So my son, Jackson, has decided to start a new blog. It’s called Everything TV and — you guessed it — he’s decided to write about some of his favorite TV shows. If you know Jackson, then you know he’s a HUGE fan of Survivor and his first post is all about the show and some of his favorite seasons.
Follow the link and check it out.
So last week, we went 5-2 with our picks. Time for our picks for Round 2 of the playoffs.
Sunny: Packers over Rams; Ravens over Bills; Chiefs over Browns; Saints over Bucs.
Jason: Packers over Rams; Ravens over Bills; Chiefs over Browns; Bucs over Saints.
Joshua: Packers over Rams; Bills over Ravens; Chiefs over Browns; Bucs over Saints.
We have some differing picks for this week, so we’ll have plenty to argue about, I guess!
But here is the beautiful part of this story from Isaiah 6: God makes it possible for Isaiah to be made clean. He makes it possible for the man of unclean lips to be purified. Because the most important question isn’t, “What do you do with a God so holy?” The most important question is, “What does such a holy God do with a sinful mess like me?”
And this is where we find the Good News in this story.
Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
Isaiah 6:6-7
We see the heart of God in action here as He acts to purify Isaiah. There is an atonement that takes place as the angel takes a coal from the altar and presses it to Isaiah’s lips. I’m guessing this was somewhat painful for Isaiah. I mean, this coal is so hot that the seraphim uses tongs to remove it from the altar! It seems as if there is always pain associated with atonement. No less is true today — for dying to self can be a painful process for each one of us. And in this way, Isaiah’s experience however loosely anticipates God’s ultimate act of atonement that would come seven centuries after Isaiah.
“Your guilt is taken away, your sin atoned for.” Isaiah hears these words in his vision, and we have the opportunity to hear them, too — when we put our trust in Jesus. At the cross, He takes away our guilt and atones for our sin.
Only a holy God could do this. And only a loving God would do this.
God holds holiness and love in perfect balance. His holiness still allows for forgiveness, for mercy, for grace. This is prompted by His great and enduring love.
You see, we aren’t given a glimpse of the hoy God simply so we would wallow in despair over our lack of holiness. No, we are given this image of God’s holiness so, like Isaiah, we would confess our sin in order to hear these joyful words of forgiveness!
Uzziah is an example of how the Holy God of Israel deals with pride. But Isaiah is an example of how the Holy God of Israel deals with humility. Do you need to humble yourself before the Holy God? If you would confess your sin in repentance and follow Jesus into the waters of baptism, God promises this: Your guilt will be taken away, your sin atoned for.
If you’d like to talk more about this, you can reach out to us at prayer@mayfair.org.
In the name of Jesus Christ, the Sovereign Lord who makes all things new, he who has ears, let him hear.
Over 150 years ago, the great Christian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote a parable about two robbers who entered a jewelry store and did something very strange: they switched all the price tags. They didn’t steal anything: they just took the high-priced tags off the expensive pieces of jewelry and put them on the cheaper items. And they took the discount price tags off the costume jewelry and put them on the really expensive rings and bracelets. The next day, the jewelry store opened for business as usual. And for the next several days, no one even noticed that folks were buying $10,000 rings for just a few dollars while other were buying cheap necklaces for thousands of dollars.
Kierkegaard used this story as a way of describing the world. He said we live in a world where the price tags have been switched. You see, God (the true King) has determined what is right and what is wrong. It is His prerogative to name good and evil — to determine the “price tags,” if you will. But our enemy has come along and switched some of the price tags. Behaviors labeled by God as evil and sinful were determined to be “no big deal” in Isaiah’s day, while the things that were truly good and important in God’s eyes were minimized and treated as if they were of no importance. Like Uzziah, the people decided to switch the price tags. Instead of living according to God’s precepts of right and wrong, the people had arrogantly determined this for themselves. So God says, Woe to those who call evil good and good evil. Woe to those who switch my price tags! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes!
And this makes Isaiah such a relevant word for us today, because we often do the same thing. We have elevated individualism to a dangerous level in our culture, to the point that we’ve switched the price tags. And freedom of expression and freedom of determination have become just a few of the idols of our day, which leads to sin becoming an accepted way of life. We have become wise in our own eyes by falsely believing we have the authority to call evil good and good evil.
You see this everywhere in our culture.
The enemy seeks to reverse the moral code of God by normalizing sin as an accepted way of life and we are party to this whenever we shop according to the switched price tags. And make no mistake: we’re all guilty of doing this. But we forget our place. Like Uzziah before us, we do not have the authority to rebrand evil as good and vice versa. So Isaiah speaks for all of us when he says he is unclean.
What do you do with a God so holy, so “other?”
Isaiah gives us a good example, one that is a stark contrast to the pride of Uzziah.
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!”
Isaiah 6:5
In response to this vision of the Holy One of Israel, Isaiah confesses his sin. Rather than acting out of pride, as Uzziah did, Isaiah says, “I am a man of unclean lips.”
I remember the first time I said a curse word in front of my parents. I remember it because it was also the LAST time I said a curse word in front of my parents. We were driving over to visit my grandparents. To get to their house you had to take Highway 231 North out of my hometown of Lebanon, Tennessee and cross the Cumberland River. As a child, I was always awestruck by the view from the bridge as we crossed the river. So one day, we were headed to my grandparents’ place; my Dad was driving the car, Mom was in the passenger seat and I was in the back — not wearing a seatbelt, because it was the wild, wild West of the 1980s when you didn’t do that sort of thing. We’re going over the bridge and I’m staring out at all that water and I decided that this would be a good time to use a couple of the new words I’d recently heard on the playground at school. I had just started using some of those words anytime I wanted to express surprise or dismay — I’d learned that there were all kinds of words people used in those kinds of situations. So I just let fly with a couple of those four-letter words without thinking anything of it.
Until my mother popped me on the mouth with the lightning precision of a ninja karate chop. She popped my mouth with her bare hand — not hard enough to draw blood but hard enough to stun me into silence.
She pointed her finger and me and her eyes narrowed as she said, “We do NOT talk that way.”
And I knew I was a young man of unclean lips.
So has Isaiah been running around saying four-letter words? Is that it?
No, I don’t think so.
But in the presence of the holy God, Isaiah is struck by the profanity of his life. He realizes that he is thoroughly polluted and he must confess. Yes, he says he’s a man of unclean lips, but he could’ve just as easily said, “I’m a man with an unclean heart, with unclean thoughts, with impure motives sometimes.” And he knows that his fellow Israelites are equally polluted by sin. So in response to our question, “What do you do with a God so holy?” Isaiah gives us a good answer: you acknowledge your lack of holiness. You confess your sin.
Isaiah tells the truth when he says that he lives among a people of unclean lips. Immorality was rampant throughout the land of Israel in Isaiah’s day. Much like their King Uzziah, the people had ignored God’s commands and developed their own standards of right and wrong. Isaiah would go on to pronounce this word to the people on behalf of God:
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!
Isaiah 5:20-21
This is what God says to His people.
The time stamp of Isaiah 6 is also significant. All of this occurs in the year that King Uzziah died.
Uzziah was king in Jerusalem for over 50 years. (You can read his story in 2 Chronicles 26.) By most human standards, Uzziah was a pretty good king. He subdued Israel’s longtime nemesis, the Philistines. He built up Judah’s military and expanded her economy. Most importantly, he learned the fear of the Lord from a teacher of the Law named Zechariah. And God granted the king much success; in fact, the writer of 2 Chronicles says that Uzziah’s fame spread far throughout the land. It seems that Uzziah was something of an international celebrity.
But this popularity eventually went to Uzziah’s head. 2 Chronicles 26:16, But when he was strong, he grew proud, to his destruction. Uzziah’s pride led him to do something terrible: he desecrated the temple of God. In an act of supreme arrogance, Uzziah marched into the temple to burn incense on the hoy altar. This might not seem like a big deal, but this was an affront to God, who commanded that only the priests were to burn the incense. Eugene Peterson says of Uzziah, “He decided to take charge of his own soul and put God to his own uses. He went to the holy altar of incense…and proceeded to run things according to his own tastes and desires.”
Azariah and eighty of the other priests stood up to the king and told him that this was forbidden. But this only angered Uzziah all the more. The Bible says Uzziah had a censer in his hand, presumably to make the incense offering. The way the story is told, it seems as if Uzziah had decided to completely ignore both the word of God and the rebuke of God’s servants. And that’s when Uzziah was suddenly struck with leprosy on his forehead as a visible manifestation of God’s judgment upon him.
You see, Uzziah thought he was truly sovereign, the captain of his own ship. In his pride, he thought he could make up his own rules, no matter what God had commanded. But that is sacrilegious. It’s not an exact parallel, but imagine someone entering the church with a can of spray paint and desecrating the communion table and the baptistery and the cross with the words: “There’s a new sheriff in town. We’re doing things MY way now!” That’s essentially what Uzziah has done in the temple.
And so Uzziah spends the rest of his life in isolation because of this leprosy, his life serving as a cautionary tale of the danger of sinful pride. And we would do well to heed this cautionary tale in our day.
Worship is about the life of the holy God, not the prideful preferences of sinful man.
Can you imagine what it would be like to talk to someone who had actually seen God? If someone claimed to have seen God, would you be interested in what that person had to say? Would you lean in a little closer to hear their story?
Isaiah 6 records the firsthand account of someone who saw the living God with his own two eyes. Isaiah had an encounter with the Holy One of Israel; in his own words, he says, My eyes have seen the King! And what he saw was glorious.
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. 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. And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”
And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.
Isaiah 6:1-4
Isaiah is unequivocal when he says, I saw the Lord. Now, it’s true that no one can see God and live; we learn that truth in Exodus 33:20. When God says this to Moses, the idea is that the fullness of God’s glory would be too much for us — it would kill us if we were to glimpse His face unmediated. That’s how glorious God is! But God apparently dialed down His glory enough that Isaiah could catch a glimpse of Him and live to tell about it, much like He did with Moses all those centuries earlier. One commentator calls this “a gracious condescension” on God’s part. It is an act of grace that Isaiah receives this vision.
And what Isaiah sees is majestic, glorious, and — most of all — holy.
Isaiah hears the seraphim calling out to one another. “Seraphim” literally means “burning ones.” Apparently these are angels of fire with six wings and it seems that Isaiah sees them hovering over the throne of God. And the seraphim are calling out these words of praise:
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!
In ancient Hebrew, repetition was often used as a way of denoting something of a superlative nature. But scholars have noted that this is the only time in the OT you find a quality being “raised to the power of three.” So when the angels say, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts,” they are essentially praising God’s infinite holiness. God is completely, totally, absolutely holy. One scholar puts it this way: “God’s holiness means that he is separate from everything that is sinful, utterly removed from the profane world, and glorious in majesty.” Isaiah catches a transformative glimpse of the holy God. Throughout the rest of his prophetic career, Isaiah’s favorite way of describing God will be to refer to Him as “the Holy One of Israel.”
It is worth noting that Isaiah receives this vision while worshipping God at the temple. The Israelites believed that heaven and earth met at the Temple in Jerusalem and Isaiah’s vision brings this to bear. He looks up into heaven to see the Lord sitting on His throne but the train of his robe filled the temple. And when the seraphim praise God for His holiness and His glory, the doorposts begin to shake and the room fills with smoke. It really is an awesome scene.
This is what worship is really about. Worship ushers us into the presence of the infinitely hoy God. We come in awe before the glorious throne of God. In worship, we confess God’s holiness but we also confess our sinfulness — which Isaiah does in the next verse. Worship is intended to capture our hearts and our imagination as we ponder the holiness and the majesty and the grandeur of God. How sad, then, that the meaning of worship in our day has been reduced to something as superficial as “song style” — but that’s what has happened.
Our worship is about the life of the holy God, not the preferences of sinful man.
Each year, our family makes picks for the NFL playoffs. Here are our picks for the opening weekend, including the NCAA Championship Game as well.
Sunny: Bills over Colts; Seahawks over Rams; Bucs over Washington; Titans over Ravens; Saints over Bears; Browns over Steelers; Alabama over Ohio State.
Jason: Bills over Colts; Seahawks over Rams; Bucs over Washington; Titans over Ravens; Saints over Bears; Browns over Steelers; Alabama over Ohio State.
Joshua: Bills over Colts; Seahawks over Rams; Bucs over Washington; Titans over Ravens; Saints over Bears; Browns over Steelers; Alabama over Ohio State.
Yeah, we all made the same picks, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.
It’s been a difficult week.
There was turmoil in Washington D.C. this week as a group of violent protesters stormed the Capitol building, wreaking havoc. It seems they thought they were taking something back. But lives were lost, as was another fiber in the perilously frayed bond that once held us together as a people.
I honestly wonder how much of this bond is left.
I was talking to a friend as we watched the images of anarchy in the House chamber and my friend said, “I’m afraid we’re heading toward Civil War.” Ordinarily I would scoff at such a comment. But the fact that it even seems like a possibility — no matter how remote — is telling.
Some have started saying that we live in “two Americas.”
More like 328.2 million Americas.
That’s what happens when truth is up for grabs. You can make reality whatever you want. We’ve seen this already. Early reports showed elected officials seemingly encouraging the crowd to “fight” to take back the election, their rights, etc. etc. And within hours of the violent display at the Capitol, some of those same officials were quick to tweet that you shouldn’t trust everything you hear. Things were immediately spun by every side to the point that you simply don’t know what to believe.
Were these protesters Trump supporters?
Antifa?
QAnon?
White supremacists?
Who knows?
We live in a time when it’s difficult to trust what we see with our own two eyes. This is what we’ve lost in a culture that has been described as a “post-truth” society.
Truth is whatever you want to make it, whatever you choose for it to be.
How lamentable.
All of this drives me back to what I know to be true — one of the only things I know to be true, actually. Today I find solace in the enduring, eternal Word of God.
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.
Isaiah 40:8
Take heart in His eternal truth, for this is the essence of our faith.
So is the coming Day a good day or a bad day?
It all depends on whether you’re part of God’s repentant remnant.
For those who turn away from their idols and put their trust in God and His Messiah, this will be a day of deliverance and salvation.
But for those who put their hope in something else — in anything else — it will be a terrible day of calamity and darkness.
In the words of Isaiah, the Lord has a day. Are you ready for it?
If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all.
Isaiah 7:9
May God’s people be firm in faith — firm in our trust in God’s Messiah, the King, the Servant, and the Savior.
The Messianic King brings judgment. Jesus loves us too much to leave us in our sin. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus issues judgments upon anger, lust, breaking your promises, retaliating, hating your enemies, greed, worry, and more. And to trust in Him is to trust in His judgment — for His judgment is just and true.
The Messianic Servant brings comfort. Jesus loves us too much to leave us uncomforted. He speaks words of consolation to those who are broken by their sin. In the Gospels, Jesus has compassion on the crowds — for they were like sheep without a shepherd. To trust in Him is to trust in His comfort — for there is no comfort like the Lord’s comfort.
And the Messianic Savior brings hope. Jesus loves us too much to leave us in our disillusionment. He gives us hope of a coming day when all of our enemies are defeated once and for all. And to trust in Him is to hope in Him — for He is truly the hope of glory.
If you’d like to begin this new year by placing your trust in Jesus — by confessing His lordship in baptism — you can reach out to us at praye@mayfair.org and we’ll set up a time to talk.
Though my sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow when I turn to Him in repentance.
The Lord has a day. Are you ready for it?
In the name of Jesus Christ, the Sovereign Lord who makes all things new, he who has ears, let him hear.
