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Facing Holiness By J.I.Packer

I have been very warmly welcomed here and the first thing I should like to say is that for me it's a very great pleasure and privilege to be sharing in this Rutherford House week here in St. George's Tron and certainly I feel the sense of privilege as I set myself now to bring you something from the Word of God in this evening service. And without more ado, now let's turn to the Word. If you have your Bibles, please keep them open at Isaiah chapter 6, the passage that was read to us a moment ago. And our sermon text is verse 3 of the chapter where we read of the angels, one called to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory.
We live in strange times, do we not? I have lived in Britain and I have lived in Vancouver, Canada and I have the same sense of strangeness in both parts of the world.
It isn't that all goodwill is gone and that there are no decent people around anymore, but yet, as compared with things that I remember 30 years ago, it seems that today nothing is sacred. Little sense of human dignity seems to remain.
Our preferred comedians are the Monty Python group, who 30 years ago would simply have been dismissed as disgusting. Mind, they are sometimes very funny, but the fact remains that 30 years ago they would have been dismissed as disgusting, and that's not the way that we regard the Pythons today. And there don't seem to be any agreed moral standards among us, but there don't seem to be any agreed moral standards among us anymore, no absolutes generally accepted
in society. And we seem ready to tolerate just about anything, any form of behaviour
on the part of our fellow men, and we feel we ought to. And so kinky things and freaky
things and weird things have a field day. And one just wonders where we shall be 30
years on down the line. Well, what do you think is happening to produce this change?
I think we have to acknowledge that in these respects, at any rate,
our Western society really is slipping. One asks why.
There's spiritual weakness here. One asks, of what sort? If I were asked to put my finger
on the chief spiritual weakness that I see in our Western world today, both in our general secular
culture and particularly in our churches—I'm sorry to have to say it, but I must say it
in our churches too. I know what I would say. Indeed, I am going to say it right now.
I believe that our chief spiritual weakness can be pinpointed like this. No longer do we see God,
in the sense, I mean, of realising who He is and remembering that we live in His presence.
That's something which was once the cement of our society,
but most of that cement seems to have moulded away. And even in our churches it's true.
When we hear about God, what is said comes to us as information
without what I call vision, information without realisation.
And while that is so, we shall see nothing else as we need to see it.
Therefore, I think it will be very much in our interest to meditate together this evening
on Isaiah's vision of God as recorded here in the sixth chapter of his prophecy.
He saw God, of course, in terms of physical vision. He actually saw something. I'm not
suggesting that we are likely to see anything with our physical eyes, but the effect of seeing
what he saw made Isaiah realise who and what God is, and that's the awareness, brothers and sisters,
that you and I need to recover. So that's my hope and my prayer for this message tonight,
that it will help us to recover something of the vision, the realisation of God.
Nothing, I believe, could do us more good. Nothing, I believe, is more urgently needed
at this present time. Note that the vision came to Isaiah in the temple. You ask what he was doing
in the temple. Well, the temple was the established place of the presence of God,
the place where you went to seek the fellowship of God under the old covenant set up.
And there was a particular reason why Isaiah should have been in the temple
seeking the face of God at this particular time. As he says at the beginning of verse one of the
chapter, it was the year that King Uzziah died. And King Uzziah was a strong king.
That's underlined for us three times in 2 Chronicles 26, where his reign is described.
Uzziah made himself strong. It says, this is the thing that stressed. And Uzziah had been on the
throne for 52 years. And I suppose that the death of Uzziah, the imminent death as it may have been,
or the death which had just taken place—you can't tell from Isaiah's phrase which it was,
but it doesn't really matter for our purposes—that would have come as a kind of national trauma
in the way that 80 years ago the death of Queen Victoria, who had reigned for over 60 years in
England, came as a kind of national trauma. And everybody wondered what was going to happen.
Everybody felt this was the end of an era. Everybody felt real uncertainty about the future.
And so I suppose it was in Jerusalem as King Uzziah's life ebbed away.
And the kingdom passed to young Jotham, a young man of 25, untried, nobody knew anything about
him. You can't wonder if there was real uncertainty and real anxiety as to what the future might hold.
So it's natural to suppose that Uzziah had gone to the temple
to pray, gone to the temple to seek God's face for the future of his people.
It says in the very first verse of Isaiah's prophecy that he received messages from God
in the reign of King Uzziah. Already then he had something of a ministry, as a prophet,
a spokesman from the Lord, and I suppose he was concerned to know what he should say to the people
in this time of national anxiety and uncertainty.
He had gone into the temple to get a message, to try and get his own mind clear.
And he was there in the appointed place of God's presence, and he was, I suppose, praying.
As I say that, I'd like just to slip in this word. I hope, brothers and sisters,
that every one of us is regularly found in the place where the Lord makes his fellowship
an experienced reality. That today isn't a temple in Jerusalem. It isn't any building
here on earth. It's the fellowship of God's own people. I hope that Lord's Day, by Lord's Day,
we are found worshiping with the congregation, which is the true temple of the Lord under this
new covenant order of things. If not, we can expect to miss fellowship with God, which we
otherwise would have known, and the fault would then be entirely ours.
So here is Isaiah. He's in the temple. He's anxious. He's praying. And he sees a vision,
an overwhelming vision. I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, it says, high and lifted up. His
train filled the temple. The temple was a building of about the size of St. George's Tron.
You can imagine the grandeur of the vision that Isaiah saw when you realize that the train,
that is the robes of the God whom he saw sitting on the throne, filled the temple. Think of it.
And I guess that the vision of the throne was enormous, and Isaiah had to raise his eyes to see
it. It was a vision of greatness. It was a vision of divine grandeur.
It was more. It was a vision of holiness. Isaiah not only saw, he heard, and what he heard was
angels, seraphim, the shining ones, that's what their name literally means,
crying one to another in praise of God. And their words were holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
And the threefold repetition of that word holy is not, at any rate, not primarily
to drop Christian readers a hint about the Trinity, though sometimes the threefold
repetition has been taken that way, but primarily it's repetition for the same reason as we repeat
things, namely for emphasis. Holy, holy as it were in italics, holy as it were in capitals.
As emphatically as can be, the angels were celebrating the holiness of God.
And the way to focus what Isaiah saw is to understand it as a vision of holiness.
This in very truth is the notion that holds everything together. Do you know what holiness is?
Holiness in the Bible as a word applied to God the Creator means first everything that sets
him apart from us men and makes him different. It means second everything that sets him above us
and makes us makes him worshipful and awesome to us. And the very fact that Isaiah had to raise
his eyes to look on God spoke to him of the fact that God is, as God always must be above him,
as God is above us. Holiness stands for everything that sets God above us. And thirdly, holiness is a
word which points to everything that sets God against us and makes him terrible to us. As we
shall see, there are aspects of the difference between God and man which do make him terrible
to us. And the God whom we worship and serve is the same God whom Isaiah saw. There's solemnity
then for our own souls in this message. There's a hymn in some hymn books. Not, I'm glad to say,
in the hymn book from which we were singing tonight, written by, alas, an Anglican bishop.
I speak as an Anglican. It hurts to confess it. It's a dreadful hymn. It's a hymn which
celebrates Isaiah's vision and gets it absolutely wrong. Maybe you know the hymn.
Bright the vision that delighted once the sight of Judah's seer, sweet the countless tongues united
to entrance the prophet's ear. That makes it sound as if it was a performance of the Grand
Opry in Jerusalem. It wasn't that sort of experience at all. Isaiah was overwhelmed
with awe. Isaiah was flattened with shame, as we shall very shortly see.
This was a vision of God's holiness.
And when unholy men realize that they're in the presence of a holy God,
it doesn't bring delight and it doesn't bring entrancement.
It doesn't bring joy. It brings a sense of personal need and personal crisis, as it did here.
But let's take these things in order. This was a vision of holiness. Holiness in scripture can
be compared to light, as it breaks up into a spectrum of colors as you pass it through a prism.
Five qualities at least unite together to make up holiness. Every single one of them
is here in this story. I want to pinpoint them and bring them together so that our
understanding of the holiness of God will be full. So here they are, five qualities
which together make up the holiness of God. Quality number one, lordship.
Or, as we love to say, behaving just for a moment like Americans and preferring the long
word to the short one, sovereignty. Perhaps it's because I'm English. I prefer the short
word to the long one. I have my problems. The other side of the Atlantic, I'll tell you,
with this preference of mine, I would much rather talk about God's lordship.
I would much rather focus this first quality and the holiness of God, this first dimension of it,
in terms of the Bible picture of it, the picture that you got here, God's throne.
And I would much rather express it in the way that the English Bible
translates the first words of no less than five of the Psalms, God reigns.
For this is the first element in God's holiness that we have to reckon with.
He is Lord. He is King. God reigns, as indeed we've already been singing in one of our hymns.
Remember how this is put at the beginning of Psalm 93?
The Lord reigns, says the Psalmist. He's clothed with majesty.
The Lord is King and he's girded himself with strength.
The world is established. It shall never be moved. Thy throne, says the Psalmist,
is established from of old. Thou art from everlasting. The Lord reigns.
His throne is established. God is King.
Isaiah saw the throne of God. So did Ezekiel when he was called to be a prophet. Do you remember
Ezekiel's vision? The essence of it was that out of a storm cloud came an enormous throne
and one like a man, says Ezekiel, he doesn't know quite how to express it, sitting on the throne.
And where you would have expected to see the legs of the throne, there was wheels, whirling wheels,
as if it was some mighty dynamo that was coming to meet Ezekiel.
And the wheels whirling were emblems of endless energy. God is King. God reigns. God is on the
throne. God has unlimited power. God maintains his kingdom. John, the seer who wrote the last book of
the Bible, was in Patmos for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. We're told
he was suffering exile. The civil authorities had banished him because of his testimony.
He saw visions. You remember, first of all, letters were given him for the seven churches,
and then the visions began in chapter four of Revelation. And the first thing he sees
is heaven opened and in heaven there is set a throne.
And the meaning of the throne is what, let me say it once again, that God is King.
And there's a story carefully told in the 22nd chapter of 1 Kings, which brings out
this same truth. It's the story of Micaiah, the prophet who, when the story starts, is in prison.
King Ahab was put in prison because Micaiah has not spoken to order. Micaiah has spoken
negatively of Ahab and the things that Ahab was doing. King Jehoshaphat, from the southern
kingdom, from Jerusalem, has come to visit King Ahab in Samaria, Ahab being king of the northern
kingdom. Ahab suggests to Jehoshaphat that the two kings combine with their armies on a prestige
military operation to recapture Ramoth Gilead, a northern city of which the Syrians had recently
taken possession. Jehoshaphat, who's a godly man, says, well, let's consult the prophets of God
and see if there's any word from the Lord about this idea of yours.
Very well, says Ahab, and he produces his court prophets. And it was very obvious to Jehoshaphat
that they were just yes men who, first of all, noticed what it was that the king wanted to hear
and then said it. And Jehoshaphat, at the end of their performance, is very uneasy. And he says,
isn't there another prophet here, perhaps, whom we could consult about this matter? And Ahab said,
well, there's Micaiah. He's in prison and he deserves to be. He speaks evil concerning me.
Oh, no, says Jehoshaphat. Let's have him out. Let's see what he has to say. So Micaiah is brought
out. And brought before the two kings concerning whom, the writer says, 1 Kings 22 and verse 10,
the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, were sitting on their thrones,
arrayed in their robes at the threshing floor at the entrance of the gate of Samaria,
very grand, very dignified, very awesome. And here is the prisoner laid in and set before them.
And they ask him the question, Ahab puts it, shall we go up to Ramos Gilead or shall we not?
And first of all, Micaiah mocks the king. He's been told what the court prophets did and he
imitates them. And the king sees that Micaiah is mocking him and says to Micaiah, don't make fun
of me. How many times shall I charge you to speak to me nothing but the truth in the name of the
Lord? And then Micaiah speaks up boldly, not in the least phased or overawed by the grandeur of
these two men in their royal dress on their thrones. And he warns Ahab that if Ahab goes
up to Ramos Gilead, it'll be Ahab's death. And then he tells us, tells Jehoshaphat and Ahab,
and all of us who read the story, why it was that he wasn't overawed by the sight of these
two kings on their thrones. Verse 19, Micaiah said, therefore hear the word of the Lord.
I saw the Lord sitting on his throne. I won't take it any further. Do you see the point?
Micaiah had seen the Lord sitting on his throne. Micaiah knew what Isaiah learned in the temple.
The Lord is king. God's in charge. Really? Not Ahab, not Jehoshaphat, just as today.
It's not the president of the United States or any of the world's rulers who are really in charge.
The Lord is king. God, he is on the throne. The first strand in the holiness of God is his
lordship. In his lordship, God overrules everything, the life of kings, the death of kings,
and everything that happens, great things and small things in his world.
Even the death of Jesus Christ on the cross was overruled by God according to his eternal plan.
Do you remember Peter saying that on the day of Pentecost?
Do you remember him being delivered by the fixed plan and foreknowledge of God,
you by the hands of wicked men crucified and slew? The guilt is yours, but the plan was God's.
God is king. It was, in fact, the truth which, above all truths,
Isaiah needed to learn at that time as he was troubled and all the people were troubled
at the death of Uzziah and the uncertainty that they felt about the new king and the new reign.
Do you see it, brothers and sisters? Are you clear that you are in God's hands and your
circumstances are in God's hands? He is king in relation to everything that concerns you?
It is so, and it's a very, very comforting and supportive doctrine.
But there's more to the matter than this. The second strand in the holiness of God,
which this story sets before us, is the reality of his greatness.
Isaiah saw a vision of lordship, and God was high and lifted up. It was a vision of greatness, too.
And the sense of God's greatness was increased by the vision of worship,
which Isaiah saw, the worship of the angels who were there hovering before the throne.
Each of them, we are told, had six wings. With two of them, each was covering his face,
like that, I suppose. With two of them, each was covering his feet,
and with two he was hovering, as birds do hover. And that was a vision of worship,
a vision of the spirit of worship, the spirit that should be our spirit as we worship our God.
The wings crossed before the eyes spoke, surely, of reverent restraint in God's presence,
unwillingness to pry into God's secrets, unwillingness to know things which God
doesn't want you to know. Putting it the other way around, it shows readiness
to listen and to hear what God says and to be content with that.
You know, in our study of divine things, it's the easiest thing in the world to give way to
a frivolous, even an irreverent curiosity and ask questions to which the Bible doesn't give
the answer, questions which don't make any practical difference to the lives that we live.
That sort of curiosity, brothers and sisters, is an irreverent thing,
and we need to learn the lesson from the angels that that's something we must learn to negate
in our own hearts. Augustine, we are told, was once asked by one of these frivolous,
curious, speculative folks what God was doing before he made the world,
and Augustine ripped out with a rather sharp answer, but I suppose he knew his man and knew
that the man deserved it, making hell for people who ask questions like that.
Tough stuff, but sometimes our curiosity does need to be sharply rebuked.
I have known, I guess you have known, folk who have been distracted from present-day obedience
by their absorption in abstract theological problems, questions which are speculative,
questions to which there's no certain answer, questions which they really would have been wiser
not to ask. Well, this is part of our worship, reverently to settle for as much as God is
pleased to tell us and not to try to pry into his secrets. Remember what Moses told the people
in God's name at the end of Deuteronomy, the secret things belong to the Lord our God.
He has his secrets and he keeps them. The things that are revealed, however, they belong to us
and to our children that we may keep all the words of this law.
They're revealed, these things, so that there may be obedience.
Well, we are in the same position as those to whom Moses spoke. Many, many things that we can think
to ask questions about are not revealed to us in scripture, but the things that are revealed
are revealed for our belief, our obedience, our discipleship, our guidance in the business of
actual living. And then each of the angels, we're told, had two of his wings covering his feet.
And that, I suppose, expresses the spirit of self-effacement in the presence of God.
The true worshipper doesn't want to call attention to himself.
He doesn't want to attract notice. He doesn't want to be seen.
Is that your spirit when you come into church, Lord's day by Lord's day?
Do you want all the attention to be focused on God?
Or would you like a certain amount of attention to be focused on you as well?
The true worshipper makes himself small in God's presence,
so that nothing may distract anyone from discerning God's greatness.
And this is a second element in true worship, reverent restraint and self-effacement.
And with that, a third quality expressed, I think, by the posture of the angels hovering
there before the throne, readiness to go and readiness to do as soon as God shall speak the
word. You've seen birds hovering. As soon as they have reason to move, they dart off. Sure.
And we, as worshippers of God, as soon as we realize that God wants us to go somewhere and
do something, as soon as we realize what the will of God is, what the call of God is, what work there
is for us to do, we should be off and away and into it. Zeal to go and do as soon as God shall
give us on our orders. This is the third element in the spirit of true worship. Before this story
ends, we see one of the angels going and doing something which the Lord told him to. As soon as
the word was given, he was away on his mission, a mission in this case to Isaiah personally.
Well, I ask you, brothers and sisters, is this worship as you and I practice it?
Reverent restraint, self-effacement before God, and readiness to go and do according to his word.
This was the vision of worship that Isaiah saw, and this was the lesson in worship that was taught
him. God give us grace to learn it too. And so here, you see, you have the second strand
in God's holiness presented and appreciated by the angels. He is Lord and he is great,
and the angels worshipped him, and so you and I must learn to do too.
But then in this story, we meet a third strand in the reality of God's holiness,
the words of the angels celebrate his nearness. His nearness to his own creatures, his nearness
to you and to me and to Isaiah and to all men. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts,
said the angels. The whole earth is full of his glory. There's no place in the world where you
can go and get away from his presence, for that's what the word glory means. You know,
glory always points to the manifested presence of God.
The whole earth, said the angels, is full of his glory. The point they were making is the same
point that celebrated in Psalm 139. For the psalmist says, whether shall I go from my
presence? How, Lord, can I get away from you? That's the thought. And he answers his own
question by saying, there's no place I can go from your presence. This is verse seven and now
verse eight to nine. If I ascend to heaven, says the psalmist, you're there. If I make my bed in
shale under the earth, you're there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost
part of the sea, even there thy hand shall lead me and thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say let darkness cover me, but darkness is not dark to thee. The night is as bright as the
day. Darkness is as light with thee. There's no place I can go and cease to be under your eye.
No place I can go and be out of your sight. That's what he's saying to God. And for him,
as a godly man, it's a great and a comforting and a glorious truth that there's no place in
this world where you're away from the presence of God. The truth would only be an alarming truth
if in fact one was trying to get away from God. Of course, there is a man in the Bible story who
did try to get away from God. His name was Jonah. You know what he did? God said go east to Tarshish.
In every sense of the word, Jonah went west. He went down to Joppa. He took ship to—sorry,
I got it backwards, haven't I? God said go to Nineveh. Jonah went to Tarshish. That's right.
I was never very good at geography. You have to excuse me. He went down to Joppa, bought a ticket
to Tarshish, sailed off west, you see, where God had said go east. Did he get away from the
presence of God? No, he didn't. And you know what happened to Jonah? To convince him that he was
still in the presence of God. Still God's eye was on him. Still God knew where he was. And still God
was shaping circumstances around him. You can't get away from the presence of the Creator in the
Creator's world. I hope you don't want to. I really do hope, brothers and sisters, that you
don't want to. If you want to get away from the presence of God, to do things which you would
rather God didn't see, you are in for a sad time. Yes, you are. For there is no place where we are
not under God's eye. No place where he doesn't see what we do. No place where we could hope that he
won't notice and therefore won't react. It's the height of folly to do things in secret, secret
that is for men, and suppose that God too won't notice and won't know. But here Isaiah is prepared
to learn the truth about the nearness of God. And he hears it. And I'm sure he took it to heart.
And this was the third strand in the revelation of the holiness of God that came to him.
Lordship, greatness and nearness.
And then fourth, Isaiah's vision was a vision of purity. God's purity which is the heart of
his holiness. You can picture God's holiness to yourself as a circle and around the circumference
of the circle are all God's attributes. But at the heart of the circle is a light which shines
so brightly that one can scarcely look at it. And that is the heart of holiness. That is the purity
of God. Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil and canst not look on iniquity, says Habakkuk
to God in chapter one and verse fourteen of his prophecy. God is pure. God is straight.
God is good. God always does right. And in all these respects, God is different from us fallen
men. This is the uncomfortable aspect of the holiness of God. This is the disturbing, the
frightening aspect of the matter which I told you before we were going to have to look at.
This is the aspect of God's holiness that is terrible to men. And once you see it,
please God, it will haunt you as it haunted Isaiah until he found out the way to come to terms with
it. For it is a terrible reality of which I'm speaking the purity of God before which we who
are crooked, not straight, we who are not upright, we who have a track record of disobedience and
defiance of God, we who have done unclean and unholy things, we cannot stand before this.
You can't see it, brothers and sisters, but I in this pulpit am a practical parable of the
thing I'm talking about. Right opposite me there are two lights so bright that I can't look at
them. The holiness of God is like that. And so Isaiah discovered. We're not told that any word
came to him directly from God about himself, but as he heard the angels celebrating God's holiness
and as he realized it, God's purity in the depths of his own soul, then spontaneously he began to
see himself as he'd never seen himself before. And he said, and you have it in verse five,
woe is me for I am lost. For I'm 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. Notice what he feels here.
He is, as we would say, convinced of his own sin. Sure. He's convinced of his own sinfulness.
Yes, indeed. But real conviction of sin, you know, is always more than conviction of one's
own sinfulness. It becomes specific. One is always convinced of particular sins for which
one needs God's forgiveness. And Isaiah was particularly convicted of his sins of the tongue.
That's what he means when he says, I am a man of unclean lips.
You say, what were his sins of the tongue? Well, we don't know, but it's easy enough to guess. By
nature, he was a very, very eloquent man, a wizard with words. He is undoubtedly the most eloquent of
all the Old Testament prophets. That was a natural gift to him. Folk who are wizards with words,
again and again are found doing things with words, which it's hard to defend. What do we do if we've
got skill with words? We use words to put other people down. We use words maliciously to tear
strips off them and put them to shame. We gossip. I've heard gossip defined as the art of confessing
other people's sins. It's a good definition. We use our gifts of speech, perhaps, to win causes
by bad arguments, to pull the wool over people's minds, to distract them from seeing straight the
lives that we're living. We use words to fool people. We use gifts of speech for self-aggrandizement.
We use our gift with words in order to get on. We use our gift of words in order to exalt ourselves
in the sight of other people and to get ourselves a reputation. He's a clever fellow. You ought to
hear him talk. And we know what we're doing, but it doesn't stop us doing it. It's pride,
it's conceit, it's self-seeking, it's dishonest, it's defiance of God, it's shameful. But these
are the sins of the tongue, which again and again, still in the year of grace, 1983, men and women
are committing. And Isaiah had fallen into these sins over and over again. He adds, I dwell in the
midst of a people of unclean lips. Everybody's doing it. But that from Isaiah's standpoint
doesn't make it better. It makes it worse. He can't justify himself for having gone the way
that everybody around him was going. It's no excuse to have gone with the crowd when the crowd
was traveling along the path of sin. One of the miseries of our time is that we are so poor when
it comes to standing out from the crowd. When the crowd is traveling in the path of sin, we don't
like being conspicuous. We don't like standing apart from what they are doing, whoever they are.
So we don't and we go along with them. What Isaiah is lamenting here is the fact that he
has gone along with the way that everybody around him is talking. He says unclean lips. I expect
that foul talk, blasphemous talk was part of the trouble in the community around. And I expect that
like so many young people today, he picked up habits of foul and blasphemous talk and thought
that there was something rather wonderful about using words in this way. But now he sees his use
of language as God has been seeing his use of language for these months and years. And he cries
to God, I'm a man of unclean lips. I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. I'm lost.
Now at last he sees his guilt. Conviction of sin has become specific.
If there hadn't been a sense of his own inner uncleanness,
one might have doubted whether it was real conviction of sin. Just to feel that you've
let yourself down, that you've fallen short of your own standards, you know is less than
conviction of sin. But equally, if he hadn't had a specific sense of particular things that
he'd said and done of which he must repent, if that had only been a vague unfocused sense
of uncleanness, that wouldn't have been conviction of sin either. Real conviction of sin is both.
You know yourself unclean before God. You know something of the twistedness of your own heart
and there comes back to your memory this, that and the other that you've done which was shameful
and scandalous and offensive to God. And unless it's forgiven, you're lost. This was what Isaiah
came to realize as he saw the vision of the holy God in the temple. And that leads us to reflect
on the fifth and final strand in the revealed holiness of God which Isaiah saw.
We've thought of the qualities of lordship and greatness and nearness and purity.
And the fifth strand is mercy. This also is an aspect and an expression of the holiness of God,
mercy. P. D. Forsythe, great theologian of 80 years ago, never tired of saying,
our God's nature is holy love, holy mercy. You know how Isaiah experienced the mercy of God.
One of the angels was sent on mission. He brought a coal from the altar. He touched Isaiah's lips.
He says, look, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away. Your sin is forgiven.
You're not lost. You're restored. God loves you.
We know how to understand that emblem, that sign, which speaks of the coming sacrifice
of Jesus Christ for the sin of the world. The altar was the place of sacrifice.
Jesus Christ, the son of God, came down from heaven to give his life for sinners
in the agony of Calvary. And when the shed blood of Calvary touches our lives,
our guilt is forgiven. Our sin is covered. We are restored. We are saved. Praise God itself.
And the mercy of God, the grace which comes to us undeserving as we are and brings us this
salvation. This is the fifth and perhaps the most glorious element of all in the holiness of our God
world. With his purity goes mercy. With his righteousness goes grace.
And so Isaiah found himself forgiven, restored, his conscience cleansed.
He was still the same man as he had been before with the same track record that he'd had.
But he knew that it was all covered now.
I, the chief of sinners, am, but Jesus died for me and the knowledge of that makes all
the difference. He was a forgiven sinner. And in his joy, when he heard the voice of the Lord
saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us, he volunteered. Here am I, he says, send me.
And you can understand that he was grateful.
And I trust, brothers and sisters, that you and I who know the pardoning mercy of God for our sins,
our specific sins, and who know that the uncleanness and sinfulness of our hearts
is covered by the blood of Christ, I hope that you and I are grateful too.
And that in our gratitude, our hearts also say to our God, Lord, here am I, send me.
What would you have me go and do? I said a moment ago that that's one strand in true worship.
Now I say it again and it's an attitude motivated by knowledge of God's pardoning grace.
In scripture, it's been said doctrine is grace and ethics is gratitude. Am I talking about your
life? I wonder when I say that. Do you live your life out of gratitude to the God who loved you
and saved you from your sins at the cost of Jesus death? Well, I hope so. For this is true godliness.
This is true Christianity and nothing less is true Christianity.
May God then write these things in our hearts. Such is God's holiness.
Lordship with greatness, with nearness, with purity, with mercy.
Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And if you look at him as we meet him in the pages of scripture,
you find all these five qualities attaching to him. Lordship, remember that vision of
Christ in glory in the first chapter of Revelation. Greatness, think of that same vision.
John saw it and fell at his feet as one dead. Nearness, he saw Nathaniel under the fig tree,
although physically he wasn't anywhere near Nathaniel under the fig tree,
but spiritually he is present everywhere and knows everything.
Purity? Yes, the first time that there was a remarkable catch of fish at the word of the Lord,
Peter sensed it and he said, depart from me. I'm a sinful man, O Lord. He felt the Savior's
purity that moment, felt that he wasn't fit for Jesus' company.
And mercy? Need I quote any passages from the Gospels to illustrate for you the mercy of Jesus
the Savior, who in the days of his flesh pardons sin as still he does from heaven.
Son, your sins are forgiven you, he said. Still he says that to those who acknowledge their sin
and according to the promise, confess it if we confess our sins, says John in first John chapter
five and following. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness. We who have to do with Jesus Christ face one whose character is exactly as
was the character of the God whom Isaiah met in the temple, for he is in very truth the second
person of the Godhead whom Isaiah met in the temple. He is God and this is what the holiness
of Jesus means, but in his holiness he does pardon those who seek his pardon.
He is the gracious Lord. Praise his name.
It was good that Isaiah was motivated by great gratitude as indeed he was,
for God sent him on a hard mission. He had said himself, I live in the midst of a people of
unclean lips. I live in an ungodly community. That's what he meant. God sent Isaiah to preach
to that community, that Jewish community, and he warned Isaiah that they would not receive
his message or at least not many of them would. That's what God meant when he said to Isaiah
in verse 9, go and say to this people, hear and hear but do not understand, see and see but do
not perceive. That's a way of telling Isaiah that they're not going to receive your word,
Isaiah. You will be a lonely isolated figure as you bring my message to them. Are you prepared for
that? Isaiah in the warmth and the joy of his gratitude was prepared for it and that was the
mission on which God in fact sent him. We who know the grace of our God, we who know the forgiveness
of our sins from the hand of the Lord Jesus, we too may find that the work on which our God sends us
in this day and generation isolates us, makes us seem like speckled birds, brings us misunderstanding,
is not appreciated, faithful witnesses for Jesus Christ are not always appreciated in these days.
I trust that we are motivated by the warmth of gratitude which will support us
under the pressure of ungratifying service who's indeed the service of our master sometimes is.
Well we've seen the holiness of God. God right the vision in our hearts.
God bring home to us as we contemplate God's holiness our need of the mercy which is part
of that holiness and God confirm our souls in the enjoyment of that mercy
and so may God strengthen us to go about his business and be his servants and witnesses and
messengers in his strength in these days. So may the Lord bless his word to our hearts
and to him be the praise and the glory. Amen.