Make Me Holy

Make Me Holy

Isaiah 6:1-8

    I am told that as you drive through some of America's National parks, you are constantly reminded by numerous sings, "Don't feed the bears!". However, every year, more and more bears are seen wondering along the roadside, or rummaging through the parking lots, looking for easy food.  Why do they do this? Because they have lost the purpose of their  existence. They were created to hunt for food in the depths of the forest,  not on the side of the road!

    So, the question for us to consider today is this:  For what were you created.  Or, better yet, as disciples of Jesus, for what were you redeemed?  I believe Peter supplies us the answer in 1 Peter 1:15-16, where he writes, "...as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy."

    The next question I have for you this morning is this:  Are you holy?   If someone called you ‘holy’ would you take it as a compliment?   Well it may depend whether or not something was appended to ‘holy’.   I mean if they said your were a ‘holy Joe’ or a ‘holy roller’ that would not be complimentary.   Secondly it would depend on how they defined ‘holy’.   If they meant that you were straight laced, Victorian in your outlook, judgmental, uptight and other negative things then again it would not be a compliment.   When we speak of ‘holy’ we are not really sure what we mean.   When we say God is holy what do we mean and what difference does it actually make to our lives?   When we read in the Bible that we ‘are to be holy as he is holy’ does it actually mean anything to us?   Does it make any difference to how we live?   So this morning we are going to look at what the Bible teaches about God’s holiness.
    As we begin let me give you a definition of ‘holiness.’   In the Bible when someone or something is described as ‘holy’ it means that it has been ‘set apart’ or ‘separated’ for God.   That is, it has been set aside and apart from everyday use and dedicated wholly to God and His will and purpose.   When the Bible says God is holy it means He is ‘apart’ or ‘separate’ from His creation.   You see the word ‘holy’ comes from a Hebrew word which means ‘to cut off’ or ‘to separate’ or ‘to set apart’.   So to apply ‘holy’ to God means He is separate, apart, above and beyond His creation and His created creatures. To say God is holy is in fact another way to say God is God.

    As we go through life, every now and then we have those defining, life-altering moments. Something out of the ordinary happens to us and changes the course of our lives. We see the world in a brand new way. Everything is different. Nothing is ever the same again. Such was the case for the young prophet, Isaiah, one morning as he came to the temple to worship.  The nation was experiencing turmoil in leadership and threats from foreign enemies.  As the prophet prays, he … 

Experiences The Holy

Humbled by His Presence   and …   

Called to Witness

1. Body
1. Experiencing The Holy  (vv. 1-4).    --- Upward
1. The situation that precipitated Isaiah’s life changing encounter was the death of King Uzziah. Some of you are old enough to remember the death and funeral of President John F. Kennedy.  Those were days of darkness and how the entire country was thrown into shock and mourning.  The young man Isaiah, no doubt, had a similar experience when his King Uzziah died.  The death of the king led Isaiah to go to the temple.  The inclination to go to church when some crisis shakes the foundation of our lives is as old as religion itself.  There in the temple,Isaiah had an encounter with the Holy.
2. The temple was about two hundred and fifty years old now. It was a beautiful, beautiful building. As he was in the temple, he looked up high, a hundred and fifty feet high to the ceiling. He looked up high into a vision above him. He saw God on his throne. The robes of God came cascading down into the temple as water comes cascading down a waterfall. All around Isaiah was the robe of God, flowing like streams of silk, curling around him.   Why robes?  Robes symbolize the majesty of God.  So, in this vision, it's God's majesty that fills up the temple.
3. Isaiah looked up into the face of God, and he couldn’t quite see the face of God, but he could see two seraphim. The seraphim were two winged creatures with three sets of wings. One set of wings covered the face; one set of wings covered the feet; and the other set of wings were used to fly. The seraphim were singing in their deep magical voice, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of God of Hosts.” The voice rumbled, “Heaven and earth are full of God’s glory. Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God of heaven.”
4. Do you know what that is like, to look upward and experience the Holy?  If truth be told, most of the time we may be rocking along through life, totally insensitive to God and God’s workings in our lives. But then something may happen that causes us to experience God or feel that we are in the direct presence of the Divine. The loss of a job, a sudden illness, a near death experience, the birth of a child—and all of a sudden it seems that God’s Spirit for the first time ever—or least in a new and different way—has broken into our world. It seems that God is speaking to us, trying to tell us something. Perhaps some of us can even cite a day and time when we had such a life-changing encounter or epiphany. Feeling we are in the direct presence of the Holy can be an awesome thing.Humbled By His Presence.  (vv. 5-7)    ---- Inward
5. When Isaiah realized that he was in the direct presence of the Almighty, he said, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isa. 6:5). The depth of our shortcomings really begins to haunt us when we feel ourselves to be in the presence of the Holy. It’s sort of like the feeling you might get while cruising down the freeway at 75 miles per hour in a 45-miles-per-hour construction zone, and you look up in your rearview mirror and see red lights flashing. (Not that any of us have ever done that, mind you. But we can imagine what it might feel like, can’t we?) It’s a humbling feeling to recognize our guilt in the presence of authority or, in Isaiah's case,  that which is Holy.
6. Speaking of guilt and sin, one commentator suggests that we as Christians are the only ones who can rightly determine our human condition, and we need to take that seriously.   Only Christians know about sinfulness, as it were, and unfortunately we are pretty good at it.   In our society, however, “we can’t be honest about our sin because we are dishonest about the human condition, because we know not how to describe ourselves except through therapeutic categories (we are sick rather than sinful), or sin as an educational problem (we are racist because we don’t have proper understanding of other cultures), or as an expression of our anxiety about being human (we are frail, vulnerable creatures who respond to our creatureliness in inappropriate ways). There is some truth to all of that, but none of that gets to the heart of a specifically Christian view of sin.”
7. Reinhold Niebuhr called sin “the only completely self-evident doctrine we have.”   You know what I'm talking about.   Sin ruins our relationships; fouls our air and water, creates financial problems, poverty, war, child and elder abuse.  It probably also gives you acne and messes up your golf game, though I can’t prove that.  I think it was John, my father-in-law, a minister in Maine, who was asked one time, “What do you believe about sin?”  To which, he replied, “I’m against it.”
8. Yet, it seems that worship, true worship, the way Isaiah and others in the Bible experience it, makes us more aware of our sin.  Once you see God for who and what He is, you cannot help but see yourself for who and what you are. In essence, Sin is a by-product of worship.  Reality is that none of us are worthy to be in his presence, even though some may think of themselves as the finest thing since sliced bread.   Romans 3 - None righteous no not one, all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory.
1. When we realize who we are in the presence of God, the only thing we can do is confess. We are all sinners living in the midst of a sin-filled world. Our righteousness hangs about us as rags, and we are hopeless in and of ourselves. 
2. In the words of Isaiah we are undone, ruined, lost. Yet, by being moved to confession in His presence we are then granted cleansing.
9. One commentator on this passage writes that, "Between the prophet’s vision and sense of unworthiness, and his final gesture of readiness to go forth for God, stands a wondrous act of forgiveness."Called To Witness  (v. 8)     ---- Outward
10. Finally, after the glimpse of God's Holiness, the realization of Isaiah's own sinfulness, and his cleansing, comes the call to service.
11. But the call is not a matter of worthiness. God’s call often comes to the most unlikely candidates: cursing fishermen, cheating tax collectors, former prostitutes, and so on. People are not called because they are the best looking, most talented, or greatest by human standards. And oftentimes people hear a call when they are going about their everyday affairs, perhaps immersed in their daily work. A routine visit to the temple turns into a defining, life changing moment. “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” the call rings out. To which some, like Isaiah, enthusiastically reply, “Here I am! Send me!” (Isa. 6:8, 9).
12. I am reminded of a famous altar in the old country of Czechoslovakia showing Christ without arms. It is a constant reminder that we are Christ’s arms to serve the world. It reminds us that Christians are not only to pray, “Thy will be done,” but we are also to say, “Here I am; what do you want me to do?” There is so much need in the world and so many opportunities for service.
13. What is needed in the Church today is disciples who will say: Here I am!  I will follow Jesus, and I will learn all I can learn about being a Christian disciple! Here I am! I will find some way to minister to the world’s need.  Here I am! I will teach Sunday school! Here I am! I will serve on that church  committee or ministry team! Here I am! I will invite my new neighbors to  worship! Here I am! I will help do what needs to be done around the church  building and grounds! 
14. Here I am! (Dare I say it?)  I'll become a missionary!  Here I am!  Send me!
2. Conclusion 
1. God calls each of us to be holy, as He is holy, yet I wonder this morning, are we hearing His call?
2. The man huddled on the cabin floor was slowly freezing to death. It was high in the Rockies in southwestern Alberta, and outside a blizzard raged. John Elliott had logged miles that day through the deep snows of the mountain passes as he checked for avalanches. As dusk and exhaustion overcame him he had decided to “hole-up.” He made it wearily to his cabin but somewhat dazed with fatigue, he did not light a fire or remove his wet clothing. As the blizzard blasted through the cracks in the old cabin walls, the sleeping forest ranger sank into oblivion, paralyzed by the pleasure of the storm’s icy caress. Suddenly, however, his dog sprang into action,and with unrelenting whines, finally managed to rouse his near-comatose friend. The dog was John’s constant companion, a St. Bernard, one of a long line of dogs famous for their heroics in times of crisis. “If that dog hadn’t been with me, I’d be dead today,” John Elliott says. “When you’re freezing to death you actually feel warm all over, and don’t wake up because it feels too good.” This is a powerful illustration of the deadly deceptiveness of sin. We will never be able to rouse ourselves out of our state of unholiness because we are paralyzed by its pleasure. We need a dramatic encounter with the holiness of God to rouse us out of our unholy oblivion before it’s too late.   LIke Isaiah, we need to worship God until we see Him as he truly IS.
3. In 1961 A.W. Tozer was given the opportunity to speak to a group of minister on a subject of his choice. Not surprisingly he chose to speak to them about the holiness of God. During that talk he said the following words: “I believe we ought to have again the old biblical concept of God which makes God awful and makes men lie face down and cry, ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. That would do more for the church than everything or anything else.” 
4. Understand this much this morning.  God doesn't call holy people to service.  God calls sinful people to worship.
1. In worshipping Him, we look upward and experience the Holy
2. In light of His holiness, we look inward to discover or recall our sinfulness, which - if we're honest before God - we confess in His presence and He forgives us.
3. Having looked upward and inward, He calls us outward.  
5. Such is the process of God making us holy (that is, setting us apart for His service.)