MACARTHUR: I have been asked to speak on the holiness
of God, and I think that R.C. finds some delight in giving me subjects that he has mastered. I'm not sure why he does this, although once
when he asked me to speak on election, I said, "Why would you, at your conference, have me
do that?" And he said, "Because I want to hear what
you have to say about it." It was sort of a test, I think, to see if
I got it right. All of us who have known R.C. for any time
at all are profoundly indebted to him for his treatment of the sixth chapter of Isaiah,
which I think for all of us who are his students will forever and always be the portrait of
God's holiness which is most memorable. And I understand why, because it is so critical
to an understanding of God's holiness, and we will get there hopefully at the end. In speaking of the holiness of God, it is
good, perhaps, to begin with something of a definition. It was A.A. Hodge who said, "The holiness of God is not
to be conceived of as one attribute among others. It is rather a general term representing the
conception of God's consummate perfection and total glory. It is His infinite moral perfection, crowning
His infinite intelligence and power." He said, "It is infinite moral perfection
as the crown of the Godhead." Holiness is God's total glory crowned. It was Thomas Watson who said, "Holiness is
the most sparkling jewel of God's crown. It is the name by which He is known." R.L. Dabney wrote, "Holiness is to be regarded
not as a distinct attribute but as the result of all God's moral perfection together." They are recognizing what the prophet Isaiah
wrote in Isaiah 57 and verse 15 when he said, "For thus says the high and exalted One, who
lives forever, 'My name is holy.'" Holy is His name. It is something along the lines of what we
just heard, as R.C. spoke upon God's being, His self-existence, His being is utterly separate
from ours, and he made that so clear. His is "being," and ours is "becoming." He is utterly distinct from us. The Hebrew is qadash. The Greek, hosios, meaning distinct, separate. He is other than we are as to the essence
of His existence, His nature. Therefore, nothing in the creation, no one
in the creation, even man created in the image of God, compares to God in essential nature. He is incomparable. He is infinite perfection. That is why His name is separate, distinct,
or holy. And thus does Exodus 15:11 say, "Who is like
You, majestic in holiness?" And there, I think, is what those medieval
theologians were after, to add "majestic" to utter distinction somehow is an expression
of worship. 1 Samuel 2:2 says, "There is no one holy like
the Lord." There is no one beside You. No one exists in Your category of being but
You. Psalm 111:10 says, "Holy and awesome is His
name." When we think of God's holiness, we think
of His utter separation from sin, because everything in the creation is affected and
influenced by sin. But there's more to His separateness than
that. However, that for us is the graphic illustration. It's hard for us metaphysically to comprehend
the difference between being and becoming, but we see clearly God's distinction from
us in the matter of His moral perfection and sinlessness. As Habakkuk the prophet wrote, "Your eyes
are too pure to approve evil. You cannot look on wickedness." Job 34:10 says, "Far be it from God to do
wickedness, to do wrong." In Revelation 15:4 it says, "You alone are
holy." There are many other statements. That gives you sort of a broad picture across
Scripture. We could talk about those statements, but
I want to go a little bit beyond that, if I may. There are more than statements regarding God's
holiness in Scripture. There are revelations of His holiness. In fact, every revelation of God, every disclosure
of God, every manifestation of God is a revelation of His moral perfection, every one. You can study any of God's revelations of
Himself, and you will find there His moral perfection. Let me give you some illustrations of that. We could study God's holiness by studying
creation. You will remember that at the end of His creation,
Genesis 1:31, it says, "God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good." This is a reflection of His essential nature. It couldn't be anything else. On the previous days, it was said that it
was good, and that was applied to all the specific details of his creation. But in the end, when He saw all of it, the
whole created complex in its totality, it was not just good; it was very good. In fact, Ecclesiastes 7:29, speaking directly
of man says, "God made man upright." Of course, He could do no other. Whatever came from His hand, from His being,
had to be perfect. Made in His image, man was free from sin. You could also look at the law of God, and
you would find revealed in the law of God His absolute perfection. Psalm 19:7, "The law of the Lord is perfect." Romans 7:12, "The law is holy. The commandment is holy, righteous, and good." Everything that comes from God, every manifestation
of God's nature is a reflection of His moral perfection. You could also see the holiness of God manifest
in His judgment. All His verdicts, all His adjudications from
the divine bench are holy. "Shall not the judge of all the earth," Genesis
18:25 "do right?" 2 Timothy 4:8 says, "The Lord, the righteous
Judge." You could get a glimpse of heaven, and maybe
it's a good thing to do for just a moment. In the fourth chapter of the Revelation we
are taken into the heaven of heavens and in verse 2 of Revelation 4, John in the Spirit,
that is, being given a revelation by the Holy Spirit in the form of vision, sees a "throne
standing in heaven and One sitting on the throne. And He who was sitting was like a jasper stone
and a sardius in appearance. And there was a rainbow around the throne,
like an emerald in appearance," very much like Ezekiel 1. "And around the throne were twenty-four thrones,
and upon the thrones I saw twenty-four elders sitting in white garments, and golden crowns
on their heads." I take it that this is a reference to the
redeemed. "And from the throne proceed flashes of lightning
and sounds and peals of thunder. And there were seven lamps of fire burning
before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God." The sevenfold Spirit is mentioned in Isaiah
11. "Before the throne there was, as it were,
a sea of glass, like crystal. And in the center and around the throne, four
living creatures full of eyes in front and behind. And the first creature was like a lion, and
the second like a calf, and the third creature had the face like that of a man, and the fourth
creature was like a flying eagle. And the four living creatures, each one of
them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within, and day and night they do not
cease to say, 'Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God, The Almighty, who was and who is and
who is to come.'" You see, in heaven, this moral perfection,
this utter holiness in the trihagion, which can, of course, even be a trinitarian reference,
but certainly is multiplied to emphasize the utter and absolute distinction of God's moral
perfection. And, by the way, what you have happening here
in Revelation 4 is very similar to what was happening in Ezekiel 1. It is the cranking up of the divine war machine
as God, in His holiness, begins to move toward the judgments that break loose after the heavenly
vision is completed in chapters 4 and 5. God, then, is holy in His heaven where He
dwells. God, then, manifests His holiness in everything
that He does, whether it's in creation, the giving of the law, in His judgments, and you
can take it from there. God can only manifest that which is absolutely
holy. And thus does James say, "Every good thing
bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with
whom there is no variation or shifting shadow." You cannot cast a shadow on the absolute goodness
of God, the perfection of God. Every representation of God, every manifestation
of God, every revelation of God indicates this perfection. To think any other than that is, says James,
to be deceived. You can see glimpses of God's holiness in
the tabernacle, even in the incense that was to be used to be offered before God, the recipe
for which was never to be used by anyone else for any personal use. And if they did, they were to be killed because
that which belonged to the Lord was so distinct from His creation. Having said all of that by way of possibility,
let me take you where I want to take you to look at the holiness of God. And we could go into any of those, but I want
to take you to another place. I believe that the most clear, the most discernible,
the most understandable manifestation of the holiness of God seen in the boldest way against
the blackest backdrop, therefore making it the clearest, is the revelation of God's holiness
in the incarnation…in the incarnation. Because I am a human becoming, I live in this
world. I can't get outside of it. I can think rational thoughts. I can follow the gift of reason that God has
given to me, and I can comprehend at least intellectually the idea of God's perfection
and God's holiness. I can, like John, get some kind of an idea
of the reality of the vision in heaven. I can, to some degree, understand the perfection
of creation in its initial form. I can understand, to some degree, the perfection
of God's law and, to some degree, the perfection of His justice. But nothing is more clear to me than the holiness
of God as manifest in the incarnation, because this is the world I live in and this is the
world you live in. John tells us that when Jesus came, He declared
God. Verse 18 of John 1, "No man has seen God at
any time. The only begotten God who is in the bosom
of the Father, He has explained Him." Whatever you want to know about God, Jesus
explains. And certainly, that's true of His holiness. In Hebrews 1 we read, "God, after He spoke
long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last
days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom
also He made the world. And He," the Son, "is the radiance of His
glory and the exact representation of His nature." So, if I want to know anything about God,
the clearest representation of that that I will ever be able to comprehend is manifest
in Jesus Christ. And we could look at Jesus Christ with regard
to His entire life. For example, Luke 1, Gabriel comes to Mary,
who was espoused to Joseph, and he makes the great announcement about the birth of the
Son of God, the Christ. Verse 30, "And the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid,
Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb
and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son
of the Most High, and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David, and He
will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.' And Mary said to the angel, 'How can this
be, since I am a virgin?'" Listen to this, "And the angel answered and
said to her, 'The Holy Spirit.'" The, what Spirit? "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the
power of the Most High will overshadow you. And for that reason, the holy Offspring shall
be called the Son of God." The Holy Spirit and the holy God sent the
holy Offspring, the Son of God. Contrast that with David's statement in Psalm
51:5, "In sin did my mother conceive me." We could look at the Gospel of Luke, for example,
in the third chapter and see another glimpse of the holiness of Christ at His baptism. And again, the Father is present and the Spirit
is present. And as I said, all that emanates from God,
all that comes from God is holy. And the affirmation of that is here, verse
22, "Jesus was baptized, and while He was praying, heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit
descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came out of heaven, 'Thou art
My beloved Son, in Thee I am well-pleased.'" That's an affirmation of the Son's moral perfection,
is it not? Contrast that with Acts 2:38, "Repent and
be baptized for the remission of sins," which is said of us. We could look at His death, and certainly
we have. It's been commented on numerous times. In looking at His death, we see again the
revelation of His holiness, 2 Corinthians 5:21, "God made Him who knew no sin, sin on
our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." Fifteen Greek words, the great statement on
imputation. But the identification of Christ with these
words, "Him who knew no sin," indicates again His holy perfection. In 1 Peter 1, "You were not redeemed with
perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your
forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood
of Christ." But again, whether you're looking at His birth
or whether you're looking at His baptism or even looking at His death, His holiness is
manifest. In fact, in Hebrews 9:14, a verse that just
came to mind, it says, "How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal
Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God?" When I hear these people say that on the cross
Jesus became a sinner, it is a grievous blasphemy, really. He only was made sin in the sense that He
bore the wrath of God for us, but even God couldn't look upon Him and abandon Him in
that moment. Now, we could look at all of that, and we
could look at any of that and see and do see His holiness. But I want to look at His life, and not all
of it by any means. I am obviously fascinated with the person
of Jesus Christ, the most compelling person by far who ever walked this planet. I cannot, it seems at any point in my ministry,
be not teaching one of the Gospels or if I'm not teaching one of the gospels, I need to
be in Hebrews or Colossians, somewhere where Christ is exalted. I happen to be now about five years into the
Gospel of Luke, and I'm in Chapter 11. This is something of a triumph for me. And it isn't that I'm missing Sundays, I'm
not. It's that I just cannot let go of the riveting,
compelling glory of Christ. But I don't think we always understand how
much His life is a manifestation of the holiness of God. "He was in all points tempted like as we are,
yet without sin." He was in all points tempted. "At all points'' simply means that at every
point chronologically, at every point socially. "He was at all points tempted like as we are,
yet without sin." I was reading some old things from Augustine
a week ago, and I found an interesting comment. Somebody asked Augustine to comment on the
sign of the fish, you know, the little acrostic from ikhthus, "Jesus, God's Son, Savior." And this is what Augustine said, "It is a
suitable sign for Christ, because He was able to live without sin in the abyss of this mortality
as in the depths of water." He literally came down and sunk Himself in
this wretched world. And I think that the truest test of holiness
is not how it holds up in heaven, but the truest test of holiness is how it holds up
here. Not how it holds up in a perfectly holy environment,
but how it holds up in an utterly sinful environment. And thus, we look at Jesus to see this most
interesting view of God's holiness. In John 8:23, He said, "You are from below,
I'm from above. You are of this world, and I'm not." "I'm not." In the forty-sixth verse of that same eighth
chapter He said, "Which of you convicts Me of sin?" "I have come from another world. I'm another kind of being. I cannot be convicted of sin." In the fourteenth chapter of John and the
thirtieth verse, Jesus said, "The ruler of this world is coming," I love this statement,
"and he has nothing in Me." He doesn't say, "He has nothing on Me." There was nothing in Him to even respond to
Satan or to the world. Theologians want to make a distinction here
and rightly so. They want to say that He was non posse peccare,
not posse non peccare. That is to say, He was not able to sin rather
than He was able not to sin. See the difference? He was not able to sin. He's was a completely different kind of being. You know, when I read my Bible and it tells
me about living in this world, it's just loaded with warnings. I am so susceptible to this world, even though
I am redeemed, even though I have been walking in the faith for a long time, many years I
have been studying the Bible, I will tell you this world is a threat to me at every
turn. There is something in me in my remaining flesh
that responds to Satan and the world, and I have to be reminded not to love the world. I have to be reminded of Psalm 1. I have to go back and remember that I must
not walk in the counsel of the wicked, I must not stand in the path of sinners, I must not
sit in the seat of scoffers because that has a devastating effect upon me. And the difference is clearly laid out, I
think, in the seventh chapter of Mark. You remember this passage, or you will when
you hear it. Listen to what Jesus said in verse 18. "Are you so lacking in understanding? Do you not understand that whatever goes into
the man from outside can't defile him?" It didn't matter what came at Jesus. It couldn't defile Him, because it's not what
comes from the outside that defiles you. He says from the outside it doesn't defile
"because it doesn't go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated." That's a rather graphic analogy. "It is that which proceeds out of the man
that defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men,
proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and
wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within
and defile the man." There is a rottenness, there is a corruption
on the inside that makes us susceptible to all these wicked influences. And that's why the Bible warns us. Proverbs warns again and again, and I went
through Proverbs one time and just listed all of the warnings to stay away from angry
people, lying people, murdering people, godless people, etc., etc., etc., because of the influence
they have on you. "Don't you know," says Paul to the Corinthian
church "you've got to get that sinning man out of your church because a little leaven"
does what? "Leavens the whole lump." You allow sin in your church, it will corrupt
the whole thing. It's why we have to do church discipline. 1 Corinthians 15:33 says, "Bad company corrupts
good morals." Jude 23 says, "Look where you're going over
there, to snatch those brands from the burning. When you're going over there to rescue those
people from the corruption in your evangelistic enterprise, when you're going over there to
pull the people out of the apostasy therein, be very careful that you don't get your own
garment stained." We live a very fragile existence in this wretched
world. I have to watch my life. I have to beat my body to bring it into submission. I have to guard my eyes. I have to guard my ears. I have to keep my feet from going certain
places. I have to keep my distance from certain people. I have to live a circumspect life in this
world so that I do not put myself in a position to be devastated. Because even in my preaching to others, I
have the potential to be so badly corrupted that I would be adokimos, disqualified from
ministry. When people ask me what appeals to me about
heaven, it isn't transparent gold streets. I can't get too turned on about that. It's nice. I am glad it'll be there. I'm sure I will enjoy it when I arrive. It isn't pearl gates and precious stones in
the foundation. I'll tell you what appeals to me about heaven,
the absence of sin. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of it. Yet when Jesus Christ came into the world,
He said, "Which of you convicts Me of sin?" He said, "Satan has nothing in Me." There was nothing in Him of corruption. He didn't have to protect His holiness by
taking a monastic vow, going into a cave and contemplating His navel for the rest of His
life, and castrating Him like some ill-conceived monk. There was no such necessity for Him. Quite the contrary. I've spend most of my life trying to be isolated
from sinners. Don't you? I really do. "Bad company corrupts good morals." I don't mind preaching at them. I don't mind giving them the gospel, but I
don't want to be where they are. I don't want to go where they go. I don't want to go to their parties because…aye-aye-aye…Satan
does have something in me. Look at the contrast. Turn to Luke 5. Now my control factor needs to kick in here
because I've been in Luke so long, I'm tempted to just go on and on and on. Luke 5:27, "After that He went out and noticed
a tax gatherer named Levi." This is Matthew, and he was a small-time tax
gatherer. He was a mokus, not a gabbai. A gabbai was a big-time tax guy who owned
a regional tax franchise from Rome and hired these little mokus guys to do the dirty work. They sat at the crossroads, and they taxed
the wheels on the cart. They taxed the beasts of burden that pulled
the cart. They taxed the letters you were caring to
give to someone else. They taxed the goods that you bought. And every time you crossed the intersection,
they took money from you and extorted all they could, not only to give what the prescribed
rate was to Rome, but to make the rest of their own fortune. Of course, extortion was great. They were the more hated of the tax collectors
than the big guys because the big guys nobody saw. You began to despise that guy sitting at the
crossroads. Well, here is one of them named Levi. And of course, in order to collect taxes,
he had to have a group of thugs and scum balls and riff-raff around him who strong-armed
the people to get them to pay up. And if they didn't pay up, then they had to
be treated like the mafia treats people. You know, you have the guys go around, beat
them up a little bit and get what they want to get. This was the scum of all scum in the society
not only because of the lowlife extortion that they engaged in, but because they had
become basically the agents of a pagan, invading, occupying Roman government, which was despised
and hated by the Jews. And so, they were all un-synagogue. They were booted out of the synagogue. They couldn't worship there. They had literally traded their birthright
for a mess of pottage. And so, Jesus comes to Levi, the last person
on the planet you would ever choose to be an apostle of the Messiah if you are on the
Jewish apostle selection committee. He said to him, "Follow Me." "You're My man." And he jumped up from his tax table, and it
was like taking a hand out a water, believe me, there was no gap because somebody was
in line whoever had the strongest right arm and the gang that surrounded him sat down
and said, "I'm in charge, guys." So, he couldn't go back. "He left everything behind. He rose up, began to follow Him. And Levi gave a big party at his house, and
there was a great crowd of tax gatherers." That must have been some event. This is a meeting of the mafia, and you know
the kind of people that associate with the mafia. And it says, I love this, "and others," others
of the riff-raff. And they were reclining at the table. You know, they didn't do the fast-food thing. They did the slow food thing. You actually sort of got prone on your arm
and you just dropped the grapes one at a time and you talked and you conversed, and this
went on and on. One can only imagine what they were talking
about. It wouldn't have been the most edifying group,
and the conversation would have been a little racy. And the Pharisees with all their scrupulous
perspective, verse 30, "And the scribes began grumbling at His disciples, saying, 'Why do
you eat and drink with the tax gatherers and sinners?'" And there you have the word that describes
the "other," all the rest of the social scum. "What are you doing in there?" "And Jesus answered and said to them, 'It
is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick.'" And you see the amazing thing about Him is
He could go into the most contagious ward on the planet and catch nothing…catch nothing. "I haven't come to call the righteous but
sinners to repentance." This is
frankly one of the great illustrations of the holiness of Jesus. He could hang around the most wretched people
in the society, sinners probably, and surely embraces prostitutes. And it says this was an extended event, not
only this event, but there must have been many others like it because in Matthew 11:19
it says, "Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners." So you know when these people got together
it was about gluttony. It was about drunkenness. It was about extortion, and it was about iniquity. What else would they talk about? And the Pharisees, who knew their own wretchedness,
who knew their own corruption, who knew their own hearts, kept their distance. It's hard enough being a hypocrite without
hanging around those kind of people. Turn to the seventh chapter of Luke, the seventh
chapter of Luke. I wish I had time to unpack this whole story. "One of the Pharisees," verse 36, "was requesting
Him to dine with him." So, He entered the Pharisee's house and He
didn't mind being with a self-righteous hypocrite, and He reclined again, a prolonged event. And the way they used to do it from the history
that I read is the houses tended to be somewhat open, and there would be this meal going on
with the dignitaries, and people in the community were allowed typically to stand around the
outside and listen to the conversation. Apparently, that's what happened. "And behold, there was a woman in the city
who was," literally, "an immoral woman," a prostitute. "And when she learned that He was reclining
at the table in the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster vial of perfume." Some historians say that small, thin alabaster
bottles containing perfume were sealed up at the top, and they were actually carried
around the neck of women. Now, for a prostitute this was a part of her
operation. It sounds like Proverbs, doesn't it? "I'll perfume my bed." And so, she must have been a fairly successful
one, because hers was an alabaster vial. And she brought this vial and "standing behind
Him," verse 38, "at His feet," now wait a minute. On the outside, you know, you could stay. She's moved in. Jesus is there, reclining. His feet are up here, and His arm perhaps
like this. She comes up behind Him and "weeping, she
began to wet His feet with her tears." This is outrageous! Are you kidding? And then she is wiping His feet "with the
hair of her head, and kissing His feet." And then she breaks the neck of the alabaster
bottle, and she starts pouring the perfume on Him. "Now when the Pharisee who had invited Him
saw this, he said to himself, 'If this man were a prophet, He would know who and what
sort of person this woman is who is touching Him.'" This is just too touchy, "that she is an immoral
woman." And the Pharisee, of course, is operating
out of his own heart, right? What sinful man is going to have a prostitute
doing that to his feet without having an illicit thought? Well, the way the story ends, you can read
the middle. Verse 48, instead of the woman corrupting
Him, He says, "Your sins have been" what? Instead of sin corrupting Him, holy grace
reaches out and justifies her. And they said in verse 49, "Who is this who
forgives sins?" "And He said to the woman, 'Your faith has
saved you, go in peace.'" "Go in peace." She was an hamartolos, "especially wicked,"
"immoral," and "filthy" is how that word is translated in lexicons. But she was on a mission. Luther says, "The only water she had was heart
water, and so she used her tears. The only cloth she had was her hair. So, she used her hair. And the only gift she could give was what
she used for her immoral relationships." It had no effect on Him at all, except to
draw out of Him forgiveness. That's because Hebrews 7:26 says this, "We
have a high priest who is," listen to this, "holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from
sinners, and exalted above the heavens, who does not need to offer up sacrifices for his
own sins." "He is a Son," verse 28, "made perfect forever." Jesus could go to hell and be holy. He did…He did, 1 Peter 3:19. He could go into the teeth of a demoniac with
a legion of demons and purify that man and leave him clothed and in his right mind. Now, I have to close. So, go to Isaiah 6. In respect to my friend R.C. and that wonderful
passage, I want to show you something. Isaiah 6:1, "In the year of King Uzziah's
death." Why is that important? Well, first of all, it's important if your
name is Mrs. Uzziah, but apart from that, this is a sudden act of God in which Uzziah
is killed by God, according to 2 Chronicles 26 after reigning for fifty-two years and
sort of being a symbol of God's continuing blessing and when he's gone it really looks
bad. Chapter 5 laid out six curses for grasping
materialism, drunken pleasure-seeking, moral perversion, corrupt leadership, etc., and
promised the coming of the great enemy army and the captivity of Israel. Things looked bad. And I believe Isaiah goes to the temple and
seeks God, and it says here, "I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with
the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six
wings. With two he covered his face, with two he
covered his feet, with two he hovered," like a celestial helicopter, the angels just hovering
in motion ready to be dispatched and go immediately to minister to the saints as Hebrews 1:14
says. And then in an antiphonal pattern, "one called
out to another and said, 'Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full
of His glory.'" And you know the rest of the story. "The foundations on the threshold trembled
at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke." And the response to this vision of the holy
majestic glory of the One on the throne produces a sense of guilt and devastation, and he says,
"Woe is me!" He used that word six times in chapter 5. He knows exactly what it means. It's a damnation curse. He sees himself as cursed because seeing this
holy vision, he then sees his own sin. He is overwhelmed. He says, "I am," in the Hebrew, "disintegrating
because I have a dirty mouth." Why does he say that? He has the best mouth in the land. He's a prophet. Because one's depravity is most frequently
manifest through one's lips. He is affirming his depravity, the depravity
of his people. He feels this way because he has seen the
King, the Lord of hosts. And in that contrast feels the horror of his
own sin. And you remember the account. "One of the seraphim flew to me with a burning
coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. He touched my mouth." And there you have the picture of atonement
and the application of the atonement personally applied. He is purified. Then the Lord says, "Whom shall I send, and
who will go for us…whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" "Then I said, 'Here am I. Send me!'" I think he said it meekly, humbly, probably
with the possibility that he would, in having said that, been struck by God for such audacity
having just confessed his wretchedness. But the Lord says to him, "Go, and tell this
people, 'Keep on listening, do not perceive. Keep on looking, do not understand.' Render the hearts of this people insensitive,
their ears dull, their eyes dim, lest they see with their eyes, hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts, return and be healed." "You go and know this, you're going to meet
resistance. Their hearts will be hard. Their ears will not hear. Their eyes will not see. They will not understand." He says, "How long do I do that? I mean that sounds like a rather unproductive
way to spend the rest of my life." How long? "Until the cities are devastated, inhabited
houses are without people, the land is utterly desolate. The Lord has removed everybody away, and nobody
is left. Keep doing it." Why? Because verse 13, there is a holy seed, there
is a stump, there is a tenth, there is the elect. Now that's a fast trip through here, this
magnificent vision of the Holy, Holy, Holy One on the throne. With that in your mind, let me close by drawing
your attention to John chapter 12, John chapter 12 , and verse 36, middle of the verse. "These things Jesus spoke, and He departed
and hid Himself from them. But though He had performed so many signs
before them, they were not believing in Him," listen to this, verse 38, "in order that the
word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled which he spoke," and it's right out of chapter
6, "Lord who has believed our report? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?"
that part taken from chapter 53, "For this cause, they could not believe, for Isaiah
said again," and here comes Isaiah 6, "He's blinded their eyes, He's hardened their heart,
lest they see with their eyes, perceive with their heart, and be converted and I heal them." And then notice this amazing statement in
verse 41. These things Isaiah said because he saw His
glory, and he spoke of Him." Whose glory? Christ's. Who is "Him"? Christ. Back to verse 37. "They were not believing in Him." And when Isaiah saw His glory and spoke of
Him, he was speaking of Christ. There is a Christophany. There is the heavenly vision of the Holy,
Holy, Holy Son and Lord who manifests Himself in this world. Jonathan Edwards said, "God only appears in
human shape in the Son. It is Him we love and Him we serve." Father, we do commit to You this truth. We are overwhelmed by the glory of our Christ
and His utter holiness. We thank You that we come to a High Priest
who sympathizes with our infirmities, but who in it all triumphed and whose perfection
has become our salvation. To Him we give all the glory. Amen.
