Sermon Tone Analysis
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God is Holy
Guilt, grace, gratitude.
You have probably heard me say that many times from this pulpit and I know the catechism students have heard me mention it on many occasions.
These three words are not only the three sections of the Heidelberg Catechism but they are also reflected in how we worship God each week.
We come before God with songs of praise.
Understanding that he is great and holy we confess our sins.
We then here of God’s mercy in the Words of Assurance, in the reading of scripture, and the gospel of God’s grace is proclaimed each week in the sermon.
We then respond to all of this in gratitude.
We give our offerings.
We are blessed to leave this place and serve God in gratitude for what he has done in Christ.
If you are looking for this framework you will see it throughout scripture and it is for more than just a catechism and weekly worship of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is a structure for living your life in light of who the Triune God is and what he has done for us.
We see this in our Old Testament lesson from the book of Isaiah this morning where the prophet is gripped by the absolute holiness of God.
As we dig right into this passage from there is some important information that we need to know as we begin.
As we read this morning you may have asked a question in the first verse.
Who is King Uzziah and should I know something about the year he died?
King Uzziah has one chapter dedicated to him in the book of 2nd Chronicles.
At a young age he starts off faithful to the LORD and he establishes a large and trained army that protected Israel from their enemies but tells us that after Uzziah became powerful his pride led to his downfall.
He went into the temple of the LORD and tried to burn incense at the altar.
Priests tried to stop him but he felt as though he could do the work of a priest even though he had not been set apart to do the priestly work.
He did not heed the warnings of the priests and God caused leprosy to break out on his forehead.
He spent the rest of his life in a separate house because of the leprosy.
There is something significant there.
Because he refused to acknowledge that he wasn’t set apart and made clean to go before the altar God made him unclean with leprosy and he was set apart because he was unclean.
I tell the background for a reason.
Uzziah had refused to acknowledge the holiness of God.
In fact, it fact he completely blew it off.
He didn’t think he had to be set apart and he had could go before God on his own.
In Isaiah, we are going to see someone who acknowledges the holiness of God and as a result is humbled and repents.
That is the contrast we see between Uzziah and Isaiah.
As we see in verse 1 Isaiah has a vision of the Lord seated on a throne.
High and exalted.
We see that the train of his robe fills the temple.
Considering what happens in this passage and everything Isaiah could describe there is a real economy of words.
He says a lot but we have just 8 verses to describe this encounter.
When we connect this verses two through 4 we really get the idea of the image that Isaiah is wanting to paint for us.
We are to see the majesty of God because he is seated on a throne.
We are to understand the power and awesomeness of God because the train of the robe fills the temple.
In other words, just the edges of his garment fill one of the largest buildings that his audience can picture in their minds.
The smoke give us the idea of the majesty and transcendence of God.
It is meant to draw upon the imagery of God at Mount Sinai.
All of this is to bring us to specific place as we look at what Isaiah is setting before us and it is all about verse 3.
What we are seeing is the holiness of God.
The word holy is not a word that was common in the ancient Near East.
It was not only rarely used and when it was it was essentially used to show that the pagan gods were different and not common.
There was no idea of morality in it either and that would probably not have worked anyway because in many cases the behavior of the pagan gods was not exactly what we would consider to be moral.
But for the Hebrew people this was not the case.
Throughout the Old Testament we are told that God is holy.
The word appears in different forms in the Old Testament over 800 times.
The Bible makes it clear that the one, true God is holy.
This means that he is different.
He is set apart.
He is other.
But he is also righteous and perfect.
The word holy is used to describe but there are stories in the Old Testament that tell us what this means too.
Humans can’t look upon God because his holiness is too much to bear.
God is holy and we as humans are not.
We are sinful.
We are covenant breakers.
He is righteous.
He is a covenant keeper.
But it God is more than holy.
There is something important that we need to understand as we read this.
For us to say holy, holy, holy just sounds repetitive or sounds like an allusion to a hymn we all know very well.
In Hebrew though repetition is an important part of how the language helps us to understand things.
If I wanted to express to you the size of an average sized rock I would just call it a rock.
If it was a big rock that even large equipment would have trouble moving I would express it as a rock rock.
You get the idea.
Here in is the only place we see the repetition going to the third level.
Nothing else gets to that level of emphasis except what we see here.
The holiness of God.
This is something that we struggle with as modern folk.
We don’t have much of a concept of royalty except for things like royal weddings.
We have reverence and respect for a president or other leader but we would never bow before them.
It isn’t even just the throne and kingly imagery that we struggle with.
Movie effects have deadened us to the idea of a loud voice coming out of smoke but that doesn’t change the nature of what Isaiah saw.
Isaiah is overcome at what he has seen and heard.
Isaiah 6:
Now this is not language that we would likely use.
I have not used the term woe to me at anytime in my life.
At least not when I’m being serious but we can understand what Isaiah is saying here.
He is completely overwhelmed.
He is ruined.
Every fiber of his being would have been feeling this.
I had an experience as I was preparing on Thursday that gave me a feeling that helps me to illustrate this experience for us.
I received one of these IRS scam calls you may have heard about.
Go ahead and laugh at me if you like but for a minute or so I actually believed what the person on the other end of the phone was telling me.
Something had been missed in my taxes and there was a warrant out for my arrest.
In that moment, even though I had a sense that nothing was actually wrong I still was consumed to fear.
I felt it down to my toes.
I was shaking.
I wanted to cry.
Even once I got my bearings and got it all sorted in my head it still took me awhile to feel normal again.
The notion that the power of the government could come crushing down on me was consuming for me.
Like I said, go ahead and laugh, but I was kind of a wreck after that.
But there is something important to think about.
I ultimately knew deep down that this wasn’t real and I was still shaken up by it.
Isaiah was in the presence of something far more powerful than the IRS.
On top of it all he could not even begin to think this was a scam or that it wasn’t true.
He was in the presence of almighty, all-powerful, and all-knowing God and he was a sinner.
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