As my next
consideration of “the Gospel for all Sinners,” I began praying about what God’s
book means by, “the power of God for salvation.”[1]
I want to know the connection between the power of God expressed in the gospel,
and the power of God that fills the church in our preaching of the gospel. How
can we know how to experience this power of God saving us, and then sending us
to make this good news known for the saving of others?
My thoughts
ended up back in an early section of God’s word where one of God’s prophets had
a terrifyingly liberating experience with God. It helps me understand something
of the power of God that brings salvation to our souls.
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!”
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.”[2]
What stood
out first is that this was all God’s initiative. Isaiah did not say that he
asked for this encounter. Rather, he speaks of something God did to him from
beginning to end. God revealed himself to Isaiah so he could join God in his
work.
However, when
I looked at what Isaiah contributed to the picture, his response to the vision God
gave him was to see his poverty of spirit, to mourn his woeful condition, to
meekly identify his own inability to do anything about what was wrong with him,
and to hunger and thirst to join God in his righteous work.[3] While
I do not want to force the Beatitudes into this, I recognize that this is the
way God works. The Beatitudes are the blueprint of his work in us. Therefore, it
is no accident that Isaiah’s response to God looks the same.
Isaiah
expressed his response to God like this:
· “Woe is me!” (5)
· “For I am lost;” (5)
· “for I am a man of unclean lips,” (5)
· “and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;” (5)
· “for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (5)
I see in
Isaiah’s response, not only the Beatitudes, but also the way people will
respond to the power of God in the gospel. When God came to Isaiah in the power
of his holiness, it did not first produce a powerful messenger. It produced a broken
man.
“Woe is me!”
A woe is bad
news. It means someone is in trouble. Isaiah had just seen the glory of the
Lord, and the result is that he felt woe, distress, impending doom. The glory
of God’s holiness did not make him feel safe. It did not make him think he
could condone his sin. It did not give him encouragement to list his good
works. He knew he was in dire trouble to see God in his glory. He knew he was
not acceptable to God in his condition. The vision of God’s holiness terrified
him, and he was filled with dread about what the holiness of God would do to
him.
The point is
not that Isaiah was about to be blasted off the face of the planet by God’s
holiness. It is about the way Isaiah felt when he saw God’s holiness. He was a
good man, as good men went in the day. However, he was wrapped up in the
culture of his generation, including their distance from God. His admission of
woe indicated that he immediately saw a great disparity between him and God.
There was no encouragement whatsoever that seeing God in his holiness was a
good thing.
“For I am lost;”
In
relation to this vision of God’s holiness, Isaiah felt lost, disconnected,
distant from this God. This was not someone he knew. This was not the way he
had pictured God. It was not the way he understood God looking at him and his
people. He had no sense that he was close to God, or that this holiness was his
home, or that he had known this God as he had grown up in the religion of
Israel. The only thing such holiness could make him feel was that he was lost
to this God.
It
is interesting that, when Isaiah received this vision of God, something many
people would have imagined they would have wanted for themselves, it did not
make him feel found. It did not have the feeling of God coming to find him. It
had the feeling of him being lost. He may have thought he was a good man until
then. He may have had the typical mindset of the Jewish people that they were
the chosen people of God, so all was well.
In
fact, it reminds me of the religious leaders of Jesus’ time and ministry. They
kept discovering that they were out of step with the Messiah. When John came to
prepare the way for the Messiah, and he called everyone to repentance, the
religious leaders believed they were already good enough, so they would not
repent. They had a religion of good works made in their own image, and they were
sure they were good enough.
However,
as soon as Isaiah saw God in his holiness, the only thing he could believe is
that he was lost from that holy God. He was not close to God. He was not
acceptable to God. He was not in intimate fellowship with God. He was not
buddy-buddy with God. There was nothing in Isaiah’s heart that made him believe
God would be pleased with him.
This
was an early expression of what Jesus said would characterize the world at his
coming. Jesus came the first time, not to condemn the world, but to save the
world.[4] The second time Jesus comes,
although he will gather the elect to be with him forever, he will also execute
God’s judgment against the world. Jesus explained it to his disciples like
this, “Then will appear in heaven the
sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and
they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and
great glory.”[5] When the world sees Jesus
coming, they will mourn. While his appearance to his people will be like our
hero arriving on the scene to crush our enemies, it will be like the world’s
worst fear coming true beyond their wildest imaginings. They will mourn at the
utter hopelessness of the situation, and the overwhelming despair of seeing
God’s holiness in the face of Jesus Christ.[6]
In
the book of Revelation, the description of Jesus’ coming is stated like this:
15 Then the kings of the earth and the great
ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and
free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, 16
calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of
him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, 17 for the
great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”[7]
To see the one who is seated on his
throne, and the Lamb who is his image, is to feel the utter terror of God’s
holiness. It doesn’t matter how powerful, or sinful, or influential, anyone is
in this lifetime, when Jesus comes, no one will stand against the wrath of God toward
the unrepentant sin of the world.
As the Psalm-writer said, “If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O
Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be
feared.”[8]
I originally learned this verse in the NIV. It reads, “If you, LORD, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?”[9]
The point is that, if God kept a record of sins, no one could stand. Isaiah
knew this when he saw God’s holiness. If God kept any kind of record of his
sins, he stood no chance of standing before that holiness. When Jesus returns,
and the world sees the holiness of God on the face of Jesus Christ, and sees
that the day of their wrath has come, they will know that no one will stand
before them.
This is why Paul wrote,
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that
is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in
heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.[10]
Jesus has been so highly exalted, and
given the name that stands above every other name, “King of kings, and Lord of lords,”[11] so
that, when the world is confronted with the return of Jesus Christ, and they
see the wrath of God on the face of the Lamb, they will bow their knee before
the judgment of God, and confess with their mouths that Jesus Christ is indeed
Lord. It does not matter how much power anyone wields in this earthly life; not
even the power that Satan himself exerts in leading the nations astray. He,
too, will bow before the Lord Jesus Christ, confess that it has always been Jesus
Christ who is Lord, and surrender powerlessly to Jesus’ judgment against him.
This is the only way that people can
know God if they are lost. If they do not come to Jesus before his return, they
will feel the weight of lostness, the utter and completely unredeemable
lostness of the human soul.
“for I am a man of unclean lips,” (5)
Here
is why there is woe on Isaiah’s life. Here is why Isaiah felt lost in the
presence of God’s holiness. It is because he was “a man of unclean lips.” His approach to God was unclean. What he
spoke even in his highest expressions of worship was unclean. What came out of
his mouth was unclean and unacceptable.
This
is not talking of some vulgar man who pridefully spouted off all his swearing
and cursing. This is talking about a man who was living in the God-given
religion of Israel, observing the law, living by the sacrificial system, but
had no connection to the holiness of God.
The
only way Isaiah could see himself in relation to God’s holiness was as a man of
unclean lips. He could not speak in his defense, because anything he would say
would come out of unclean lips. He could not give a defense, or even plead for
mercy. All he knew was that he was under the judgment of God’s holiness because
of his uncleanness of heart and soul and word and deed.
“and I dwell in the midst of a people of
unclean lips;” (5)
It
is very important to recognize this, that Isaiah’s first response to God’s
holiness was to understand his own woeful position. However, he was what he was
in context of a culture and generation that were unclean in speech and conduct.
No matter how much the people approached God in outer ceremony, their hearts
were hardened towards God, far away from him, and so the things that came out
of their mouths were unclean.
When
Isaiah saw the holiness of God, he did not look to the religion of the day to
help him out. He had no hope in turning to the sacrifices, or the worship
practices of the day. He knew that the things proceeding from his own mouth
were unclean, and that he lived in the midst of a people whose words and
expressions were unclean. He had no hope in him, or in anyone around him.
“for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (5)
Here
is the reason Isaiah felt woe was upon him. This is the reason Isaiah felt lost
and condemned. Here is the measure by which Isaiah knew he was guilty of
uncleanness himself, and the shared uncleanness of his community. It was that
his own eyes saw God. It was with his own yes that he saw “the King, the LORD of hosts,” or “Yahweh of hosts.”
If
people of today asked Isaiah to describe what he saw in heaven, and whether he
could affirm or contradict the belief that man is free to approach God through
any religion they desire, and to describe God in any way that pleases them, his
answer would be, “my eyes have seen the
King, Yahweh of hosts!”
In
other words, Isaiah would tell people that there is only one God who sits on
the throne, and he is holy beyond description, so that no one could ever
imagine approaching him on their own merits, or describing him in their own
terms. Isaiah would tell us that he is the Holy One, the King, the LORD of all
hosts of people, of angels, and of demons. He is LORD over those who are for
him, and he is LORD over those who are against him. He is Yahweh, the
resplendent one who has no equal. To see him is to instantly know that all we have
created in our own minds, and all we have imagined of a god in our own image,
and all we have worshiped of creation instead of Creator, is meaningless. In
fact, it goes beyond meaningless into an indictment of guilt upon us for
seeking anyone and anything besides him.
The beginning of the Gospel for
all sinners
The
beginning of the gospel is our lost condition. The gospel is good news in
relation to the bad news. The bad news is that we are sinners who will stand
before a holy God who causes even righteous and religious men to fall before
him in horror at their sinful condition. When Jesus, “the image of the invisible God,”[12]
comes to judge the earth, sinners will be horrified at his holiness and his
wrath. They will see the face of the holy God who sits on the throne, and of Jesus
Christ, the Lamb of God, who radiates the glory of God’s holiness upon a sinful
world. They will cry out to the rocks, and the hills, and the mountains, to
please cover them so they do not need to see this wrath expressed to them. The
nations who have rejected the King of glory will see him coming in glory, no
longer to offer salvation, but to execute much deserved judgment.
The
gospel continues to ring through our time, no matter how much or little time is
left. It shows us a holy God who cannot be appeased through good works, but so
loved the world that he sent us his Son, Jesus Christ, who lovingly laid down
his life as the sacrifice for sin. He now forgives all who come to him in the
name of Jesus Christ, fleeing the world, the flesh, and the devil, and all the presence,
power, and consequences of sin. He welcomes everyone who comes to him on the
basis of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, putting their faith in him,
trusting in him alone for their salvation.
Even
Isaiah discovered that he could be made completely right with this holy God,
not by doing good works, but by experiencing atonement as the gift of God.
However, that is a post for another time. Today, let the holiness of God expose
your sin in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ who will bring you to the
Father for the forgiveness of your sins. As the song-writer declared, “But with you there
is forgiveness, that you may be feared.”[13]
© 2015 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
[1]
Romans 1:16
[2]
Isaiah 6:1-8
[3]
Once again returning to the Beatitudes of Matthew 5:3-6
[4]
John 3:17
[5]
Matthew 24:30
[6]
II Corinthians 4:6 shows that all God’s glory is seen in the face of Jesus
Christ, including the holiness Isaiah saw.
[7]
Revelation 6:15-17
[8]
Psalm 130:3-4
[9]
Psalm 130:3 (NIV)
[10]
Philippians 2:9-11
[11]
I Timothy 6:15; Revelation 17:14; 19:16
[12]
Colossians 1:15
[13]
Psalm 130:3-4
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