Holy and Awesome

Welcome Summit Church at our campuses across the triangle. This is the first official weekend that we welcome back our college students from all around the country who are coming back to Raleigh Durham to begin their semester. Just out of curiosity, if you are a college student at one of our campuses, I know that for the 830 service, this may not be that many of you, but if you would at any campus you're at right now, if you would stand to your feet, we want to welcome you back. There's you that are here.

Let's put our hands together. We certainly miss you guys when you are gone. Our church is much different when you are not here.

Our offering does not change the slightest bit, but we are glad that you are back. We are in week number two of a series called The Name. The Name, you have a name and that name is important to you. Somebody's never really going to be that close to you if they don't take time to learn your name.

If you call me DJ, then I know that I am not that important to you. In the same way, God has a name and understanding his name is crucial to knowing him. For most people, I explained to you last week, God is a mystery. There are a number of people who aren't quite sure he exists or if he does, how you could know that he exists. There are other people who, you know, they would say, yeah, I believe that he exists.

I know it can't be that nothing times nobody equals everything. So I believe that God exists, but I don't really know how you would know him or relate to him like a person. That confuses me when you speak and when you talk that way. There are even more of you perhaps listening to me who are, I described last week as like I was. You believe in God, you know how to say I have a relationship with God, but for many years, I just felt no warmth of affection of emotions for God. I told you I would hear people talking about God and they would get emotional and I'd just be like, there's not a whole lot going on down in here. I believe in him. I know I'm going to answer to him, but there's no warmth of feeling for him.

And there's a number of you that would, if you were honest, would be in that category. All these issues are addressed in scripture through coming to know the name of God. Exodus 34 is the place that we are working from.

So if you have a Bible, it invites you to take it out and begin to open it to Exodus 34. That's where God declares his name to Moses. This weekend, I want to talk about the holiness of God's name. You're going to see the concept of holiness woven all through this passage. Holiness is the most commonly used descriptive word about God by Moses.

Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Holy is the word that runs through all those books. In fact, it's used 124 times to describe God in just Exodus and Leviticus. Holiness is one of those words that most Americans find bland and unattractive. If you ask them what holiness means, they're going to think of some kind of bright white colorless light, or they think it means, you know, weirdly religious. So that if you say, you know, so-and-so is so holy, that's usually not a compliment. But holiness just means perfection. In English, the word comes from the word whole, like wholeness. And so when you're saying holiness, you're saying something is complete. It is holistic in its goodness. It is the essence of goodness.

It is something that I want to show you today that you yearn for, whether or not you've ever known what to call it. For example, we want holiness in our relationships. Nobody wants a spouse who is unfaithful. Nobody wants a boyfriend who lies. Nobody wants a friend who exploits them. We want holiness in our business dealings.

Nobody wants to deal with a contractor who shows up late, does inferior work, and overcharges us. You may not have known what to call that, but what you're yearning for is holiness. Let me show you. Exodus 34, real quick, let me just as you're turning there, tell you that I always use multiple sources when I prepare messages. And you can always access those, kind of trace where I'm coming from and stuff on the blog, my blog, our church's website.

We always post the transcript before the weekend starts, and you can just see it's all in there, every dumb joke, everything, where it all comes from. So I always use multiple sources, but for these concepts this weekend, I feel particularly indebted to Tim Keller. Tim Keller, as many of you know, if you've been here, serves as somewhat of a theological mentor for me.

My Yoda, he is. In fact, maybe you could probably conceptualize our church like this. That might help you.

But anyway, especially for this weekend. Chapter 33, we'll get to 34 in a second, but when Moses begins this encounter by saying, God, let me see your glory. Let me see your glory. And here's how God responds. Chapter 33 verse 19 says this, and God said, I will make all my, here we go, goodness, there's your keyword, I will make all my goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim before you my name, the Lord. Verse 20.

But God said, you cannot see my face, for men shall not see me and live. Is it not ironic that when God makes all his goodness pass before Moses, that his goodness is so good that Moses cannot actually look into his goodness without that goodness killing him. So God then tells Moses to take the 10 commandments, which are the moral expression of God's goodness, that God is a God who is truthful, he's just, he's pure, he's compassionate.

And God says, I want you to hold these 10 commandments, which represent the moral expression of that, I want you to hold them in your hands. And God takes Moses and he puts him inside of a mountain, the cleft of a rock, and he covers him up with his hand. And then he passes by him and then it says this, chapter 34, verse five, then the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. You're seeing again the concepts of holiness here, you saw goodness in the other verse, descended here means that God is high and lifted up and he's coming down.

In the cloud, the cloud is mysterious, even though God is coming close, he's still hidden, the cloud covers him, you still can't really see his shape. These are all the concepts of God's holiness that you see there in that chapter. Now, what we're gonna do is we're gonna leave Exodus and I want you to go to another place in the Bible. So if you got your Bible, leave Exodus 34, we're gonna go to Isaiah six for the rest of the week, where we're gonna get an even more in-depth look at God's holiness.

So flip over to Isaiah, just kind of hold it down on the menu bar and a little thing will come up and just say Isaiah and go straight there. By the way, just out of curiosity, how many of you have an actual like real paper Bible in front of you? Why don't you just hold it up and be proud for a minute, all right?

That's awesome. How many of you have a real, but, you know, digital Bible and you've got it right now, just hold it up like we're at a concert versus, all right, there you go. I've told you before that my pastor at my little Baptist church growing up used to say that the sweetest sound he ever heard in church was the sound of the ruffling of the pages as people open their Bible to God's word.

Not one time have I ever heard that at our church, never. I see the warm glow of God's word illuminating your faces, but I never get to see that. So whatever kind of Bible you got, I would encourage you to bring one, some kind of Bible. You get so much more out of it when I'm teaching through it, if you can see it in front of you. And by the way, when you're doing this right here, I know that's not the Bible. I know that's Angry Birds, okay? And God sees that too, so don't do that.

But you can follow along there with me. Isaiah chapter six, verse one. Isaiah six, verse one, here we go.

In the year, Isaiah is about to have a similar experience, very similar to Moses'. In the year that King Uzziah died, let's stop here and talk about who King Uzziah was. King Uzziah was one of Israel, Judah's most beloved kings. He had reigned in Israel for 52 years, half of a century. And he was a very good king. He led the people to prosper spiritually, to worship God economically, politically.

It was a time of unprecedented prosperity in Israel. And everything was awesome right up until the very ends when Uzziah got a little cocky and he thought he no longer needed the priest to offer sacrifices for him. He was so awesome he could just do it himself. And so he goes into the temple and he's going to offer incense to God and the clear violation, by the way, of what God had very clearly said. So the priest come running in and look at Uzziah and say, Uzziah, you can't do that. And Uzziah turns to them and basically is saying, you shut up, I'm the king and I will do what I want because I'm awesome.

And as he's pointing at the priest, threatening them, it says that leprosy broke out in his forehead and then inch by inch just covered his entire body until there was not a spot of him that was not covered in leprosy. He ran out of the temple and a couple of months later he died. That left Israel, you can imagine, in political turmoil. It's like the bottom has fallen out. Their beloved leader that they've depended on now for half a century who has led them and kept the nation stable has just fallen. He has fallen morally and he has died.

And everybody's looking into the future saying, what in the world is going to happen now where in utter dismay the foundations of the nation have been shaken. In that very year, Isaiah says, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne. In other words, Uzziah just fell off his throne, but God's still on his. I saw him high and lifted up. And the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim.

In Hebrew, that literally means the burning ones. Each of the seraphim, angels, had six wings. With two of the wings, he covered his face. The two, he covered his feet.

And with two, he flew. The angels, the burning ones. In scripture, whenever an angel, a human being, sees an angel, it's not the little overweight cupid looking thing that we like to put on our Hallmark cards where it's like a chubby three-year-old that has a toy bow and arrow. Whenever in scripture a human being sees an angel, the first thing the angel always says is, fear not, don't die. You don't have to die.

It looks like you're about to die, but you're not going to die. When these angels, these angels that would scare us so badly if we saw them that we would feel like we were going to die, when these angels are before the throne of God, they have six wings. And with two thirds of them, they are covering their parts of their body in worship.

And with one third, they are flying. I've heard some suggest that perhaps there, there is a ratio for how we ought to relate to God and our service to him. For every one third of service we do, we ought to have two thirds worship. God is probably not trying to give us a mathematical formula there, but I think it raises a very interesting point. And that is that everything that we do as believers ought to arise from and be bathed in worship because the primary thing that God gave us as his followers is to sit in adoration and worship of him, not to work for him. Work arises out of worship. Okay. Keep going here.

Let's see, where are we? Verse three, and one called to another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. The Hebrew language uses repetition to express superlative. So for example, in scripture, when it wants to say a deep pit in Hebrew, what it literally says is a pit pit. Or if you want to say pure gold, you say gold, gold.

That means like real gold. This is the only instance in scripture where a superlative requires a threefold repetition. In other words, it's the only time you got something repeated three times, and it's telling you that God is pure and undefiled holiness. Holiness is his most defining characteristic. Notice the angels do not say power, power, power.

They don't even say love, love, love. They say holy, holy, holy. Now what does the word holy mean?

What does it mean? Literally in Hebrew, the word kadosh means set apart. Set apart, different, distinct. In these encounters, both Moses's and Isaiah's, we see God set apart in at least two ways. Number one, we see that God is set apart by his awesomeness.

He set apart by his awesomeness. He is high and lifted up. He dwells in clouded mystery.

There is smoke. He's covered. He has to descend. Theologians call this the otherness of God. You see, often we want to reduce God to being just a slightly bigger, slightly stronger, slightly more intelligent version of us. You can see that in how we demand that God give us, for example, explanation for his actions. You know, God, you better explain yourself, and I better see some good coming out of this, or I'm just going to quit believing in you. If you don't explain this to me, and if I can't see this, and this doesn't make sense, then I'm just going to be mad at you, and I'm going to tell you that you don't exist, and I'm going to rebel against you, as if we could bring God down and put him on trial as if he were one of us. But God is not just one of us, just a slob like one of us, for you children of the 90s. And at the end of the day, we are not in a position to judge him. That's kind of the whole point of the book of Job. Job, you know, the story of Job is basically a guy who suffers, and he doesn't know why he's suffering. And so for 38 chapters, he essentially begins to yell at God, and say, God, is this fair?

What have I done wrong? Are you really ruling your universe in a just way? Now, ironically, you and I know the reason that Job is suffering. It's told to us in chapters 1 and 2. There's this cosmic theater going on, and God is proving something to the angels through the life of Job. But what's interesting is that when God finally comes down to answer Job, you know, he doesn't tell him about chapter 1 and 2. He doesn't say, Job, yeah, here's what you don't see, man.

Here's 1 and 2. Here's what's going on. That's why all this is happening, and it's going to be awesome later. He doesn't say any of that.

Here's what he says, chapter 38, verse 25. Job, the lightning bolts report to me. Which of the lightning bolts report to you? In fact, Job, why don't we get together and discuss the problems you have with me running my universe. We'll get together for coffee, and I'll tell you what. Why don't you bring your universe that you've created, and I'll bring my universe that I've created, and then we'll compare notes, and we'll just see who's doing a better job. Oh, you don't have a universe?

Okay, then maybe you're not in a position to judge me about mine. That's essentially what he tells him in the book of Job. God says, you want to put me on trial?

Let's take a look at the expanse of your knowledge for a second. Now, listen, I am not telling you there is never a place for you to question God. The Psalms are filled with people doing just that. But God's point in Job is that we are not supposed to ask God questions. We can't ask Him questions, but we're not to do so in a way that supposes we can bring God down to our level as if God had the answer to our bar of justice as if we could see or know enough to bring God into judgment.

The way Isaiah would say it in Isaiah is this, Isaiah 55. My thoughts, God says, are not even your thoughts. It's not that I just got a better version of your thoughts. It's that your thoughts and my thoughts don't really even compare. My ways are not your ways, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts and your thoughts.

We know now even more than Isaiah would have known when he wrote that how high the heavens are above the earth. Billions of light years is how high that distance is, and if the distance between God's wisdom and my wisdom is the distance between His power and my power, then it makes sense that there's a lot of things that I may not immediately be able to grasp yet because God is not on my level and we are not peers. You see, the classic objection that people have to Christianity, it's probably the number one, is what we call the problem of evil. And the problem of evil, it's basically built on two premises.

It goes like this. If God is all-powerful, then God could stop evil and suffering. If God is all-loving, then He would want to stop evil and suffering, but evil and suffering still happen, therefore God must not be all-powerful or all-loving, and a God who is not all-powerful or all-loving would not be the Christian God, therefore God does not exist. That's the explanation of the problem of evil. But I've explained to you before that that problem is missing a premise, and that premise is this, that if God is all-powerful, and He is, and if God is all-loving, which He is, then it would also follow that God is all-wise. And if God is all-wise and His wisdom exceeds my wisdom to the extent that His power exceeds my power, then it makes sense that there might be a lot of things that my small mind are not immediately be able to grasp at least at the present moment. Does that make sense?

All right, think about how much higher God's power is than yours. I had an illustration of this yesterday at the gym where I work out. It's called Iron Tribe. They have these little what they call rowing machines, and you get on there and row for two minutes, and you feel like you're going to die. And so there's a little way you can track what you're doing, and you can do watts, like how many watts you're producing. And so I'm in like a two-minute rhythm, and so two minutes, and that's all I got. I check, and I see, and I've averaged about 240 watts for that time, and I think 240 watts, that's enough to power four light bulbs. I can power four light bulbs, and then I feel like I am going to pass out.

If I really push myself, I can get to 300, 320, for about 30 seconds, and then I feel like I'm going to die, and that's five light bulbs. Okay, that is the extent of my electrical engineer, you know, that's how much electricity I can produce. The sun, the sun, our sun generates enough energy in one second, one second, to supply all U.S. energy needs for 13 billion years. And God just spoke the sun into existence. He said, they let there be light, and there's light. I work my heart out for two minutes, and I can light four light bulbs. God just has a throw-aside comment, and he creates one star out of millions of stars that produces enough energy to light our earth, our planet, for 13 billion years.

Here is my question. If God's wisdom exceeds mine to the extent that his electrical, you know, generating power exceeds mine, then am I really in a place to hold God to account? Imagine a seven-year-old telling a rocket scientist, no, no, no, that rocket will never fly, it doesn't have wings, it's way too heavy, it's weirdly shaped, it's not going to be able to fly. The scientists may not stop and explain all the principles of aeronautic engineering.

The scientists might just say, uh, no seven-year-old, just sit and watch. That's essentially what God does to Joe. He says, Joe, I can't explain it to you right now, but I want you to sit and watch, and I want you to think about the extent of my power. Again, please understand, I'm not saying there's no place for you to ask questions. I'm not saying that God's purposes have no rhyme or reason, or that we will never grasp them. I'm just saying that we should approach the question with the knowledge that God is holy, that God is awesome, that he is glorious.

We should not be surprised that some of his purposes remain hidden from us, at least temporarily, and just because we cannot see a good reason for something bad doesn't mean that there is not a reason why God is allowing certain things to happen. God is holy, he is beyond the beyond, he is above the above, and I know that can be difficult for many of us because we really want to shrink God down to our size so that we can predict him, so we can compartmentalize him, so we can control him, right? But that is not a God that is worthy of worship.

It's like Evelyn Underhill, the British political writer of the early 20th century, used to say, if God were small enough to be understood, he would not be big enough to be worshipped. So God has set apart his awesomeness. Number two, God has set apart in his moral perfections. He set apart his moral perfections. God is pure goodness with no mixture of bad at all. He is without injustice, without deceit, without capriciousness, pettiness, or impurity. Now, as I told you, these are all things that we value in people, but they're going to find their ultimate expression in God. God's goodness is so good, it's so good that it cannot tolerate a lack of goodness or it cannot tolerate evil.

Habakkuk 1.13, you are of such pure eyes, Habakkuk, that you can't even see evil. I've compared it before with you to somebody handing you a nice big glass of iced tea, and as you're drinking this glass of iced tea, they say, oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you, it's mixed with about 2% human urine. You don't say, oh, well, 98% good.

That's a pretty good, you know, that's like an A rate. No, you don't do that. You would spit it out. Why?

Because that amount of impurity would just make the whole thing nauseous to you. God is so good that injustice and impurity and dishonesty cannot be tolerated in his character because he's pure goodness. But go back to Isaiah, at the sight of God's holiness, watch this, the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called. And the house was filled with smoke, the temple. And I said, Isaiah said, woe is me, for I am lost.

I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have now seen the King, the Lord of hosts. God's holiness is terrifying. It's terrifying. The angels have to cover their faces when they're in the presence of God. The temple, the pillars of the temple, which aren't even people.

They're shaking with fear. Isaiah, the prophet of God, the man with the message, God's appointed messenger for that generation. Isaiah falls on his face and he says, I'm lost. I'm ruined. I'm undone. When Job, whom God called righteous, when Job finally saw God, he says, I'd heard about you with my ears and I believed in you, but now I see you and I abhor myself. I hate myself and I repent and dust and ashes.

I'll give you one other interesting place. You see this in the New Testament. So you see, it's not just an Old Testament thing. And Jesus in Mark 4, one of the best stories from Jesus's life. They're out on the ocean and Jesus is asleep in the boat and this hurricane rises up and the disciples who are experienced fishermen think they're going to die.

Right? And in a rather humorous exchange, they finally wake Jesus up, who is evidently sound asleep. And they're like, what's wrong with you?

We're about to die. And Jesus stands up and he's kind of wiping sleep out of his eyes. And he's like, what are you guys whining about? And then it's kind of holds up his hand. He's like, cut it out. And the whole thing just goes immediately placid.

Right? I mean, it's almost like he's, it's almost like he turned off a car alarm. You know, whose storm, whose geo storm is this?

He just stands up and turns it off. Here's what's interesting about the story. It says that after Jesus did that, the disciples were, get this, greatly afraid. During the hurricane, when they thought they were going to die, they were only afraid. After Jesus calmed the storm, they were greatly afraid.

In other words, they were more terrified by the rescue than they were by the storm. That's God's holiness. They are seeing the extent of his power and it is terrifying to them. Why is God's holiness terrifying to us?

Give you a handful of reasons. First, just to be in the presence of greatness is terrifying. Just to be in the presence of greatness is terrifying. Have you ever really been in the presence of greatness?

Let me bring it down to a human level so we can start there and I'll work back up to God. You ever been in the presence of human greatness? When I was a teenager and like every other kid in North Carolina, every other boy, my hero was Michael Jordan. I was nine years old when he hit the shot against Georgetown to win. I have, I have reenacted that shot probably thousands of times. Every one-on-one game you ever played always ended with somebody saying, oh, the Jordan, the fade away and hitting it.

So he's just a hero. So my, one of my life's ambition was I want to meet Michael Jordan. When I was 14 years old, there was a golf tournament in Winston-Salem where Michael Jordan is a charity tournament. He was going to come play. I don't understand how, why people like to watch golf.

I mean, if you like that, I'm not trying to offend you. And if you play golf, you're awesome. But I don't, you know, so I was like, but Hey, Michael Jordan is going to be there. So me and my best friend went and the whole day, all we were trying to do is find where Michael Jordan was.

Because I was 14 years old, not that smart. We could not find Michael Jordan the entire, I felt like a big failure. Like I went to this golf tournament and I didn't see him all day. At the very end of the day, after the whole thing shut down, I'm just standing on this little, like, you know, road in the golf course. And I see this purple Porsche, 924 Carrera.

And I was a devotee. So I knew that was Michael Jordan's car. And I see it coming down the road. And I turned around to my friend who was getting food. And I was like, that's Michael Jordan. So he runs over and a bunch of people run over and I'm here at the front of the line and Michael Jordan's rolling up and he rolls down his window. Cause he's looking for somebody. He's not looking for me.

He's rolling it down. And my friend, my best friend takes me and shoves me in my head into Michael Jordan's car up to my waist. I am this far from Michael Jordan's face.

That far. I could have licked him. And one of my life's regrets is that I did not lick him. And I, we're right there, just eye to eye.

And Jordan, you know, he's just uber cool. He's just got his hand in his car. He turns over, he looks at me, cuts his eyes like this. He says, get out of my car. And I pulled back and I turned around, I promise you. And I looked at that crowd and I went, he talked to me.

He talked to me. Michael Jordan has spoken to me now for me, Michael Jordan, just to be in his presence is a mixture of fascination and fright, right? Because that's what it always means to be in the presence of greatness fascination.

You're simultaneously attracted and repelled at the same time, right? Rudolph also, the German philosopher said, that's how you know when you're worshiping whenever you're filled with a sense of fascination and fright at the same time, right? The idea of a threatening, frightening God is really out of fashion today.

I understand that it's unmodern. We'd much rather have God be the precious moments teddy bear that we, you know, makes us feel warm when we're cold. But if being in the presence of human greatness makes you feel fascination and a great deal of fright, how much more is it to be in the presence of the almighty God? How much fright must you and I feel in the presence of that kind of greatness? You see, we want to reduce God down to being our buddy to be in our you know, when I was in college at a teacher, Jesus is my homeboy, my the precious moments, God, but you understand that when we say things to God, like, Oh, God, we want to be in your presence and just be with us, that if in the middle of worship today, God answered our prayer and said, Okay, you want me and rips off the roof and looks down in here, we would all outside of Christ, we would all die. That is the God that you and I are dealing with.

And it is terrifying. Second, God's holiness is terrifying because it exposes our sin. Notice that Isaiah says I'm unclean, I'm lost, and I'm ruined. The KJV King James Version I grew up on used to say I'm undone.

I'm undone. And actually, I like that translation better out of all the different English words because the word in Hebrew implies I'm coming apart psychologically. The glue that had held Isaiah's life together, his sense of goodness is revealed to be nothing before God. You see, when God's presence enters your life begins to enter your life. That's how you always feel.

You feel like everything that I've depended on to be good, everything that I've used to justify myself, everything I've used to feel strong, I feel ruined and I feel undone, I'm coming apart. The sign, listen to this, the sign that you don't know God at all, is that you feel pretty good about yourself. And so when we live in a culture that's all about self help, and all about feeling good about yourself, being confident in yourself, what you're seeing is a culture that is teaching us not to know God at all.

That's the first sign you're coming into God's presence is you start to feel undone. You see, we are creatures of comparison. And so we tend to console ourselves as people by comparing ourselves to other people. We think, well, I'm not as bad as, you know, so and so.

I'm not perfect, but I'm not as bad so and so. I know that God's going to grade the curve. It's like when you're in school and everybody does bad on the test, and you feel good because the teacher walks in and said, all of you did badly on the test.

So the only ones that are going to fail are those who did really, really badly. And you think morally speaking, that's got to be the child porn people and terrorists, and you're not one of those. So you're going to be okay, and God's going to be fine with you. But all of a sudden you get in the presence of God's holiness, and you realize that it has nothing to do with how you compare to somebody else.

It's how you compare to the goodness of God. And you look into his holiness and you see how sick and twisted and deformed your heart has really become. Isaiah would later explain, I probably reflected on this counter, he would say, Isaiah 54, he'd say, all my righteousness is like a filthy rag. We don't really translate that well in English because we just don't have a word that captures the word filthy. For them, filthy, it meant defiled.

They only used it in the Old Testament to describe two different things. A filthy rag was used to describe a leper's rags who had wrapped the open sores of his leprosy. These rags now filled with blood and pus and disease, contagious disease. That would be a filthy rag.

The other one they use it for is a woman's menstrual rag, which they believe made her ceremonially unclean. And Isaiah said, all my goodness, that I was carrying, all these things that I thought made me awesome, all these things I thought made you approve of me and that gave me hope for the future. He said, suddenly I realized that I was standing there holding a big group of pus-filled, blood-filled lepers rags, and I was saying, this is how I want you to accept me. God's holiness is terrifying because it reveals our goodness to be not that good, which leads to this last one here.

Third, God's holiness is terrifying because it reveals our strengths to be weaknesses. Notice that Isaiah starts talking about his lips. You know what's significant about his lips?

My lips are unclean. For a prophet, his lips would have been his pride and joy. That's how he proclaimed the message of God. He's been a prophet now, by the way, for several years.

This is not his calling. He's been a prophet for five chapters. For Isaiah, his lips would have been his greatest strength.

Looks like the quarterback's arm or the dancer's legs or the scientist's mind. But God reveals even his strongest strength to be weakness. That's why he feels undone because even his best is insufficient. Here's how Tim Keller says that the holiness of God does not make Isaiah ashamed of his weaknesses. The holiness of God makes Isaiah look at his strengths and realize that they're not really strengths at all. That's how you feel when you come into God's presence and that's why you feel undone because the glue that you believe holds your life together is suddenly gone. The Apostle Paul had a very similar experience.

He describes it in Romans 7 when the Apostle Paul says, what I thought always held my life together. What I thought made me awesome. What I thought was my hope for the future was my knowledge of the Ten Commandments, knowledge of God's law and my obedience to the Ten Commandments. He says I was a Jew of the Jews.

I kept the law better than anybody. I knew that I was in the upper one percent when it came to religious zeal. He said, but one day I was studying the Ten Commandments and I came to the Tenth Commandment, thou shall not covet, and it suddenly God illuminated my heart to see that all my life I've been jealous and I've never been satisfied with what I had and people that I thought were a little better than me, I just hated them. He said and suddenly I realized that every one of my obedience to the Ten Commandments was saturated with this disease and he said in that moment, now I'm going to switch to Galatians 3, he said in that moment I saw that all my obedience to the law was, and he uses another word we don't know how to translate, skubala. All my obedience was skubala to God.

Skubala we translated as dung but let me just tell you parents this, if your kid spoke Greek and said skubala you would wash their mouth out with soap. The Apostle Paul did not use a polite word. In fact he used a pretty rough word he basically said all my best righteousness was nothing but a bunch of human dung. It was filthy and nasty and my greatest strength was revealed to be weakness. Let me just ask you for a moment, what is that for you? What is your glue? What do you feel like is your strongest thing that gives you hope for the future or justifies you before God? Is it your bank account? You think you know what this is a rough season but we've got enough we're going to be fine. Is it your business ability?

You're like yeah I think it's all about tomorrow I'll just rebuild the things because I'm awesome. Is it your athletic ability? Is it your looks? Is it your family? Is it your involvement in church?

Is it your moral goodness? George Whitfield who helped spark the great awakening in the United States in the 18th century, he basically had one message he preached in different forms. Right a lot of preachers like this including me you have basically one message you just put in different forms and tell different stories.

His message had only two points. He would always tell the people he was speaking to he'd say number one repent of your sins. People understood that repent of your sins you know stop doing the bad stuff you know is wrong. But Whitfield's second point was always really surprising to people is he would say repent of your goodness because he would say two things have happened with your goodness. Number one you use your goodness as a cover to justify yourself to cover up the fact that your heart is really evil. He said number two your goodness is the place where you do not depend on God because you feel like this strength and this goodness is going to give you the ability to succeed in life.

What is that for you? What do you feel like will justify you? What do you think holds your life together because that will be the greatest source of your sin? Because it's that strength that takes your eyes off of your hope in God's grace and it's that strength that makes you rely on your strength not his. The apostle Paul would say it like this whatever is not a faith is sin.

What does that mean? What it means is whatever in your life does not come from hoping in God's grace for your justification and dependence on God's grace and strength for your future that is the very thing that has become sin to you. And it is more likely that your strengths will keep you from hoping in God's grace than your weakness as well. You see you naturally lean on God in a place of weakness. When you feel unable you're like I gotta have God help this one out. It is your strengths where you begin to rely on yourself and it is your goodness that keeps you from hoping in God's grace. That's why the writer John Newton of Amazing Grace would say grace first teaches our hearts to fear and then our fears release. It makes us feel undone. It makes us feel like nothing we have is sufficient. That's how Isaiah feels at the holiness of God. Now at this point it all feels like bad news doesn't it?

Watch what happens next. 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 with it and he said behold this has touched your lips your guilt has been taken away and your sin has been atoned for out of the darkness comes a burning angel with a coal from the altar and he touches Isaiah's mouth with it. You might be tempted to think of this as some kind of purification by fire you know burning out the impurities but that's not an Old Testament concept. We never see that metaphor used that way in the Old Testament. What's happening here the coal listen represents the fire of judgment that's already been burned. You see it came from the altar and what would happen is they would take a lamb and they would put it on the altar and if you were offering that lamb you would reach out your hand and you would place it on the head of the lamb and you would confess your sins and it's symbolizing that your sin is being transferred to that innocent lamb and as you confess your sin the priest would take the knife and he would slit the throat of the lamb and the blood would soak down onto the coal and then they would light the coals on fire until the coals had completely burned up this sacrifice and when it was all burned out all that would be left would be the glowing ember of one of those coals from a fire of judgment that's already been burned through. When the angel takes this coal what he is taking is the coal of God's judgment already having been poured out on something or someone else and come in and say now your sin is covered and you are atoned for. You and I of course see even more clearly than Isaiah saw but what Isaiah saw was that God's holiness was not just terrifying listen to this this is the irony God's holiness was also cleansing because not only was God's goodness so far above Isaiah's he felt undone God's goodness also included him being filled with love so that God could not watch Isaiah suffer God would ultimately come and receive the punishment that was due to Isaiah for his sin we know that that land that was offered on the altar was going to be Jesus and in Jesus we would see the holiness of God on clear display that though God was so holy that sin could not survive in his presence we see that God is so loving that he offered up himself in our place so that we could survive with him forever we see in Jesus that God was so righteous he was so good that we had to die for our sins but God was so loving that he was glad he was glad to die in our place this is what it means for God to be holy and what Isaiah experiences in this moment is this kind of understanding of who God is and how much he loves Isaiah and when he sees listen this is not his salvation he's already been a prophet now for five chapters it's the sense where God's grace is becoming real to him it's what we talked about last week it's when all these theories suddenly become felt and that's when your eyes begin to fill with tears because you begin to say oh my God look at what you saved me from and look at how much you love me and that experience caused two things to happen in Isaiah number one it propelled him outward you see the next phrase see what happens then I heard the voice of the Lord saying whom shall I send and who will go for us and I said here am I send me it's like I've often told you guys God's a spiritual cyclone he never pulls you in without immediately propelling you back out this virgin used to say a burning heart will always find for itself a flaming tongue the sign that you have met God is that you suddenly become very overwhelmed with people around you who don't know God who are no less holy than you were but are under God's condemnation and you begin to see and sense how much God loves them I think when I read this I think back to my own call to ministry basically happened like this some of you will think this is strange and weird but you know whatever it is what it is I when I was in high school I just could not get an assurance of my salvation and I used to go when I would sleep at night I'd have nightmares I'd wake up in the middle of the night because I dreamed that I was going to stand before God one day and God was going to turn me away and I was going to think I was a Christian and I actually wasn't and God was going to turn me away and I would go apart from him and go to hell forever and I struggled with that for several years until I got into college by the way out of that comes the book stop asking Jesus into your heart all right well when I get into college God finally gives me the assurance of salvation where I know that I'm saved but listen to this those dreams continued but it wasn't me that was standing before God being turned away I would dream and I would think about other people that I went to college with I would see them being turned away from God and I would think about the 2.2 billion people in the world that had never heard the name of Jesus I thought about one day them being turned away from God and in the midst of this you know college career where I was headed to law school I began to say I remember one afternoon I just looked at God and I said God please will you let me go tell them now up until that point I was surrendered to God and I was ready for God to like you know I always I've told you I always thought God would call me by writing something in the sky or you know spelling it out in my Cheerios JD thou shalt go to Indonesia and I was like I'm ready for that you know but I stared at my Cheerios for years and all it ever spelled out was over and over and over again right well all of a sudden overwhelmed with the sight of the holiness and the grace of God I said God please let me go tell these 2.2 billion people let me preach to people in a way that brings them to faith in Christ and y'all it was one of those moments where the Holy Spirit he the Holy Spirit said finally you're asking the right question you see I volunteered to go that's what Isaiah did is some of you guys are sitting around waiting on God to reveal something the problem is you've never been overwhelmed with God's grace because when you're overwhelmed with God's grace it will turn you into an evangelist so I spurged and said you're either a missionary or an imposter because those people who have been saturated by an experience with the grace of God they become zealous evangelists for the grace of God so he is a gets propelled outward here's the other thing that happens watch this he gives Isaiah a ridiculous amount of confidence notice how God describes Isaiah's ministry assignment listen to this imagine hearing this and God said Isaiah notice go and say I'm going to and say to this people keep on hearing and do not understand keep on seeing but do not perceive make this people's heart unperceptive and dull what kind of call to ministry is that God I need a prophet who's going to go preach for the next 40 years and everybody's going to hate him and nobody's going to listen and not a single person is going to be converted and Isaiah's like oh me me me let me do that listen that means nobody ever wrote a glowing review of Isaiah's ministry nobody ever came up to Isaiah on the street with tears in their eyes and said man your sermons have really touched my life Isaiah would be be hated all of his life he would be rejected in fact we know that Isaiah died because one of the Israelite kings took him and put him in a log and cut him in half how does Isaiah volunteer for a ministry like that he volunteers for a ministry like that because he knows the holy God stands behind him and he says if that God is with me if that God promises to supply my need if that God is waiting for me at the end of the journey to say well done good and faithful servant then I can stand against the world because I've got him on my side that's how he does it you see I think about that sometimes I mean you guys are never like this to me you guys are an awesome audience but when I go other places it's not always as friendly and those places are called college campuses and when I'm standing at a college campus sometimes and I look out there and I see occasionally just pure hatred coming from some student I get a little intimidated you know that section of there doesn't like me right and it happens real quick but I will very quickly I will think a lot of times I'll just lift my eyes up really quick just glance up because I get this picture of God in heaven when I feel intimidated I get this picture of God the father like standing on the edge of heaven looking down right he's got the he pulls the angels around he's like oh look it's JD he's preaching again and you know he's scared right now he's scared because there's people don't like him he's preaching way too long but he is my boy he's my son he's doing what I told him to do and all of a sudden in the midst of that preaching I'll get the sense of confidence because I'll know I'll know I'll know I'm like if that God stands behind me then I don't care who stands against me some of you are where Isaiah was you're discouraged success is not in front of you nobody praises you you need a vision of what Isaiah saw and that is the holy God if you're doing what he told you to do standing behind you saying I am with you others of you are where the nation of Israel was you're in the year that King Uzziah died the foundations of your life are shaking you've suddenly learned you got cancer or maybe you're in a divorce or maybe your family's falling apart or I don't know what's going on with you right but something's happening in the found that you lost your job and the foundations of your life are shaking I'm not going to be okay you need to see that where others fail you parents leaders a friend your job where they have fallen off the throne God never will and the God that made his promise to you at the beginning is going to stay with you for the rest of your life and that God is the one rock that you can build your life on he's the one throne that will never falter it will never fail and you can establish the rest of your eternity on it you see Jesus is the God that you see high and lifted up and it's the God you've always wanted to know you may not have realized that but Jesus is the God that you have always craved you've craved this kind of goodness you see there's one other time that Isaiah talks about God being high and lifted up and it is the entrance into Isaiah 53 which is the story of the prediction of Jesus's crucifixion you see Jesus is going to have a experience very similar to Isaiah as he's going to stand before the judgment of God but he's pure and he has nothing to be afraid of and he can see God there's no fear but in the midst of that moment listen what Jesus does he's a man of clean lips Jesus reaches down and he picks up our filthy rags and he holds them and he says these are my rags and God's the father says those are not your rags those belong to them and Jesus says I hold them in their place and Jesus would be struck down by the judgment of God because of our filthy rags and our sin and our sense of pride and there we would see the holiness of God on display that he is so holy that sin had to die in his presence but he was so loving that he couldn't let us die and so he gave himself for us so that we could be saved and when you come to know that God that is holy in that way that will satisfy and transform your entire life once you bow your heads with me all of our campuses you bow your heads do you know this God if you've never come to know this God if you've never received him right now you could begin a relationship with him it's just repentance and faith repentance means you acknowledge that he's the Lord and you're the rebel that he's in charge not you faith means you say to him right now Lord Jesus I receive your gift of salvation offered to me I receive it as my own.