Behold and Surrender | Sermon 3.13.22

Gray Gardner

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Introduction

Illustration:

Clemson football games, euphoria of fans, men hugging total strangers.

OR, like last season, great disdain worn on your face, head dropped, choice words, or “surrender cobra.”

You don’t have to beg a diehard Clemson football fan to “show some emotion” at a game. It just happens reflexively.

I love Clemson football and the atmosphere of those games. But sometimes I catch myself noticing the difference in my posture, my attentiveness, my passion, my affections for God during church. I’m often struggling to remain fully engaged. I’m frequently half-hearted in my singing and joy. And the times when I do feel it, I feel a little uncomfortable — a little self-conscious — spontaneously and reflexively showing my emotion in outward expressions like raising my hands or kneeling.

And then I look around. And I recognize that many of us are in the same boat. Many of us are half-hearted at best when we come into this room.

Men who cried over a basketball game the day before are like statues in the sanctuary.

Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections:

In matters which concern men’s worldly interest, their outward delights, their honor and reputation, and their natural relations, they have their desires eager, their appetites vehement, their love warm and affectionate, their zeal ardent; in these things their hearts are tender and sensible, easily moved, deeply impressed, much concerned, very sensibly affected, and greatly engaged; much depressed with grief at worldly losses, and highly raised with joy at worldly successes and prosperity.

But how insensible and unmoved are most men, about the great things of another world! How dull are their affections! How heavy and hard their hearts in these matters! Here their love is cold, their desires languid, their zeal low, and their gratitude small. How can they sit and hear of the infinite height, and depth, and length, and breadth of the love of God in Christ Jesus and yet be cold, heavy, insensible, and regardless! Where are the exercises of our affections proper, if not here? What is it that more requires them? . . . Can anything be set in our view, greater and more important?

How is it that you and I can be so ardent in our beliefs about who God is in His grandeur and glory, His beauty and power, and yet be so unmoved by Him?

How is it that our stadiums are more full of emotion than our sanctuaries?

How is it possible to meet the sovereign King of the universe and yet remain unchanged?

Today, I want to show you how one man’s experience meeting God radically transformed his life, and how it might speak to our lives as well.

Scripture Reading

Isaiah 6:1–8 (ESV)

1 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;

the whole earth is full of his glory!”

4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”

8 And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”

Biblical worship requires:

Today I want you to see from this passage that biblical worship requires beholding God in His glory, confessing your sin, receiving forgiveness, and living in obedience.

1. Beholding God in His glory (vv. 1-4).

Spend more time on this point

1 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord . . .

Isaiah’s vision begins with the sight of God exalted on His throne.

King Uzziah’s death:

Died around 740 BC after 50 years of mostly prosperous reign. He died, though, by disobeying God and contracting leprosy. He died unclean, rebellious.

Not only that, Israel was beginning to feel the pressure of enclosing armies from Persia

After 50 years of Uzziah’s reign, most of the people alive at the time of Uzziah’s death had only known peace and prosperity. There would have been anxiety about what would happen next, if they would be provided for, if they would be protected, what foreign armies might look for an opportunity

It is in this year — this context — that Isaiah looks to heaven and sees that although the earthly king has died, the sovereign king of the universe remains on his throne.

Application: We are in a similar place nationally as Israel — anxiety is high, global conflict escalating, economic pressures from inflation, political division and instability.

Stop looking to Washington or Wall Street for your peace, comfort.

Look to the One who sits upon His throne unfazed.

—> But when you look to Him, you need to ensure you’re seeing Him as He really is. That you are seeing Him truthfully, not just as a projection of who you want him to be.

A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us... Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.

So what does Isaiah see?

1 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.

First, God is sitting on a throne, high and lifted up; the train of his robe filling the temple. (v. 1)

“High and lifted up” reflects not just God’s position in space and time — like he’s actually high in the air above the earth — but also His supremacy above all things. His is a throne that is not only massive, but supreme in authority

“Lord” — “adonai” — “sovereign one” — God has absolute authority over all of His creation

Psalm 115:3 “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.”

His robe filling the temple — the place in ancient Israel where heaven meets earth — showing that although God is transcendent and omnipotent and ineffable, he is also present and close.

God’s not just “out there” — he’s in the room.

Next, Isaiah’s vision turns to what’s happening around the throne:

2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.

Seraphim (plural for seraph) — lit. “burning ones”

These are heavenly, angelic beings that are perfectly pure and sinless, existing for the sole purpose of ministering to and praising God

Fire represents God’s holiness throughout the Bible, and these angelic beings are absolutely consumed by their nearness to God

Wings — cover their faces, feet, and fly.

They cannot see or be seen

They cannot stand on the same ground (lit.), or choose their own path (fig.)

Perfect divine beings are at risk of being entirely consumed by the raw power and divine glory of the Triune God.

Words used demonstrate a constancy to their movement: they are always covering their faces, always covering their feet, always flying, always calling out to one another.

And what is it they constantly call out? ...

3 And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;

the whole earth is full of his glory!”

Holy, holy, holy:

In Hebrew, words would often be repeated twice to emphasize a superlative or a totality.

Example: in one place in 2 Kings, our translation reads “pure gold” but the Heb. actually reads “gold gold.”

But nowhere else in Scripture is something given such an emphasis so as to be repeated three times.

J. Alec Motyer, Isaiah

But here for the only time in the Hebrew Bible a quality is ‘raised to the power of three’, as if to say that the divine holiness is so far beyond anything the human mind can grasp that a ‘super-superlative’ has to be invented to express it and, furthermore, that this transcendent holiness is the total truth about God.

Holy = “brightness,” the unapproachable God, or “separatedness” of God’s nature

The Heb. word for holy has it’s root in a verb that means “to cut” or “to separate”

Louis Berkhoff:

It does not seem proper to speak of one attribute of God as being more central and fundamental than another; but if this were permissible, the Scriptural emphasis on the holiness of God would seem to justify its selection.

Not only does God’s holiness refer to his moral perfection and righteousness, but it also defines all his other attributes:

God’s love is a holy love, meaning the way He loves is totally perfect and separate from the way we love.

God’s justice is a holy justice, meaning the way He judges is totally perfect and separate from the way we judge.

and so on.

Application:

For some of you, your God never contradicts you. You and your God always agree, which is to say, God always agrees with you, never challenges you on your attitude, thoughts, or behavior, never calls you to something hard or uncomfortable or out of touch with your pattern of life.

Your God is not a holy God. Your God is not the God of the Bible. Your God is essentially just a projection of your own beliefs and tendencies.

We need to come face to face with the God who IS, the God who is perfect in His holiness.

4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.

This is a total sensory experience: overwhelming in magnitude, blindingly bright, unbearably loud, shaking earth, temple, and man to its core.

Isaiah sees God in His glory. And it’s only after seeing God for who He truly is, that Isaiah can see himself as he really is.

2. Confessing your sin (v. 5).

Biblical worship requires not only beholding God in His glory, but also confessing your sins.

Face to face with the holy God of the universe, Isaiah has only one response:

5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

Woe is me!

Lit. - “I am ruined!” “I am done!” — Word used to mean “to be silenced”

Like a teenager caught in the act of rebellion against their parents, silenced by their mom and dad’s knowledge of what they’ve done: “I’m dead!”

Prophets would announce “woes” against those who sinned against God, as a way of proclaiming judgement on them.

Isaiah would do so later in the book of Isaiah.

Jesus famously pronounced woes against the Pharisees.

Here, before Isaiah ever moves to proclaim judgment on the rest of Israel, he first declares a woe against Himself.

“Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips”

Isaiah see’s his sin, first, as primarily to do with his lips — his mouth, his speech. But he also recognizes that he lives in a culture marked by the same sin.

This indicates a few things:

First, our speech is sinful in its inconsistency: with it we praise God and curse people.

James 3:7-10 “7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, 8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.”

Second, our speech is sinful shows the idols in our hearts.

Matt 12:34 “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”

Isaiah sees God in His glory, and He is immediately confronted with the sinfulness of his heart as demonstrated by his speech.

Application: What do you praise? How do you speak to people? Do you gossip, tear down, slander? Do you speak harshly? What does this reveal about your heart?

Isaiah is left undone in His sin before a holy God. If the fiery, perfect angelic beings cannot even look upon God in his holiness, then what is to happen to Isaiah in his uncovered sin?

3. Receiving forgiveness (vv. 6-7).

Isaiah looked at God and was undone by what he saw because of His sin. But then he learned that God is not only holy, but gracious.

Notice a few things here:

1) God goes to Isaiah in the midst of his sin, before he was clean, in order to make him clean.

God didn’t wait for Isaiah to clean himself up before he accepted him. He ran towards him.

2) God sacrifices upon his own altar in order to atone for Isaiah’s sins.

God’s demands as a holy God are impossible for sinful humans to follow

But God provides for what he demands in an act of sheer grace — he takes from His own altar that which is required to atone for Isaiah’s sins

Atone = pay the penalty for, set in the right

This is a foreshadowing of what was to come with Christ.

In spite of our sin, God ran towards us:

Rom 5:8 “8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

In spite of our sin, God sacrificed himself for us:

Rom 3:23-25 “23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.”

In His death, Jesus was absorbing the penalty for His people’s sins.

Remember in Genesis 2:17? The penalty for sin was death.

You can’t charge sin as on a credit card, paying minimums until you get enough money to pay it completely off and move on with your life.

The payment is your life!

There is no way to pay interest on the wages of sin and keep on living month to month, because sin separates you from the source of life, God Himself.

But Jesus made a way.

Like a rich benefactor paying the debts of someone owing millions of dollars, Jesus steps in and pays the debt due to sin — substituting Himself for us, dying in our place, absorbing the penalty of sin.

In so doing, God’s justice is satisfied: the debt is paid. At the same time, He is able to forgive sinners and show them mercy, because He paid it Himself rather than making them pay it. The brilliance of God’s plan!

Then on the third day, in a great act of victory over the powers of sin and death — the powers which the great enemy uses to enslave mankind — Jesus is raised from the dead!

4. Living in obedient surrender (v. 8).

In response to this good news, Isaiah responds in the only way that’s right: obedient surrender.