Our Response to God's Holiness: Repentance
Notes
Transcript
Thanks so much May! Here at East, we put three things before our members: gather, group and move. To gather is to worship on Sundays and to be at fellowship events that we have. To group is be in one of our awesome groups that we offer consistently. And to Move is to serve the Lord in your church and your community. If you need help taking either the GROUP step or the MOVE step, stop by our Next Steps area and talk to someone on one of May’s teams. They can help you start finding the info you are looking for!
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This morning, May just read the same verses we read last week! And guess what? We’ll read them again next week! In the last couple of sermon series we have been covering large amounts of verses. But in this study on God’s holiness called Better than Good, we want to settle into just a few verses and chew on it for a little bit!
If you missed last week, Isaiah, a prophet who speaks on behalf of God to his people, is giving us a glimpse into the presence of God. God is on his throne in the sanctuary, he has a killer robe on, and there some crazy 6 winged beings flying around God’s throne calling HOLY HOLY HOLY is the Lord.
The challenge last week was to think about how God’s holiness should change the way we view Him. The takeaway was that it should lead to worship just like the 6 winged creatures! Recognizing God’s holiness should add weight to who God is, it should bring him glory.
The first response we see to the holiness of God is to worship.
But that is not all we see going on here. Today, we will see how God’s holiness affects the way we view ourselves.
May has already read these verses, so let me voice a prayer thanking God for his word and we will dive right in, alright?
PRAY
We will start at the same place we did last week with the first few words! In the year that King Uzziah died...
Last week I explained to you that King Uzziah was a king of Judah who was greatly blessed by God. He was a good king as far as kings go! But his success got to his head. And so, instead of letting the priests handle the sacrifices and him staying in the castle, Uzziah waltzed right up to the temple and through to the inner places where only priests were allowed to go. Once in there, he offered sacrifices that only kings should be offering. What was he doing?
Isaiah is definitely playing on that fact that a king had no place in the sanctuary, because there was already a king on the throne! God’s throne was not vacant. We talked through that last week.
But there is more here to this Uzziah business. Isaiah not only contrasts Uzziah to God, he also contrasts the actions of Uzziah in the temple against his own actions there.
That’s why we will first see...
1. The Humbleness of a Prophet
1. The Humbleness of a Prophet
Here, Isaiah, the great prophet experiences the presence of God and his holiness and is immediately affected.
Then I said: Woe is me for I am ruined because I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips, and because my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Armies.
There was no conversation with God here. Simply being there at the throne of God and experiencing his holiness first hand, led to the statement I just read… WOE IS ME! I AM RUINED
That term literally means, “I am undone. I should be done away with. I am unfit to be here!” It is obvious that Isaiah is overwhelmed with God’s holiness. But he actually gives three reasons why in what follows.
a. I am unclean
Isaiah, as far as we know, was a faithful follower of God. He was a prophet who spoke truths to God’s people on behalf of God. Yes, that’s a heavy job, but we have no reason to think he was hiding tons of secret sins.
But here, when faced with the absolute holy, otherness of God, Isaiah, who speaks with boldness to other humans finds himself broken.
You see, in light of the beauty of God’s holiness, even the smallest of sins will break the heart of man!
We see this over and over again! The closer we get to God, the more our sins are magnified!
So, what does that mean for us? That means that if you are going through life right now without a repentant heart that is broken over your sin, one of two things is going on...
You are no longer sinning. You can live everyday without any conviction of your sin because their are none.
You are no longer near God. You have gotten so far from God that your sin seems small when you look at it and really not that big of a deal.
I know I am still a young guy, but I’ve found myself in many seasons of life where I was walking day to day without any feeling of heaviness for my sin. And I know it was not the first one! It was not that I had stopped sinning. It was that I was no longer near God.
As believers, this is a situation that we must deal with!
(Union and Communion?)
b. My people are unclean
Isaiah calls out his friends, his neighbors, all those who live in the region!
We can resonate with this, right? God, I live in a messed up place! We as a country inact things into law that blatantly go against your Word. Our media celebrates sinfulness and evil! This place is a mess! We have all prayed that prayer! Most of us have voiced it to others or posted it on a social media platform. We quote 2 Chronicles 7:14 and ask our country to repent!
And I pray that happens one day!
But that is not what Isaiah is doing here.
Notice that when Isaiah encountered the holiness of God, his first thought was not to fingerpoint! God, look how messed up your people are! Look how messed up the world is! I got neighbors that do this sin and that sin. I have family who have turned their back on you.
No! Isaiah’s first statement was I AM A SINNER!
My fear is that we as the church want our neighbors to repent. We want our government to repent. We want our whole country to repent. But we want to continue in our sinfulness and complacency, because they are the real sinners! We aren’t that bad.
Church, may that not be so of this local body! May we always look inward before we point the finger, before we involve any one else! May we be like Isaiah who first confessed his own sin to the Lord before even acknowledging the sin of those around him. When we encounter the beauty of the holiness of God, may our hearts first break over our sin!
I pray this over myself and all who call East home!
The third reason Isaiah gives for feeling undone is...
c. I’m seeing GOD!
Isaiah says, “My eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Armies.”
Here God is clearly the King. Isaiah sees him on his throne. What do kings do? They rule! Isaiah believed that God was ruling over everything in the universe!
That’s why he also said this, recorded in Isaiah 40:21-26
Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not considered the foundations of the earth?
God is enthroned above the circle of the earth; its inhabitants are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like thin cloth and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
He reduces princes to nothing and makes judges of the earth like a wasteland.
They are barely planted, barely sown, their stem hardly takes root in the ground when he blows on them and they wither, and a whirlwind carries them away like stubble.
“To whom will you compare me, or who is my equal?” asks the Holy One.
Look up and see! Who created these? He brings out the stars by number; he calls all of them by name. Because of his great power and strength, not one of them is missing.
Isaiah had seen and heard of lots of kings. But no kings were truly HOLY like God, and had the power and reach that God did.
Because Isaiah had this view of God, he was humbled in his presence. He was left feeling unworthy to be in the throne room with such a king!
I am ruined… Why? Because I am unclean, my people are unclean, and I’m seeing God who is the AWESOME KING OF THE UNIVERSE!
But this is not how everyone comes into God’s presence. In fact, Isaiah has already mentioned someone who didn’t.
Isaiah becomes a contrast to King Uzziah that we read about in verse 1.
2. The Haughtiness of a King
2. The Haughtiness of a King
I read much of this last week, but in case you forgot or missed it, let me remind you. Uzziah was a great king in a lot of ways. He led God’s people well and God used him to accomplish incredible things. But as his notariety increased so did his ego...
But when he became strong, he grew arrogant, and it led to his own destruction. He acted unfaithfully against the Lord his God by going into the Lord’s sanctuary to burn incense on the incense altar.
The priest Azariah, along with eighty brave priests of the Lord, went in after him.
They took their stand against King Uzziah and said, “Uzziah, you have no right to offer incense to the Lord—only the consecrated priests, the descendants of Aaron, have the right to offer incense. Leave the sanctuary, for you have acted unfaithfully! You will not receive honor from the Lord God.”
Uzziah, with a firepan in his hand to offer incense, was enraged. But when he became enraged with the priests, in the presence of the priests in the Lord’s temple beside the altar of incense, a skin disease broke out on his forehead.
We then read that this skin disease forced him to live in isolation away from civilization. And by the end of his life, he was only remembered as one who had a skin disease and not as the good king he had once been.
Here’s what is assumed in this story that we need to make sure you know...
Uzziah knew he wasn’t allowed to make sacrifices. That was a job for the priests. The priests had a particular lineage that was traced back through Levi, one of the sons of Jacob (Abraham’s grandson).
So, what would cause a man who knows he is not allowed into the presence of God to enter into it anyway?
Uzziah, deep down must have believed he honestly deserved it! He was good enough to go into the presence of God. He had a higher view of himself than he ought to have. He rolled right up in there with authority!
Priests would make sacrifices for their own sin before stepping into the inner most parts of the temple, because they understood the reverence of it. They knew they were sinners and that they could not enter God’s presence that way. They were much more like Isaiah in that regard. They knew their own sin. But Uzziah didn’t.
He walked arrogantly and haughtily into the presence of God.
But how did he leave? Completely humbled, right?
You see, when we come to God in the wrong way, he often uses that encounter to get us where he wants us, but it’s often times not pretty.
Isaiah entered into God’s presence humble and broken. Uzziah came in the opposite. But he left that way.
We don’t know if this was actually leprosy. Because of a lack of medical advancements and knowledge, often times simple skin diseases could be treated as something much more serious. Leprosy became the catch all for many skin diseases that have been much less dangerous to the individual or even contagious.
So, because of this skin disease, Uzziah would never be allowed even into the part of the temple that was allowed to go into. Because he tried to take what wasn’t his, even what he did have was taken from him!
Uzziah would have lived a life of utter seclusion from then on. If others were to touch him unknowingly, they would then be considered ceremonially unclean until ritualistic washing a sacrifice were made. Because of this, when others got close to him, he was required to yell “UNCLEAN” to let them know that he had a skin disease.
Isn’t that interesting? Because what was the thing that Isaiah cried out in the presence of God? I am a man of unclean lips. It’s the same word that Uzziah would have cried out his whole life after this. But the one time he needed to say it, he didn’t. But Isaiah did! And that makes the difference. That’s what we are to notice here.
What do we takeaway from this?
We cannot enter into God’s presence with arrogance. I will argue that there is no place for arrogance at all in the life of a Christian! Hear me church, there is no place for arrogance at all in the life of a Christian! When we are overly proud or arrogant, we are acting very unChristlike.
In fact, just for the sake of argument… How do we find arrogance anyway?
People get arrogant about physical size. Guess who gave you that build?
People get arrogant about how smart they are? Guess where that came from?
Your smoking-hot wife? God
Your well-behaved kids? God
Your good job and lots of money? God
Your big house and nice car? God
And even the most important thing a Christian has we didn’t earn! Our eternal salvation comes from God too! Paul says you don’t get to earn it, why? So that no man can boast!
Do you see this? There is no place for arrogance in the life of a believer at all!!!
Confidence that comes from Christ’s work in us is one thing. Arrogance is just sin.
So, it is clear from this passage, that God’s holiness is too great for us to enter into his presence any way but humble!
But the question lingers, if there is such a risk in the presence of God, why even try to get close? What is offered there?
This is what we see happen to Isaiah next! We see...
3. The HOPEFULNESS of Atonement
3. The HOPEFULNESS of Atonement
After Isaiah cries out to God that he is unfit and a sinner, we see this happen...
Then one of the seraphim flew to me, and in his hand was a glowing coal that he had taken from the altar with tongs.
He touched my mouth with it and said: Now that this has touched your lips, your iniquity is removed and your sin is atoned for.
How weird is this? Remember, this is a vision. It’s not physically happening. If you wondered why Isaiah didn’t freak out when his lips burned off, that’s why.
I don’t believe we are to wrestle with what the coal represents or really even why the lips. The big takeaway is “Who’s holding the coal?” Isaiah? NO!
In the presence of God, Isaiah recognized he was unfit. He knew he had a lot to work and a lot to fix, but God didn’t say to Isaiah, reach in grab a coal, and touch it to your lips, did He? NO! He sent a seraphim to do it FOR Isaiah.
This is the hopefulness of atonement! It comes from God and not within us! You are not responsible for fixing yourself because you couldn’t do it if you tried! ONLY GOD CAN FIX YOU! And it’s going to happen in his time and in his way. It’s our job to get in the presence of God and He will do it!
If you are not spending time in the Word, praying, sharing your faith with others, worshiping God through song during the week, looking for ways to serve others, then you are not in the presence of God. That is where life change occurs! That is where the coal is touched to our lips, our sins are atoned, and we are changed!
Isaiah found himself in the presence of God. His heart was right, in that he was humbled to be in God’s presence, not haughty like King Uzziah. And God brought healing to brokenness there in the sanctuary!
Here is what I know...
If you are not pursuing God's presence, don’t expect him to bring healing.
If you think you can fix yourself or that you don’t really need fixing, don’t expect him to bring healing.
Right?
Isaiah would continue to speak after this many many things. But the two chapters that will stand out the most are chapters 52 and 53. Isaiah begins to speak of a servant who is coming to God’s people who will change everything. He won’t just be doing touch up work with coals of fire. He will bring ultimate healing to God’s people.
He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He didn’t have an impressive form or majesty that we should look at him, no appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was. He was like someone people turned away from; he was despised, and we didn’t value him.
Yet he himself bore our sicknesses, and he carried our pains; but we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on him, and we are healed by his wounds.
We all went astray like sheep; we all have turned to our own way; and the Lord has punished him for the iniquity of us all.
Do you see? Many years before Jesus was born on earth, Isaiah foretold of his death. A death that would accomplish something for all of us!
Folks, I don’t know if you have ever been told this, but you are a sinner. You are unfit to stand in the presence of a holy God. You have unclean lips and live in a people of unclean lips. You are ruined in his presence by your sin.
But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Long before we ever served at church, Christ died for us.
Long before we were baptized, Christ died for us.
Before we asked for forgiveness, Christ died for us!
Before we ever did one single thing for God, Christ gave up his life for us.
Today, if you have never trusted in Jesus as your Savior, you can! Because he died for you! He has not left you along in your sin! Jesus was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins, we are healed by his wounds and experience peace because he took our punishment!
Today, you can experience that peace by turning from your sin and trusting fully in Jesus as the only one who can save you.
Please, if you have any doubts about whether you are saved, just come and talk to me. We have decision counselors that stand ready to simply talk through some things with you and hear your story. We would all love a chance to help you take this important step.
If you are already a Christian in the room, deal with God on these issues. Ask the hard questions of yourself about your own heart.