I preached this past weekend on Isaiah 6 – Isaiah’s call story. It’s one of those passages that begs for an over-active imagination, like mine, to be let loose. The scriptures say, Isaiah was in the throne room of the Lord and he witnessed or experienced the holiness of God. Seeing what was surely beyond his capacity to fully grasp, Isaiah was undone. He fell on his face and cried out in despair. His sin and the sin of his people was as real to him as anything he had ever known. And this realization dropped him.
In that spot, Isaiah is purified. An angel touches Isaiah with a coal from God’s altar and Isaiah is now no longer laid out, but up and fully present. When I read this part of the story, I’m amazed at the “instantaneous-ness” of it all (yes, I know instantaneous-ness is not a real word.) When Isaiah cries about his sin, we get the sense, that both his and his people’s brokenness, was something oppressive on his soul. The burden of his own junk was crushing in on him. But with one touch, the purifying offered to him is complete and it only takes a millisecond. “Snap” – it’s gone and he’s been imbibed with God’s very own holy.
I was listing to James Bryan Smith’s podcast, Thoughts from Above, and he was talking about the “finality of the cross” and the resurrection life in a believer. He says that at the cross sin – your sin, my sin, ALL sin – was dealt with for all time. Its oppressive reign was annihilated for all time for everyone. It is now our responsibility to step into the channels of God’s grace to receive that pardon – to become reborn; to allow the sin to not just be covered but removed.
Smith also said it’s not just about the finality of our sin, but also the reality of the resurrection. We are invited to live into this new life and to receive from the Holy Spirit all that we need to be holy as God is holy. We have it…already…living within us…sin no longer has to control and enslave us. Will we mess up? Shoot, I do all the time, but it still means I can “go on to completeness” or as Wesley said, “on to perfection.”
As I listened to Smith, Isaiah’s experience came back to me. This guy was made pure in the presence of the Lord and the Lord called to him with a question – who will go for me? Isaiah was up off his face – hand raised – empowered and ready to tell the world about God’s goodness. He wanted people to know this holy God wasn’t the “smiter of men.” For Isaiah, God’s holiness wasn’t oppressive – it was far from legalism or rule-following. God’s holiness was purifying and good and life-giving. God’s holiness was life-changing in a way that lifted up and transforms and never pushed down.
And I believe, it’s this new reality that Isaiah received that he was so quick to jump and offer to tell people about. It’s what compelled him to say “here I am. I will go.” There is a word for that – a word for what Isaiah was swept up into, what it was that he couldn’t wait to share with the world. In Hebrew the word is kabod – it’s translated as heaviness or weighty. In the new testament, it is mostly the word doxa. We mostly use the word “glory” in our English translations for both these words.
The heaviness of God’s presence is God’s glory – the brightness, the honor, splendor that comes from the gravity of God’s presence. God’s glory is the beauty of who God is – it is the captivating and intoxicating essence of God’s being that floods creation with beauty, goodness, and truth. God’s glory is what brings Isaiah to this place of being wonderfully undone and restored and sent. It is the who or what of God that is so often unidentifiable and yet so real and personal and felt.
The glory of God breathes life into everything. It’s the glory of God that brings grace – the unmerited favor of God in our lives. God graced Isaiah with God’s beauty and purity and it flowed from the glory – the heaviness of who God is. God’s grace does that with you and me too. God’s grace wooed us to Him. God’s grace opened our eyes to see our need for him. God’s grace allowed us to say yes to him. God’s grace allowed us to be forgiven. God’s grace powers into us the life of resurrection, and God’s grace gifts for the work ahead. And it’s God’s grace that is poured into us in the person of the Spirit – God’s very self as close as our breath (remember the word for Spirit is also the word for breath – how intimate and awesome is that?!?).
God’s grace does this because of the Glory that God is! God’s glory wipes away all that isn’t holy, pure, and loving. And it is God’s grace and beauty that also says “I will make a way for you to be who I created you to be.”
No wonder the church responds to this God in “doxology.” In ancient words that reveal and speak to the glory of God.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
Praise him, all creatures here below;
Praise him above, ye heavenly host:
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
As I’ve reflected on this today, I’ve realized that my soul, mind, and body are in deep need of the weight of God’s glory. Like many of you, I have felt the weight of a lot of things these last months and weeks. The weight of pandemic and the weight of change and the weight of injustice. The weight of speaking or not-speaking. The weight of loving well. The weight of demands and expectations. We all face these things and the “weight” you are facing is certainly different from mine – but it’s still there. And I’m longing for a different weight.
What I’m longing for is what Isaiah experienced. The weight of God’s brilliance, splendor, holiness…glory that undoes me and restores me and fills me with a joy-filled life response. I want to enact in my life the finality of the cross and receive the grace of the resurrection life every day. And I want to be so consumed with his Glory that I find myself breaking out in doxology often.
And I want this because, like the people living in Isaiah’s time, we need to encounter the Glory of God again. I want the revealed glory of Christ to be so real in me that the world around me takes note. I want to know that glory because I believe it is the only way the weight of all that other stuff will be properly sorted out.
So, I don’t know, maybe join me today and return to Isaiah 6 and let’s let our over-active imaginations run wild into the glory of God. Who knows, maybe we may find ourselves jumping up saying “here I am. Send me too.”
It was in the year King Uzziah died that I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple. 2 Attending him were mighty seraphim, each having six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3 They were calling out to each other,
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Heaven’s Armies! The whole earth is filled with his glory!”
4 Their voices shook the Temple to its foundations, and the entire building was filled with smoke.
5 Then I said, “It’s all over! I am doomed, for I am a sinful man. I have filthy lips, and I live among a people with filthy lips. Yet I have seen the King, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.”
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7 He touched my lips with it and said, “See, this coal has touched your lips. Now your guilt is removed, and your sins are forgiven.” 8 Then I heard the Lord asking, “Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us?” I said, “Here I am. Send me.”
Isaiah 6:1-8 (New Living Translation)
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1 comment
Hey Jim! Great observations here, and I thank you for sending them. Isaiah knew what all of us know– that what draws us to God is the love he shows for us, an unconditional love that breaks down our self-erected barriers of defiance and arrogance and liberates us from any kind of slavery that can attempt to take our spirits hostage. I became a Christian instantaneously not all that long ago when, while reading a simple book, I read a short descriptive explanation of what Jesus’s sacrificial act was in the overall process of grace. Two things happened immediately. First, I looked up from my reading and realized I genuinely loved Jesus for the humanness of his sacrificial love for us. Then, the very next thought was, “I believe in Jesus.” His grace toward me thus motivated a deep and visceral love based on a gratitude for what he did and everything he stands for, and it was that love that propelled me into a sense of overwhelming confidence in him, that I instantly realized was faith. I couldn’t believe it. It was like turning on a light switch. I went from a casual reading of a book to a near-instantaneous love of Jesus and the beginning of a faith that now abides and grows daily. I was amazed then and I’m amazed now, but I can clearly see that Jesus is all about grace and he is the model for all of us as well. Anyway, thanks so much for including me on your blog. We all still miss you here. Hope all is well with you and the family!!! Love, Grace & Peace to you and them. Tom