Hearing the Word of God is Serious Business
In the year that King Uzziah died
I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his
robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his
face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to
another and said:
“Holy,
holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
the
whole earth is full of his glory!”
And the foundations of the
thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with
smoke. (Isaiah 6:1-4)
Is God a
concept for you or is He the Holy One who has shaken the foundations of your
life and re-shaped the reality of your world?
The specifics of our encounter with God will certainly be different from
Isaiah’s, but the result of seeing and understanding the holiness of God will
be as life changing for us as it was for Isaiah.
As you
prepare for worship, pray for God to open our eyes to see His holiness. Seeing Him this way will rock your world!
And I heard the voice of the Lord
saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”
Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”
And he said, “Go, and say to this
people: “‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes, and hear
with their ears, and understand with
their hearts, and turn and be healed.” (Isaiah 6:8-10)
In his
book, Isaiah by the Day, Alec Motyer, writes,
Hearing the
Word of God is serious business.
Remember how Hebrews, calling us to live with ears open to the Word
‘today’ (Heb 3:7, 15:4-7), ends with a sobering reminder of the searching power
of the Word and the inescapable God whose Word it is (Heb 4:11-13). Isaiah would have agreed. We are habit forming beings; each decision
predisposes us one way or another. A
right decision makes the next decision in line a bit easier and we are on the
way to some good, settled habit; a wrong decision makes the next wrong decision
that bit easier and we are further down a very slippery slope. Over all presides the Sovereign God in total
justice, holiness and fairness. He alone
knows in advance the ‘point of no return’ - the point where a bad habit
(however long or short in preparation) becomes irreversible. Actually he not only knows it, but he decides
it. Isaiah’s people had been called to
walk in obedience (1:19), to walk in the light (2:5); they had been alerted to
the Lord’s desire for a harvest of righteousness (5:7) – all to no avail. But the only way to amend such a situation is
to send the Word of God again (6:8), yet if they reject it again it will be
their last chance. The very word which
could save them would blind them (6:10).
What a serious thing it is to hear the Word of the Lord! Obedience is the mark of the redeemed. What if the next invitation of grace and
summons to righteousness gave us our last chance to clear some cherished sin
out of our lives! Alec Motyer, Isaiah by the Day, Day
10 – Isaiah 6:1-13, p 43.
Worship is serious business, for
in worship we hear the Word of God. Pray for me as I prepare to preach that Word
and pray for all of us to have eyes to see and ears to hear, for all of us to
understand with our hearts and be healed.
I look forward to worshipping with
you this Sunday.
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