Day Six: Isaiah Sees His Mission

Please forgive my tardiness in posting. I was kicked out of the house for a chunk of the day, then was at my brother's place.

The quotes that Storms utilized in this article were outstanding. The quotes used in today's portion were a great example.

"Having believed with certainty that he was about to be crushed into non-existence by the very holiness of God and having received an unsought for, and unmerited, complete cleansing, what else would he rather do than hurl himself into God's service?" (Oswalt, 186).

The word received again implies a gift. It promts me to return to the thought in the first section. He has given Himself to a people. But I will refrain. You already know my thoughts on that. In light of this quote and the truth contained therein, we would rather do nothing other than hurl ourselves into God's service. Yet so often we drift. So my question for you (and myself) is this: What would you rather do than hurl yourself into God's service? Where are those pockets of nominal christianity? Charnock called it practical atheism. His stance was that when we hold back from the Lord certain areas of our lives, we are acting as if there was no God (more specifically, we deny His being a just God who will judge). For me, as you know, I struggle with my tongue. I began cursing as a joke, what seemed to be a small compromise in my eyes. But that's how sin grows. With one small compromise here, another there, and then BANG! You're deep in it and have no clue how you got there. Well, that's what happened to me, and now I have lost control over my tongue. Isaiah 6 hit me hard, that Isaiah, a prophet, would say that he was a man of unclean lips! "Of all the things to say," I thought to myself, "why lips? Why say something that will expose my folly?" But I deperately need the Lord to intervene in my life and show me my sin, for otherwise, I am a blind man. I take solice in the fact that God still used to Isaiah in mighty ways with his mouth. I pray that same thing for me. That as I lead worship, wherever and for whatever group of people, that the Lord would use my lips in mighty ways. That he would purify my tongue so that it could be used for His glory.

Another thing mentioned in the article is something I really appreciated. "Personal transformation is the product, not so much of seeing the ugliness of sin as seeing the beauty of the Savior. Isaiah was awakened to the horror of his sin only because he saw the holiness of his God." In the past, I have sought to see how foolish and sinful I am and we are as the human race, and it has been helpful. But This makes even more sense. When seeing the beauty of the Lord, I realize instantly how unworthy I truly am. I want to see the Lord, that I might be undone in His presence. That seems to be the surefire way to see the Lord and sin as one ought.

"Calvin concludes that man is never sufficiently "touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state, until he has compared himself with God's majesty" (I:3)."

Gentlemen, it has been my distinct honor to discuss these things with you. Your points were well-formed and provoking, causing me to dwell more fully on the issues mentioned in the article. Thank you for your involvement in this study. I pray that even whoever might stumble upon this blog would recognize more clearly the holiness of God and be undone as a result. As I end this post, I will leave you with a quote from Stephen Charnock on the holiness of God that I read this morning.

When we take a picture of man, we draw the most beautiful part, the face, which is a member of the greatest excellency. WHen God would be drawn to the life, as much as can be, in the spirit of his creatures, he is drawn in this attribute, as being the most beautiful perfection of God, and the most vauable with him... his holiness is his beauty (2 Chron. 22:21);--"should praise te beauty of his holiness."