Text: Isaiah 6: 1-7
INTRODUCTION:
The greatest need most of us have is the need to see and understand God.
I am convinced that the greatest shortcoming in our generation is the inability to see and understand God. If there were some way for us to communicate a vision of God completely, there is no doubt in my mind that people would flock to Him.
It is appalling how woefully ignorant our generation is about the Creator. It seems as though everyone wants a designer God, created ju8st the way they like to think about God, and doing only what they want Him to do. They don’t want a God Who gets in the way of what they believe. They don’t want a God Who is going to affect their behavior in any way. They don’t want a God Who speaks in “Thou shalt nots….” They want a God Who will say, “Oh all right. Go ahead.”
We do not want a God Who gives us moral absolutes, or Who imposes Himself on the decisions of our lives.
When I hear people talk about the kind of God they serve or want, I am even more amazed at the people of the Bible. Think about the kind of faith a man like Abraham must have had. God came to him in the desert and told him to gather his family and belongings and move to a land He would show him.
Can’t you just hear the discussion with his wife when he went home and told her what they were going to do? “We’re going to do what? We’re moving? Where to?”
“I don’t know”, he replies.
“What do you mean you don’t know?”, she asks. “Who is guiding us?”
“God,” he says.
“What God? Did you see Him? What did He look like?”
“No,” he said. “I didn’t see Him—but I heard Him speak to me.”
His wife replies, “Now let me get this straight. You heard a voice but saw no one. He told you to pull up your family and move and you don’t even know where we are moving?”
That’s the kind of conversation most of us would probably have had, but I suspect Abraham’s wife was much more faithful. She knew her husband, so she went with him to that unknown land.
Just think about the kind of faith it took to do what they did for no other reason except that God asked them to do it.
Wouldn’t you like to think you had that kind of faith?
We live in a world that doesn’t really understand when we say we know God, that we have a personal relationship with Him. If you say something like that to many people they will look at you like you are some sort of weirdo.
People in out culture doe not want to believe in anything they cannot see, hold and touch. Ours is a world that has to see God in order to believe in Him.
So it is that I conclude, the most pressing need we have in our generation is to the need for a fresh vision of God. But, we will not have it, at least not the way most people want it.
Why? Because3 if God were to show Himself to us, we would not need faith. The Bible says we are saved through faith…there would be no faith…no need for faith, if we could see everything about God.
So, without that vision we are left to other devices. One device we rely on is the Word of God. In God’s Word we are given a wonderful collection of pictures of God.
The truth is, God has allowed us to see and understand Him. His Word, His Son have given us a picture of the God Who created the universe. I contend that what we need today is a renewed vision, a fresh picture of God and a fresh encounter with Him.
Some of us are still running on our childhood vision of God. We have not moved beyond that because we have not had any new, fresh encounters with God since we were saved in childhood. I contend that we all need to have our vision of God renewed once in a while. Once in a while we just need to appear before God and admit we haven’t been close to Him for a while, so our vision is blurred and our behavior has been affected.
Not only do individuals need a fresh vision of God, so do churches. When we get to the point where we think we know better how to run our lives and His church, we need a fresh vision of God. We have got to come back to the point that we are all clamoring with our shouts of “I want this or I want that”…and ask afresh and anew, “What does God want?” But, we won’t come to that point without a fresh vision of God.
Before you can know God’s vision for your life or the church, you have to renew your vision of God. There can be no vision from God until there is a vision of God.
Let me share with you for a few minutes the kind of things you are likely to discover afresh about God, when you seek this fresh encounter. You can join the ranks of the likes of Isaiah, who said, “I saw the Lord….”
Look what the prophet saw when he saw the Lord.
I. YOU WILL SEE GOD’S PERFECT GLORY
One of the big problems some people have with God is about this perfection business. From early elementary school we are taught there is no such thing as perfection. There are no perfect circles, no perfect squares, no perfect triangles or rectangles. Truth be told we don’t eve know how to define perfection because we have never seen anything that was perfect.
Not long ago I saw a young couple on a game show on T.V. They were about to be married. The young woman was asked what the ugliest thing about her chosen mate. Without hesitation she answered, “His feet.”
Then the young man was asked the ugliest thing about his fiancé. He thought for a moment and said, “There is nothing ugly about her. She is perfect.”
Now, remember I told you they were about to get married. Let’s find him and ask him again in about six months.
Even if there was something perfect for us to observe, we would not be able to see it perfectly because of our imperfect minds and bodies.
Perfection is a stranger to us in any area of life, except when we get a vision of God. When Isaiah saw the Lord, high and exalted, he saw the perfection of the glory of the most high God. When we see God we are treated to a view of His perfection. That is His glory. His love is a perfect love. His good is a perfect good. His white is perfectly white. His kingdom is a perfect kingdom. His grace is perfect grace.
If we could hear His choir we would hear every note perfectly sung. All of His works are perfect. Even imperfect man bears testimony of the perfection of God. This perfect God made man with the ability to decide for himself. God chose not to make us robots. He could have, but He didn’t, because this perfect Being did not want man to have to worship Him. He wanted us to choose to worship Him.
God made us all with the ability to become a perfect spiritual being some day. That day will be when our vision of God is of the first-hand variety, when we live with Him in eternity.
A vision of God will enable you to see God’s perfect glory. Also, a vision of God WILL ENABLE YOU TO SEE YOUR OWN IMPERFECTION. That’s what the prophet saw. And, that’s what you will see.
II. YOU WILL SEE YOUR OWN IMPERFECTION
The principle is this: The closer you are to God, the more of your own imperfections you will see. The farther you get from God, the better you look to yourself. If you are not seeing your faults, you are not close enough to God.
Isaiah saw the glory of God and responded like this; “Woe to me. I am a man of unclean lips and I live among people of unclean lips, and my eyes beheld the King.”
So, you see, how you see yourself is greatly affected by how you see God.
It reminds me of those soap[ commercials where they show you a white shirt that has just been washed. It looks nice and white. They then sow you another shirt that has been washed with their detergent, and when it is put up against the first shirt, that first one looks sort of dingy. It looked O.K. until it was compared to the one that was really white.
You know the problem? We are constantly comparing ourselves to other dirty laundry. It is only when we compare ourselves to God’s whiteness that we see ourselves as we really are. And the kicker is this….the closer one gets to God, the more of his own imperfections will be seen.
The prevailing thinking is the closer we get to God the better we become. The reason is this…the closer we get to God, the more of our own imperfections we have to deal with and the more we deal with them the closer we are to the Lord.
It was the vision of my own sin and the thought of its penalty that made me begin to search for a way out. I found that way out in Jesus, and having found Him I have become aware that I am the recipient of His perfect love.
However, since my salvation I have experienced many more fresh encounters with God, and these serve to continually remind me that my desires and my tendencies are still largely carnal, seeking to become more spiritual.
And that brings us to the last thing Isaiah saw. He saw an angel place a burning hot coal on his unclean lips and said, “Behold this has touched your lips; and you iniquity is taken away, and your sin forgiven.” So, not only will you see God’s perfection and your own imperfection, but you will see purifying for perfection.
The Apostle Paul told the church at Colossae, “…let us cleanse ourselves from all the filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.”
He went on, “We warn and teach everyone with all possible wisdom, in order to bring each one into God’s presence as a perfect individual in union with Christ.”
Here’s the bottom line: We can never be good enough to deserve to live with God in Heaven. The only way we can get good enough is to be made perfect by the blood of Jesus Christ. In theological circles that is known as the doctrine of justification. We are justified by our faith in Christ.
God’s kingdom is perfect. How could it remain perfect if He allowed imperfect beings into it? That is the essence of our Christian faith. Before we can live with God in Heaven we need an overhaul. We need to have some work done on us in order to be able to live in eternity with God. Jesus does the overhaul, and it has an eternal lifetime warranty.
However, He wanted us to have a “fullness of life.” The way we do that is to go back periodically for a tune-up, consisting of a fresh vision of God.
The only hope we have of entering the Kingdom of Heaven lies not in our ability to make ourselves perfect, but in the fact that Jesus, our Advocate, has said we can come into Heaven on His perfection.
Also, the only hope we have of living the triumphant, abundant life Jesus wants us to have, is to refresh our vision of God from time to time.
CONCLUSION:
How long has it been since you have had a fresh encounter with God? Is your understanding of God dependent upon what others tell you about Him? Is God nothing more than a Santa Claus, a vending machine, perhaps a computer or even a museum oddity? Do you need a new, fresher understanding of God?
Why deprive yourself one more day without coming to God for the blessing you need and He wants you to have?
INTRODUCTION:
The greatest need most of us have is the need to see and understand God.
I am convinced that the greatest shortcoming in our generation is the inability to see and understand God. If there were some way for us to communicate a vision of God completely, there is no doubt in my mind that people would flock to Him.
It is appalling how woefully ignorant our generation is about the Creator. It seems as though everyone wants a designer God, created ju8st the way they like to think about God, and doing only what they want Him to do. They don’t want a God Who gets in the way of what they believe. They don’t want a God Who is going to affect their behavior in any way. They don’t want a God Who speaks in “Thou shalt nots….” They want a God Who will say, “Oh all right. Go ahead.”
We do not want a God Who gives us moral absolutes, or Who imposes Himself on the decisions of our lives.
When I hear people talk about the kind of God they serve or want, I am even more amazed at the people of the Bible. Think about the kind of faith a man like Abraham must have had. God came to him in the desert and told him to gather his family and belongings and move to a land He would show him.
Can’t you just hear the discussion with his wife when he went home and told her what they were going to do? “We’re going to do what? We’re moving? Where to?”
“I don’t know”, he replies.
“What do you mean you don’t know?”, she asks. “Who is guiding us?”
“God,” he says.
“What God? Did you see Him? What did He look like?”
“No,” he said. “I didn’t see Him—but I heard Him speak to me.”
His wife replies, “Now let me get this straight. You heard a voice but saw no one. He told you to pull up your family and move and you don’t even know where we are moving?”
That’s the kind of conversation most of us would probably have had, but I suspect Abraham’s wife was much more faithful. She knew her husband, so she went with him to that unknown land.
Just think about the kind of faith it took to do what they did for no other reason except that God asked them to do it.
Wouldn’t you like to think you had that kind of faith?
We live in a world that doesn’t really understand when we say we know God, that we have a personal relationship with Him. If you say something like that to many people they will look at you like you are some sort of weirdo.
People in out culture doe not want to believe in anything they cannot see, hold and touch. Ours is a world that has to see God in order to believe in Him.
So it is that I conclude, the most pressing need we have in our generation is to the need for a fresh vision of God. But, we will not have it, at least not the way most people want it.
Why? Because3 if God were to show Himself to us, we would not need faith. The Bible says we are saved through faith…there would be no faith…no need for faith, if we could see everything about God.
So, without that vision we are left to other devices. One device we rely on is the Word of God. In God’s Word we are given a wonderful collection of pictures of God.
The truth is, God has allowed us to see and understand Him. His Word, His Son have given us a picture of the God Who created the universe. I contend that what we need today is a renewed vision, a fresh picture of God and a fresh encounter with Him.
Some of us are still running on our childhood vision of God. We have not moved beyond that because we have not had any new, fresh encounters with God since we were saved in childhood. I contend that we all need to have our vision of God renewed once in a while. Once in a while we just need to appear before God and admit we haven’t been close to Him for a while, so our vision is blurred and our behavior has been affected.
Not only do individuals need a fresh vision of God, so do churches. When we get to the point where we think we know better how to run our lives and His church, we need a fresh vision of God. We have got to come back to the point that we are all clamoring with our shouts of “I want this or I want that”…and ask afresh and anew, “What does God want?” But, we won’t come to that point without a fresh vision of God.
Before you can know God’s vision for your life or the church, you have to renew your vision of God. There can be no vision from God until there is a vision of God.
Let me share with you for a few minutes the kind of things you are likely to discover afresh about God, when you seek this fresh encounter. You can join the ranks of the likes of Isaiah, who said, “I saw the Lord….”
Look what the prophet saw when he saw the Lord.
I. YOU WILL SEE GOD’S PERFECT GLORY
One of the big problems some people have with God is about this perfection business. From early elementary school we are taught there is no such thing as perfection. There are no perfect circles, no perfect squares, no perfect triangles or rectangles. Truth be told we don’t eve know how to define perfection because we have never seen anything that was perfect.
Not long ago I saw a young couple on a game show on T.V. They were about to be married. The young woman was asked what the ugliest thing about her chosen mate. Without hesitation she answered, “His feet.”
Then the young man was asked the ugliest thing about his fiancé. He thought for a moment and said, “There is nothing ugly about her. She is perfect.”
Now, remember I told you they were about to get married. Let’s find him and ask him again in about six months.
Even if there was something perfect for us to observe, we would not be able to see it perfectly because of our imperfect minds and bodies.
Perfection is a stranger to us in any area of life, except when we get a vision of God. When Isaiah saw the Lord, high and exalted, he saw the perfection of the glory of the most high God. When we see God we are treated to a view of His perfection. That is His glory. His love is a perfect love. His good is a perfect good. His white is perfectly white. His kingdom is a perfect kingdom. His grace is perfect grace.
If we could hear His choir we would hear every note perfectly sung. All of His works are perfect. Even imperfect man bears testimony of the perfection of God. This perfect God made man with the ability to decide for himself. God chose not to make us robots. He could have, but He didn’t, because this perfect Being did not want man to have to worship Him. He wanted us to choose to worship Him.
God made us all with the ability to become a perfect spiritual being some day. That day will be when our vision of God is of the first-hand variety, when we live with Him in eternity.
A vision of God will enable you to see God’s perfect glory. Also, a vision of God WILL ENABLE YOU TO SEE YOUR OWN IMPERFECTION. That’s what the prophet saw. And, that’s what you will see.
II. YOU WILL SEE YOUR OWN IMPERFECTION
The principle is this: The closer you are to God, the more of your own imperfections you will see. The farther you get from God, the better you look to yourself. If you are not seeing your faults, you are not close enough to God.
Isaiah saw the glory of God and responded like this; “Woe to me. I am a man of unclean lips and I live among people of unclean lips, and my eyes beheld the King.”
So, you see, how you see yourself is greatly affected by how you see God.
It reminds me of those soap[ commercials where they show you a white shirt that has just been washed. It looks nice and white. They then sow you another shirt that has been washed with their detergent, and when it is put up against the first shirt, that first one looks sort of dingy. It looked O.K. until it was compared to the one that was really white.
You know the problem? We are constantly comparing ourselves to other dirty laundry. It is only when we compare ourselves to God’s whiteness that we see ourselves as we really are. And the kicker is this….the closer one gets to God, the more of his own imperfections will be seen.
The prevailing thinking is the closer we get to God the better we become. The reason is this…the closer we get to God, the more of our own imperfections we have to deal with and the more we deal with them the closer we are to the Lord.
It was the vision of my own sin and the thought of its penalty that made me begin to search for a way out. I found that way out in Jesus, and having found Him I have become aware that I am the recipient of His perfect love.
However, since my salvation I have experienced many more fresh encounters with God, and these serve to continually remind me that my desires and my tendencies are still largely carnal, seeking to become more spiritual.
And that brings us to the last thing Isaiah saw. He saw an angel place a burning hot coal on his unclean lips and said, “Behold this has touched your lips; and you iniquity is taken away, and your sin forgiven.” So, not only will you see God’s perfection and your own imperfection, but you will see purifying for perfection.
The Apostle Paul told the church at Colossae, “…let us cleanse ourselves from all the filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.”
He went on, “We warn and teach everyone with all possible wisdom, in order to bring each one into God’s presence as a perfect individual in union with Christ.”
Here’s the bottom line: We can never be good enough to deserve to live with God in Heaven. The only way we can get good enough is to be made perfect by the blood of Jesus Christ. In theological circles that is known as the doctrine of justification. We are justified by our faith in Christ.
God’s kingdom is perfect. How could it remain perfect if He allowed imperfect beings into it? That is the essence of our Christian faith. Before we can live with God in Heaven we need an overhaul. We need to have some work done on us in order to be able to live in eternity with God. Jesus does the overhaul, and it has an eternal lifetime warranty.
However, He wanted us to have a “fullness of life.” The way we do that is to go back periodically for a tune-up, consisting of a fresh vision of God.
The only hope we have of entering the Kingdom of Heaven lies not in our ability to make ourselves perfect, but in the fact that Jesus, our Advocate, has said we can come into Heaven on His perfection.
Also, the only hope we have of living the triumphant, abundant life Jesus wants us to have, is to refresh our vision of God from time to time.
CONCLUSION:
How long has it been since you have had a fresh encounter with God? Is your understanding of God dependent upon what others tell you about Him? Is God nothing more than a Santa Claus, a vending machine, perhaps a computer or even a museum oddity? Do you need a new, fresher understanding of God?
Why deprive yourself one more day without coming to God for the blessing you need and He wants you to have?
2 comments:
Ken, I appreciate your listening to this unseen God. This Sunday we will be exploring this very topic. I am leading the entire church family in a discussion format worship service, that will bring us to a decision corporately either we choose God or not. Pray for us, I am hoping to see great miracles as folks have to confront their lack of actual faith.
Great idea, pastorfbclptx. E-mail me at kennaco@gmail.com and let me know how it went.
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