Seeing God for Who He Is--Republished from 2016

Our second challenge on Sunday centered around the way that we see God...our view of Him. Now I would venture to guess that no one reading this blog would say that they have actually seen God. We may have seen the results of His presence, or the work of God in the life of someone we know or even our own life, but we haven't seen God in the way that Isaiah did in Isaiah chapter 6.

Read Isaiah 6:1-8.

Now notice some things here about Isaiah's interaction with God.

1--He truly saw God. No filters, no veils, no nothing. He says in verse 1, "I saw the Lord..." and then he explains what all he saw as he was looking at the Lord. So many times when we come to the Scriptures (which is where we truly see God), we come with a set of filters that taint our vision of Him. We come with preconceived notions that come from our past experiences, our upbringing, or our theological bent. But God wants us to look at Him without these filters, and just see Him for Who He is. We need to truly see God...no filters, no bias...and let that change us.

2--When Isaiah saw God for Who He was, he saw himself for who he was. Notice his response to seeing all of this in verse 5: "Woe to me! I am ruined!" A loose paraphrase might be, "Oh no! I'm going to die!" Why? "I am a man of unclean lips (or a sinner) and I live among a people of unclean lips (or sinners), and my eyes have seen the...Lord Almighty!"

When we see God for Who He truly is, then we realize just how much of a sinner we truly are. When God's reality becomes reality to us, our sinfulness becomes that much more apparent. There is nothing more hideous than seeing something you thought was clean held up next to something that really is clean. You thought it was looking good, but then you see that it wasn't all that good at all.

Isaiah identified his lips as unclean. Why was that? Because he was a preacher, and had been preaching for quite a while before this particular event took place. He was struck by the purity of God and that his own words were not as pure as God's words. This caused him to think that God would strike him down because of it.

But God's mercy triumphed over judgement and he sent the angel to purify Isaiah's lips. A burning hot coal on the mouth would have been painful. But that leads to the next thing I want you to think about...

3--When we see ourselves for who we are, it brings pain. God had to purge Isaiah from his sin and so when it happened, He brought pain upon him. Friends, our sin should bring us pain. Maybe not physical pain as in having a burning hot coal touch the part of your body that is sinful, but the pain of knowing that we have offended a righteous, holy, sovereign God. If our repentance and confession doesn't bring a modicum of pain, are we truly repentant? Pain is not always a bad thing.

When I was in college I tried my hand for about a week at weightlifting. Needless to say, I didn't stick with it. But one of the things that I remember my trainer telling me was this..."Pain is just weakness leaving the body!" I never forgot that. And this applies to the Christian life as well. When we experience pain...the pain of repentance, the pain of loss, the pain of being unjustly accused and persecuted...weakness leaves us. Spiritual weakness becomes a thing of the past. We become Spiritual Body Builders that can face the toughest of challenges in the strength that we have been given from the Lord. And we remember that it is not our strength, but God's!

4--Only after his sin was purged was Isaiah ready to do the work that God had called him to do. Friend, what is it in your life that the coal needs to touch? Perhaps it is your mind harboring lust, greed, envy or bitterness. Perhaps it is your hand that reaches out to steal, hurt or hide those things that are unworthy of the follower of Christ. Perhaps it is your lips that speak gossip, slander or lies. Perhaps it is your feet that take you to places you should not be. Whatever the case is, ask God to show you Who He is so that you will have the courage to tell Him where your sin is the ripest. Then He will purge your sin...painful as it may be...and then He will call to you.

Then be ready to say with Isaiah..."Here am I! Send me!"

Feel free to comment below or ask a question. And we hope to see you on Sunday!

Something Completely Different—Part 2

I was watching the snow fall this past Sunday morning, and it got me to thinking about the passage of Scripture that tells us “though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool.” (Isaiah 1:18—NLT)

Yesterday we talked about praying for people who pop into your mind. Today I want to tell you about a practice that I try and do at least once a day, and most of the time at the end of the day or even throughout the day. It is the practice of repentance.

What I try and do is find a moment or two where there is nothing pressing on my time. No phones to answer, no kids to watch, no sermon to write, no letter to mail, no book to read, no TV to watch, no nothing. I just get alone and I pray this very simple prayer. It goes like this:

“Lord, please reveal to me anything in my life
that is offensive to You. Bring it to my mind that
I may confess it and repent.”

Then I wait. I allow my mind to think back through my day, afternoon, morning, whatever, and think about those things that I have done, said, thought or even considered that might have been offensive to God. If there is nothing, I say “Praise God!” and go about my day. But when there is something (and more often than not there is), I move on with my confession.

Confession of sin is simply agreeing with God that what I have done is offensive to Him. It is stating that I have sinned, and I need to be forgiven. I confess my sins to God because that is what I am commanded to do (1 John 1:9—“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us…”).

Once I have confessed and received God’s forgiveness, I then need to continue on toward repentance. Repentance is turning from those things I have done that offend God and moving toward Him. Obviously, this assumes I know His Word and His will for my life, so that I can move in the right direction. But I must fill the void of sin with holiness.

Jesus put it this way in Matthew 12:43-45:

“When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, seeking rest but finding none. Then it says, ‘I will return to the person I came from.’ So it returns and finds its former home empty, swept, and in order. Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before.” (Emphasis added)

Notice that this “evil spirit” left the person for a time, but when it came back, there was nothing there to replace it. I think that Jesus is telling us that when we seek forgiveness through confession of sin, we are truly cleansed. That’s the promise of God in 1 John 1:9. But the problem is that we don’t replace that sin with something holy. So repentance is replacing the sin in our lives with something else that is holy and righteous.

Now please don’t misunderstand. I am not saying that the things that we replace our sin with must necessarily be spiritual things. They could be things like hobbies, crafts, etc. that are wholesome and bring us a connection to God. If you noticed in the discourse that Jesus was giving to His disciples in Matthew 12, the life of the person was empty, leaving room for the evil spirit (or what I might call “besetting sin” or “habitual sin”) to come back.

So when you do this, ask God to show you your failures, confess them, then repent of them and fill that void with something that will honor God in your life.

If you do that every day (or even multiple times a day), you’ll find that your “sin accounts” with God will be kept very short…and joy will fill your life!

Have a great Tuesday, and we’ll see you on Sunday!