight of our sin. It should drive us to repent!
If we have sinned, and we are ashamed, then we want to take our hand off the hot-plate of sin and save us from further danger.
But here’s the problem: What do you do if you feel shame, but you stubbornly refuse to bow the knee to King Jesus?
If you have rejected God and his wonderful commands, what do you do with this shame you feel so deeply?
You try and push it away. You try to ignore it. You try to blame other people for the way you feel. You harden your heart against God's commands, even though you know what you’re doing is wrong. And eventually, you convince yourself, deceive yourself, into thinking you’re actually doing a good thing.
This seems to be part of the problem for ancient Israel. They had suppressed their shame.
They had turned away and done their own thing. They had done awful things, and they weren’t ashamed. They weren’t sorry. They weren’t embarrassed. In fact, as we saw last week they were prideful, thinking more highly of themselves than they should.
They were haughty, and openly evil. (Sounds like I’m describing western nations today!)
But the thing that makes this all the worse is that they were God’s people. They had God’s Law, they had received a land of blessing from Him. They had God’s temple in their midst where they should go and worship. Yet they still did what ought not be done.
So, because of their actions, their unashamed evil, God will bring his good and fair consequences. He promises to crush Judah. But God holds out hope, that despite the judgement, He will not abandon them, but lead them to a wonderful future hope.
Remember
Isaiah, around 700 BC. Before the falls of Israel & Judah.
Israel & Judah are the two countries that formed out of the split nation of Israel.
Isaiah proclaiming mostly to Judah that God’s judgement is coming, but he will not forget his covenant promises.
Genre is prophecy.
We’ll walk through the passage, touching almost on every verse. I have divided the passage into 4 sections.
Signs of Judgement (men)
Signs of Judgement (men)
3:1-7
This first section deals with signs of God’s coming judgement. The question could be asked, “how do we know when God’s judgement has come to Judah?”
This section tells us a bunch of things you will be able to see happening, and interestingly enough, most of them relate to men. We’ll get to a section on the women a little later.
So first: What God will do to this rebellious people?
For behold, the Lord God of hosts is taking away from Jerusalem and from Judah support and supply, all support of bread, and all support of water;
We open with an official title of God - Lord YHWH of Hosts. Adoni YHWY of Sabaoth. If you know the song “A Mighty Fortress” we sing “Lord Sabbaoth his name, form age to age the same”. This is what that refers to. The LORD over all the host of heaven.
He is going to cut off the supplies to Judah. God will end support for Judah. This will cripple their nation as a punishment from God.
This cutting off will include cutting off food and water supplies, so potentially a famine is coming for Judah. But interestingly when God removes his support, it’s not just the food and drink which is taken away - God will remove great leading men and invert their social order:
the mighty man and the soldier, the judge and the prophet, the diviner and the elder, the captain of fifty and the man of rank, the counselor and the skillful magician and the expert in charms. And I will make boys their princes, and infants shall rule over them.
All the leading men of the nation will be removed (some of them shouldn’t be there anyway like magicians), but in their place will be irresponsible, unwise kids and babies.
This is God’s judgement, to take away the strong men, and the wise men, and the trusted voices of their community and give them people who can;t even tie their shoelaces. They will get the leaders they deserve. And who knows what destruction bad and broken leadership will wreak in their nation? This alone is a judgment of God.
But there will be more effects of God’s judgment:
And the people will oppress one another, every one his fellow and every one his neighbor; the youth will be insolent to the elder, and the despised to the honorable.
Things will be upside down and back-to-front. Instead of loving their neighbor, they will oppress them. Instead of honoring honorable people there will be despising. Instead of respecting one’s elders, there will be insolence.
The very fabric of society that you and I enjoy today, with relative calm and order, is a blessing of God. When God withdraws his support, society collapses.
Things will get so bad, that they will think a guy with a cloak is their best candidate for leader:
For a man will take hold of his brother in the house of his father, saying: “You have a cloak; you shall be our leader, and this heap of ruins shall be under your rule”; in that day he will speak out, saying: “I will not be a healer; in my house there is neither bread nor cloak; you shall not make me leader of the people.”
The Lord is bringing about such a destruction of their society, that they’ll see a bloke with some decent clothes and say: “He’s the best candidate for leadership!” but in response he will reply “I can’t help you mate, I got nothing to give”
Imagine that, trying to appoint someone to leadership on appearance alone, not on whether or not they’re actually qualified to do the job!
Hang on a sec - we see all of this stuff in our own day!
We have fewer and fewer strong and respectable men to lead our families and communities
We have fewer and fewer strong and respectable men defending our nation
We are effectively ruled over by boys and children, and in some families they are literally ruled by children because the parents let the children drive the family, they set the tone and direction of the household.
There is insolence toward the elderly, their advice is dismissed as old fashioned or our of touch. God's appointed shepherds are ignored or dishonored.
We try to appoint leaders on the basis of how they look or how they sound, not on their character and experience.
You may not have realized this, but we are under the judgement of God. We see the signs of God’s judgment all around us.
This is what happens when we turn away from God and his good order. When we turn away from righteousness! In Romans we’re told:
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips,
It is a sign of God's judgment to be given over to sin and evil. We see the proliferation of evil as a sign that God has removed his support and supply, and like a rose cut from the bush we will look good for a while, we will survive OK for a time, but unless we return to the source of Life, The LORD Jesus, we will eventually wilt and fade. Our society will collapse, our men will become nothing more that children with beards, authority will be despised,
But why? Why was God bringing judgement on Judah? What had they done that deserved such consequences?
Reasons for Judgement
Reasons for Judgement
3:8-15
Why has this judgement come? Why is God going to do this to Judah? Look at verse 8:
For Jerusalem has stumbled, and Judah has fallen, because their speech and their deeds are against the Lord, defying his glorious presence.
They were against the Lord in word and deed.
It’s bad enough to be a hypocrite - say one thing and do another, but they had rebelled in both in what they say and do.
Defying God’ presence. He was in their midst at the temple, and they only did sacrifices out of religiosity, then they would worship idols
It was so bad you could read it on their faces, God says:
For the look on their faces bears witness against them; they proclaim their sin like Sodom; they do not hide it. Woe to them! For they have brought evil on themselves.
Not only can you see their sin “on their faces” they will tell you about it. They will proclaim it. They are unashamed of their sin, like Sodom was unashamed.
Remember when a gang of men gathered to rape the Angels in Sodom? They didn’t care who saw them, or who knew. They just wanted to feed their lusts. The city had a reputation for evil and wickedness. And it was because of that evil, that God wiped them from the map, with literal fire from heaven.
Now God is alleging that Judah is basically just as bad. They won’t hide it.
And because of their evil, open, brazen unashamed evil, God will bring his wrath against them.
But like Sodom, God will save his righteous people in the midst of such evi. Despite the wrath coming for Judah, the Lord holds out comfort to those few who have done the right thing. How haven’t fallen in with the evil of the nation:
Tell the righteous that it shall be well with them, for they shall eat the fruit of their deeds.
It will be right with them. In this life potentially, but certainly in the next.
Righteous Jews need not worry.
You need not worry yourself with the judgment coming for this nation, or indeed for the whole world. You shall reap what you sow. If you sow righteousness, you will reap goodness and blessing.
Same goes for the wicked. They sow evil, and they shall suffer:
Woe to the wicked! It shall be ill with him, for what his hands have dealt out shall be done to him.
Even if they do not get their just deserts in this life, eventually before the judgement seat of God all accounts will be settled. All the righteous will be rewarded, and all wickedness punished.
But now, back to ho how bad things were:
My people—infants are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, your guides mislead you and they have swallowed up the course of your paths.
Their leadership was spinless and leading them astray.
Offends your modern ears, but you must see
a) God is speaking into a context where women leading would have been profoundly strange.
b) God has ordered the world in a certain way. We can see from both nature, and from God’s word, that God designed us in different genders with different strengths and weaknesses. In a healthy society, the men lead. Israel was in such a state that it was as though children and women were their leaders.
Sadly, we’re in such a state that it’s not a metaphor, it’s the truth!
How many Australian families are driven by the whims of children rather than the parents leading in a deliberate and godly way?
How many marriages have a wife usurping her husband? Just like the curse foretold? And how many husbands have shirked their duty like Adam and sit back passively?
How many churches have women in the pulpit this morning in direct violation of the clear teaching of scripture?
This has nothing to do with the value and worth of each and every man, woman & child under God, and everything to do with Godly order and obeying God’s word. It is a mess out there, and I can guarantee some if it has seeped into our church.
Bad guides… false teachers.
The Lord has taken his place to contend; he stands to judge peoples. The Lord will enter into judgment with the elders and princes of his people: “It is you who have devoured the vineyard, the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
The Lord will enter into judgment with the elders and princes of his people: “It is you who have devoured the vineyard, the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor?” declares the Lord God of hosts.
We should be filled with shame!
Right now our culture is doing it’s best to convince us that we shouldn’t feel ashamed to do evil.
Not disciplining your children, because it’s difficult? You should be ashamed.
Left your spouse to pursue a relationship with another person? You should be ashamed! But the world will say you need to do what’s right for you, and protect your own happiness.
- you should be ashamed!
Trying to usurp or rebel against authority? you should be ashamed!
Turned your back on Jesus & his Bride? you should be ashamed! It’s not like choosing a car brand or
Signs of Judgement (women)
Signs of Judgement (women)
3:16–4:1
Unashamed women
The Lord said: Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with outstretched necks, glancing wantonly with their eyes, mincing along as they go, tinkling with their feet, therefore the Lord will strike with a scab the heads of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will lay bare their secret parts.
Instead of perfume there will be rottenness; and instead of a belt, a rope; and instead of well-set hair, baldness; and instead of a rich robe, a skirt of sackcloth; and branding instead of beauty.
Your men shall fall by the sword and your mighty men in battle. And her gates shall lament and mourn; empty, she shall sit on the ground.
Trying to escape the shame:
And seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying, “We will eat our own bread and wear our own clothes, only let us be called by your name; take away our reproach.”
Future Glory
Future Glory
4:2-6
In that day the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land shall be the pride and honor of the survivors of Israel.
And he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy, everyone who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem, when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the bloodstains of Jerusalem from its midst by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning.
Then the Lord will create over the whole site of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud by day, and smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night; for over all the glory there will be a canopy. There will be a booth for shade by day from the heat, and for a refuge and a shelter from the storm and rain.
So What?
So What?
SIgns of Judgement men
Reasons for Judgement
Signs of judgement women
future glory