Isaiah 6:1-8Today’s text is one that God used in my life about 17 years ago to revolutionize my faith. With it he awakened me to his holiness, my sin and guilt before him, his grace as a response to my guilt, and finally, my gratitude to that grace.
1.) God’s Holiness. The angels called to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” (Isaiah 6:3)
I won’t take the time to exegete and explore this text since the seminal work on this topic, The Holiness of God, by R.C. Sproul, is available for you to purchase and read. But suffice it to say, what I learned in these verses, and in subsequent studies on the character of God, is that God is a big God.
I grew up learning (virtually) that the only attribute of God was “love” – which almost always meant “nice” – which almost always meant “nice” as a relativistic, self-adoring culture defines it. To be sure, God is love. We ought never to back away from that life-transforming truth, simply because it is often misunderstood and abused. But as today’s Scripture reminds us, God is also holy. And his holy, righteous, and just character is pure and undefiled. When you encounter this sort of God you immediately since your unworthiness, your sin, and your guilt.
2.) Our Guilt. Even the righteous Isaiah sensed his guilt. Upon encountering the holiness of God the King, Isaiah exclaimed in what must have been sheer terror,
“Woe to me!”… “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” (Isaiah 6:5)
When we see our beautiful, glorious, matchless King for who he is, we are dead indeed if we do not immediately cry out over our sin and overwhelmingly feel our guilt as Isaiah did. I believe part of the consequence for making God our divine “buddy” with whom we feel so chummy, as we have increasingly done in our day, is that we fail to see him as the King of the universe, grand and sovereign and perfect in every way. As C.S. Lewis wrote about the great Lion, Aslan, God is not safe, but he is good. We need a cosmic reality check and ought to seriously reconsider the lesser deity we have created in our own image. A.W. Tozer’s Knowledge of the Holy is a good place to start for such thinking. God must be our starting point, and a proper understanding of who God is, and letting God be God, is essential.
3.) God’s Grace. Once we have seen God for who he is, and have felt the weight of our guilt before him, we needn’t despair (though that, no doubt, should be our immediate impulse). Why? Because the beauty of this holy, unsafe King is that he is good. His holiness is loving and merciful. His love and mercy is holy. He intercedes on our behalf.
Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. [7] With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” (Isaiah 6:6-7)
A substitutionary sacrifice has been made on our behalf. A guilt-offering has been made. The King has interceded for us to purify us, atone for us, forgive us. The King left his throne and took on our filthy rags to make a way for us. Our King became our Savior, our Mediator, and our High Priest. In utter humility we ought to fall before him and sing with the angels…
“You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.” (Rev. 5:9-10)
”Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!” (Rev. 5:12)
”To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!” (Rev. 5:13b)
This is the gospel of grace. We don’t deserve such treatment. We didn’t earn it. We can’t earn it. It was victoriously accomplished to exalt the King and reveal his glory before the whole earth (v. 3). We trust and receive such lovingkindness to our everlasting joy. We reject such lovingkindness to our everlasting peril and regret.
4.) Our Gratitude. Trusting and receiving the glorious and gracious gospel of the King, ultimately, compels us to become living sacrifices of praise and urges us on to grateful, joyful obedience. The overflow of the redeemed and regenerate heart, at the recognition of such tender mercy from our mighty and holy King, is a life of profound submission and service – saturated in heartfelt and self-denying love, humility, gratitude and joy.
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8)
No hesitation. No compromise. No paralyzing doubts and fears. Instead, grateful and joyfully obedient submission and service to the King. A life of such faithfulness will be met with an inheritance at the end of all things, the King’s Kingdom, which was prepared for the faithful at the creation of the world (Matthew 25). To be sure, such a life requires a long obedience in the same direction. But such obedience is not burdensome (1 John 5:3). It is merely and movingly the inevitable response of one who has seen the King for who he is, been pierced by the weight of guilt that attends such a vision of God in his regal and holy splendor, and has been relieved of such guilt by the atoning intercession of the King.
How else would a person respond? Nothing else makes sense.
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” (Isaiah 6:3)
Stand Firm,
Dale
I bought and used R.C.’s Holiness of God after attending a seminar where he was speaking. Today I tell EVERYONE that this was the most life changing bible study I have ever done. We all “know” God is holy but when I actually “understood” what that meant, it changed me forever.