Think on these questions as you dwell in Isaiah 3:1-4:1:

1. The imagery of loss and deprivation in this passage illustrates a dramatic reversal of fortune for the people. How does this portrayal of material loss serve as a cautionary tale about human pride and self-sufficiency in today's world? How might this lesson resonate with contemporary attitudes toward possessions and status?

2. The deterioration of physical appearance, such as baldness and the shift from fine garments to sackcloths, symbolizes a deeper spiritual downfall. How does this visual imagery highlight the consequences of relying on worldly wealth or appearances as a measure of righteousness or security? What lessons can we draw from this in terms of our priorities and perspectives?

3. The passage suggests a desperate dependency on others when all worldly riches and status are stripped away. How does this reflect the vulnerability of relying solely on external means for security and identity? In what ways can understanding our dependence on God's righteousness rather than our own possessions or achievements reshape our sense of worth and reliance?

Transcript:

I told you that this was an interesting passage, and I didn't lie, right? This is an interesting passage in many ways, a fun memory for me. There was an official alternative band in the mid-nineties, late '90s maybe, called Johnny Q-Public that had a silly, funny song on their first album called a Bald Women. No, it was Women of Zion. As I was reading this, that song was going through my head. I do not advise you looking it up. It's just basically this passage. There's nothing wrong with it necessarily. It's just a strange tune. But anyway, the idea that is coming through in this passage is a continuation of what we saw in Isaiah here, verse in chapters one and two, right? That there is something going on where God is bringing judgment. The people have rejected Him, so He is bringing judgment to them. And notice in verse one, I highlighted here, if you're watching on video, the Lord God of hosts is taking away from Jerusalem and from Jude. I highlighted the Lord God of hosts is taking away. Whoever comes and does this, whether it is foreign nations or other groups of people who come and take this stuff or do these things to them.

It isn't the earthly people that are necessarily taking them. We see here it is the Lord God who is doing this. He is coming to judge his people. We're seeing how this is all happening. In verse 2, we see the mighty man and the soldier, the judge and the prophet, the diviner and the elder, all of these things are being affected. All these people are being affected by this judgment coming from God. There is no one who is immune from this. They think this is coming because they have rejected God. They have rebelled against Him. So we see in verse 8, That Jerusalem has stumbled, Judah has fallen, because their speech and their deeds are against the Lord, defying His glorious presence. We've seen that in first two chapters, that they are rejecting God, that they're going against Him. We see here God continuing to make His case. Verse 9, For the look on their faces bears witness against them. They proclaim their sin like Sodom. They do not hide it. That is fundamentally the issue. They are relishing in their sin. They proclaim their sin like Sodom. They don't care that it's sin. God is noticing that they are not acknowledging that they are in rebellion against him.

They're not asking for forgiveness. So, what has He said? Woe to them for they have brought evil on themselves. This is something that they are doing to themselves. But notice in verse 10, tell the righteous that it shall be well with them, for they shall eat the fruit of their deeds. For those who remain righteous, they are... Well, it says here they're good to go. Now, judgment is coming on Judah and Jerusalem. They may be affected by all of this, but ultimately, things go well with the righteous why, because they are forgiven. They are brought into God's sense of peace and God's sense of hope, and they have salvation, right? That is the important piece that we see here. And so, this is all happening to all the people. We notice those different types of people. Now we're seeing that it's going to be happening with people at every level. We see in verse 12, Infants are the oppressors, women rule over them. All my people, your guides, mislead you and they've swabbed you up at the course of your paths. You get the idea that everybody is affected and that roles are being reversed.

All these things are happening. We get down to the end of the passage in this way. Is where the women of Zion, the part that puts the song about bald women in my head comes to us here. We see in verse 24, instead of perfume, there will be rottenness. Instead of a belt, a rope. And instead of well-set hair, baldness. This is interesting imagery for us, but the idea is that there were these women who would walk around and they would relish in their possessions and relish in their status. You notice this with everything it says that is being taken away from them, right? I'm going back up to verse 18, God is going to take away their anklets, their headbands, their crescents, their pendants, their bracelets, their scarves. You get the idea. Everything that they have is being taken away. And then we get down here, even their hair is being taken away. That they're being made bald because of their rebellion against God. This is affecting everyone. And the idea here is that in their pride, just like the pride of the sin that was being talked about earlier in this chapter, now we are seeing that this pride of possessions and all these things is being taken away.

And this is a vivid word picture for us, where we're really at when we are without God, right? We think that we do these things on our own, that we have all our possessions on our own, but ultimately they're gets from God, and if they say we're going to be taken away, we wouldn't smell good, right? In our sin, we have rottenness. Instead of hair, we have baldness. Instead of Rich Roe, we're in Sackcloth. Now, remember, Sackcloth is about mourning. They are not in a good position here. They do not have all these things that they had before. It gets down to the point here, as we see in verse 1, chapter four, Seven women shall take hold of one man in that day saying, 'We will eat our own bread and wear our own clothes, although let us be called by your name, take away our reproach. In other words, all these women are now so poor that they need a man. They need him. They had been haughty and they had been rich, they had done all this, but now they are brought low. They are needing someone else to take away their bad state of affairs.

So, as we think about this, this is an interesting passage. And as you've noticed, I've stumbled over my words a little bit because it's hard to even know what to say about this passage as we go through it because there is just so much going on here. But you can't really separate the passage into parts. There's one theme here. The important thing that we need to remember is, when we think that we are doing well, when we think that we can save ourselves or that we are doing well on our own, it's very easy for all of that stuff, that false sense of righteousness to be taken away from us. It's very easy for us to think that our hair is quite good, and then for us to find out that we are bald. The best thing for us to do is to seek the Lord, for us to remember that everything comes from Him, that He is the source of all things that are dead. Anything that we have comes from Him. Most importantly, the most important thing that we have is Christ's righteousness. We do not save ourselves. We try to earn our salvation on our own.

We would not have good hair. We would be bald. We would see that we were bald. We would not have a rich robe of our own righteousness. Now, if we see that our attempts at being righteous on our own is a skirt of sackcloth. The only hope that we have, and we're going to see this later on in Isaiah, is to be covered in the righteousness of the Father. That is our hope. We have the rich robe, and we have the righteousness of Jesus Christ. May we rest in that as not on ourselves.