In the year King Uzziah died,
I saw the Lord
high and exalted.
The train of his robe filled the temple,
and above him were the seraphim, each with six wings. And
with two wings they covered their faces, and with
two wings they covered their feet. And with two they were flying,
and they were calling out to one another,
holy, holy, holy is the Lord God
Almighty. The whole earth is filled
with his glory.
And at the sound of their voices,
the doorpost and the threshold
shook and the temple
was filled with smoke.
Woe is me, I cried.
I'm ruined. I am a
man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean
lips. And I have seen the
king, the Lord Almighty. And
the seraphim flew to me with a live
coal in his hand that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And with
it he touched my mouth and he said, see, this hot
coal touches your lips, and with it your guilt
is taken away, your sin
atoned for. And I
heard the voice of the Lord say,
whom shall I send? Who will go for us?
And I said, here am I, send me.
And the Lord said, go tell this people,
be ever hearing, but never understanding.
Be ever seeing, but never perceiving.
Make the heart of this people calloused,
their ears dull, and close their eyes, otherwise
they might see with their eyes and hear with their ears
and understand with their hearts and turn and be
healed. And I said,
for how long, Lord?
And he answered, until the
cities lie ruined, until and without inhabitant,
Until the homes are deserted and the fields are
ruined and ravaged, until the Lord has separated everyone
far away and the land is
utterly forsaken. And although a
tenth will remain, the land will again be laid waste.
But as the terebinth and oak leaves a
stump when it's cut away,
so the holy seed
will be the stump in the land.
Father, I thank you for your word.
Your word reveals the clearest picture of who
you are. I
thank you that you preserve this vision through the generations
to meet us today, Lord, so that we might
not just see, but understand. Not just hear, but perceive. Would you
help our hearts see the
full picture of who you are
and be moved by you?
In Jesus name, Amen.
This message is somewhat of a reprise on
a teaching I gave a month ago in a midweek gathering. I don't know if
it's a reprise or a part two.
And I was called several weeks ago and asked if I would give a message
on holiness again, to which I was kind of feeling, please
no, don't send me in there coach,
not into the pulpit, but into holiness. Like
that. The Old
Testament tells us that the high priest would enter the holy of holies
one time per year to make atonement for sin. You know what
that tells me? God's people should not enter
into holiness casually,
without fear and trembling. And I was
reading a book by R.C. sproul, who said the irony of when he would bring
a teaching to his congregation on holiness is that they
would assume that somehow by his knowledge, that that mirrored a life
of holiness. When he said, in truth, behind the scenes, what he was learning is
no, the more I know about God's holiness, the more I understand
just how far away from it I am.
And during my midweek teaching, I posed the following question
to the congregation. If holy
is the characteristic of God, the only characteristic of God in
Scripture that's sung or lifted to the third degree,
he is holy, holy, holy. If his
holiness is declared nearly a hundred times in Scripture, and if Scripture
tells us another several hundred times, then that when
his holiness touches or inhabits something, that thing becomes
holy as well, then is it reasonable to say that
Scripture calls His people to think on his
holiness often? And if that's true,
why do we hardly ever hear about it or
talk about it or teach about it?
And I offer two observations in this midweek gathering.
Firstly, holiness guys is really difficult
to explain and articulate. If I were
to tell you the primary definition of his holiness is his set
apart sacred otherness, his transcendence, you
should rightly come to me and go, can you elaborate on that a little
bit? That's kind of those words in itself.
And I would have to go, I'm so sorry. That's all I got for you.
Here's the thing. He is the Creator.
He is not created. He is the existing
one. He did not come into existence. And the only thing
each one of us has at our disposal to try to explain
his set apart sacred otherness, his transcendent
existence, are things that only exist because of Him.
And in that way, we're kind of always going to come up short.
A teacher kind of has an uphill battle there. But
my encouragement is that biblically, I think we're in good company.
Listen to this vision of the Lord's glory and holiness from Ezekiel,
chapter one. And above the expanse over
their heads, there was the likeness of a throne in appearance
like sapphire. And seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness
with a human appearance. And upward from what had the appearance of his
waist, I saw as it were gleaming metal like the appearance of
fire enclosed all around and downward from what had the
appearance of his waist. I saw, as it were, the appearance of fire.
And there was brightness around him, like the appearance of the bow that is in
the cloud on the day of rain. So was the appearance of the
brightness all around. Such was the appearance of the likeness of
the glory of the Lord. Get it?
That's like the clearest, most unclear picture,
right? But listen to this. And when I
saw it, I fell on my face
and I heard the voice of the one speaking. Those
verses suggest to me that for a believer, the most
important part of knowing God's holiness is not so we can
describe it well to other people,
but so we can be moved by it
when we see it, when we perceive it.
The way Isaiah was moved and transformed by this vision of holiness,
it messes me up quite often. Woe to
me, I cried. I am ruined.
I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean
lips. And my eyes have seen the king.
So a prophet in the Old Testament oftentimes
was probably somebody, when compared to the standard of holiness around
him, probably seemed like an upstanding, righteous
guy. And a prophet was called oftentimes
in the Old Testament to pronounce woes on God's people.
You know, Jesus even does this in the New Testament. Woe to you scribes
and Pharisees, right? But the thing is,
is when Isaiah comes face to face with a holy God, the
true standard of holiness, the first thing he does as the
prophet, before acknowledging anyone else's sin,
pronounces judgment on.
Woe is me. I am ruined.
We never want to make the mistake of looking at someone else's sin
and thinking compared to that person, I'm doing all right.
If we're doing that, we're looking at the wrong standard.
He's the standard
we want to be looking toward God's holy standard so we understand
just how clearly we need Him. That
word ruin means to be cut down and shredded,
undone, shredded. Not like Pastor Justin, in a different
way.
So my second observation is that we don't bring it back.
Okay? My second observation is that we don't
speak or think or teach about God's holiness often
because we don't. It doesn't feel good to
be in the presence of that which leaves us undone
and shredded apart. We love to think
on the qualities of God that feel good, the warm and
fuzzies. But I'm not saying that
despairingly. I love his mercy. I love his
goodness. This is not a diminishment. This is
get the full picture. We love to think of the qualities of God
that make us feel good. But we're content oftentimes with keeping his
holiness at a good, safe distance.
And one of the things that I've been trying to keep in mind lately is
in these New Testament stories where we go to to build
our sermons on his goodness and his mercy. Maybe the woman caught in
adultery or something like that. No doubt his goodness and mercy is
all over that story. His holiness is in that story too.
He does not set his holiness aside in those
moments. I would suggest it's his holiness that makes his love
in that moment so otherly his
mercy so otherly that it causes the Pharisees to drop those
stones. The doorpost in the threshold had the common
sense to shake in his presence.
So for me, it's not a question of whether his holiness is there.
It's just a matter of if we're perceiving it to be there or not.
Here's an example of what I believe is his holiness being present
in a context I don't. I didn't expect. Luke 5, 7,
8. This is Jesus after he instructs the some of the disciples to
cast the net on the other side. After they've been unsuccessful,
they catch a bunch of fish. They signaled to their partners in the other boat
come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats so that they
began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw
it, he fell down at Jesus knees, saying,
depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O
Lord. That word saw is connected to the same word
Isaiah says when he says, my eyes have seen the King
beholding and perceiving something different here. This is
a incredible testimony of God's
favor and goodness.
But while everybody else is celebrating this, Peter's response is much different.
Here's my suggestion about this. Peter is a lifelong
professional fisherman. He's done a lot of fishing. He
knows when the fish are biting and when they're not. He knows when they're going
to and when they're not. He's caught a lot of fish or
very little fish. He's never seen anything like this before,
but it's kind of familiar. He's not just hearing,
he's understanding. He's not just seeing. He's perceiving that this is
a holy moment and the one standing in front of
him is holy too. And Peter's first
instinct with the knowledge of the holy is to be moved
to humility.
And his second instinct is to try to create
as much distance as he can between him and
the Holy One. Depart from me. So biblically, it
kind of makes sense, guys, that our instinct is to shrink back
and create distance from that which cuts us.
But this is what God, Jesus does in
Isaiah and Peter. He calls them closer,
he calls them deeper. He makes a way.
Why? Because as much as we try to
create that distance, we serve a God, a holy God,
who's desired to close that distance.
That he sacrifice his one and only holy Son Jesus to make
a way. And for that reason,
knowing his holiness actually makes his
gospel, the gospel, taste so much sweeter.
Because if you understand just how much ground
he had to cover to rescue us back,
help us, Jesus.
Isaiah was brought into the holy of holies, most likely
expecting death, but instead purified by a hot coal taken from
the altar. A sacrifice, indicating that a
sacrifice had been made that Isaiah didn't have to be a part of.
And it was after this moment of purification that Isaiah
hears the voice of the Lord, clearly hears the call, whom
shall I send? And Isaiah responds in a very interesting
way. Here am I not. Here I am.
And I think, here I am is an
offering of location. Here am I
is an offering of self.
I'm here, Lord. There is a call and a
response to God's holiness. 1st Peter
1:14, 15. But just as he who called you
is holy, so be holy
response in all that you do. As obedient children, do not
conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance.
And you ask, we ask in ignorance of what? Not knowing. Any
better? No, I don't think so. When we lived in
ignorance of not knowing a holy God who has a
holy Son that he gave for our forgiveness of sins.
And we've been given the gift of the Holy Spirit. Renewed hearts, renewed
minds, renewed affections for him, so we can turn and be
healed. He is holy, holy, holy.
The question is, when we hear the call to
holiness, are we responding? And one of the ways I believe
we can respond in holiness, according to what I see in scripture, is
with pride, which I don't recommend.
Just make that clear. Don't recommend it.
And I say pride because Isaiah 6 opens with these words in
the year King Uzziah died. And I was like, who is
this Uzziah guy? I gotta look this up. 2
Chronicles 26 tells us that he
receives the kingdom at 16 years old.
And I was like, people don't even trust their 16 year old with the
keys to their car, right? Imagine giving
one the keys to the kingdom. And
while that's hard to fathom, Scripture tells us he reigns faithfully
for 52 years. And the reason it's
faithful is because it says during that time he seeks the Lord. He
does what is right in the eyes of the Lord, and he holds to an
understanding of God that is taught to him by the prophet
named Zechariah, whose Scripture says instructed him in the
fear of God. And that word fear,
again, actually is translated as vision.
It's the same word that Isaiah uses when he says, my eyes have seen, my
eyes have a clear vision. I am beholding and perceiving
God clearly. When our eyes have a clear vision of who
God is, we have a clear vision of who we are and who he's
called us to be. But this is the thing I
thought about Uzziah's life. He was taught this vision
from somebody else. And how many know that
we cannot be sustained by someone else's vision of God,
someone else's experience of God?
My parents, I love them. They tried their best. They
really did. Bless their heart. They told me
about God. I didn't listen. I had
to see God for myself. And when I
did, everything changed.
It goes on to say, when King Uzziah sought God kept a correct vision of
the Lord, that God's presence and power went before him.
Everything he touched was successful. It was the favor of
the Lord was all over him. He was able to defeat armies, rebuild cities, build
strongholds. The land was fruitful. Everybody was happy,
having a good time. But at some point, we're told that in the
course of that, that place of favor becomes a place of
pride in his heart and in his pride. He
enters the temple, the holy place, casually,
and decides, I'm going to make a sacrifice to the Lord,
which is strictly forbidden for even a king
to do it. This is for consecrated, set
apart priests. He took
holiness casually at this point. And
it's an incredible scene, guys. Second Chronicles 26.
It says he is surrounded by priests who are saying,
please don't do this, please don't.
But instead of repenting, he becomes
angry. He digs his heels in. But, you know, I want to
be fair to this. Just like I said in the New Testament, I think there's
these stories where His Holiness is there. When his mercy is
in these stories where His Holiness is there, his mercy is there, too.
Because all the time, several times in Scripture, when people
took His Holiness, his presence casually, they were just.
I didn't even have to say it. Everybody said, right, that's right.
That didn't happen to Uzziah. He was
given leprosy. I
think that's actually an act of mercy. When King
Uzziah lost sight of who God was, he then lost sight of who he was.
He no longer feared the holy, and it was his lack of being
ruined by it which brought him to ruin and the end.
And I promise you, somebody can check my
Google search. I was like, is there anywhere in the Scripture that says he
repented? I. I want to say something happy to these people.
And I. There was nowhere. And I was like, well, that's
unfortunate. But, you know, sometimes
I think scripture leaves those things unsettled so that we
can think about it a little
deeper. Scripture says
that he remained king in the kingdom. Isaiah
6 still refers to him as king. 2nd Chronicles
26 refers to him as king. They don't take away the title. And
he's still surrounded by the spoils of the kingdom. But all the
power of the kingdom transfers to his son.
He has to live in a separate house from everybody, and he's not allowed to
go into the temple of God anymore, which. That
messes me up. That's a humbling reminder.
What good are the titles and all the
spoils of the kingdom and all the good stuff
in Christianity if there is no presence?
It's nothing. Paul says,
indeed, I count everything as loss
because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ
Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I
have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that
I may gain Christ. How else
Uzziah's story speaks to me is this. Firstly, again, context.
52 years of faithful ministry before this
happens. Firstly, we never mature past our
need for Jesus to be our Lord and Savior.
The full picture, not just Savior, not just Lord.
Lord and Savior. We never mature past the need for the
Holy Spirit to be revealing in us these
places that need deep, deep healing in our
hearts. And pride.
Pride is a scary thing to me in these
scriptures because in this story, it kind of builds up over time,
goes under the radar a little bit. It's hard to. It isn't
obvious. And pride is anything in our lives. I think that we say,
you know what, God, I know better than you in this.
I know better than what your word says in this.
Pride says, yeah, I know what your word says about sexual immorality
and impurity and idolatry and discord and jealousy and drunkenness
and selfish ambition and gossip and things like this.
But God, this time's different.
This relationship I'm in is different. You know, my Heart.
Have we ever been in that conversation with the Lord? Nobody
answered that. The
problem there is, I think we don't know his heart.
R.C. sproul says God does not lower his standards to
accommodate us. He remains altogether
holy, altogether righteous, altogether just.
And here's the thing. That list I just read,
read off Galatians 5.
His word cuts. According to
that, we're all getting cut. You understand?
Ain't nobody making it without him.
His word cuts when we come to it.
But we are called to depend on the Holy Spirit
to cut out the things in our lives that do not reflect his
holiness. And I was just
really. I was thinking about that. That verse in
Isaiah 6 Make the heart of this people calloused. And I was like,
how does that. How does callousing happen? I think it's when we
keep coming back to what cuts us casually, and
we're no longer moved by it, and we're no longer changed by it.
I have, as a guitar player these really thick calluses
on my fingers from years of playing. And what it
means is I can play guitar for hours with no pain, no feeling. I
can touch a hot pan on a hot stove,
freakishly, you know, doesn't bother me.
And the way that happens is I would pick up a guitar when I first
started, and those tiny little metal strings, they literally will cut
fingers. And if you play long enough, those things will turn into blisters.
And if you're stubborn enough to come back
over and over again and you don't
dress the wounds that are being exposed,
then those blisters become hard places. They become
calluses.
So Uzziah's life,
I look at that and I go, man, that's in my heart.
I don't want to make the mistake of thinking I'm better than that.
It changes my prayer life. We pray God,
please, please, Lord, reveal these places in our
hearts that are callous and no longer moved by your
holiness and bring us to brokenness so we might
turn and be healed. Help us be transformed.
One day, my wife was sitting on the couch, and our
youngest son, or young son. Youngest son. Was that prophetic? Oh,
no. Oh, no. I take that back.
Whoo. Okay.
Our young son was sitting on the floor, and I was
standing next to my wife, and she was looking at my
son, looking at me, looking at my son, looking at me. And I said, what
are you looking at? What are you doing? And she said, I'm trying
to figure out what traits he has of yours.
And she says, he has your lips. And in that moment,
Quickly, I lean in and I give her a kiss.
And I say, no, you have my lips.
And I stood up with this.
I still got it right.
Pride. And when I took a step back,
I tripped over this giant Paw
Patroller truck that my son had in the floor. Just, oh,
forever changed by that moment. I
don't got it. You know what I mean?
That's revealed. And you know what? I guess I could pretend that didn't
happen. But, you
know, who knows? It happened. My
wife.
And that brings you to humility. My recommended
response to God's holiness is humility.
When Moses encountered God in the burning bush,
something wonderful happened. I'm going to put the verses up on the screen so you
can reference what I'm telling you.
Moses is in the desert tending these sheep at the bottom of this mountain.
I think he's aware that there is a burning bush. And
also, I don't think it's unusual for there to be a burning bush in
the desert. Why? Because it's hot
and bushes are flammable. Okay.
Sheep are also flammable, and people are, too.
So I think Moses is going, well, let me do what I got to do
and keep you guys safe, you know? And. And at some point, he
starts to realize in his mind, man, you know,
what's usually familiar to me is not
acting like it usually does. And this
is what I love. He's writing this down. Moses says. And he puts this in
quotes, which means he says it out loud, which
means one of two things, because he doesn't know God is there. He's either
talking to himself or he's talking to the sheep.
And I like to think that he's talking to the sheep. He's just going,
hey, this is crazy. I'm talking to
sheep. I'm going to turn,
and when I do, I'm going to see something wild.
And I'm going to have to deal with it. I don't even know why I'm
telling you this. I think the heat has got to me. I might
be dead. And if that's the case, you know, good luck finding your way home.
This is the message translation.
And when he turns. Listen to this.
When the Lord saw that, he turned aside to see.
And that word see is vision, perceive.
Behold, same as Isaiah, when
he perceived God called to him out of the bush. Moses,
Moses. And he said, here I am. Then he said, do not come near.
Take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is
holy ground. And he said, I am the God of your Father.
The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. And Moses
hid his face. And it brings me to that throne room
image of those seraphim hiding their face. For he
was afraid to look at God. So
Moses right there becomes aware of the holiness that is
before him, and he's moved to humility.
And that is a story where God's presence inhabits something.
And that thing doesn't burn the way it used to.
I don't walk like I used to. I don't
talk like I used to.
And I began to think. Worship team, you can come out, please.
I began to think, what does humility
require of us?
And the word that came to me was surrender.
Surrendering to the holy.
Surrendering to that which breaks us and shreds us
apart and cuts away when we want to shrink
back from it. There
is hope in surrendering to the holy.
There is healing and restoration in surrendering to
what is holy, to a holy God.
A few weeks ago, I was outside building a playset for our kids, and
my daughter got a splinter
in her finger and my wife had to take her inside. And
when she took her inside, I just heard the worst screaming coming out of our
house for the next 20 minutes. It's because the fear of
what my daughter was going through, just like, oh, this is going to
hurt. And you know the thing about a child? They will try to
convince you, negotiate with you to leave
that splinter in. They'll say, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no. I can play
just fine. It's not even a thing. It's no big
deal. But, you know, as your mother and father,
we know that if you don't handle that thing there
that's being exposed, it could
turn into something worse that's much harder to deal
with over time. It could turn into a greater
infection. It could cause longer lasting pain, and we don't
want to see her go through that. But you kind of have to come to
a place in all this fighting, this
resisting, where you just go, look, do you want to be
healed or not?
And I was driving the other day and I thought, do you want to be
healed? And I just thought, man, I bet that's really hard
for Jesus to say, knowing
that one touch of his holiness could make that go away for
them. Many of us
who experienced this before with children understand
the process is much easier when the child
stops resisting and starts surrendering.
And I'm drawn back into this throne room vision where that hot coal
touches Isaiah's lips. And I go, man, that's
A searing pain that
probably took quite a while to heal. There's a process
to surrendering to the Holy Spirit. And Isaiah says,
for how long?
For how long, Lord, Do I have to be in
this? Do I have to be a part of this process of cutting?
And the Lord responds with this list.
The cities, the homes, the fields, the land, it's all
going to be cut away. All of the things that were built up
under Uzziah that the people put their trust in, that was not the Lord
had to be cut away. Why?
Because we serve a holy God who is not
interested in preserving our idols.
He's interested in restoring our worship,
healing our hearts, and drawing us
closer to Himself. He's closed the distance,
and that's what he's about.
There is good news in his holiness.
The end of that passage in Isaiah, it is a
promise that after everything
is cut away, which
hurts, no doubt, after
everything is cut away, there is one thing that remains.
The holy seed. Jesus.
Is that not good news?
This morning, instead of closing with the time of prayer in the altar space, I'm
just going to have Michael and Brittney lead us in a song. And I
just want us to take some time to think on God's
holiness. If there are places in our
heart that we need him to reveal to us, which I think we all have
it, now is the time to
surrender that to him, lean into that
brokenness instead of shrinking back from it. This
morning, you can do this in your seat, or the altar space is open. If
you want to come and be moved by his holiness, let's
worship.