Isaiah

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Shame Before Jesus, CCEF Session One


I. We have all been humiliated by the shame of either our sins or the sins of others.

Shame requires us to seek out covering, inclusion, cleansing. These are things we can only receive from Christ. We are drawn to the Holy One, we reach out, touch Him, and He touches us back.

Shame matures. The longer we allow shame to exist in our lives, the more it grows. We are forgiven, we know in our heads that we are, but over the years, shame of our sin (or sin committed against us) actually grows.

There are some sins we all “get.” We talk about them and everyone nods their heads in understanding. But some sins are not understood by the majority. We are shocked by them, and those people are shamed, even after being forgiven. They are identified by their sin, isolated, rejected, often for years after the events have ended.

Example: Naomi. She is shamed in every way possible in her society. Widowed, childless, landless, poor, sojourner. But by the end of the story, “Jesus is lying in her lap.” She is in the line of Christ, elevated to honor by the Holy One.

Those dealing with shame are the ones God is looking for. He seeks them out. The healing of shame requires inclusion, and Christ includes us, brings us in.

The Characteristics of Shame:
1. You are Different. Isolated.
2. You are a Failure. You don’t measure up, either to your own standards or to the standards of others.
3. You are a Fraud. Especially in the successful. “If I am found out…”
4. You are Rejected. People avoid “those people” as if we still function under the law of clean and unclean.
5. You are Violated. Someone has committed a shameful act against you and you take on that shame, internalizing it.

This is the American experience/identity. We are individuals, alone, setting out to prove ourselves, rejected when we don’t measure up to the standards of the society around us.

II. How does God reach into shame?
1. The Exposed are Covered.
God covers them with animal skins. Yes, a sacrifice. Perhaps, “If you want to behave like animals, dress like them.” Consequence of sin is shame needing to be covered, and sometimes the covering we end up with is just as shameful as the initial event.

BUT…
Exodus 28: The priests are exquisitely closed n garments of dignity and honor. They wore a turban with the phrase “Holy to the Lord” inscribed on the front.

The priests represent the people, and the people know that. THEY are clothed in dignity and honor. THEY are holy to the Lord. They are slaves, freed from bondage, clothed with dignity.

2. The Outcast is Accepted.
Adam and Eve are cast out of the Garden, but the are pursued by God. This pattern permeates all of Scripture.
God pursues the shamed.

God pursues exiled people.
Hosea 10: To a disgraced, exiled people, God says, “Call me ‘MY God’.”

Hosea 2:16 “My husband.” An exclusive, accepted, chosen relationship. PERSONAL pronoun.
Anyone can call your spouse by his or her name, but you are the only one who can call them “my husband” or “my wife.” There is a special love and intimacy related to personal possessive terms.

Isaiah 55: To share a meal is an intimate experience. To a shamed people, God says, “Come.

3. The Contaminated are Cleansed.

Isaiah 6: An unclean man, shamed by his sin, falls before the Lord. “And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

Through a seraph, an intermediator, something holy, something of God, touches Isaiah and he is made clean. The shamed man goes from “Woe is me,” to “Here am I! Send me!”

III. Guilty and Shamed by Association
In the Garden, to be associated with the serpent is to the separated from God.

Isaiah 54: What does God say to His people about shame and association? He claims the culturally shamed, a barren, single woman. God says, “Do not fear, you will not be shamed, for your Maker will be your husband.”
We are associated with God, you take on His reputation. Shame has no longer has a place in us.

IV. Conclusion

1. Guilt and Shame are paralyzers. We cannot grow and mature in Christ with guilt and shame in our lives.
2. Feel dirty, shamed, rejected? Every page of Scripture is about you. God pursues you. You belong. POSSESS HIM: “My God.”
3. For the shamed to be allowed to take on the name of an honored person is shocking. God turns to us, gives us His favor, places His name on us, calls us His own.

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All Alone?


It’s not often that I go looking for inspiration in 90’s Christian rap music. Ok, I don’t think it’s ever actually happened. But when you put the iPod on shuffle, you just never know what’s going fill your ears. This is what I got this morning from GRITS:

A servant of God must stand so…so very much alone that he never realizes he is alone. In the early stages of Christian life disappointments will come, people who used to be lights will flicker out, and those who used to stand with us will turn away. We have to get so used to it that we will not even realize we are standing alone. Paul said, “No one stood with me, but all forsook me…but the Lord stood with me and strengthened me.” We must build our faith, not on fading lights, but on the light that never fails. When important individuals go away we are sad until we see that they are meant to go. ‘Til there’s only one thing left for us to do: to look at the face of God for ourselves.

It’s from their 1999 album Grammatical Revolution. And it got me thinking. What do we do when we get to those points in life in which it feels like we have been completely abandoned?

Sounds like the Apostle Paul knew what that was like. Not too many people are willing to stick around when their ministry’s leader is in jail.

Paul understood abandonment.

Jesus knew what abandonment was like. He was abandoned on the cross, bearing the burden of our sin. Not too many people are willing to stick around when their leader is being executed.

Jesus understood abandonment.

There are times when we are abandoned by all the people we know. Whether by choice or by circumstance, we find that those we tend to lean on in hard times are unavailable. When we physically lean and the thing we expect to be there is not, gravity tends to drag us to the ground. The same thing can happen if we rely on people, things, habits, places to catch our fall in hard times.

That’s what I love about the reminder in that last line of “Count Bass D (A Reading From)”: …we are sad until we see that they are meant to go. ‘Til there’s only one thing left for us to do: to look at the face of God for ourselves.

Often when we look for support, encouragement, backup in the battle, we look to our right and to our left only. We want our fellow soldiers by our side, and when we find them missing, we are confused, hurt.

But in those times, we must remember the promise given in Isaiah 52:12: For you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight, for the LORD will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.

We are never alone. It may seem that we are fighting the battle alone because we feel we have little or no human support. But we have a God outside of time that goes before us, straightening and smoothing our path while still standing behind us, guarding our back in the heat of battle.

David Crowder Band sings “Only You”, a song written from the perspective of realizing and appreciating the experience of learning that He is all we need in the heat of battle:

Take my heart, I lay it down
At the feet of You who’s crowned
And take my life, I’m letting go
I lift it up, to You who’s throned

Chorus
And I will worship you, Lord
Only You, Lord
And I will bow down before You
Only You, Lord

Take my fret, take my fear
All I have I’m leaving here
Be all my hopes, be all my dreams
Be all my delights, be my everything

And it’s just You and me here now
Only You and me here now

You should see the view
When it’s only You

Have you ever seen the view, when it’s just you and the Lord? Or do you crowd your view with people, places, things? God has recently stripped some false supports from my life and shown me that, while painful, the result is beautiful– the opportunity to see Him and only Him.

Try it sometime; the view is spectacular.