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The Holy, Holy, Holy One Makes Us Holy
2.6.22 [Isaiah 6:1-8] River of Life (5th Sunday after Epiphany)
Fashion is funny, fickle, and fleeting thing.
What is fashionable today, likely won’t stay that way for long.
And what was fashionable before, is more than likely to make a comeback.
Fashion is a funny, fickle, and fleeting thing.
Perhaps the easiest place for us to see the fleeting nature of fashion is in jeans.
Colors and styles and hemlines swing back and forth.
In the 70’s bell-bottom blue jeans became a fashion statement.
The jeans of the 80’s were stone or acid-washed, ripped, and tattered.
In the 90’s jeans were baggy and wide legged.
The 2000’s were tighter and boot cut.
First cousins of the 70’s bell-bottoms.
2010 were the decade of the skinny jeans with rips reminiscent of the 80s.
Fashion is cyclical.
We’re probably due for a repeat of bell-bottoms and boot-cut jeans in the next decade.
You’ve probably lived through a few fashion trends.
You might not have bought into them all, but it’s likely that you adopted them a little bit.
And I’ll bet, tucked away somewhere, there’s evidence.
Like old family photos.
Usually, when we find those old pictures—and we know we look bad—we say something along the lines of “well, that’s what people wore back then!” as if we had no hand in picking out our own clothes.
Fashion is a funny, fickle thing.
In the moment, when everyone else looks like you, it seems like the most normal thing.
When you look back, though, it can be embarrassing.
Today, in Isaiah 6, the Lord’s prophet after whom this book is named, gets a good look at himself in the mirror of the law.
But he doesn’t just embarrassed.
He’s undone.
Isaiah sees (Is.
6:1) the Lord, high and exalted, (Is.
6:3) holy and mighty.
And it changes how he sees everything ever after.
Isaiah lived in a world that is not all together unfamiliar to you and me.
Fashion isn’t the only thing that is cyclical.
Isaiah lived in Judah during a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity.
(2 Kings 15:2) King Uzziah reigned in Jerusalem for 52 years, longer than David or Solomon.
Like David, Uzziah was a military force.
He commanded an army of more than 300,000 men.
He built towers with catapults into the walls of Jerusalem.
Even Egypt respected him.
But he wasn’t just a military force.
Uzziah rebuilt Judah’s public works and economy.
He dug cisterns and improved the land for farming and livestock.
(2 Ch. 26:15) His fame spread far and wide.
Life during the reign of Uzziah was good.
But just because the people enjoyed peace and prosperity doesn’t mean they pursued the Lord’s ways.
The people knew plenty, but they forgot the Lord.
They enjoyed many luxuries, but they lived like (Is.
1:4) a brood of evildoers.
The women dressed like they were about to attend the Met Gala— wearing bangles, headbands, and necklaces; bracelets, nose rings, and charms.
They carried fine purses, wore fancy tiaras, and admired themselves in expensive mirrors.
(Is.
3:16) They were impressed with themselves, but the Lord said they were haughty.
The men were greedy land-barons.
(Is.
5:8) Their homes were never big enough.
They gobbled up the fields of those who couldn’t afford to keep them in the family.
(Is.
5:12) They went from party to party—eating too much and (Is.
5:22) drinking too much and not caring at all about all those they stepped on as they continued to climb their way to the top.
Not only were the men and the women arrogant and greedy, they thought they had God fooled.
They held big religious looking festivals.
They brought generous offerings and spread their hands out in fine-sounding prayers.
(Is.
29:13) They honored the Lord with their lips and with other hollow gestures, but their hearts were far from him.
Though the Lord had blessed them with peace and prosperity they had forgotten the Lord and what righteousness & holiness really were.
(Is.
1:4) They had forsaken the Lord and turned their backs of the Holy One of Israel.
No one exemplified that more than King Uzziah.
(2 Ch. 26:16) After Uzziah became powerful and famous, his pride led to his downfall.
He was unfaithful to the Lord his God.
He went into the Lord’s temple like he owned the place.
Instead of following the Lord’s commands and having a priest burn incense for him, he tried to do it on his own.
When 81 priests courageously rebuked him, he raged at them.
Until the Lord intervened and afflicted him with leprosy.
Suddenly successful, powerful Uzziah wasn’t even allowed to live in his own palace any longer.
(2 Ch. 26:21) He was banned from the Temple.
And when he died, the people didn’t bury him alongside the other kings because (2 Ch. 26:20) he had leprosy.
He was unclean.
The people of Isaiah’s day were haughty and arrogant.
Pride infected their hearts as it had King Uzziah.
Yet, when Isaiah had the incredible and awesome encounter with the Lord, it was his own sin that stood front and center.
(Is.
6:5) I am a man of unclean lips and I am living among people with unclean lips.
Does this strike you as a strange admission of guilt?
At first, we might think Isaiah is denying responsibility.
I’m unclean, but I’m just like everyone else around me.
But that isn’t what he is saying at all.
(Is.
6:5) My lips are unclean and I’m living like all the people around me instead of pursuing righteousness.
In this confession Isaiah is driving at one of the most challenging things for us.
Like Isaiah, we live in a world where wickedness surrounds us.
It’s everywhere.
You don’t have to search for sin.
Evil parades itself in broad daylight & demands applause.
Sin is fashionable.
But sometimes when the darkness of sin is so thick, we think we’re doing alright.
Without realizing it, we’ve let the world reset the standard for holiness.
Our wicked world loves gossip rags and salacious rumors about famous folks.
And maybe you personally don’t care who’s dating whom in the celebrity world.
But think about how eager we are to hear juicy gossip.
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