Readings for today: Isaiah 23-27, Psalms 114
One of the great privileges of my life is to spend about a month in Africa each year. I’ve been almost twenty times at this point and I’ve learned an incredible amount from the cross-cultural interactions I have with my brothers and sisters across the globe. They have helped me understand the Bible better. They have helped me understand God better. They have taught me much when it comes to faith. Perhaps the biggest lesson has to do with the dynamic of honor and shame that shows up throughout the Scriptures. The world tends to equate humility with shame and pride with honor but the Bible inverts this matrix. According to Scripture, pride ultimately produces shame and humility is the path to genuine honor. This dynamic holds true not just for individuals but for tribes, cities, and even nations.
What was the great sin of Tyre and Sidon? Two of the great commercial trading centers in the ancient near east? Pride. Tyre saw itself as “the bestower of crowns, whose traders are princes, whose merchants are the honored ones of the earth?” (Isaiah 23:8 CSB) Sidon enjoyed tremendous wealth and privilege. “And on many waters your revenue was the grain of Shihor, the harvest of the Nile; you were the merchant of the nations.”(Isaiah 23:3 CSB) In their pursuit of worldly honor and riches and power, they forgot the Lord. They dishonored God. And they paid the price. “Wail, O ships of Tarshish, for your haven has been destroyed… Be ashamed, O Sidon, for the sea has spoken...” (Isaiah 23:1, 4 CSB)
But it’s not just Tyre and Sidon who make this mistake. The whole earth has forgotten God. The whole earth pursues wealth and power and honor and glory apart from God. The whole earth seeks to exalt itself rather than humble themselves before their creator. Therefore, the Lord will bring His righteous judgment. No one shall escape. “Look, the Lord is stripping the earth bare and making it desolate. He will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants: people and priest alike, servant and master, female servant and mistress, buyer and seller, lender and borrower, creditor and debtor. The earth will be stripped completely bare and will be totally plundered, for the Lord has spoken this message.” (Isaiah 24:1-3 CSB) And why does the Lord speak such a harsh word? Why does the Lord render such a harsh judgment? Because the Lord is jealous for the glory of His Name. He is jealous for His own honor. He will not rest until the whole earth sings His praises. “They raise their voices, they sing out; they proclaim in the west the majesty of the Lord. Therefore, in the east honor the Lord! In the coasts and islands of the west honor the name of the Lord, the God of Israel. From the ends of the earth we hear songs: The Splendor of the Righteous One.” (Isaiah 24:14-16a CSB)
Human beings were made for one glorious purpose...to bring honor to their Creator. To enjoy God and to worship Him alone forever. To praise God for all eternity. This is the great work we were designed for. This is the great work we were made for. And it is to our abiding shame that we neglect this great task and forget our God. It is to our great shame that we “exchange the truth of God for a lie and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” (Romans 1:25 CSB) We pursue worldly honor and worldly wealth and worldly power to our own destruction. Because we have turned away from God and gone our own way, He has “given us up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. We become filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. We are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” (Romans 1:28-31 CSB) And God simply will not allow such evil to stand. So He brings judgment. He lays low the proud. He shames the arrogant. He dishonors the honored among all the earth. “The Lord of Armies planned it, to desecrate all its glorious beauty, to disgrace all the honored ones of the earth.” (Isaiah 23:9 CSB)
This is why we must consider carefully the priorities of our lives. Why do we do the things we do? What drives us? What gives us purpose and fulfillment? Are we truly seeking to honor God in all we say and do? Or are we trying to steal a bit of that honor for ourselves? Are we truly seeking to glorify God in our homes, neighborhoods, schools, and places of work? Or these just means we are using to justify our own ends?
Readings for tomorrow: Isaiah 28-30, Psalms 115