Spiritual Formation - Pt. 5

5 - Spiritual Formation

Colossians 3:9–11“Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”

The Colossians are to exhibit in their everyday lives the kind of behavior that is in keeping with the character of the One who created the new person in the first place. In other words, as God’s chosen people, loved and holy, clothe yourselves with the character of your God and Father.

Today, we are going to look at Israel and Isaiah, seeing how seeing God (in scripture, worship, prayer, etc) will shape your life and change you. Through:

Worship and Service

Background

Israel was to be God’s SERVANT to the Nations. By trusting in God and not trusting the nations, they would be a blessing to the nations.

Isaiah 43:10–11““You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me. I, even I, am the Lord, and apart from me there is no savior.”

They inevitably failed because they refused to trust in God and instead trusted the surrounding nations and their strong armies to deliver them - which would ironically be their downfall.

A principle we learn from this is: Whatever we trust in place of God will eventually turn on us and destroy us.

Because they depended on the nations instead of God, they lost their distinct mission to them.

Yet God would use the nations they trust in to show his superiority and judge their decisions.

Anyone with a sense of reason in Israel would wake up to see, the nations we are trusting in instead of God - they too are under the sovereignty of God and under His hand.

They would come to understand out of the disasters that were to follow that we are to fear God alone:

Isaiah 8:12–15““Do not call conspiracy everything this people calls a conspiracy; do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it. The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread. He will be a holy place...”

In the midst of all this despair, God is not content for darkness and despair to reign, but if his people will change and will see his light, then they can be delivered from their enemies by a child. Isaiah 8:23-9:6

They will be humbled as they trust in the mighty nations, yet true deliverance would be in the form of a baby child.

Sinful, arrogant, self-confident, complacent Israel is going to be the holy people of God to whom the nations will come to learn of God. But how can this be?

Sinful Israel can become the SERVANT Israel when the experience of Isaiah becomes the experience of the nation.

Isaiah’s Experience

Seeing God leads to Worship, and worship leading to responding in service to the Creator’s call.

We like Israel in history are called to be His servants, His witnesses to the world - teaching them who God is and who they are in that light through our Christlike character:

Acts 1:8 “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.””

We, like Israel, need an encounter, a confrontation with God, we need to see God, who He is as revealed in Scripture.

Isaiah - saw God in such a way that changed the shape of the rest of his life. May we too, see God in Scripture, in experience, and hunger after Him and serve Him as Isaiah did.

Isaiah 6 Scripture

Isaiah 6:1–4“In the year that King Uzziah died

In the context of a crisis, like this one, God can more easily make himself known to us than when times are good and we are self-confidently complacent.

“I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.”

Hebrews normally believed that to see God was to die.

Yet there are several instances where people were permitted to see God for different purposes but in them was an encouragement and confirmation for them that would enable them to act what God was requiring.

“Sitting on a throne” & “High and lifted up”

The veil is removed, he sees “The King”. The whole experience of Isaiah is one of awe. He is seeing the monarch, the supreme ruler, of the earth to whom all people have to do and give an account. He is the King, not Uzziah or Ahaz or Jotham. The emphasis is upon God’s exaltation, for human attempts at self-exaltation are the height of folly. Only God is exalted.

“The robe fills the temple” - In Exodus 24:10 - the pavement is described when they saw God, and here it is no higher than the train of his robe.

It is as if language fails to describe the sight of the sovereign God of all creation, the transcendent self existent, all powerful, loving God.

Is Isaiah just trying to describe his robe, no, the point is that God is filling the temple but the experience, the sight, is too awesome, to great for reporting with words that is experienced more than described… Perhaps this is exactly what Paul was describing in 2 Corinthians 12

Each one of us would do well to aspire to our own experience of his presence.

As Isaiah (most likely) lies prostrate at the threshold of the temple, his awareness brings him to several creatures (seraphim) encircling the throne of the immense Being before Him. These servants standing before the One seated.

These seraphim are “fiery ones”

They typify the appropriate response to God’s holiness, His otherness.

They are all wings and voice - perfectly ready for praise/worship and service.

Wings covering their faces, for even they, perfectly holy creatures dare not gaze in the face of the Creator. The sight is too much.

Wings covering their body, as in the creature should not look upon the creator, so the created should not be displayed int he sight of the Creator.

But to be in the presence of the creator is not just to be prostrate on the floor with awe but to be filled with worship and praise. So with the other set of wings they fly and calling out with song “Holy Holy Holy is the Lord of Hosts, Filling all the earth with his glory.”

Calling out to one another may be viewed as that they were delighting in one another in the glory of God.

Holiness.

This encounter was doubtless responsible for Isaiah’s use of The Holy One of Israel 26x.

This holiness is distinctness. Holiness was how Israel understood God’s character. He was not like other gods who gave laws but those laws were not essential to the character of such a god. Israel’s God was different, it was God’s character and his relationship with Israel in them displaying that character through ethical behavior. His laws were because thats who He was and who Israel was to be.

For Isaiah then, here he was in the presence of the One distinct from all gods and especially himself. Here is the one who is ethically pure, absolutely upright, and utterly true. He is the thrice holy God, the Holy One.

His presence is not restricted to a temple, but fills the earth. And where His glory is, his presence, sin is judged.

The temple was shaking to the thunderous hymn sung by the seraphim, and all the while the sanctuary was filling with smoke.

Worship

Awareness of Him will move us to worship, it’s all about His worthiness.

Worship - will strengthen our faith and strengthen us to be as he is.

Worship of God for who He is, reminds us that that life is about God and not about us; we are characters in His story, all things have been created by him and for him (Colossians 1:16), and we exist to serve God and not to persuade God to serve us. In essence, this experience is the Lord’s repeated message to us in Scripture is “I am God, and you are not.”

Isaiah 6:5–8““Woe to me!” I cried. “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.” Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 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’s Call to Service

At this point, Isaiah becomes aware of himself. He has become aware of the awesomeness and holiness of the Creator before him and now he has become brutally aware of himself. The same one who had been pronouncing woe and judgment on others for their sin, is now pronouncing judgment upon himself in the presence of the Holy One.

This is paradigmatic of the human race. A personal confrontation with the eternal Holy God, the infallible with the fallible, the infinite to the finite is to know the futility of one’s own existence without his care.

Isaiah is aware of the sin rampant in the nation as well as himself. The character of God is so pure and holy, we are not.

The atheist and agnostic who reject the person of God, when true and consistent to their beliefs will go mad. Purposesless and futitlity become their god as seen in Neitzche.

Isaiah knows there is purpose in the universe, for He meant him, for him the problem is, his separation from it or rather him.

Verse 6: God does not reveal Himself to destroy us but to redeem us.

We see fire here as an image of God’s holiness. It is a fire of righteousness that devours unrighteousness. It is by this fire of God’s purity that the repentant are made like Himself.

We see on the day of Pentecost the fire of the Holy Spirit descending on the disciples and purifying them and producing in them the very character of Christ.

“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” (After he is atoned for, after receiving the grace of God he must respond with service in light of His grace) And I said, “Here am I. Send me!””

The spiritual encounter with God is never merely a means to some end but neither is it an end in itself because unless the experience moves to a lived out form of praise to God in obedience and surrender and service, it will decay.

Those who need to be coerced into service to God are perhaps too little aware of the immensity of God’s grace toward them.

As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Service

“Write your obituary now and see if it will play well in heaven.”

Serving God and serving others - the high road to freedom from bondage to others, where we will cease to be manpleasers and eyepleasers, because we are acting unto God in all our deeds - at work, at home, with family, friends, neighbors, and strangers. It is unto the Lord that we serve.

John 12:41 “Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him.”

John 13:2–5“The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.”

John 13:12–17“When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.”

The blessing of God is not on being served, but on serving!

The key to Christ’s willingness to serve others in place of being served by them is found in the crucial truth that Jesus knew who He was.

That “the Father had given all things into His hands, and

That He had come forth from God and was going back to God” (John 13:3).

He knew his dignity and power (“the Father had given all things into His hands”),

He knew his significance and identity (“and that He had come forth from God”),

And he knew his security and destiny (“and was going back to God”).

His identity was from his relationship with his Father and not from the opinions of his family and peers. There were many instances of criticism, rejection, slander, being misunderstood, plotted against, denied, and abused by his family, friends, disciples, religious leaders, and the Romans.

Just as Jesus knew who he was, where he came from, and where he was going, so all who have put their trust and hope in him should know the same.

Like Christ, we have dignity and power;

We have every spiritual blessing has been given into our hands.

We also have significance and identity; we have become the children of God.

And we have been given the security and destiny of knowing that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ.

When these truths of who God is and who we are begin to define our self-image, they make us secure enough to love and serve others without seeking our interests first.

Because of our security and significance in Christ, we do not need to be controlled by the opinions and responses of others.

We have nothing to prove to anyone, because we know who and whose we are.

So rather than trying to impress and manipulate people, we can do our work with excellence as unto the Lord.

This all comes from being more concerned with what God thinks of us, and less worried about what others think of us. Therefore, I am no longer enslaved to people’s opinions of myself, we are free to love and serve them as Christ loves us—with no strings attached.

A wise person finds more joy in serving others than in pursuing possessions, power, performance, or prestige.