to the degree that God is a reality in your life - Concept versus Reality -- Part 2

Isaiah 6

How do you know that God has moved from being a concept to being a reality? Verses 5-8


Isaiah heard the seraphim call out, "Holy, holy, holy!" In Hebrew, magnitude was gotten a cross by doubling a word. Nowhere but here in the Old Testament is there a tripling of a word. There is a category beyond categories here.

What is holiness? Holy wisdom is wisdom that is infinitely beyond anybody else's wisdom. Holy love is infinitely beyond and infinitely more perfect than anybody else's love... Holiness also means brilliance and beauty. The seraphim were constantly singing and praising. They were/are fascinated and love His holiness. They can't get enough of it, they were/are enamored by it.

There are people that say that they used to believe in God, I used to go to church, but He didn't come through for me. He let this and that happen and I don't know why He let my life go in this direction and I asked for this and He let me down... If this is true for us then we are in a sense 'marrying' God 'for His money'. He is an object, a concept, in these cases, without weight... But the seraphim are adoring and serving God just because of the beauty of who He is. For the seraphim His holiness is not useful, it is beautiful... (tangent) What good do you get out of listening to great music by yourself? Does it make money for you, move you along in your career? No. It is a good in itself. It is not useful, it is beautiful. Isaiah 6 is telling us here that is how God should be if you knew who He really was. (My heart longs to find Him to be that much of a reality in my life!!)

How can someone, though, find the complete and unique holiness of God as beautiful in itself? The power of God is a benefit to you, the wisdom of God is a benefit to you, the mercy of God is a benefit to you, but (Jonathan Edwards said it like this) "God's holiness is of no use to us at all." And so we cannot attack it with our selfish ambition. On the surface, it seems God's holiness is nothing but a threat. But anyone who really worships God's holiness, is loving Him for who He is in Himself because it is of no help to us.

How on earth could we possibly get to this place? That we see the beauty of His holiness because, again, on the surface it is only a threat. You cannot overpower, question, escape God because of his Holy power, His Holy wisdom, and His Holy presence. How can this be beautiful?

Verse 5 "Woe to me!" Isaiah is putting a curse on himself... A friend of mine in Ithaca, who, in a sense, dismantles me in Chess every time, went up against a "Chess Master" at the Ithaca Fest this weekend and became undone. HE was absolutely dismantled. There was nothing he could do about it. He was overwhelmed from the beginning. He had a "Woes me!" moment in the face of human holiness.

Jewish tradition says that Isaiah's father was brother to the King. This would have made Him one of the elites. We know from Isaiah's book that He was a man of artistic and communicative genius. He was a man with masterful speech, masterful "lips". In an oral culture, this would have meant great power. In a time of great upheaval in his country ("King Uzziah" had died), at a time where he wielded great influence, he would have most certainly been, as we do today, proclaiming the errors of the old generation, the establishment... But then He meets God and he sees that He was the problem. Even his "lips", the best part of his self were unclean, flawed, wrong, twisted... Every time someone in the Bible sees God as a reality they start to hate themselves... Reaction to this could be: 'This sounds like low self-esteem and I believe in a God of love.’ Okay. Let's suppose that there is a God that is nothing but love. No holiness. No justice. No wrath. You would still hate yourself in the presence of a god who is just pure love. You would say, 'I am so cruel! so unloving! I thought I loved people, but I now know I really haven't loved anybody!' ... If in the presence of human holiness you can be undone, how much more than would it be so with God.

This is how you know that God has begun to move into your life as a reality. You think you are "sinner", you think you are "lost". You think you are more capable of cruelty, evil, more selfish, more petty, more small-minded, more impatient than you thought you ever could be. You know you are a sinner and you can only be saved by grace... If there is a real God it would have to feel like this! How could it be otherwise! And I think we can move this beyond ‘it is this way because that is what the Bible says’. I think this is common sense, if you think through the implications of the reality of God...

But this was not all that happened to Isaiah. People with low self-esteem who find themselves in the presence of God realize to a great degree that their low self-esteem was self absorption. The only way that they could ever get out of their low self esteem is if something gets them to think outside of themselves. And this something must be heavier than their very self or they will remain unshaken.

As soon as Isaiah confesses, as soon as he talked about the reality of his sin (at his point of the lowest self esteem you'd ever want), God begins to explode into his life. The angel of God flies towards him. Isaiah sees the fire in his hand and he would have thought he was a goner. The fire of God represents judgment and wrath in the Old Testament. Fire consumed people in the presence of God and Isaiah probably would have expected to be wiped out here. He saw that he deserved it, he saw the magnitude of his sin undone by the weightiness, the "glory" of God. But as soon as the fire got to his mouth, it must of hurt, but it did not consume. He had been cleaned...

One second after Isaiah realized he didn't deserve to live, that he was more wicked and flawed then he ever dared believe. He was then more affirmed valued and wanted than he ever dared to hope. Because God is saying at this point in Isaiah 6, 'I am saving the world and I need a new partner. And by the way you are going to be utterly ineffective and persecuted.' Isaiah immediately says, 'send me!' What happened to Isaiah? His self image had been deconstructed and reconstructed on the spot. Before he thought he was good by a performance standard... If there are performance standards: if I do this, if I live like this... If you are living up to your standards, you are bold and confident, but not humble, you are arrogant. If you are not living up to your standards, you are humble and kind of sensitive to other people, but you are not confident. in the grace of God you are both bold and humble at the same time because you are more wicked than you ever dared believe and you are more loved than you ever dared to hope. This gives you a new stability. Nothing in this world now can move you then. When you fail, you can remember the affirmation of God, which is there by grace, not performance. When you succeed you are not arrogant because you remember that you are nothing more than a sinner saved by grace. Bold AND humble at the same time. Theoretically you can handle anything... to the degree that God is a reality in your life. When God starts sliding towards becoming a concept again, you got to make sure He is a reality. And then you can handle anything.

Now how is that possible? How could the fire of God (here in Isaiah 6) be an agent of cleansing? Centuries later almost the same thing happened. The temple was shaken. There was an earthquake because God came down. The very veil of God in the Temple ripped. Do you know when that happened? Matthew 27

In the Garden before He was taken Jesus said, "I am sorrowful even onto death." In other words He was saying, 'Woes me I am undone! I feel like I am coming apart!' ... But no angel came down that time and said that his sin was atoned for because Jesus was the sacrifice. Jesus Christ became our sin and was shaken by the judgment of God so that you and I could be unshakable. So that our sin could be atoned for... If this is really true, that we are accepted completely in Him, not on the basis of our performance, His holiness than will truly be beautiful! You then will not serve God on the basis of getting things because you have already gotten everything! ... WHY THEN SERVE GOD??? BECAUSE OF THE BEAUTY OF WHO HE IS and WHAT HE IS DONE! Because you want to know Him, resemble Him, because you want to be apart of this new business of Him in saving the world...