Michael Durham challenges the congregation to reevaluate their perception of grace, contrasting it with the righteous judgment of God. Through an exploration of Isaiah’s vision and personal reflections, the sermon calls for a renewed sense of wonder at God’s grace and a deeper fear of His holiness.
0:00 – Introduction and opening prayer.
5:05 – An address to your hearts.
8:07 – I was asked to preach the funeral of a person who had killed themselves.
9:58 – We should not be offended at the thought of God judging a person.
12:56 – Observe God’s holy judgment of King Uzziah.
25:49 – Why do you excuse certain sins you commit?
28:58 – Isaiah did not grasp the holiness of God until this day…
39:49 – Years ago the Lord began to depend my understanding of the fear of the LORD.
44:20 – Seeing the amazing grace of the Lord Jesus Christ!
50:34 – Closing prayer.
(Please note that the following transcript has not been proofed for errors.)
It is indeed my privilege to be here tonight and I confess that it’s a privilege of grace, not deserved.
Would you pray with me?
O gracious father, God of all grace, God of mercy. God of infinite love, we call upon you. And we do so in the merit of your blessed Son, Jesus Christ the Lord. We call out his name because he is our advocate, and I am so grateful. But even now he prays. He intercedes for us men. My prayers seem so pitiful and puny compared to his father, but our hearts, our hearts yearn for thee.
We long to see your gracious activity in our midst. We long to once again to behold the manifestation of your glory and your holiness. And so, with our voices blended with his, hear us tonight. Do not deprive us. We pray. Look upon his merit, his achievement, his performance. And for his sake be kind to us. Make your word alive.
Be it be a sword in thy hand. And may you reap your harvest and your spoil. To the glory of his name. Amen. The text. We pray the Lord be pleased to speak to us from tonight. It’s from Isaiah chapter six, verses one through five.
And I found it quite interesting that in both messages previous to tonight, this text has been mentioned and referred to and therefore I. I do not believe that’s an accident or a coincidence. I really struggled whether I should preach from this text because a few of you have heard this text preach from me, but with all of my prayers I felt impressed by the Lord that this was the text for tonight.
And therefore I put my confidence and trust in him. Therefore take he. Then listen. For I do believe the Lord has something to say to us. Isaiah chapter six I want to speak on the theme is Grace still amazing? Is grace still amazing? In Isaiah chapter six, beginning with verse one. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple.
Above it stood seraphim. Each one had six wings, with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of host. The whole earth is full of his glory. And the post of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out.
And the house was filled with smoke. So I said, woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For mine eyes have seen the king, the Lord of host. Nothing like this had happened to the prophet Isaiah. Seeing God in the temple terrorize the prophet, and he cries out in absolute horror.
Woe is me, for I am undone. I want to lay aside the prophet in our text, just momentarily, because I want to address your hearts. I am truly troubled by what I’m seeing in most of our churches. Something is terribly wrong, if not immoral. When we are shocked by justice and not by grace.
You should be much more surprised by grace than judgment and we come into this world deserving judgment. We come into this world in the negative balance and God being righteous and holy, he is right to judge us and he does not owe us his mercy. You do not come deserving of any kindness of the Lord. This we know.
I know you know you cannot have grown in church or come to know Christ without this to be fundamental to your understanding. But somewhere along the line in our fundamental understanding of God’s grace, we have lost its wonder.
If you would say that some tragedy might very well demonstrate the righteous judgment of God, you will bring upon your head the indignation of people. And it just isn’t the unchurched. Many and much of Christendom will find your statements hard to swallow and to accept. They seem to be still angered when you suggest that the Lord still has a righteous temper.
Even you may be now starting to feel somewhat uncomfortable that God can and will dispense justice before the great and terrible day of the Lord. And so I’m very concerned what I am seeing the last couple of years in my travels in good churches. This has nothing to do with the fringe churches, the churches that are unbiblical and unsound.
I’m talking about all the churches represented here and others. If you’re surprised by God’s judgment and not his grace, you have a theological and a heart problem. The death of Christ did not remove all displays of God’s justice and retribution. Remember? And Aeneas and Sapphira, they were struck dead and carried out feet first, because they lied in church.
I think even sincere saints are often surprised by the revelation of God’s judgment, and we are often indifferent to his displays of mercy. I remember many years ago being asked to preach the funeral of a young man who had attempted murder and then committed suicide. He found out that his girlfriend was consorting with another man, found them together, put five bullets into her body, then turned the gun and killed himself.
His former stepfather was the only Christian associated with that family, and so they asked if he would ask me, his pastor, to preach the funeral. And at that funeral, I could not offer any hope to them that they would see their loved one or friend again. But I told them I wasn’t there to preach men into heaven or to hell.
But then at the same time, I could not give them any assurance they would see him again. And then I committed to give them the only help and hope that I could offer them. And that is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. I told them that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, and he died for the ungodly.
And then I called upon them to repent of their sins and to believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ. Because I did not preach that young man into heaven, and give them the assurance that he was in a better place. You would have thought that I was the one who had shot and killed him. The anger in that funeral home was unmistakable, and it was aimed at me.
We despise a God who is right and true in his judgments, and we demand a God who will only show us mercy. We’re offended if he anything than anything else other than leaning at our senses, are shocked by the thought of God judging a person or a church, or a family, or a society or a nation. Before the great day of the Lord.
We have seemed to think that all of his judgments are postponed to some future, as the old divines called the great designs for the final Judgment. But where did we get that? That’s not in the Bible. We can define holiness, and yet we can do so often without experiencing it. And I’m sure, I’m sure I’m persuaded that the problem confronting us today, right here at this juncture in church history, is that most churches today lack the fear of God.
That’s a whole. We really do not fear the Lord. Oh, I don’t mean we don’t fear him, but we do not fear him, as the Bible teaches. Do you? Do you really? Do you fear him so much that you fear sin? Years ago, I wrote an article for a digital magazine that we published, and I wrote about fearing sin, and I reader replied and said that you should only fear God.
You should not fear sin. I responded and said, we should fear anything that is associated with that which God hates. If we truly fear God, we will fear that which he hates. Beloved, you can know God is holy and not experience him. It isn’t knowing that God is holy that saves you. It is knowing the God who is holy that saves you.
And this is eternal. That they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou has sent. That’s what saves you. Knowing him in reality personally. And so I ask, are you ever amazed at grace? The songs we just sing. Was there a flush that came over you of wonderment, amazement that he would do this for me?
Amazing love. How can it be that thou, my God, should die for me? Or have you learned the words so freely that you can sing them with no thought or feeling? Has grace become common and routine? Well, thank you for letting me address your heart. Let’s get back to the text. Now, I want to direct your attention to God’s holy judgment of you.
Desire.
First, it’s noteworthy to mention the scene setting words in the year that King Uzziah died. Isaiah was one of the noblest and best kings of all of Judah. Second longest reigning king, 52 years and perhaps not since Solomon had Judah so prospered as it did under the administration of using. But most importantly, Isaiah was a lover of God.
He loved the things of God. Isaiah was born and reared under the great King Hezekiah, and at the time of our text event, Zaya was the only king that Isaiah had ever known. Isaiah was called to preach under his under his administration, and he was aware that Zaya was one of those national treasures that would be hard to replace.
But there was one glaring blot on an otherwise great record. At the height of his glory, he dared to take something upon himself that was not for him to take. He was the king. Yes, but this was one thing forbidden to him. Executive privilege stopped right here. He dared to enter into the Holy place and assume the ministry of the priest, and offer incense in the temple.
He dared to enter and offer worship to God in a way that was not permissible for him. And while the censor was in Eusebius hand, a white spot broke out on his forehead, and God afflicted him with the most dreaded and incurable disease of his day leprosy. And the end of his life was a disgrace. The Bible states it in a very matter of fact way and Second Chronicles 2621.
Here’s what it says. King Uzziah was a leper until the day of his death. He dwelled in an isolated house because he was a leper for he was cut off from the house of the Lord. Cut off from the house of the Lord. Does that mean anything to you?
It was a shameful, reproachful thing to use. And now here’s the prophet Isaiah in a vision taken to the very place where all of this happened. By vision, God carries him up to the temple and shows him the very place where he was. I had grabbed the sensor and God struck him with leprosy. Now would you consider for a moment Isaiah’s dilemma with me?
Why was this sin visited with such swift and severe wrath? Now, I don’t think I’m running off into speculation to ask that question, and to say that I think you, Zaya, is feeling that perhaps you Zion’s punishment doesn’t fit the crime. Stop and think with me. How could the Lord have been so harsh with a good man? All that the monarch had done was an act of worship.
What he wanted to do was draw closer to God, to him, participate in a more intimate kind of worship. Some of the kings of Judah had led the people into grave sin. Some had even offered their children to the sacrificial fires of the idols that they worshiped. Even David’s sin of adultery and murder cannot be considered small or petty.
And yet many of those kings did not suffer the shame or pain of using as punishment because of the zeal for God using a wish to draw closer to him. He wanted the privilege of honoring worship to honor the Lord. Why then, was he judged so severely? Well, wicked kings seem to escape such severity. I mean, his great great great great great grandfather, David was all the time talking about being in the house of the Lord and serving in the house of the Lord, dwelling in the house of the Lord forever.
Well, he even said one time, I’d rather be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord. He just wanted to be close to God and so did Josiah. Why such severity? And there’s only one reason. You, Zion, knowingly failed to acknowledge the holiness of God. Instead of his act been seen as an act of holy worship, it was a defiant transgression that ignored the infinite holiness of God.
What he meant to be worship was literally abominable. He dared enter into the presence of God. Listen carefully. By his own righteousness, taking upon himself the duty reserved only for the sanctified to set apart the priest. He made a statement about God. Here’s that statement. He was saying that man could enter into God’s presence by his own goodness.
Do you understand? Does this make sense? How often we enter to the place of worship? Unthinking thinking. We deserve to be there. Thinking we merit. You desire. He may have done great things for God. He may have been a dear king and a good man up to this point. But none of those things gave him the right to enter before a holy and awesome God.
Listen carefully. I know that the Christian is washed in the blood and therefore has access to the presence of God. But we do not come by our own merit. Amen. We do not come any other way but the mercies of God. Therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, present your bodies as a living sacrifice. Yes, come boldly to the throne of grace, that you may obtain mercy.
But how can you come? Not without the blood of the lamb. Amen.
And for some of us who know the Lord washed in the blood, forgiven of our sins, robed in his righteousness, we have forgotten the price by which we have access. And we consider it a mundane thing, something the writer of Hebrews said, be careful, be careful. Josiah sin because he didn’t fear God enough to obey him. He dared to think he was holy enough, which can only mean he dared to believe that God was not much more righteous than himself.
He forgot God was infinitely holy, and that no man can presume to enter into his presence. We just cannot presume that. And somehow we have twisted this word, grace and faith. To to be defined as presumption. Taking it for granted. Assuming all is well. Because we are under grace.
Well, we may be able to impact this now. But how was Isaiah to know this? How could the despondent prophet see all of this? Remember Isaiah being a mere man who had suffered from the same affliction? I suffer from? I suffer from the sin of relativism. I have this problem that I see my sins relative in comparison to others.
I want to categorize my sins and I especially like to categorize them in the lower echelons of sin. Not that bad, you see. Not that terribly important. And I’m not the only one that has that characteristic. If you’re breathing here tonight, you have it too. We do that. We do think that there are some more grotesque in their sins than us.
And so we judge sin based upon this, this imaginary standard. But the problem with that is we’re still sinners and our sin colors taints our judgment of right and wrong. And when we worship God without being mindful of who we are approaching, we may think we are honorable, but God thinks something very different. So here’s mournful Isaiah trying to understand all of this.
But he can’t. He just can’t. We barely do here tonight. And we have the benefit of history and the New Testament scriptures. There was only one thing that could help this prophet. Only one thing that could cure his relativism. What was it? Witnessing the holiness of God. And my friends. That is the only thing that we heal us tonight and all that God would be gracious to turn this place into a holy place, sanctified by the manifestation of his presence, that we too might have our hearts gripped again and remember how holy he is.
Oh, that he would do it! It’s been my prayer for days and weeks now. Go, Lord, split the heavens. Render them come the helm we need to see. We have forgotten. We know it intellectually. Doctrine is embedded into our Supreme Being. But Lord, we need that reality. You are holy, infinitely more holy than we are. That’s our cure.
Tonight. I Isaiah’s dilemma is not so different from yours and mine. Even though I’ve explained why God was angry with what you desire. Isn’t there still something within you that said, yeah, I get that. But still, I just don’t think it’s quite fair. I think it’s a little overdone. I don’t think God was just trying to prove a point, but I don’t think I deserved that.
Yes, I have sinned. Couldn’t be as bad, you might argue, as King Manassas sinned. And by the way, King Manasa martyred the prophet Isaiah. Tradition says he put him in a hollow log and had him sworn in. Two and yet manifest himself in the end was forgiven and restored to the throne.
But yes, I is cut off from the house of the Lord.
Have we forgotten that it’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God?
Have we forgot that without the advocacy of our precious master and Lord Jesus, we have no right to come in and of ourselves? Oh, if God’s grace was withdrawn from me tonight, I would still be the abominable man that I was when he found me. And probably far worse. Having tasted the good things to come.
Isaiah is struggling with all of this. How is it, my friend, that you can excuse certain sins you commit? You don’t see them as sins as clearly as the Bible states them. You can watch men and women do things on TV that you wouldn’t do, but you’ll watch it and call it entertainment. Look at the church today. The world of Christendom.
There’s such a such a cheapening of our great God and our worship. We come a new way and style. We please. We come lax a days ago. Look at our demeanor. Look at our appearance. Watch what we do, how we speak. And why? Like Isaiah, are we puzzled over God’s judgments? Thinking it’s unreasonable? Too strict. Why does grace not move our heart to tears?
Why are we not shocked and still bewildered that God has shown you favor instead of wrath? Why are you not surprised that God loves you?
The reason for all of this and why you can so easily excuse yourself and your sin, is that you are not convinced of God’s surpassing holiness. We heard that this morning when the fear of the Lord grips the heart. It does so because you are conscience of the all seeing eye. The abiding presence of God. Listen to Joseph.
How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? He knew he was under the the surveillance of God. He knew God was watching. He knew God was there. And yet we have easily forgotten this. We don’t practice the continual, abiding presence of God. We act as if God is not there and therefore there is no fear of the Lord.
The reason for all of this, the reason we can so easily convince us because we’re not convinced of the surpassing holiness of God. We do not know what the words God is holy really mean. And when you remove the holiness of God from worship. Not just gathered praise and singing, but a life lived under God worship. When you remove holiness from the worship of God, your worship becomes either entertainment or ritualism.
And many of us in this room has fallen to one error or the other. Sins no longer a violent, wicked, just a behavioral problem. And the gospel is just another self-help therapy. There’s no Christianity, no Christianity without holiness. None whatsoever. Isaiah did not grasp the holiness of God as he ought to before this day. I’m convinced of it.
And he was a prophet. Therefore, to help Isaiah, God invades Isaiah’s space. Oh, would he invade our space tonight?
Oh, to once again be moved and overcome, overwhelmed that God is holy and I’m not the Holy of Holies. Was no longer a place to Isaiah. It became a person.
And there he is, sitting on his throne. His royal robes flows down, fills every space, drapes the furniture. Creatures appear so beautiful that they’re terrifying. Six wing creatures crying out Holy, Holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory, and the harmonic voices of those beautiful creatures reverberated the pillars of the temple, and a cloud of smoke filled the room, and he saw God and beloved, what Isaiah saw God.
That God has not changed. He still high and lifted up. He is still the Holy One of Israel, the Holy of Holies. Yes, not a place, but a person. And tonight we are in the presence of this Holy One. Whether we feel it or not, whether we acknowledge or not, whether you have the spiritual sensibility to know it or not, he’s here.
He’s in this place, and his word is being proclaimed through a faulty and weak servant. But it is still nonetheless the word of the Lord. Will you hear it? Will you heed it? Will you let him have his way and invade your space here tonight? Have you been overwhelmed and smitten with the sense of God’s holiness that you wanted to hide? Have you ever?
Or have you never seen such purity and beauty before? Never saw it to the degree you were terrified to. Many professing Christians never experience the terror of the Lord. And I wonder how they can be Christians. I honestly don’t know how.
We don’t fear sin because we don’t think of it correctly. We don’t see it for what it is. We don’t see its vileness because we don’t understand holiness. And of course, we don’t understand the nature of the holy because we really don’t know God. And again, I don’t mean you don’t know him. It doesn’t mean you’re not to say, but you don’t know his essence.
Oh, you do not know the deep secrets of his heart that he’s made known to his friends, his very intimate love and heart for his people.
Why would the mother of that son. That day, as I stood at the head of the casket of her son. Why would she stand and look at me and say, I don’t care what anyone says, my son is in heaven. Why would she say that to me? One reason only. She didn’t under understand the certain standard of holiness, for if she did, she would have not been shocked by the judgment of God.
No, no, no. She would have been shocked that she had not been condemned long ago, and that she was not in hell at that present moment.
At that moment. Isaiah saw it all, and there were no more questions except one. Do you know what that question was? Would he survive?
Was he next to receive the judgment of God? Would he break out in into leprosy leper spots up here, or would he be carried out feet first? I mean, there was no escape there. He was. There was God. He was caught. And he cries out. Woe is me, for I am undone. I’m a man of unclean lips. And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.
Oh, yes, he knew he had dwelt in the midst of a people of unclean lips. He’d been preaching to them. But today he knows he too is a man of unclean lips. Why? He tells you. Because I have seen. My eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts. Sin was no longer relative before this day. Isaiah. Of course, he knew God was holy, but now it was more than an intellectual understanding.
Now he had seen the Holy One and he realized that his sin was incriminating. And he’s a prophet.
I mean, he’s a man that if we were in the presence of, we would be quite inferior feeling. But he’s not in the presence of another man. He’s in the presence of the thrice holy God and in his presence. Isaiah’s sin was repulsive not just to God, but to the prophet himself. Well, that’s what I need tonight. I constantly need the mirror of the holiness of God that I might behold my need for his holiness and his continued grace.
Oh, dear Christian. When was the last time? How long has it been since you were overwhelmed and amazed that you are his? Counted his child. Oh, I pray God revive us tonight. How could you desire to survive? He felt hopeless, rightly condemned. God’s holy presence had done its job. God is so holy that the least of sins has no right to survive in his presence.
One sin is like a germ that would destroy a sterile laboratory. It can’t be tolerated. And there he is in the presence of Almighty God.
Beloved. My concern tonight. And I preach out of a burdened heart. I. I assure you, is that we do not make the same mistake to do that so many others have made it, and that is because we are forgiven of our many sins. That we do not see the need to pursue holiness. We must never forget. Follow peace with all men and holiness without which.
No man shall see the Lord.
I’m not advocating you sharpen your pencil and start making your list. Of new duties and things you can you can reform and do better. Hear me? There is only one hope for us tonight, and that is God’s mercy. And that he would display his holiness to each one of us. So that the post in the pillars of our hearts shake with holy fear in the name we need the fear of the Lord to be restored in our eyes.
The lesson of you, sire, should cause you to tremble. It’s a it’s terrible to lose the fear of the Lord. The opposite. It’s the opposite. Is pride and arrogance and willful presumption to believe that you can enter into God’s presence. Because God is gracious.
It’s taken license with the the grace of God, ignoring holiness. No, no, no. Yes, I can come into his presence because he’s gracious, but his grace doesn’t excuse my sin. His grace forgives my sin because he dealt with it already. But that same grace that justifies is the same grace that pursues you and sanctifies you. And for too long we have been too happy to separate the doctrines of justification and sanctification.
We want to miss the error of the Roman Catholic Church, of course. We do not mix them in that unholy mixture as they. But my dear friends, they are connected. Let me say it again. The same grace that justifies is the same grace that sanctifies, one justifies and pardons. And that same grace now works to give you the desire and the power to please him.
And that’s what holiness is all about, being conformed to the image of his dear son. What do you say? What do you feel when some brother or sister corrects you, rebukes you for your sin? Do you feel something of of despise for them, or do you quickly justify and say, well, listen, that’s all law. You know we’re under grace.
Beloved, do you not remember that he is holy and that his love is holy? His love? Let me say it again. Is holy.
Several years ago, the Lord began to deepen my understanding of the fear of the Lord.
Up to that point, being a saved Pharisee.
Performance was very important to me. Making sure that I walked in a upright way. And that’s important. Yes. But one day my heart was found out by God to be lukewarm, maybe even cold. I hate those seasons. How about you? I despise them, I hate them. I don’t, I don’t relish or enjoy when my heart can’t seem to find him.
And and the conscious awareness of his presence is gone and just kind of slowly erodes. And here I am in this wilderness, longing to come before God again and to know the sweetness of his presence. This had been going on for weeks. Crying out to the Lord. Oh Lord, help me! Help me! Where are you, Lord? Where are you?
And on this particular day. Oh, praise be to his name. The gospel came back again. The gospel. And I was reminded of how much he loved me in Christ. How much he loved me in His Son. Oh, I must interrupt my story to remind you that there was another great display of holiness also. And you find it in Matthew.
Matthew chapter 27 and beginning with verse 54. Matthew 2754.
So when the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly, saying, truly this was the Son of God. I suggest and submit to you that the holy vision of Isaiah comes second to what these men saw on Calvary’s hill outside the walls of Jerusalem. There was the greatest display of the holiness of God ever to be seen more than the burning bush, more than Bethel.
More than this blessed and extraordinary experience the prophet here has in Isaiah six for there that centurion, the one given the authority to to insure the death, the execution of our blessed Lord, he witnesses all of these things the earthquake, the darkness, the demeanor, and the words of our blessed Savior. And he becomes greatly afraid. Unfortunately, the Bible doesn’t tell us what happens to that man.
It’s perhaps because he doesn’t understand all that he saw, if any. But we do. And on that morning when I was wrestling with a cold, cold heart, God took me back to Calvary’s hill. And there I saw holiness. What did I see? I saw him not in a vision, but in the word of God. By the help of the Holy Spirit, I saw my Jesus hanging, condemned.
He stood in my place, and I saw the father unleash upon him the curse and the wrath and the retribution that I deserved then, and I still deserve tonight.
And I remembered that he was cut off from the house of the Lord. And I can’t explain that to your theological mind. You theologians, please excuse me that I can’t go any further than that. But this I know nor thought. My heart. He took my sin, and he suffered all of the wrath of God. And that meant to be cut off from God, forsaken by God.
Remembered no more for good by God.
And he was remembered for your evil. Remembered for your sin. Remembered by God for your transgressions. Right? And when I saw that again, having been preaching for many, many years.
My heart was overwhelmed by love. So amazing, so divine. I was overcome by it, that I felt something I never felt. Literally. My heart began to beat out of rhythm, trembled, and now I’m physically shaking. Because that day I saw in the retribution of God on my sin in Christ, the love of God for me. And although again, I have been saved for many years.
No, I was a child. But this morning, fresh love poured out by the Holy Spirit came. And I was so moved that God became terrible to me using the authorized versions language I was. He was terrifying. And here was the question that came flying out of my mouth. How can you be who you are and love me like you do?
I have never known anyone who loved like this.
And at that moment my eyes again. My understanding was helped. That’s what holiness means. Altogether different. Altogether pure. Magnificent. Beautiful. And isn’t the love of God that in more. And at that moment his love became something out of this world. I can’t even compare it to the love of my wife for me, or my love for her to do so.
Would you be blaspheming against his infinite love? Who is a God like this so holy that he can love so wicked people like us? Me?
And since that day, the fear of the Lord has a new dimension for me.
How can I sin against a God who loves me more than the expanse of the universe? How can I grieve such a heart of a being like this? Beloved, wouldn’t you agree with me that there’s something defective with our love and holiness tonight? Something is amiss that we can easily excuse ourselves and be terribly surprised if God rebukes us, disciplines us.
Why, my friend, are you more inclined to indulge your flesh so long as you can maintain your public image? Control yourself. Not enough to not sin in a way that would ruin your reputation. But care not for the heart that would send His Son to the cross for you. I don’t mean to condemn in that question. I’m trying to get you to see that what really happens when we transgress our father’s love for us and his will for us, is that we grieve him not a little, but much.
Because he loves you more than anyone else, more than you can measure. Great. Must that grief be when we sin against him?
His grace become ordinary, routine, commonplace, while the fear of God is non-existent. Isaiah left that day. I’m confident, stunned that he was able to escape alive. He knew he deserved wrath and he was astonished by mercy. He came that day to the temple thinking he was a holy man. He left that day truly humbled by the knowledge. There’s only one who’s truly righteous and truly holy.
And the experience so changed Isaiah that that man would one day. Right? But we are all an unclean thing, and all of our righteousness are as filthy rags. Beloved.
When you see God through the eyes of a true biblical understanding, you’re always shocked and amazed that God has not ended your miserable existence, but instead is giving you his gracious, loving kindness. Grace. Grace still amazes the man, the woman whose eyes have seen the thrice holy Lord of hosts. May we see him tonight?
Father.
If this is our only prescription for healing tonight, then we pray. Come, open our eyes. And may we experience holy love. Love divine. Thank you. Father, very much. Beyond my ability to thank you.
For your mercy towards us. Towards me.
Lord, that that person who’s heard all of this tonight.
They can’t grasp it. Apart from your holy work. Pardon, I pray awaken, illuminate. Show them you in your son. And for those of us, Lord, who have seen and drifted from it, restore us tonight. Come to us. Visit us. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
