Humility or Humiliation

Isaiah 4:2-4 (ESV)

[2] 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. [3] And he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy, everyone who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem, [4] 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.

Humiliation precedes glory. In chapter 3 everything is backwards. Leaders are brought down. Children lead. The ease and beauty of women is gone. God’s people are judged and humiliated. In chapter 4 their glory is restored, but it is not their glory. It is the glory of the God they serve. The description recalls the days in the wilderness when the pillar of fire guarded them by night and the pillar of cloud led them by day. The glory of their God was their protection.

Romans 1:25 says that people “exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” This is the very thing Israel had done. They became enamored with their own glory. They became enraptured with their own ease of life. They became self-focused and lost sight of God. God will not share his glory. This worries me because so much of what we call church has become about us. So much of our country and culture has decided that truth, righteousness, and goodness is decided by us and our own passions. We have become our own standard. Measured against ourselves we measure up pretty good. When we get to that place, humiliation must precede glory.

We have a choice; we can choose humility or humiliation. When we fail to choose humility, we choose humiliation by default. God said, “I am the LORD; that is my name; my glory I give to no other” (Is 42:8). We can enjoy his glory. We can rest in his glory. We can walk in his glory. But, we cannot take his glory on ourselves. “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (Jas 4:6). “Toward the scorners he is scornful, but to the humble he gives favor” (Prov 3:34). Isaiah 3 is a terrible description of how God opposes the proud and scorns the scorners. Isaiah 4 is a beautiful promise of how God restores his people. He may take us through humiliation because of our pride, but he never abandons his peoples. We have a choice we can choose humility or humiliation. Let us choose humility.