An encounter with a Holy God

November 15 2020

Isaiah 6

         It goes without saying that there are a lot of slogans out there that are used to advertise all of the stuff that we can buy. We’ve heard them so often that we just kind of automatically know the company that they refer to when we hear them. If I say the phrase, “I’m lovin’ it”, you just know that this is what McDonalds uses to promote their fast food. Or is I say, “Just Do It” most of us know that this is Nike’s slogan. If we hear, “Eat Fresh” that of course is the jingle for Subway. The best of these give us in a nutshell exactly the reason we should choose the company behind them. We know when we hear, “Fifteen minutes saves you fifteen percent or more” we know this is telling us that Geico insurance might just be able to save us some money in a short amount of time.

         Now, I was thinking about these jungles or slogans because I was thinking about this sign that hangs above the pulpit in our church. It states “Holiness unto the Lord.” I grew up in a United Methodist church, attended a Moravian church, served in a number of churches and this is the first church I have been a part of that has had such a sign. To tell you the truth, I find it kind of neat. To me its like our jingle or slogan. For most of you though you may have attended so long that this sign just kind of blends into the woodwork; that’s the other reason I thought I should point it out. So, I wonder if somebody new came and read this sign and was curious just what it meant, what exactly would you tell them?

         I am required to take classes to be ordained as a pastor and this class I am currently taking is all about this idea of Christian Holiness. In this weeks assignment we were asked to explain what this idea of holiness means to someone who had never attended church and to do so on one sheet of paper. Let me tell you, I have taken a lot of classes so far and had a lot of difficult assignments but this one was one of the hardest one that I have had to do.I mean you think about it, just how would you explain this idea of holiness to someone who had no clue about God, or Jesus or the Holy Spirit and do it using just enough words to fill a single piece of paper, twelve font and double spaced. 

         You see holiness is one of those things we kind of know, something we think we know but when pressed to express what we know, it isn’t all that easy to talk about it. I mean we can all agree that God is holy. This means that he is nothing like us, he is without sin, and we can say that God is love, like this is who God is. God doesn’t just love us he is love; that certainly makes him different from us. So, all of these kinds of thoughts run through our mind when we say God is holy. Now the reason that it might be important for us to know just what it means to be holy is that in the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus, God tells his people, “You shall be holy as I am holy.” So in some sense, what God is saying to us here is that in some fashion we are supposed to be like him. On one hand then when we think of being holy we say that God is holy because he is nothing like us and on the other hand God tells us to be holy just like he is holy. Do you see how weird it is to talk about this thing called holiness? At least now you kind of have an idea where this sign we have in our sanctuary comes from, that it has its roots in this call by God that his people, in some way should be like him. The exact wording of this sign comes from the fourteenth chapter of the prophet Zechariah who prophesies that on the day of the Lord that the bells of the horses will be inscribed, “Holy Unto the Lord” and all the pots in the house of the Lord shall be as the bowls before the altar. Every pot shall be holy unto the Lord of Hosts. What the prophet foresaw is the day when what was thought to be the most common of objects would be considered as being able to be used for the holy work of God. No longer would holiness be something confined to the Temple but instead, one day holiness would be part of everyone’s every day life. From this then we start to understand what is meant by consecration which means to set something apart for God’s holy use.This then is what the sign we have is trying to remind us every Sunday, that we are to allow God to take us out of the world to be used by him for his holy purposes. All this then brings us back to the question just what do we mean by holy? What exactly is this holy purpose that God has chosen us to do?

         With all of these questions running around in our head we come to the scripture for today from the sixth chapter of Isaiah. It goes without saying that this chapter is a really strange, rather mind-blowing event that Isaiah invites us to experience with him. Not only that, but as we find out, this is when God calls Isaiah however this call does not happen in chapter one like we would expect but it happens after five chapters of prophesying by Isaiah have occurred. If you read these first five verses you hear Isaiah rail against all of the injustice he sees being done by these people who are supposed to be the people of God. Interspersed within Isaiah’s call of judgment against the people of Israel are these images of a glorious future that God has in store for his people that are found in the second and fourth chapters. Here Isaiah sees the day when people from all over the world will come to Jerusalem and learn the ways of the Lord. The result will be that the nations will beat their swords into plough shares and their spears into pruning hooks. So in these first five chapters there is this tension between what God’s people are now and this vision of what one day they will become. And then all of a sudden Isaiah has this vision, right out of left field. We are told that this vision happened in the year that King Uzziah had died. This detail lets us know that this is a year of uncertainty, a change in the leadership of God’s people. Uzziah had been one of the better kings but his greatness went to his head and in his arrogance King Uzziah attempted to go into the holy place of the Temple and light incense upon the golden altar. This was absolutely forbidden for the king to do what was the work of the priests. The priests took and surrounded the king forcing him out of the Temple and God punished the king by giving him the dreaded skin disease which meant that he was unable to be part of the rest of the community. His son Jotham took over the kings household and Uzziah  lived in isolation until his death.Now, I’m not sure if what had happened to Uzziah is important to our understanding of Isaiah. But as we study this vision of Isaiah we begin to notice that there are a lot of connections. So, what we re told next is that Isaiah’s sees the Lord sitting upon the throne. The throne of God was thought to be above the ark of the covenant in the holy of holiness, the most sacred place in the Temple so this helps us to understand just where Isaiah’s vision takes place. The statement that God is on the throne also tells us that here is the true king over all. The kings and rulers of this world come and go but the one true king remains and rules forever.We are told that God our king is high and lifted up not just physically but also in comparison to all that is in our world that seeks our worship. God is over all of these. Then we are told that the train of his robe filled the Temple. This is a very unusual wording to describe the presence of the Lord. If you look at the Hebrew word used for robe you find that it is used only in one other place and that is to describe the robes worn by the priests in the Temple. So the implication is that God is not only our king but he is also our heavenly priest. This serves somewhat to tell us why Uzziah was not allowed to be a king and to do the duties of the priests because only God was allowed to do both, to be our king and priest.

         Next we are told that above the throne of God were the seraphim. These are what we might call angels, or heavenly beings. Now these weren’t the cute little chubby beings with wings that are some Hallmark version of what we find in the Bible. No, these were terrifying awe-inspiring beings whose name means to burn. In some way they were fiery and they had six wings, two to cover their eyes because the glory of God was too much for them to behold; two wings to cover their bodies so that God could not look on them; and two wings by which they flew about. So the image is a flying fireball swirling around the throne of God. As is often said, where there is smoke there’s fire and this is also what Isaiah describes. So, Isaiah not only sees this awe inspiring imagery but he could smell the smoke that filled the Temple. This smoke corresponded to the burning of the incense in the most holy of places so that one could not directly gaze upon God otherwise they would die. Out of this smoke and this whirling of flying fire beasts came a loud chorus of voices crying out, back and forth to each other, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” The sound of their voices, we are told, was so loud that the doorposts of the Temple shook violently. Definitely not your typical worship experience.

         What Isaiah is witnessing here is the inner workings of heaven where the Lord of hosts, the leader of the armies of heaven is surrounded by beings who never stop declaring one thing that God is holy, the most holy, the one whose holiness is above and beyond any other.It is this most holy God whose glory fills the whole earth. It is hard to know just what is meant by God’s glory filling the whole earth but something Jesus told his disciples may help uncover its true meaning. In the seventeenth chapter of John, in what is called the High Priestly prayer, Jesus says, “The glory that you have given me I have given them, that they may be one even as we are one.” God’s glory fills the earth because as we know from the first chapter of Genesis, that when God created his image bearers that they were to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Knowing what we know about God’s holiness, that he expects his image bearers to be holy as he is holy, then we can begin to understand that God’s glory fills the earth as the people he created display his holiness throughout the world.

         It’s important that we have this understanding of how God’s glory fills the earth to figure out Isaiah’s reaction to what he witnesses in heaven. Isaiah cries out, “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.” After hearing Isaiah’s reaction we are left wondering just what does he mean when he says he is a man of unclean lips and that he lives among a people of unclean lips. There is a lot of speculation as to just what this might mean but I think that its important to figure it out within this context of the vision that Isaiah is having. When we think of what comes out of our lips we think of communication, the communication of who we are, what we’re thinking, what we value, all of who we are and what we find important can be find out by what we say. Isaiah has just heard voices of what had to be clean lips because these were voices that were before the throne of God the king. These voices were crying out about the holiness of the Lord. Their whole being, their purpose as they understood it was to declare the holiness of God. Isaiah immediately realized that his people, the people of Israel did not have as their purpose the exaltation of God, the declaring of God’s holiness to a watching world. Isaiah knew that he was one of them; their uncleanness was his uncleanness. Without a life that declared the holiness of God it was obvious that it was unable for him to remain before a holy God.But all was not lost because Isaiah knew what it meant to have a life that declared God’s holiness for we read in the fifth chapter of Isaiah that the Lord of hosts is exalted in justice and the Holy God is shows himself holy in righteousness. It is when we act towards each other with justice that we exalt or lift high our God the Lord of Hosts. It is when we live righteously we declare to the world our God is holy. This justice and righteousness has as its foundation the ancient rule that we are to do unto others as we would have done unto ourselves. This means that in our dealings with others we see in them ourselves and live with the understanding of the oneness of our humanity. This is the glory of God that is to fill the whole earth, one united humanity. Isaiah knew that the people of which he was a part of were not a people of justice nor righteousness but they were people divided by wealth and privilege.Isaiah knew how far from holy he was and he also knew the great weight of the holiness of the presence he was in. Yet even though he knew what he deserved, as one who was unclean in the presence of a holy God, what happened next must have surprised him. One of the seraphim’s flew to him with a burning coal in his hands that he had taken from the altar.The seraphim took the red hot coal and pressed it to the lips of Isaiah. Imagine how terrifying it must have been for this flaming fiery beast to take a burning coal in his hand and come flying at you to press it upon your lips. Yet more surprising still, Isaiah found that he was not burned but instead he was healed. The seraphim told Isaiah that his guilt had been taken away because his sins had been atoned for. To make sense of what happened we have to know that in the twenty ninth chapter of Exodus that after the altar of the Temple was consecrated it was then holy and what ever touched the altar would become holy. So, the coal from the altar was holy and when this holy coal touched Isaiah, Isaiah then became holy, healed and right before God. God took Isaiah’s sincere confession, that he was a man of unclean lips, a man whose life did not declare the holiness of God because he lived in the midst of a people whose lives also did not declare God’s holiness, and he cleansed him by setting him apart through his gift of holiness. In much the same way we become a cleansed people, people of justice and righteousness when the Holy Spirit takes the love of Christ which burned for each one of us upon the altar of the cross and he touches our hearts with the holy love of God. This empowers us to be people whose lives exalt our God through acts of justice, whose lives declare the holiness of God through our righteousness.

         Well, the atoning of Isaiah’s sin is not the end of the story. When God at last spoke, he asked, “Whom will I send and who will go for us?” As the story unfolds it appears that the question is being addressed to one of the heavenly beings but before they could answer, Isaiah says, “Here am I! Send me! Isaiah’s response is a response  of gratitude that God in his mercy did not remove Isaiah from his holy presence when he was unclean but instead made a way to cleanse him and make him holy.It always sounds so noble, so exciting that Isaiah was willing to be sent by God to go and speak the message of God to his people but Isaiahs calling was one which was unbelievably hard. Isaiah was to go these people of unclean lips, those whose lives did not declare the holiness of God and tell them that they were like him, in need of healing. Yet as God forewarned him, these people would not listen, they would refuse to see the need of a coming clean with God. God already knew that the fate of these people was sealed yet God still sent Isaiah. The reason God sent Isaiah was that he was a God of justice and righteousness; this is what makes him holy. And this is why he would warn his people so that one day they would look back and remember that God had once offered them his mercy through the cries of Isaiah but they had turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to the offer that had been extended to them. Unlike Isaiah who had allowed the fearful holiness of God to touch his life they would refuse him, satisfied with their status quo. What is important though is that Isaiah was willing to go, to serve God even among a faithless people. Isaiah would go because he had an encounter with a holy God, the true Lord and King who had been merciful to him. You see, what else could Isaiah do to show his gratitude but to give God back the life God had saved. So it is with us. God has cleansed our hearts by the burning fire of Christ’s love for us poured out for us upon the cross. What can we do to show our gratitude to God except to give our lives to him just as Christ first gave his life for us. We need to our lives and use them to exalt our God through treating others with justice. We need to allow our lives to declare that our God is holy God through a life of righteousness. May our prayer be the prayer of the seraphim that the whole earth may be truly filled with the glory of God. Amen.