Sending Out an S.O.S.

I'll send an S.O.S. to the world. I hope that someone gets my . . . I hope that someone gets my . . . I hope that someone gets my message in a bottle.

Last week, actually, when a fisherman in Scotland emptied his nets, he discovered a message in a bottle that had been adrift at sea for almost ninety-eight years.

It was a message from a scientist who was trying to study the ocean currents. But there are actually a lot of different kinds of messages that end up in bottles in the ocean. They contain all kinds of messages.

There is a commercial running on TV right now. I don't know if you have seen it. It's a survivor on an island, and he sends out an S.O.S. for someone to send him more pain medication so he can enjoy his getaway on the island without back pain.

Messages in bottles are most often associated with shipwrecks. Survivors send out an S.O.S. in hopes that someone will get their call for distress and answer the call and send them the help that they need.

In the late 1700s, for example, there were forty-four people who were shipwrecked off a small island in the South Pacific. And they sent out an S.O.S. message in a bottle, but sadly the message wasn't found until 150 years later. Which is too late for them.

But a group of eighty-eight migrants were more fortunate. They were rescued off the coast of Costa Rica just a couple decades ago when they sent out a message in the bottle.

Well, S.O.S., as you probably know, stands for, what does it stand for? Save our souls. And it's not always the sender of a message who needs the soul saved. Sometimes it's the recipient of the message that needs the soul saved.

In the sixteenth century, British and other world navies used to use bottled messages to send messages of warnings to shore about enemy positions, the number of enemies that were in the area, the number of ships that were in the area. The message warned the people about an impending attack or invasion.

Queen Elizabeth I even created a new position, a job position called "Uncorker of Sea Bottles." No one else was permitted to open a bottle that washed up onto shore. Can you imagine that job position? I wonder how busy you would be, really, and hopefully that would be the only kind of bottle you would be uncorking. But no one else could open that kind of bottle because it was absolutely critical to the health of the people for that message to get through.

This morning we are going to have a look at an S.O.S. message from Scripture, an important message that was originally written on a rolled up piece of papyrus, and a message so important that it traveled across the ocean of time to reach us today. And it's found in the book of Isaiah.

If you have your Bible, please open them up. The author of the S.O.S. is Isaiah, and he was an eighth century B.C. Israelite prophet from Judah.

The message has multiple layers in it—in this message.

In this message, Isaiah rang the alarm bell about a looming disaster that was facing his nation. The nation was facing an impending attack and assault by the powerful Babylonian empire. But there's another layer. Isaiah also wrote about the coming of Christ, such rich, rich passages in Isaiah about the coming of Messiah, the One who would come to deliver. He also wrote about God's final judgment, and he wrote about the new creation.

So there's all these layers in Isaiah, and inspired by the Holy Spirit, it's as though Isaiah looked through the lens of his political situation down through time to send us all a message and to speak to every generation to come. And it's a message that's relevant to our generation. I think as you will soon see it's a message that's very, very relevant to women today.

So we are going to have a look. We are going to do a quick scoot around the first five chapters of Isaiah, and then we are going to do a slower walk-by of chapter 3, where there's a section that talks directly to the daughters of Zion.

Now, that's a huge amount of territory that we are going to cover today, and we are going to move fairly quickly. But I'm talking to a room full of women who have the capacity to put on makeup, pack a lunch, let the dog out, wipe a runny nose, sign a permission slip, throw in a load of laundry, and find a missing shoe all while talking on the phone at 7:00 in the morning. Amen? So we can do this. Are you ready? Have you got Isaiah open? All right; let's go.

Isaiah's message in a bottle sounds four alarms—it sounds an alarm about the crisis, the condition, the consequences, and the call.

First of all, the crisis. Now, I'm going to talk about another crisis first.

The night the Titanic sunk there were lots of warnings sent to the captain of the ship about that they were speeding into an ice field. But the messages were ignored.

One nearby ship sent an urgent warning while the Titanic was communicating with their arrival port, Cape Race, about the time chauffeurs were to meet the celebrity passengers at the dock and what kind of food they were to serve, to make sure all the arrangements were done and everything was going to be fancy and fine.

And so, preoccupied with sustaining the richness and the opulence of the Titanic experience, the Titanic responded to this warning message with this message back. “Shut up. I'm talking to Cape Race; you're jamming my signals.”

They were warned, but they didn't believe the warning. The party was in full swing; things were going well; things were going really well on the Titanic ship. How could anything bad happen?

It was like that type of situation when Isaiah sounded the alarm for the nation of Judah.

Accordng to Isaiah 2:6–8, the country was economically well off, militarily they had an amazing army, a great army, educationally, politically prosperous. The country was doing well. The people were full of things from the East. They were rich. They were enjoying the good life. But Isaiah tells them that there's an S.O.S. crisis looming. There's a crisis looming. They are facing a precarious situation; things are not as healthy as they seem.

So flip over to chapter 1 of Isaiah. We are going to have a look at the situation. The situation and the crisis was that God's people were spiritually unhealthy. God's people are spiritually unhealthy.

Isaiah says, “Guess what? You think things are going well, but you are spiritually unhealthy. First off, you are making bad choices.”

Verses 1–4, the Lord says, “Your children I have brought up and reared, but you have rebelled against me.” Isaiah says they have forsaken the Lord; they have despised the holy one of Israel. They are utterly estranged.

Your bad choices have led to this distance in a relationship between you and God. You and God are not B.F.F. Most of you—all you young people know what that means, right? Okay, that's Facebook. Best friends forever. Right?

You are not tight. You are not on speaking terms. You are not real close, and that's because you are making bad choices. You are making bad decisions. You are choosing things that are not in line with the Word of God.

Second thing, you are not thinking right. You are not thinking right, and you have lost your passion. Isaiah 1:5: “The whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint.”

Okay, you are not using your brains, people. You have lost your passion. You are just kind of floating around with no heart. No heart. Not that first love, you have lost it. You are not using your brains, and you are complacent. You just don't care that your relationship with God isn't right.

The third thing, you are playing religious games.

Verses 11–15. It talks about the sacrifices and the convocations and the solemn assemblies and the incense and the prayers, and the people are doing this. And guess what God says? He says, “I'm sick of it. It's meaningless because you are playing all these religious games. You are going through the motions of being religious, but your heart isn't in it. You are not being obedient. You are fooling around with other loves.”

Verse 21 of chapter 1, “The faithful city has become a whore.” You are fooling around with things you shouldn't be fooling around with. You are full of things from the East. The worldly things and the worldly ideas and all of these, that's what's captured your heart.

That's what you are truly in love with. There's no difference between you and the next person. You are playing religious games; being a Christian is not making a difference in your life.

The situation had reached a tipping point, and the Lord makes a plea in chapter 1. He gives a warning, and He gives an ultimatum.

He says in verses 15–20, “If you are willing and if you are obedient, you are going to eat of the good of the land.” You are going to prosper, your land is going to do well, your family is going to do well, your nation is going to do well.

But there are consequences to the choices you make. You've reached this tipping point, and things are going to go one way or they are going to go the other way.

He issues this warning: If you don't clean up your act, if you don't get serious about your relationship with the Lord and start making godly choices, you are going to wither up, or you are going to crash and burn.

Take a look at verses 30 and 31. “You shall be like an oak whose leaf withers, and like a garden without water. And the strong shall become tinder, and his work a spark, and both of them shall burn together, with none to quench them.”

That's pretty graphic imagery there: Like an oak who withers. Like a garden without water. Like a stick that was once strong but is now dry and brittle and ready to burn up.

I just think of my garden. We had a great summer back in Canada for gardening and for growing gardens; it's a beautiful climate for that. And my garden, my petunias are amazing this year. They are just spilling out all over the place. Pink and purple and white out of my planters; they are gorgeous. The slugs did not invade this year, thank you, didn't have a fight with the slugs eating everything.

They're just absolutely beautiful. But I have this pot that I neglected and didn't water. It had this beautiful kind of green plant in it. My mom is a green thumb. I pretend I am, and I'm not.

I did not water the poor thing all summer. I just didn't. And this green, beautiful green plant is not beautiful and is not green. There are leaves on it that have turned brown, and they are really, really brittle, and they're snapping right off. In fact, my puppy goes and snaps them all off. And it looks pretty scraggly and pretty ugly.

What kind of graphic imagery is that that the Lord is communicating to us? We understand this imagery, like a garden that hasn't been watered. Wilting, feeling dry. And maybe that's the way you're feeling. Maybe you are feeling dry, and maybe you are feeling brittle. And all like a garden that's parched on the inside.

And the Lord is addressing this situation through Isaiah. He's saying your choices have consequences. Your choices with your relationship to God has consequences for your family, for your life. And if you are not careful with this tipping point, you are going to dry up, and you are going to crash and burn.

The second point is their condition. The second S.O.S. Flip over to chapter 5. The reasons for the looming crisis, here Isaiah kind of goes over the reasons, and the reasons are of the woes, the great woes of chapter 5. Woe actually means “a great grief, trouble, distress.” It means this is a crying shame. This is a tragedy. It's a crying shame.

There are elements of judgment, but it's pity and sorrow and, “Oh, I feel so bad for you.”

Crying shame, and there's six of them in this chapter. Nobody likes to hear about woes. It's like listening to a distant aunt at a family reunion go on and on about every minute detail of her aches and pains and an operation she's had. Or listening to your mom nag to you about how a particular habit is bad for you. Or having your doctor nag about your cholesterol.

I was sharing my outline with my husband, Brent. He said to me, “Hey, Mary, this is a great outline, but who wants to hear all the doom and gloom?” And it's true. Nobody likes woes.

I mean, I've had my share of woes. I had my share of woes this summer, and they were just household woes, trivial ones, really. But I wish someone would have told me I had a crack in the tank of my toilet upstairs before I went on holidays. Because there was a waterfall that went all the way down from the top story all the way down to my storage room while I was gone.

I wish someone would have told me the compressor on my fridge was going to break down before I lost all that food and went away for the weekend. And then that the compressor on the loner fridge was also going to break down. I'm finally going to have a new fridge delivered this upcoming Friday, hallelujah! I have been without one for two months. I've had a loner fridge for the last three weeks that sounds like a battle tank.

No one likes woes. And no one likes to be the doom and gloom prophet. But I sure wish I would have known that those woes were coming and what I could have done to avoid them.

The number one thing I hear when people respond to the book Girls Gone Wise is, “I wish I would have known this six years ago. I wish I would have known this ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty years ago, because I could have avoided so much grief.” I'm sure that all of you who are joining us from McPherson Prison are saying, “Yes, listen up, people.”

We can avoid grief if we make good decisions. If we make bad decisions there are woes. And it's good to hear about the trouble that you might get into.

So that's what Isaiah is doing here. He's warning the people, and there are six common woes. The first one, chapter 5:8, all of these woes are in chapter 5, is, “Woe to you who join house to house, who add field to field.” Materialism is the first woe.

Now, we don't think of materialism as a woe, we think of materialism as pretty good. The more stuff we get, the better, right? But no, Isaiah said this always pursuing after stuff, getting more stuff, adding houses to houses and fields to fields, that's a woe. That's going to get you into trouble.

The second woe is indulgence, chapter 5, verses 11–13. “Woe to those who rise early in the morning, that they may run after strong drink.” And then in verse 12, “But they do not regard the deeds of the LORD or see the work of his hands.”

So in other words, these people are really motivated. You are really, really motivated to get up if you are getting up for something fun and exciting. You are really motivated when it's something indulgent, self-indulgent, but you're not motivated when it comes to doing the work that is necessary to cultivate your relationship with the Lord. Indulgence.

Third woe is cynicism. Verses 18 and 19. “Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood . . . who say, 'Let him be quick, let him speed his work that we may see it.'” In other words, these people are skeptical about God. They're saying, “Yeah, let Him come, come on.” “Show it to me.” “I don't believe You are going to.” “Bring it on.” "Let God speak." And just being really cynical.

Have you ever been in that place where you are cynical about the Lord? You are cynical about His love or about His power? Or about His ability to intervene in your life?

So you don't even bother praying or fasting or doing the work to seek His face because you are cynical, because He hasn't answered you how you want, when you want, in the time you want. He hasn't jumped to your agenda, and so you get cynical about the whole thing. Cynicism is a woe. Mocking God is a woe.

The fourth woe is found in verse 20: "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil." These people do the switch-a-roo of moral standards. Sex outside of marriage is good, remaining a virgin is bad. Alternate lifestyles are good, traditional family, hmm, not so good. Where have we heard this lately? This revisionism, this revision of moral standards.

Do you know that prior to 1960 there were not even statistics kept for living together because it was so rare? Unbelievable. Back then it was called what, living in sin. Unbelievable. Over the course of fifty years, how quickly our culture has changed. How quickly our standards have changed.

How we've changed from valuing and cherishing what God calls good and thinking, “Hmm, that's not so good; this is better.” And doing the switch-a-roo, this revision. That's a woe. Isaiah said that's a woe, that's going to get you into a whole pile of grief and trouble.

The fifth one, verse 21, intellectualism. “Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!” So people who think that they're so smart and so progressive, and that their thinking is so forward and cool, and they take pride in their intellect because “I am politically correct.” Isaiah says woe, woe to you. Woe to you who do not rely on the wisdom of God but rely on your own wisdom.

The sixth one, conformity, verses 22 and 23. “Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and . . . mixing strong drink, who acquit the guilty for a bribe.” In other words, these are conformists; they're heroes. They want to look good in someone else's eyes. They do what other people want them to do. They take the bribes, “Oh okay, oh okay. We'll do it your way.” Conformity, peer pressure.

Have you ever heard that expression, “What goes around comes around?” Would you agree that these woes are something that we are seeing in our own culture? That this isn't just something ancient from so long ago, thousands and thousands of years ago? This is a prophetic word and a prophetic voice for our day and for our generation.

And now we are going to turn our attention not to the general woes but to the woes for women. So flip over to chapter 3, and this is really where I want to park and walk around a little bit.

Because I believe that this message, Isaiah's message for women, is for our culture and for our day and for our age and for me and for you, and it's incredibly relevant, incredibly relevant.

The woes of women, we are going to read through a part of this passage, starting at verse 11. Chapter 3, verse 11.

Woe to the wicked! It shall be ill with him, for what his hands have dealt out shall be done to him. My people—infants are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, your guides mislead you and they have swallowed up the course of your paths.

Let's skp down to verse 16.

The LORD said: Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with outstretched necks, glancing wantonly with their eyes, mincing along as they go, tinkling with their feet, therefore the Lord will strike with a scab the heads of the daughters of Zion. And the LORD will lay bare their secret parts. In that day, the Lord will take away the finery of the anklets, the headbands, and the crescents; the pendants, the bracelets, and the scarves; the headdresses, the armlets, the sashes, the perfume boxes, and the amulets; the signet rings and nose rings; the festal robes, the mantles, the cloaks, and the handbags; the mirrors, the linen garments, the turbans and the veils.

Sounds like a shopping mall, doesn't it?

Hear some of the woes of women in this passage. Six woes that I have identified in this passage as well.

First of all, false ideology. Chapter 3:12, “Your guides mislead you.” Your guides mislead you. And ladies, wouldn't you say, and particularly those who are my age and older, we have lived through it. We have witnessed a revolution when it comes to our ideas about women and womanhood.

Some of the ideas have been all right. Some of the ideas have addressed some very real problems. But I believe the solutions have been off base, often. Our ideas about womanhood and morality and family and marriage and children and what's right and what's wrong, they have all been challenged, and they have changed since the woman's movement of the 1960s.

Those of you who are younger don't even remember a world that was ever any different. Those of you who are younger have not seen the change. You just think it's always been this way. Well, it hasn't. We have gone through this revolution of ideas.

In 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique. And not very many people even read it, but it was this ideology and this group of women who worked for this massive change in society. They said we need to change the role of women so that women can be happier.

Are women happier? I don't think so. They're not. In fact, studies show that as women have gained more and more power and influence and control and money and economic freedom and independence . . . TIME Magazine showed the statistic that as that has gone up, up, up, up, up, women's happiness has done what? Down, down, down, down, down, down.

We are unhappier now than when the woman's movement set about fifty years ago to solve the problem of women's unhappiness. It's a great irony. Your guides mislead you. You have bought into false ideas.

Another woe that I've identified is the girl power ideology. “Women rule over them.”

Now, this isn't talking about female politicians; it's not even addressing the issue of female politicians because there weren't female politicians then. But what it's addressing is this problem that men had become effeminate and wimpy, and immature; they weren't men anymore. Not only were they not men anymore, they were ineffective leaders, their wives were bossing them around, and their wives had control issues and were telling them what to do.

Our culture would say that's a good thing—it's about time women wore the pants in the homes. It sounds good in theory, but it doesn't work so well in practice. It violates the design of who God created us to be, creates friction in relationships. Ladies, we lose ourselves when we lose sight of who God made us. We lose ourselves. Not only that, we lose our men. We lose men.

And do we ever need men. We need our fathers, we need the husbands, we need the dads, we need the men to be men.

That's a distinctive of these True Woman Conferences is we are not just getting together as women to study the Word and have a good time, which is all good to go deeper in the Word. But we are viewing that through a lens that we are facing that is incredibly problematic in our culture, and that is understanding ourselves for the women and men God created us to be. Woe.

Another woe is found in verse 16, and it's arrogance. The women are haughty. They are arrogant. And in our culture, is that not seen as power?

If you've got your nose up, “I am woman. I am strong, hear me roar. I'm invincible, girl power. Go out and get them, girls! Go out and get them.” But Isaiah says woe, not so good.

It's not going to get you to where you want to be. It's not going to get your relationships to the place you want them to be. It's not going to satisfy your heart the way you want your heart satisfied. It's not going to help you to understand yourself who God created you to be. You are going to lose yourself instead of find yourself.

Next one, sexual forwardness. Verse 16. These women are prancing and mincing and they're glancing wantonly. Now I'm not talking wanton like the soup, okay? I'm not talking about the little dumplings that float around in the Chinese broth. Wantonness is sexuality, the provocativeness. The "ho-ho-ho, come get me." It's good to be sexual. It's good to be a sexual being and sexually forward and to do what you want sexually and to go after the guys or at least show enough skin so they'll go after you.

And this is an issue in our culture, is it not? Women, we are taught today, and you young girls are taught today, that sex is power and your sexuality is a way that you exert power. You can exercise power, and you can show men that you are in charge by being sexual and by being brazenly sexual. Woe, Isaiah says woe.

The next woe that I have identified is in verses 18–23, that long, long, long shopping list. It's obsession. Obsession with our image. Obsession with what we look like. Obsession with what we have. Obsession about the finery.

The word mirrors is in that whole list. It's our image; it's how people see us. It's feeling good about ourselves. It's all me, me, me, me—what I have, what I want, what I need to get, what other people think.

And as a culture we hold up this sexualized image of women and then we beat ourselves up when we are not that skinny, air-brushed model on the cover. Obsession. Not with who God wants us to be, but with the world's image of what women should be. We are obsessed with gaining that.

And number six, and for this one you go back to verses 8 and 9—insolence. Insolence. Defying God's glory. "Jerusalem has stumbled and Judah has fallen because their speech and their deeds are against the LORD, defying His glorious presence. For the look on their faces bears witness against them; they proclaim their sin like Sodom; they do not hide it. Woe to them! For they have brought evil on themselves.”

Here is the thing, ladies. God created male and female. In His image. In the image of God to be image bearers to reflect the glory of God. Who we are is to shine the spotlight on Jesus. Who we are is to shine the spotlight on God's glory.

And when we shake our fist at God and say, “I'm going to be who I am; shine the spotlight on me, and do womanhood my way,” we are being insolent. We are defying God's glory. We are defying it.

Because in the end—we were not created, you were not created, I was not created—our life is not about us, ultimately. Our lives are about bringing glory to the story of Jesus Christ. And we do that as male and female in distinctive ways.

That is why God created us male and female, to tell this great cosmic love story of the Bridegroom, Jesus Christ, and the Bride, the Church. Men and women point to that story in different ways as men and women. That's why it's so important that we get our womanhood right, and that we do womanhood the way that the Bible points us to.

If we don't, if we as individuals and as a culture move away from this, Isaiah says, “Woe to them for they have brought evil on themselves. And there are consequences.” There are consequences when we don't do life God's way.

Any of you who are parents, you know that when you see your kids doing something the wrong way, you want to correct that. Why? Because you know there are consequences. If they bump up and do things the wrong way, there are consequences that sometimes they will have to face for the rest of their lives.

So Isaiah is giving this warning. He's saying, “I'm giving you this warning. I'm plea-ing with you. I am pleading with you. Take a look at these things. Understand that there are consequences.”

There are consequence. Chapter 3. First of all there are personal consequences. Starting at verse 24, “Instead of perfume, there will be rottenness; and instead of belt, a rope; and instead of well-set hair, baldness; and instead of a rich robe, a skirt of sackcloth; and branding instead of beauty. Your men shall fall by the sword and your mighty men in battle. And her gates shall lament and mourn; empty she shall sit on the ground.”

Verse 1 of chapter 4: "Seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying, ‘We will eat our own bread and wear our own clothes [we'll provide for ourselves], only let us be called by your name; take away our reproach."  

What are some of these consequences? I'll go through them quickly. Life is going to go sour. There's going to be rottenness instead of perfume. It's not going to have such a good fragrance. Your life is going to start stinking. Life is going to stink, kind of like my fridge did when I opened the door there. It’s not going to be very pleasant for you.

Second, bondage. It's going to be a rope. You are not going to be truly free. It's going to be like chain and shackles around your ankles. True freedom comes from doing things God's way, can I hear an amen?

If you do not do things God's way, it will be bondage to you. It will be bondage; it's this false freedom. It's, “Oh, I'm so free.” But guess what? You are not free. And one of these days you are going to wake up and figure that out.

Number three, shame. Baldness. There's going to be an unhealthiness, like your hair is going to fall out. It's going to be shameful for you. You are not going to display the glory of who God created you to be, of what God has given you. You are going to be sick, spiritually sick. And perhaps even that's going to affect you in other ways, physical ways.

Sackcloth, verse 24, so there's grief, sadness, depression. You tell me that women are not dealing with more grief and sadness, depression now than ever before. That our doctors are not dispensing more and more medication to try and get women out of the downward spiral.

Identity issues. There's going to be branding. Branding in those days was if you were branded, you were identified as a prostitute. You were branded. There was a branding that was a label that was put on you. So instead of the beauty of who God created you to be, you are going to be living under this branding of a false identity. And we as women deal with so many issues of identity and struggling with identity.

And this one just breaks my heart—men shall fall. And those days, they were falling by the sword. Now our men are still falling by a sword, are they not? Our men are failing. Our men are diminishing.

I'm the mother of three grown sons. It breaks my heart to see these young men fighting to retain a godly masculinity in a culture that puts them down at every turn. You mamas know what I'm talking about, amen? You women with husbands know what I'm talking about. You women in college with friends and brothers, you know what I'm talking about.

We all know this, do we not? The men in our culture are falling. And the men in our relationships are falling. As we saw in the video, when we as women don't have our acts together, we have the capacity to be influencers, to either breathe life into our men or to kill them. And woe to us for quenching the life out of our men.

Emptiness. Verse 26. Empty. She shall sit on the ground. Now, how sad is that? All this stuff, all this self-definition, all of the goods, all of the mall, all of the power, all of the money, all of the career, all of this, all of myself—trying to build myself up in every which way, every possible way.

And not to say all those things are bad, but when we are looking to those as our source of identity, guess what? Empty, empty, empty, empty. It's empty. And if we are not pursuing a relationship with the Lord and being who God wants us to be, empty you will sit on the ground.

And many of you have reached that point of emptiness. You feel it keenly. You feel that emptiness, and it gnaws at you at night. You are going through all the motions of what our culture says is going to bring you happiness and joy, and perhaps you are very, very successful, but you know. Maybe no one else knows, but you know in the darkest of nights that emptiness that is gnawing at your heart and spirit.

Desperation, loneliness, verse 1. The women shall take hold of the men. This is the irony. We diminish our men, and yet we are more desperate than ever for affirmation from them. There's this desperation, there's this desperation on the part of young women and older women, women of all ages.

When I'm at my conferences, sometimes I speak to women. All they want to find, they just need to find the guy, find the guy. “If I find the right guy, my life is going to be great. If I could just trade in my current model, upgrade a bit. If I could just find another guy.”

This desperation that leads women to give their bodies, to give their hearts, to give themselves time and time again, revolving door going around and around and around and around and around and around.

“Empty, empty, she shall sit on the ground” (v. 26). Desperate, desperate.

And you know what, not only are there personal consequences, there are national consequences. As go the women, so goes the nation. Chapter 3, verse 1. There's economic disaster.

Actually, I'm just going to read you a quote here from the 1800s: “The greatest influence on earth, whether for good or for evil, is possessed by women. Let us study the history of bygone ages. The state of the barbarism and civilization of the East and of the West, of paganism, of Christianity, of antiquity and the middle ages, of medieval and modern times, and we shall find there is nothing which more decidedly separates them than the condition of women.”

We are tremendous influencers. For good or for evil. We can change the course of a culture. We can change the course of a home. You are all familiar with that saying, “If mama ain't happy, ain't no one happy.” And how true that is.

If the women in a culture are not living right, the culture is not going to be headed in the right direction. So this is a call to women. It’s so fascinating that Isaiah speaks to the women of his generation, to the daughters, to the girls, and says, “Girls, come on, please, please let's get our act together. Let's get it together.”

Because it's not only affecting you, what you do is not just about you, this affects our families, this affects our churches, this affects our communities, this affects our nation. And there are national consequences.

Verse 1, there are economic disaster. God will take away support and supply. He's just going to turn His back, says, “Fine. You are not going to pay attention to Me, okay. See what happens.” And this is not vindictive; this is just a natural consequence of a distance in the relationship. There's going to be economic disaster.

Taking away support and supply. There's going to be a lack of good men, all the good leadership, men of rank, verses 2–3, there's going to be a lack of them. It's going to be hard to find good men.

Number 3, immature and selfish leadership. Verse 4, infants shall rule over them. You are going to have this immaturity, these leaders who are selfish and making decisions for their own good rather than the good of the people. That's a national consequence.

Another national consequence, verse 5, people are going to lack respect. There is going to be an insolence, an insolence toward authority, an insolence toward  things that ought to be honored and held in high esteem. There is going to be a rise in crime.

People are going to oppress one another, verse 5. The protectors, those who are supposed to protect us are going to become our oppressors.

There's going to be a rise in poverty, neither bread nor cloak, verse 7, and verse 6, the nation is going to disintegrate, a heap of ruins. That which was once glorious will become a heap of ruins.

So here's the call. The call is found back in 1:16, here is the call: “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widows cause.” Cease to do evil; learn to do good.

That requires intentionality, that's what we have been talking about. Seeking God, it takes some learning; it takes some work. We need to learn by training, by practice to do good. And us women particularly in this culture.

And the call is to stand against this massive tide of the direction things are going and to stand against that even in the church to stand against that as part of a faithful holy remnant. God is issuing that call to every one of you today.

His promise for if we do that is amazing. His promise of how He will quickly rise up to respond, quickly rise up to answer, quickly the tipping point and, and make sure things tip the right way.

Let's take a look. Isaiah 4:2-6. In that day, in that day, in that day something that many of us have been praying and longing for. In that day, oh God, may it come.

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. And he who was left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy, everyone who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem, 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 spirit of burning (vv. 2–4).

Guess what, ladies? This is not easy. Making things right with God and setting things right in your heart and in your life is not easy. It's a spirit of judgment, and it feels like burning. It can be very hard; it can be very painful.

At the same time, as many of you can witness to, it is so good. When God corrects us it is for our benefit and our joy. It is so good to be corrected by the hand of a loving God.

And then, “Then the LORD will create over the whole site of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud by day and the smoke and the shine of a flaming fire by night; for over all the glory there will be a canopy” (v. 5).

In other words, you are going to experience the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in a real and tangible way. You are going to experience God in your life.

There will be a booth for shade by day from the heat, and for refuge and a shelter from the storm and rain (v. 6).

God is going to watch over you, be your strong tower, and help you weather every hard time and every difficulty. So this is the call for the women today. This is the call that God is extending to us. He's extending this call to me, this circle is right around me.

It's a call for me to incline my heart toward the Lord, to seek His face. Not just for my own sake, but for the sake of my children, for the sake of my husband, for the sake of my community, for the sake of my church, for the sake of my nation, and for the sake of His glory shown through His people across the world.

My favorite story, letter in a bottle story, comes from a British man. It happened during World War I. There was a private, and his name was Private Thomas Hughes. In 1914 he was crossing the channel to go to war. So he wrote a love letter to his wife and to his young daughter, Emily. His wife, Catherine, and his daughter, Emily. He wrote a love letter and poured out his heart to his little baby girl and to his wife, rolled it up, put it in a bottle, and threw it into the English Channel. And then he died two days later fighting in France.

Well, the bottle bobbed around in the ocean and wasn't found until 1999, when a fisherman dredged it up out of the River Thames. And although the intended recipient, his wife, the wife had died; the daughter hadn't. They found little Emily, eighty-six years old, living in New Zealand.

And when she got that letter from her papa, you can just imagine what happened in her heart and her spirit. She said, “It completed my life. It brought me joy. A message from my father, a message from my father, my father for me, that demonstrated his love.”

And ultimately, this message from Isaiah that Isaiah delivered is a love letter. And it's a love letter from our Heavenly Father to His girls. This is a letter of love. This is a letter pleading us as His girls, “Turn your face. Seek Me. I love you.”

I just want to challenge you to ask the Lord, "Lord, what is it? What is it in my heart, in my life? What are the woes that I'm bringing on myself, by my own choices, by my own hand, by my own behavior? And Lord, please, I turn from those. And the good news, and this is that wonderful, also in this passage, the wonderful verse, "Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow" (1:18).

Guess what? The instant you turn, I've provided the answer to your woes. I've provided the answer. And I provide forgiveness.

I would like all of you, please to bow your heads. And I'm going to give you the opportunity to just spend a minute or two wrestling with God, speaking to your Heavenly Father who has written a love letter to you. And you've been challenged this morning. He's pointed out some of the woes, perhaps in your life. You've been challenged about some of the lies you've bought into of our culture. Some of you have been just control freaks in the lives of your men. And cutting them down and cutting the life out of them instead of breathing life into them.

If there's something you need to deal with, would just slip out of your seat and down to your knees right where you are, or if there's not space just bow down before the Father. He knows your heart. I'm going to give you just a moment to pray.