Beauty from Ashes
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Wow. What a powerful image...
1 The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners,
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn,
3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.
4 They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.
How many of you have little brothers and sisters? Have you ever noticed that little kids love to ask, “Why?”
Tonight I want to focus on that phrase in the third verse of the passage we just read together.
—To give them a crown of beauty instead of ashes—
Let me ask you something...
Have you ever broken something that belonged to someone else?
Have you ever broken something that belonged to someone else?
How did you feel afterward? What did you do? How did they respond? If you haven’t broken something, hurt someone, or did something that wasn’t right by now, you will. But I think it’s safe to say, we’d all admit we’re not perfect, right?
Take a look at this short video clip from the movie Kicking and Screaming.
(Show Video Clip “Coffee Outrage” - Kicking and Screaming)
So Will’s sittin’ in the back of the line at the coffee shop and clearly we see that people aren’t perfect as his impatience turns into yelling and then other people start yelling and then lying and eventually a fight breaks out.
What I want you to see is that it’s not just that we aren’t perfect, it’s that this is what brokenness looks like. This is ashes of sin. This is how broken people really are. This is how the world really is.
We are surrounded by reminders that things aren’t right.
We are surrounded by reminders that things aren’t right.
Road rage, gossip, bullying, lying, cheating, stealing, bad attitudes, nasty addictions… Just scroll through any social media news feed and you’ll find all sorts of clues that our world is broken...
I wanna read a portion of again.
1 Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You can’t eat from any tree in the garden’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden.
3 But about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, ‘You must not eat it or touch it, or you will die.’ ”
4 “No! You will not die,” the serpent said to the woman.
5 “In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 The woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
Do you see what happened there?
In the beginning there was God’s voice. And then there was the serpent’s voice. The bible tells us that the Serpent is the devil and he is a liar.
Adam & Eve listened to wrong voice.
The voice that whispered...
Do what you want...
Do what makes you feel good...
Do what makes you happy...
The voice that made them question God’s character...
Did God really say?
God lied to you...
God wants to keep you from experiencing all that life has to offer...
When humanity sinned against God by listening to the lies of the serpent, we broke what God had made beautiful.
When humanity sinned against God by listening to the lies of the serpent, we broke what God had made beautiful.
Some of you still don’t buy this. Some of you still think is a joke. Some of you just can’t believe that God is real.
Let me just put a thought in your head...
Take God out of the equation and what do you have left? The same thing. The only difference is that all you’ve got are ashes and no hope.
Pretty much everyone would agree that things aren’t the way they should be.
Pain
Suffering
Diseases
Anger
Frustration
Anxiety
Sadness
Sin fractured creation so that everything is in pieces, fragmented, shattered.
Yeah, we gotta talk about sin, because the good stuff won’t make sense and you won’t take it seriously if you don’t understand the problem.
Everybody say “SIN”. It’s dark. It’s ugly. It’s broken. Nobody wants to talk about, but we gotta talk about it...
We used to say “Sin is rebellion against God” And it is, but the word rebellion has been hijacked until it no longer holds the weight of what it really means. You may have heard it used to describe doing your own thing or just being a teenager.
Perhaps a better word to describe sin would be mutiny.
Sin is mutiny against God!
Sin is mutiny against God!
In a mutiny, people who were charged with following the orders of an authority figure decide to take matters into their own hands. They cease obeying their leader because they think their plan is better. Usually they attempt to overthrow the current person in authority and replace them with someone from the rebellion.
I know it sounds crazy to tell the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the universe that we know better than Him, but we do it every day.
We’ve mutinied. We’ve replaced God as the leader of our lives and the results are disastrous.
Sin breaks our relationships
Sin breaks our relationships
One of the primary ways you may see the effects of sin in the world around you is in your relationships. Maybe you’ve heard someone say something like, “Who cares what I do if it doesn’t hurt anyone?” This kind of statement completely underestimates our ability to influence others.
Its easy to see the domino effect of sin play out in our everyday lives. Think of it this way…you promise a friend to keep a secret, but then you share that with another friend. It goes full circle until you’re confronted about it. You lie, saying you never gossiped, and then quickly have to find the friend you told so they can back up your lie.
When God confronted Adam and Eve about their original sin (), they hid from him (a futile effort with someone who is all-knowing). They no longer trusted God enough to be honest with him. When they finally responded to God, Adam immediately blamed his wife for his own sins. Then she passed the blame on to the serpent. They cared more about protecting themselves than they did about each other. Their relationship, which God had created good, was fracturing already. Your sin does the same thing.
Whether you talk behind someone’s back, lie to their face, or take credit for something they did, your sin destroys your relationship with other people and with God.
But that’s not all!
Sin leads to guilt and shame.
Sin leads to guilt and shame.
Sin doesn’t only impact our relationships with other people; it eats us up from the inside. Once we realize the weight and consequences of our sin, guilt and shame are quick to follow. That’s why Adam and Eve hid from God—they knew they were guilty. This is the first time they were aware of their nakedness, and their guilt led them to experience shame for the first time in history. They wanted nothing more than to cover up what made them feel shameful, but their efforts didn’t do any good.
Guilt and shame only serve to drive the wedge in a broken relationship deeper. For example, you get caught in a lie, so you avoid the person you lied to and the person you lied about. But avoidance doesn’t relieve guilt. It eats away at us until we become cold and calloused. God doesn’t want us to feel shameful; he made us to be free and joyful. Yet when we try to replace him as the leader of our lives, we lose many of the good things he provides for us that we can’t provide for ourselves: security, peace of mind, and true freedom. We lock ourselves in a cage of shame.
Illustration: The Weight of Guilt. Have a volunteer student join you up front. Ask them to do a series of simple tasks for you such as: 5 jumping jacks, standing on one foot while drinking out of a water bottle, tying their shoe, etc. Next give them a backpack stuffed full of books and have them repeat the same tasks (which will not be as easy). Lastly, fill their arms with bulky items (like a large box or a pile of blankets) and have them repeat the tasks. Each time the burden grew, the simple tasks became harder to do.
Guilt is like a heavy burden, weighing you down. Wherever you go, you carry it with you. It keeps you from enjoying your favorite things and makes the simplest things hard. Everything reminds you of your sin. You can’t shake the burden no matter how hard you try.
Why does sin have such a damaging influence on how we see ourselves? Because it goes against how we were made to live. We don’t need someone to always tell us we’ve done something wrong—we know in our hearts that we’ve gone against our created purpose.
Shame can make us feel like no one will ever want to be near us. Guilt caused Adam and Eve to hide from their Creator. But God didn’t turn his back on them or leave them forever. He reached out to them. True, he still held them accountable for their actions. Their sin was truly off-putting (they basically told the One who had done everything for them and loved them completely that they didn’t trust him or want anything to do with him), yet God took the first step to repair their relationship. And he does the same thing with each one of us.
Putting It All Together:
Because of sin, God’s good creation was broken: our relationship with God, our relationships with others, and our own hearts. Fortunately God doesn’t abandon us in our brokenness no matter how hard we try to hide from him. Our sins that cause us to feel so much shame are not news to him. They grieve him because he doesn’t want to see us hurt others and ourselves or live outside what he knows is best for us. But they don’t chase him away. If anything, our guilt and shame cause us to run away from him. Thankfully, God had a plan to reach out to us while we were still running from him, while we were still leading a mutiny against him.
I’m gonna read God’s plan to you.
John 3:
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.
21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
I want you to hone in on those words...
“For God so loved the world...”
“For God so loved the world...”
Let me ask you some questions...
What relationships in your life have been damaged or broken because of sin?
How has shame or guilt influenced your life and your relationships?
5 years ago a good friend of mine married another friend of mine and days after the wedding we all found out that this dude had a gambling addiction, a porn addiction, a drug addiction…the young lady he married was devastated… “What have I done?” She had married a liar. This dude now has had the opportunity to share how Jesus saved his marriage, is delivering him from his struggles and he’s spreading love all over the place!
11 years ago a sassy, smart alec, rebellious teenager slapped me in the face when I was teaching the bible and told me to f*%& off. Just last year I hired her as the worship pastor in our church.
14 year old Tommy ( I changed his name) tried to kill himself and survived. Dude’s heading to bible college and is sold out for Jesus.
4 years ago I sat in my office with a man who found out his wife had been cheating him for years and she chose to leave the marriage. He thought his life was over and he’d never be able to pick up the pieces and his two sons would never see an example of a good mother. 6 months we ago we had a tiny wedding in the office area of our church.
And I wish I could tell you that every story had a happy ending. Not every story does.
But I can tell you that God loves broken people. God so loves you. He accepts you as you are but he loves you too much to leave you that way.
ILLUSTRATION: Koda.
You’re not too far gone. Whatever burden you’re carrying tonight… It’s not too heavy for Jesus to lift from your shoulders. You’re not too far away. There’s no mountain high enough. There’s no valley low enough to keep God from stepping into the mess of your life, into the ashes of your life and bring you back to life in the most beautiful of ways.
No matter what you’ve done.
No matter how filthy you think you are.
No matter how empty and lifeless you were or feel right now.
Jesus loves you!