How is your week going? How are you doing?
This past Sunday, we started a new series, “Worship and Prayer.” We will take nine weeks to look at corporate worship, private worship, and prayer. These are our focus areas for this fiscal year and the next. We believe that this is the foundation for our growth individually and for our growth as a church. Please continue to keep these areas in your prayers.
We started the series by taking a look at the holiness of God. When is the last time you reflected on the holiness of God? It may have been awhile. Why? It’s because the word “holy” has become watered down for us. We use it so often that it has become meaningless. Or maybe we haven’t reflected on the holiness of God, because it is a terrifying thought.
Our passage, Isaiah 6, this past Sunday was a terrifying one. Isaiah is brought face to face with the King of the Universe in all of His glory. This is the glory that God has and the glory that He is due. It is quickly apparent that God is holy, and Isaiah is not. God is all powerful and gloriously majestic, and Isaiah is not. God is perfectly sinless, and Isaiah is not.
After this glorious sight, Isaiah’s first words in this book are “Woe is me.” It is remorsefulness. It is brokenness. It is helplessness. He knows that he is in the presence of his holy God, and in it, he knows that his sinful self deserves judgment and death.
He is at the lowest of lows. He has no hope within himself, and then, at that moment, it is God who acts. It is God who saves. A burning coal from the altar of sacrifice touches the lips of Isaiah, and he is made clean. His guilt is washed away, and his sin is atoned for.
In the presence of God’s holiness, the only way sin can be atoned for is through sacrifice. This coal from the altar of sacrifice points to Christ who was sacrificed on the altar of the cross. The cross is the only place that God’s absolute holiness meets our absolute sinfulness and we come out alive and restored.
See, Christ bore this cross so that we may be saved. He bore this cross, because He loves us. The cross does not only show us the depth of God’s holiness and our sin. It shows us the depth of His love for us.
The beautiful truth of this passage is that the person who was slaughtered on the cross for us is the same person who sits on the throne in Isaiah 6. He who is high and lifted up lowered Himself, not to sit on an earthly throne but to be slain on a wooden cross.
God’s holiness displayed through His glory demands us to worship. However, God’s love displayed through the cross gives us the desire to worship. It is now a blessing instead of a burden. It is now a delight instead of a duty.
Let’s reflect on the holiness of God this week. May it drive us to repentance and faith. May it drive us to cling to the cross. May it reveal to us more of the love of God. Lastly, may it lead our hearts to worship.
See you all on Sunday for our Lord’s Day worship. Continue to pray for one another.
In Christ,
Pastor Tim
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