“Behold, I am against you,”
declares the Lord of hosts; “And I will lift up your skirts over
your face, and show to the nations your nakedness and to the kingdoms
your disgrace.” Nahum 3:5
No one likes to be humiliated. I
personally have faced public humiliation a few times, and it is
HORRIBLE. A couple of times I probably earned it, but many times, I
was innocent, or at the least, clueless. There is nothing like having
all of your faults put on parade to a watching public. It is
mortifying. You want to crawl under a rock and never come out. You
fear showing your face for years to come. Going home to my five year
class reunion was a step of faith way back in the day, and when
people actually APOLOGIZED for how they treated me, I was
stunned...and relieved. It wasn't ALL me. As I have aged and learned
and looked back, I am embarassed at my actions and attitudes that at
the time seemed perfectly justifiable to me. But others did not see
me that way. I was not being honest with myself, and their being
honest with me was not kind. But truth is revealed eventually. And
with God, all truth of motive, action, pride, humility...all will be
shown for the truth of what it is...there will be no faking it, no
justifying it. All will be uncovered. We usually do not admire those
who uncover people's weaknesses and humiliate them. So where does God
get off talking like this? So who are we talking about here? Who does
God want to humiliate? Why would a loving God say such a thing, the
watching world would ask?
Well, this passage is about
Nineveh...described in verse one here as “bloody, completely full
of lies and pillage, swords, spears, corpses, sorceries and harlots.”
These were not nice people, folks. This is the city that Jonah ran
from God over. I have heard stories of skulls stacked feet high
around the city as a warning to others to keep away, as trophies of
their military prowess. They were not nice to enemies, and were
morally corrupt toward one another. It and Babylon are both symbols
of total evil and depravity in scripture. They thought they were
something, but God was going to humble them, showing that under that
skirt of war and victory, they were naked, vulnerable, and
disgraceful losers. They would not be able to intimidate the Lord God
of the Universe into thinking they were undefeatable. They were
filthy animals of human beings. Along with harlotries came
diseases...and those would also be shown by their nakedness. They
could never cover their sin forever...they would be shown for what
they really were, just men.
So there we have it. It says in Hebrews
that all things will be laid bare before the one to whom we must give
account...we have touched on this before. We can dress up and play
Christian, good girl, and honorable person, but God knows if we are
or not. And some day the whole world will know. We will be shown for
what we are. Are we a child of God, or are we faking it? Are our
skirts beautiful, or full of the blood of the innocents? In either
case, what are the skirts covering? Is there disease, uncleanness, and
filth? The filth of our bodies comes out of us in these places, and
some of us are not very good at using the tp to clean it up. We are
full of filth...it is a part of who we are, and eventually it has to
come out of us or it will kill us from the inside. If we are not
nurturing life, other filth comes out, and the skirts also covered
that. There is little that is pleasant under the skirt. The Lord
cleans us up like a baby needs to be cleansed of its filth. But the
enemies of God continue in their evil ways, the filth accumulating
day after day. Every once in a while, we can clean ourselves up, but
the filth still continues to come out day after day, year after year,
event after ugly event.
Are we threatening people with our
masquerade? Do they fear the person behind the mask of horror like
the phantom of the opera? Is the person behind that mask really a
threat, or merely acting out, thrashing against the God who made
them? Do we fear the God who would cleanse us instead of fearing the
flesh-eating filth that we choose to live in day after day?
So to make this a little more
uplifting, let's look at the other end of this thing. The skirts may
be lifted to humiliate the enemies of God, but the children of God
will be dressed by Him, handed their clothing of white. It will
reflect the pure, clean nature of the one distributing them. They
will be exalted, lifted up to reign with Him over heaven and earth.
Every knee will bow and every tongue confess Jesus as Lord, even the
enemies, but after that, we will be separated from them. That
confession will be made in one of 2 ways...one set of people will bow
in worship and adoration and joy, and the others will be forced to
see God for who He is, realize they rejected the one that would have
lovingly taken them in and cleaned them up, and state to their own
condemnation that Jesus is the Lord that they willingly refused over
all the years of their lives. It is after that day that we will never
experience humiliation again. There will be no more sin, no more
filth, and no more exposure of our weaknesses, for we will not have
any. It will be heaven. Literally.
So are you fighting the God who wants
to clean you up like a baby thrashing on a changing table, or are you
grateful for the God who will clean you, clothe you, and present you
to the world as His? Your choice! But the cleansing comes through the
fountain of the blood of Christ. He paid for the bath, the clothes,
and the ceremony of adoption, and the wedding feast...who would turn
that down for a skirt-raising with the Ninevites? Not me!
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