Lesson 4: The Cross Removes our Shame and Disgrace!
Questions 1 and 2
Greetings friend and welcome back to Faith Building Studies. Please read Joshua 5:1-8 in preparation for this lesson.
Have you ever been labeled according to your temptations (either by yourself or others)? Does your identity have to do with a shameful past or with present areas of sinful struggles? If so, this passage in Joshua shows the solution for you.
Kelly writes, "I remember that period of identity Crisis that consumed my life. Sin was so entrenched in my thoughts and made such deep inroads into my heart that not only did I identify myself by my sins they became the foundation on which I built my entire life. I was enslaved to homosexuality so I took on labels like “Gay, Lesbian, Dike. I became the Gay girl, the lesbian woman, the gay Christian.
It’s surprising how powerful a label can be when we begin to use it to define ourself. The more I clinged to the labels of my sins the more they became apart me until I no longer recognized the “me” that I had become. It can be so easy to completely loose yourself in something that can seem so seemingly harmless as a label."
In Joshua 5:1-8, we read that all the Israelite men who had been born during the 40 years of wilderness wanderings were uncircumcised. This was a problem because circumcision was a requirement for God’s people, so before the Israelites are brought fully into the Promised Land God told Joshua that all these men must be circumcised.
Circumcision is a cutting off of the foreskin of the flesh of the males, and once all the men were circumcised the Lord declared, “‘Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.’ And so the name of that place is called Gilgal to this day” (Joshua 5:9).
What a wonderful thing this was, to have “the reproach of Egypt rolled away.” That is, the circumcision of these men was a symbolic act and life-long reminder that their identity as slaves, and the shame of their past was cut off and “rolled away” from them. They were now uniquely marked as God’s people.
Question 2. Where did this circumcision happen? Does your Bible tell you why this name was chosen? Share your thoughts here.
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Kelly writes, "The circumcision happened at Gigal. God rolled away their shame and He removed their disgrace. That so deeply resonates with me. As the Lord began opening the blinded eyes of my heart to see my sins for what they really were and how I had gladly labeled myself by them it was as if my eyes were suddenly opened and I could see that I was trapped in a strangers body. I carried a heavy burden of disgrace and paralyzing shame in the person I had become.
Yet when I look desperately to the Cross I can see every bit of it rolled away. Jesus hung on the Cross naked, disgraced and humiliated. He hung their consumed by the shame of all my terrible sins. He was cutoff, circumcised from the Father labeled a transgressor and criminal. He did this for me so I can exchange the labels of my sin, the disgrace and shame of them for a new identity; child of God and a new label; Free, Wow! I'm remined of this song..."