9.19.24
We’re looking this week at the holiness of God. And we’ve seen that his holiness is designed to be overwhelming to us. Because he’s the Creator God, and we’re not! But that also brings with it the good news that he’s able to overwhelm our problems as well. We’ve also seen that his holiness not only strips us of our ugly sins, but it strips us of any self-righteous feelings of worth and value from our best things. Even those must die before we can approach the true God. Because in that stripping away, we’re finally ready for Jesus and his grace.
The final thing we see that God’s holiness produces in us is a supernatural change of our character. Our whole world is consumed by self-preservation….finding ways to secure worth and value and significance in the things we do (and the things we don’t do). And having been fully stripped away of everything that hinders our intimacy with God, we are now free to serve in any way he asks…free to fail…free to look the fool…free to be insignificant.
The results of Isaiah’s confrontation with God is a willing volunteer to go on a thankless mission for God. He’s asked to go to a people who will never listen, never respond, receive no warm fuzzy feedback from his sermons. He’s asked to spend the rest of his life preaching to a people who will only ridicule him, only despise him, and never listen to him.
And he gladly and willingly volunteers! Why? Because God’s holiness has stripped him of all the world’s definitions of life and success and joy and validation. And it’s replaced it with a confident surety of God’s love and acceptance. Being filled with the adoring eyes of God, he doesn’t need anything else. And so he’s free to serve - even thanklessly - because he still has the only thing that matters: the love and acceptance of God.
Most of our pushback in life - from circumstances we don’t like and whine about - to annoying people who get in our way, are evidence that our hearts are still booting off “me” and “my agenda”. And to the degree we see these motivations at work in our lives, we need to not only repent. But we need to take our hearts back to the absolute holiness of God, which strips all that away and lays it bare. We need more than mere repentance, but having acknowledged the wrong we have done, we need to have our hearts filled with his grace -with his love and acceptance. Until the full acceptance of God replaces the other sources of life we are turning to, we will never be freed to live fully for him. And it’s the holiness of God that makes this process possible.
Don’t run from the intimidation of his pure holiness. But run toward it, as the source of healing for your fickle heart.