SUPPOSING GOD ACTUALLY SHOWED UP!

“Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!”

- Isaiah 64:1a

[Isaiah 6:1-8]

          Introduction to the Scriptures: Isaiah is one of the most eloquent books in the Old Testament and provides for us the clearest prophecies of the birth of the Messiah. In the 6^th chapter, we have Isaiah’s call to be a prophet. Isaiah was a man who, like us, wanted to see God. In the 64^th chapter he writes, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!” You understand, he wanted God to show up. Well one day God did show up. It wasn’t quite what Isaiah had in mind, I think, and that is what we are going to look at today. So from the 6^th chapter of Isaiah, this is the Word of the Lord:        [Read] Isaiah 6:1-8]

          This was Isaiah’s encounter. Obviously it changed the direction of his life, and we are going to explore it today to see what it was that Isaiah saw.

Prayer for Illumination - Father, we ask you, through your Spirit to illumine your word for us today. It is a powerful word, and we want to have some glimpse at least of your power, of your holiness, and of your surprising grace. So speak to us in this worship hour, as we stand in your presence attentive, ready to be touched even by the coals from your altar. We offer ourselves in Christ’s name, AMEN.

Message

          In C. S. Lewis’ wonderful little book Perelandra, the middle book in his space trilogy which is really a spiritual trilogy, two eldila (that is, angels, or in this case archangels) appear to the hero, Ransom. Listen to his description of that experience, suddenly finding himself in the presence of these archangels:

The very faint light – the almost imperceptible alteration in the visual field which betokens an eldil – vanished suddenly. The rosy peaks and the calm pool vanished also. A tornado of sheer monstrosities seemed to be pouring over Ransom. Darting pillars filled with eyes, lightning pulsations of flame, talons and beaks and billowy masses of what suggested snow, volleyed through cubes and heptagons into an infinite black void. “Stop it . . . stop it,” he yelled, and the scene cleared. [p.197]

          We, too, are curious about the appearance of spiritual beings – angels, archangels, cherubim and seraphim – and perhaps most curious about how God Himself might appear, were it possible for us to see Him. What would He be like? Most certainly not like the gray-bearded grandfather in the rather sheer wrap popularized by the Renaissance artist, Michelangelo. But what would He be like, the true and living God?

          Of course, it might be the better part of wisdom, for now, if we were content with seeing His footprints in creation – they are pretty spectacular in their own right – the tangible and beautiful evidence that He has been here! I remember crossing the savannah in central Africa with the Burkes, riding on the roof of a Land Rover, and threading our way, periodically, through the great, deep holes left by elephants and thinking it would be wonderful if, instead of these footprints, we might see some real, live elephants. And it was wonderful, but terrible at the same time, when we finally did come across a herd of elephants; I still remember the urgency in our driver’s voice as he called to us to hang on as he sped away when a great bull elephant with several calves spotted us and began running toward us with his trunk raised above his awesome tusks, his great ears flapping (which is a threat), trumpeting as he came!

          Perhaps we should be careful what we ask for! Longing for a glimpse of the reality of a long-absent God, Isaiah laments, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you!” [64:1-2] – “cause the nations to quake before you!” Isaiah wanted God to show up, but somebody else might have a different response.

          But in 2 Samuel 22, David tells us what it was like when God did just that. In much the same words, in the 10^th verse he says, “He parted the heavens [he did it] and came down; dark clouds were under his feet.” Indeed, “The earth trembled and quaked, the foundations of the heavens shook; they trembled because he was angry. Smoke rose from his nostrils; consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it.” This does not sound exactly like the sort of God I would like to meet on a dark night! The earth trembling? The foundations shaking? Smoke and fire and blazing coals? David continues,

He mounted the cherubim and flew; he soared on the wings of the wind. He made darkness his canopy around him . . . Out of the brightness of his presence bolts of lightning blazed forth. The LORD thundered from heaven; the voice of the Most High resounded. He shot arrows and scattered the enemies, bolts of lightning and routed them. The valleys of the sea were exposed [those great deep canyons in the bottom of the ocean] and the foundations of the earth laid bare at the rebuke of the LORD, at the blast of breath from his nostrils.

          You want to be careful what you ask for. It may sound like hyperbole when we read it, but then again, what might we expect when the awesome Power behind the universe is aroused – particularly if we have mistreated Him and His creation, if we have offended Him? Both the Psalmist and the Prophet lack for words to describe this cataclysmic event of encountering the true God!

          In any case, in our text for this morning from Isaiah 6, the prophet did get what he asked for. “In the year that King Uzziah died,” he writes, “I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.” King Uzziah had been one of Israel’s better kings, bringing stability and prosperity to his people at a time of generally great upheaval in the surrounding nations. Uzziah’s reign lasted 52 years. That’s a long time! It began when he was 16 years old. In the past 52 years, by comparison, we have been overseen by the administrations of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush senior, Clinton, George W. Bush, and now Barack Obama – in the same 52 years! The people of Judah had a singular, stable administration for that whole time, and they had to be wondering what was going to happen now in a time of great peril and uncertainty when there were threats surrounding them and the only authority, the only stability they had known was suddenly gone.

          It was in that moment Isaiah encountered the Living God. Isaiah gets his wish, if you will, and the LORD, the one whom Isaiah subsequently called the Holy One of Israel, suddenly shows up! But it is not particularly reassuring. Isaiah continues his description of what he saw in this vision of God. “Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces [before the Lord], with two they covered their feet [because they were created beings], and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ At the sound of their voices,” Isaiah continues, “the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. ‘Woe is me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined.’”

          What might it be like to encounter the true God? Most of us, when we ask the question, are a bit ambivalent. Our world has nearly convinced us that there is no God to show up. Therefore we need no longer fear Him. Indeed, they tell us, it is foolishness of the first order for us to desire Him. We are on our own here, so let us drop all this nonsense about religion and get on with the business of living.

          A bit unsettled by this challenge, and by the blithe dismissal of God by our prevailing culture, we, like Isaiah, rather wish that God would show up in earthquake and fire to route His enemies, all those people who have dismissed the thought of God from their lives, and of course to vindicate our own rather tenuous faith. Indeed, the compelling desire of the charismatic is for some tangible demonstration of the Spirit’s power. You and I have longed for this – some great miracle, some great healing which would prove God’s existence and reassure us of His personal attention to us and to our lives. We are not content simply to take Him at His word; we are not content simply to trust His promises.

          On those rare occasions, however, when God has actually appeared in some form like earthquake, smoke and fire which give tangible evidence of His awesome power and holiness, those who witness it are, without exception, terror-stricken, like the children of Israel at Sinai, for example. They want nothing more than that this God should go away, and the sooner the better. Listen to the response of the people in Exodus 20 after God had come down in fire on the mountain to give instruction to His people.

When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”

Then the text tells us, as Moses approaches the thick darkness where he will stand face-to-face with God, he responds that the whole point is God wants them to take Him seriously. Are we taking God seriously?

          But in our text this morning, Isaiah’s description of his encounter with the true God reveals why we have this “approach-avoidance” response to the possibility of encountering the true God, and it is not, I think, what we have been assuming. The real issue revealed by Isaiah is this: yes, it may be exciting, terrifying, awe-inspiring to encounter the true God, the transcendent sovereign Lord of the universe; but the problem is, none of us can encounter the true God without encountering our true Selves. And it was this experience – not the encounter with the true God, but the encounter with the true Self – which drove Isaiah to his knees in terror, in confession, and desperate repentance.

          “Woe to me,” he cried, “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the [true] King, [the King who supercedes King Uzziah by an order of magnitude greater than he can fathom], the LORD [Yahweh] Almighty [the Lord of hosts].”

          Most of the newer translations of this passage use words like “ruined” as the NIV does (our text this morning), or perhaps “lost” or “doomed.” But the best translation of the word is in the older King James Version which says, “Woe is me for I am undone!” Those are the words the choir used a few minutes ago. The word means something like “I am coming apart at the seams. My life is unraveling. I am disintegrating.” To integrate something is to put the pieces together properly and make them fit. A person of integrity is a person who is straightforward and honest, who does not say one thing and do another, who is precisely who he seems to be; the pieces all fit. Such a person is, it seems, increasingly rare in our world, a person of integrity. We are constantly stunned when it is revealed that someone who seemed to be upstanding and dependable has been living something of a double life – indulging in behavior which contradicts the person he or she claims to be. But their persona begins to unravel in the light. They are undone. They lack integrity.

          It was Isaiah’s experience, as good and upstanding a man as he truly was, that in the light of God’s presence, in his encounter with the true God, he was overwhelmed by his own fundamental lack of integrity. He would have liked for us to think that he was a good and righteous man. We would have thought that of him. Indeed, he likely thought that about himself. But before God, suddenly his deep-seated pride, his dishonesty, his self-centeredness, things that he shares with the whole of the fallen human race, perhaps even his hidden lust and anger and greed were now on display for everyone to see. You understand, it is relatively easy to deceive each other, and even to deceive ourselves. But before the true God, the person we truly are is revealed. Here there are no excuses, no rationalizations, no justifications. We simply see ourselves for who we really are, we see what has been smeared on our faces, we see who we have been unwilling to admit we have become. And it is this, not God’s awesome beauty and holiness, it is this glimpse of ourselves which we find terrifying.

          At the very end of the Old Testament, in the final words of the last of the Old Testament prophets, anticipating the coming Messiah, what we will be introduced to next week in Matthew, Malachi says, “the LORD, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in [you’ve been waiting, you’ve been anxious about this, he is going to come]: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap.”

          And then, after those memorable words Handel included in the Messiah, God gets very specific and personal. “So I will come near to you for judgment,” He says. “I will be quick to testify against . . . adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice.”

          This is pretty heavy stuff for a culture which lives by adultery and deceit (I am afraid we are culpable here), a culture which excuses dishonesty and greed in pursuit of financial profit (is that wide-spread in our culture or what?) God says, That’s what I am going to confront when I show up – a culture which has long since sacrificed true justice for legalism (we follow the law whether it serves justice or not). These are very current sins, folks! They are very relevant. Then, just in case we are inclined to try to distance ourselves from these sins of our prevailing culture – “show yourself to the nations around us who aren’t very nice people” – God gets really personal for His own people, for believers like you and like me. In those memorable words He says, You know what? When you don’t bring your tithes into the storehouse for the accomplishment of my will and purpose, you are robbing me! I am going to confront that too, He says. Then He challenges those of us who think God owes us something for serving him, when the fact is we owe everything to God. We say, It is futile to serve you; I don’t get any reward. He says, We’ll take that up when I show up.

          I’m not making this up! Read it for yourselves in Malachi 3, and I hope you will. We have not been taking God seriously! I didn’t write all that. God wrote that. And some of us get very offended when it’s brought up – especially, of course, anything we bring up about money! But in the end I am not accountable to you, I’m only accountable to God, and besides, I’m on the receiving end of this challenge just like you are. If I don’t want to talk about what God wants to talk about because it makes me uncomfortable or makes you uncomfortable, then I have failed to be God’s mouthpiece, and when the fire falls, I will have to answer to God.

          Malachi ends that passage by warning, “‘Surely the day [of the LORD] is coming [it’s not going to delay forever]; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire,’ says the LORD Almighty.” You see, as Isaiah understood, until we are willing to face our own selfishness and our own corruption honestly, we are not ready to stand before the LORD! Psalm 24 says, “Who may ascend the hill of the LORD? Who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart.” But in all honesty, we do not have pure hearts and clean hands. Isaiah himself recognized his own uncleanness in the light of God’s holiness, and he realized he was not prepared to stand in the presence of this consuming fire. Isaiah, I suspect, was a whole lot better prepared than you and I are, but when he encountered God, he knew there was something missing.

          Fortunately the story doesn’t end there. In fact there is a wonderful promise here as Malachi continues – those whose sins have been dealt with will be set free by that fire, released like a calf springing out of confinement in its stall, and there will be a celebration. The story doesn’t end here. Once Isaiah truly sees God for who He is, when he sees himself for who he is, something happens that makes all the difference. He pours out his confession before God with a truly penitent heart which desires nothing more than to be free of this personal corruption which has separated him from God. And at this point, the seraph takes a live coal from the altar to touch his unclean lips with that refiner’s fire . . . the only thing that can purify him.

          You understand, there must be for each of us, not simply a moment when we feel bad about our sin, but one of true repentance in which we are willing to have that sin seared away by the holy fire from the altar of God. Are you willing for that to happen? Am I willing for that to happen?

          Last week Scott shared some of the stories from Lewis’ book The Great Divorce in which individuals are forced to look at themselves honestly as they are approaching God, and they are given the opportunity to deal with their sin, or they will not be allowed to remain in God’s presence; they’ll not be allowed to remain in heaven. My own favorite story among those is the ghost of a man with the pet lizard on his shoulder (those of you that have read this book will remember it). This little lizard keeps whispering to him about imagined pleasures which it will provide. The man is a bit embarrassed that he has been caught listening to this little lizard as he approaches heaven and encounters one of God’s angels. Let me read a bit of the conversation to you because it is very revealing, and I’m afraid you’ll find yourself in this story:

        “Would you like me to make him quiet?” said the flaming Spirit – an angel, as I now understood.

“Of course I would,” said the Ghost.

“Then I will kill him,” said the Angel, taking a step forward.

“Oh – ah – look out! You’re burning me. Keep away,” said the Ghost, retreating.

“Don’t you want him killed?”

“You didn’t say anything about killing him at first. I hardly meant to bother you with anything so drastic as that.”

“It is the only way,” said the Angel, whose burning hands were now very close to the lizard. “Shall I kill it?”

“Well, that’s a further question. I’m quite open to consider it, but it’s a new point, isn’t it? I mean, for the moment I was only thinking about silencing it because up here – well, it’s so damned embarrassing.”

                     “May I kill it?”

                     “Well, there’s time to discuss that later.”

“There is no time. May I kill it?”

“Please, I never meant to be such a nuisance. Please – really – don’t bother. Look! It’s gone to sleep of its own accord. I’m sure it’ll be all right now. Thanks ever so much.”

        “May I kill it?”

“Honestly, I don’t think there’s the slightest necessity for that. I’m sure I shall be able to keep it in order now. I think the gradual process will be far better than killing it.”

“The gradual is of no use at all.”

“Don’t you think so? Well, I’ll think over what you’ve said very carefully. I honestly will. In fact I’d let you kill it now, but as a matter of fact I’m not feeling frightfully well to-day. It would be silly to do it now. I’d need to be in good health for the operation. Some other day, perhaps.”

“There is no other day. All days are present now.”

“Get back! You’re burning me. How can I tell you to kill it? You’d kill me if you did.”

“It is not so.”

“Why, you’re hurting me now.”

“I never said it wouldn’t hurt you. I said it wouldn’t kill you.”

“Oh, I know. You think I’m a coward. But it isn’t that. Really it isn’t. I say! Let me run back by tonight’s bus and get an opinion from my own doctor. I’ll come again the first moment I can.”

“This moment contains all moments.”

“Why are you torturing me? You are jeering at me. How can I let you tear me to pieces? If you wanted to help me, why didn’t you kill the damned thing without asking me – before I knew? It would be all over by now if you had.”

“I cannot kill it against your will. It is impossible. Have I your permission?”

“[By now] the Angel’s hands were almost closed on the Lizard, but not quite. Then the Lizard began chattering to the Ghost so loud that even I could hear what it was saying.

“Be careful,” it said. “He can do what he says. He can kill me. One fatal word from you and he will! Then you’ll be without me for ever and ever.”

[p.99 - 100]

          Well, he equivocates a bit longer, but ultimately he allows the angel to burn away that little lizard. In desperation he gives him permission to get rid of the personal demon which was destroying his soul with its deceptions. The shocking conclusion, for which you and I are unprepared – we’re glad he’s getting rid of that little lizard that was deceiving him – but the shocking conclusion is that out of the death throes of this corruption, God causes to arise a grand substitute, a great and beautiful stallion to replace the deceitful little lizard, and the man rides away on his charger. As with Isaiah, our sins are atoned for, not when we feel bad and ask for His pardon and permission to continue with our sin, maybe gradually to see if we can’t lay them to rest, but our sins are atoned for when God’s fire touches our uncleanness and burns it away, equipping us to become all that He created us to be. All moments are contained in this moment. You know the lizard on your back. Are you willing to let Him burn it away?

          Well, we began this morning wondering what it might be like to see God. Perhaps we were a bit taken aback when we realized what all might be involved in such an encounter. But if this all seems hypothetical to you, listen to what the apostle John says about this incident in John 12:41. This points us ahead to where we go from here. “Isaiah said this,” John explains, quoting our text in the 6^th chapter of Isaiah, “because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him.”

          Really? The words of the seraphim, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty, the whole earth is full of his glory,” this was a reference to Jesus? That’s what Isaiah saw? Some early vision of Christ himself? Ah, yes, John says. For indeed God has showed up. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the Only-begotten of the Father.”

          You and I have had the privilege of encountering the true God. Fire and smoke were nothing compared to calming a storm, or healing with a touch, or striding boldly into the lair of Death to engage it in mortal combat! “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” Jesus explained. For God is far more than earthquake and fire, He is also compassion, and sacrifice. He is wisdom and grace. He is beauty and majesty. No wonder the seraphim could not contain themselves when they had opportunity to praise Him. But if we see Jesus truly, if we see Jesus for who He is, we are driven to be honest about ourselves as well. If we are not honest about ourselves, we have not truly seen Jesus. When Peter finally saw Jesus for who he was in Luke 5, Peter also saw himself honestly perhaps for the first time, and his response was quite like that of Isaiah’s “Woe is me.” Peter says, “Go away from me, Lord; [for] I am a sinful man.” That is our response when we encounter the true God.

          But God is not simply about scaring hell out of us. He wants instead to win our hearts. So Jesus’ response to Peter is “Don’t be afraid.” I’ve got something so much better for you. And he calls him, as God called Isaiah, not only to follow him, but to pass along the good news of a God who redeems every single person – no matter what their sin – a God who redeems every single person who will truly repent and allow the fire of His Spirit to refine their soul and purify their heart. Remember Jesus’ promise, “Blessed are the pure in heart,” Jesus said, “for they [and they alone] shall see God.”

          Over the next few weeks, leading up to and including Advent, we shall be preparing our hearts to see God as He reveals Himself to us. But if you are serious about the quest, don’t be surprised if He actually shows up, and be prepared to let Him have His way with you!

Closing prayer – Father, this could be a transforming moment for us, and all moments are contained in this moment. If we delay there is a very good chance we’ll miss our opportunity. So I pray that you would shine the light of your Presence into our dark hearts. There is a lot there we do not want to see, a lot there that we are not prepared to deal with, I’m afraid. But start with the greatest priority and say, “All right, let’s start here. Let’s begin cleaning house here.” And I pray that we might be willing to let you burn away the refuse, the corruption, that has found a place in our lives, sometimes a favored place in our lives, a corruption which we have indulged which has kept us from knowing you and knowing the delight of life you desire for us to know. We are enslaved to all those petty little lizards in our lives, and you have something so much better for us. Teach us to trust you and to prepare for the day that we stand before you. We pray this in the name of the living Lord whom we have seen in Jesus Christ, AMEN.