In the grand pecking order of life, where do you sit? I’d imagine that all of us could come up with scenarios where people have power and authority over us. At work, we have obligations to carry out the instruction of our bosses, supervisors, and managers. At school, if we want to do well, we have to obey the teacher or risk failing the class. At home, some here are still under the authority of their parents. But the pecking order of life runs both ways. People not only have power over us, we have power over others. Some times we have formal positions of power. Some here are professional managers with a several direct reports. Others may be the captain of sport’s team or president of a club. Sometimes we have informal positions of influence over others, perhaps it is through a personal relationship. When a person is attracted to someone else, he or she will often find themselves consumed by their interest in the other person. Questions like, “I wonder if she likes me” or “I wonder what he is doing right now” will fill our heads. Sometimes the influence may be motivated by some particular accomplishment. When we are impressed by someone’s spectacular achievement, we find ourselves wanting to be like this over achieving individual. We want to share in their success. Power is expressed and experienced in so many different ways. It is such an integral part of lives. When we have good experiences with power, like when friends follow our advice or kids obey they parents, power can make us happy and satisfied with life. When we encounter negative experiences with power, as in a difficult relationship with a boss or a teacher, Power can leave us frustrated and disgusted with life. How we respond to and use power will have a very significant influence on the quality of our life. Power is one of the few things that as a force of influence may flows through multiple area of our lives. A bad experience with power at work, such as an argument with a manager, may sometimes result in a bad experience in the home, perhaps another argument with a family member. How many of us here are guilty of having someone yell at us at work or school, and then we go home and yell at our families? Similarly, a good experience with power in the home may encourage other positive experience with power in school and at work. There is a hierarchy to the power relationships in our lives. Some of us care more about what happens at work than at home. Others have the exact opposite priorities. While the order of priorities may different from one person to the next, for all of us, the higher up we climb the power ladder, the more influential the factors become over our lives. So the big question for today is “what is at the top of the power ladder of our lives?” What will have the greatest influence over our lives? In today’s scripture, the prophet Isaiah has an encounter with power that transforms his life. Today’s scripture comes from Isaiah 6: 6 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” 4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. 5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” 6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” There are a few times recorded in the scriptures where God comes face to face with mankind. These meetings are not described as comfortable encounters. Instead, like the situation with Isaiah, there seems to be an almost terrifying element to being in God’s presence. In this passage, Isaiah has a face to face with God. The experience overwhelms him. What is it about the situation that terrifies him? Is the imagery of God’s throne room is too powerful for him to bear? Look carefully at his response. 5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” When Isaiah comes face to face with God, the first thing that strikes him, the thing that overwhelms is his spiritual filthiness before God. “I am a man of uncleaned lips.” What the significance of the lips? In Matthew 15:10 Jesus elaborates:: 10 Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. 11 What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him ‘unclean,’ but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him ‘unclean.’” [1] Then in verse 17: 17 “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? 18 But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’ 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. 20 These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ‘unclean.’”[2]This is the source of Isaiah’s woes. He is a tainted man. When face-to-face with God, his filthiness becomes so obvious to him. Sometime ago, we renovated the nursery. In addition to fixing up the toilets, and some broken toys, the plan was to repaint the entire room. We painted one coat and then we added a second. It was quite tedious and took a lot of time. Since the sun was out, we didn’t need turn on the lights until early evening. The sun came down as we finished up with the second coat of paint. When it became darker outside, someone turned on the lights. The problem with that is that with lights on the paint job didn’t look so good. I was tired and in denial. I asked Wayne, “What do you think, it looks good doesn’t it?” He responded, “No, there’s something weird on this wall and also over there.” So to my disappointment, we went back and re-painted those areas. When the light is bright enough, you can’t hide the defects. When Isaiah comes face-to-face with God, there is no hiding the spiritual filth that saturates his life. 5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” It is not just Isaiah either. The disciple Peter also has a similar experience. Luke 5 talks about a time, when Jesus borrowed Peter’s boat in order to have a platform from which to address the crowds. After he finishes speaking, he asked Peter for a favor. 4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down b the nets for a catch.” 5 Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.” 6 When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. 7 So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. 8 When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” Once the unnatural behavior of the fish makes it obvious to Peter that Jesus is the Son of God, Peter’s immediate response is a request for separation. What is going here? Why is it that every time someone comes face to face with God, they respond with a request that God would go away? What is it about God that leads to such a disappointing response? Isn’t the general view that God is all above love? Yet these responses don’t seem reflect a loving relationship. Do Isaiah and Peter have some personal issue that warps their view of God? Is this a genuine problem or is this some psychological issue they need to resolve? One of the natural laws of mankind is that we are comfortable with what we know. Consider what happens when you meet someone new. For many people, their mind quickly reaches into their experience library and they search for some category of reference. "This person" has a loud personality with a need to be recognized. When you are with these kind of people, resign yourself to the realization that most of the conversation will be spent talking about their most recent accomplishments. Once its over, let it stay over. Now over here, "this person" has a quiet personality and prefers to keep to themselves. When you are with these people, realize that you are going to have to carry conversation or there will be a lot of uncomfortable, dead silence. Finally over here, "this person" is like me, in this case it should be fairly easy for me to relate with this kind of individual. Sometimes categories serve us well, they provide points for reference from which we can quickly build relationships. Sometimes categories are stumbling block. They lead to inaccurate stereotypes that may lead us to the wrong conclusions about others. What is rare is that sometimes we meet individuals who don’t fit any of our categories. Sometimes we come across someone or something that is so foreign that we have no pre-existing context from which to cope. In those situations, the natural human response is one of fear, denial, and a deep desire to get away toward more comfortable ground. There are times, when we are desperately uncomfortable with what we do not understand. The more foreign something is, the more natural it becomes for us to fear it. Surprisingly, this truth occasionally manifests itself in our relationship with God. The typical human response to God is to respect him but to also downgrade him to terms that we can cope with. We want our relationship to God to be something that we can be comfortable with. We like hearing about how deeply God loves us. We like hearing about how he is willing to forgive our sins. We like hearing about how God wants a personal relationship with us. The problem is that God doesn’t easily fit into such a narrow box. There is much more to God. If we only focus on those aspects that we are comfortable with, we end up with the same problems of inaccurate stereotypes. We distort the relationship with a wrong understanding of God. There will be situations when it becomes painful obvious that God is so much bigger than what we can cope with. In Luke 8, the disciples had such an experience. The disciples knew that there was something special about Jesus. But many of them, like the rest of the Jews, expected Jesus to be some political leader that was going to over throw the oppression by the Romans. This position of “Roman Overthrower” fit their box for Jesus. The only problem is that Jesus didn’t stay in that box. In Luke 8, 22 One day Jesus said to his disciples, “Let’s go over to the other side of the lake.” So they got into a boat and set out. 23 As they sailed, he fell asleep. A squall came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great danger. 24 The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Master, Master, we’re going to drown!” He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. 25 “Where is your faith?” he asked his disciples. In fear and amazement they asked one another, “Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.” It’s interesting that up to this point, Jesus had healed many people of diseases, cast out demons, and even brought the dead back to life. For some reason, the disciples were prepared for these miracles. They fit the category of religious leader. They fit the image of what they expected from the Christ. But for some reason, the response to the calming of the storm is different. Verse 25 “In fear and amazement they asked one another, “Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.” For some reason, in this situation, God is much bigger than what they expected. They are shocked. Their previous understanding of Christ has been completely destroyed. They need a new model for understanding Christ. The question for all of us today is, “How big is your view of God?” When you came to service this morning, who is it that you came to worship. Is it a God who asks that we come before him once a week in worship? A God whose church we are expected to contribute financially and also with our own personal time and energy? With this weekly worship, plus some service, and perhaps a bible study will we have done enough to satisfy Him? Have we satisfied our own expectations for proper religious practice? The problem with putting God in a box is that such a practice not only misrepresents his true nature, the faulty image of God also leads us to respond to him inappropriately. When I first started my job, I was very cognizant of people’s titles. "This person" outranks "that person," so I need to pay attention to this person more than that person. Each year, as I gained more experience, I realized that titles only paint half the story, the other half is found in the corporate respect that individuals command. Some people have smaller titles, but due to past accomplish carry much greater influence in the company. So I adjusted my response accordingly. As I logged even more years with the company, I had the privilege to work more closely with higher levels of management. Initially, I found it to be a great privilege. But as time passed, as I became more comfortable with the higher management interaction, as I became more skilled in my positions, I started to get too comfortable with the position. “Too comfortable” lead to “too confident” even “overconfident.” I’d go into meeting and argue for my position. And occasionally, I’d “cross the line.” Bad things happen when you “cross the line.” You are quickly put back into your place. At that point, it doesn’t matter how good your idea or how strong your position, when you cross the line of authority, the higher priority is no longer making the right decision, the higher priority is putting you back in your place. There is a similar human tendency is to become too comfortable with God. We forget that this is the God of the universe, not some little “g”, but the one and only Holy Almighty God. To come into His presence is no trivial thing. When Isaiah and Peter realized that they were standing in the presence of the God, their filthy lives left them ashamed and unworthy of being in His presence. This wasn’t false modesty, this was the truth of their condition. Image a wedding ceremony, the bride is radiant in a magnificent gown. The wedding dress train stretches the length of the church. But the groom has been playing tackle football with his buddies. He is sweaty and wearing shorts. It was raining outside and he covered in mud. These two don’t belong together. Image a sterile operating room in a world class hospital. Great pains are taken to create a perfectly sterile environment for sensitive operations. Even the air is sanitized. Now imagine a mangy street dog who has been feeding on trash outside, running around the operating room crashing into the equipment. These two also do not belong. Imagine a Holy Almighty God. A great throne room, filled with His Glory. Angels singing praise, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” The place literally shaking from his presence. Now consider Isaiah, a man while created in the image of God, completely covered in filthy sin. These two do not belong. When the two are brought together, do you know what is supposed to happen? The answer is death. In Genesis 1, God is warns Adam about the consequences of sin. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” [3] In 2 Samuel 6, a tragic incident provides some insight into this problem between sinful Man and a Holy God. This passage describes scene where David is trying to bring the Ark of God back to Jerusalem. For the Israelites, the Ark represented God’s Holy presence among his people 6 David again brought together out of Israel chosen men, thirty thousand in all. 2 He and all his men set out from Baalah of Judah a to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the Name, b the name of the Lord Almighty, who is enthroned between the cherubim that are on the ark. 3 They set the ark of God on a new cart and brought it from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab, were guiding the new cart 4 with the ark of God on it, c and Ahio was walking in front of it. 5 David and the whole house of Israel were celebrating with all their might before the Lord, with songs d and with harps, lyres, tambourines, sistrums and cymbals. 6 When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God, because the oxen stumbled. 7 The Lord’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down and he died there beside the ark of God.[4]There are some passages in the Bible that you wish just weren’t there. They make it very hard to talk about God. This is one of them. What is the problem here? The intent was good. David assembled 30,000 men to celebrate the return of the Ark. They were all singing and worshipping God. There was clearly a genuine desire to honor God. Uzzah wasn’t messing around. An accident happened and he intervened. How are we to explain a God that would kill a man for touching the ark? One of the things that I realize from reading this passage is that relationship with God is not a trivial matter. You don’t get to decide the terms of the relationship. When it comes to the One and Only Almighty God, you relate to him on His terms. Uzzah touched the ark. The consequence of mankind’s sinful filthiness coming into direct contact with God’s Holy Presence was death. As Christians our tendency is to focus on God’s love for his people. Mentally, we know sin carries a penalty, but instead of dwelling on the penalty, we want to focus on God’s forgiveness. The problem is that without a genuine appreciation for the magnitude of our sin, it often becomes too easy to take this relationship with God for granted. It is too easy to reduce God to something he is not. God is not some gentle grandfather figure. He is not Santa Claus. He is not a friendly genie. He is the One and Only Holy Almighty God. Relationship with Him requires complete Holiness. A couple of years ago, I was on a business trip with a sales VP. We were visiting a customer who was dissatisfied with our services. The purpose of the visit was to work a plan to rectify the situation. The meeting went far smoother than we expected and we ended early. We still had several hours before our flight. We decided to catch a movie at a theater that was close to the airport. We chose to watch the “Passion of Christ”. Our timing was good we only missed the first 20 minutes or so. As many of you may know, the movie provides a very graphic portrayal of the suffering Christ endured on the cross. The beatings, the crucifixion, were awful scenes to behold. Yet the movie ended with his resurrection. We left the theater and as we drove to the airport, it very silent in the rental car, After a while I asked, “What did you think of the movie.” He said, “Tim, it really bothered me. I see why everyone is talking about the movie. What did you think?” I thought for a moment, I wasn’t completely sure how I should answer. “I think the movie was good for me to watch. As a Christian, I do believe that Christ suffered the death on the cross to pay the penalty for my sins. Watching this movie really sensitizes me to the gravity of my sins. I don’t want to ever take that for granted. But the story is more than just an hour and half of a tortuous beating. The movie ends with the resurrection of Christ. His resurrection is the hope of the world.” When Isaiah is confronted by God, he is overwhelmed by his wretched situation before a Holy God. But it is not God’s desire that he suffer endlessly in that wretched situation. Look at verse 6. 6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” According to Harper’s Bible Dictionary, the Hebrew word for atoned is translated ‘purge,’ ‘cleanse,’ ‘expiate,’ ‘purify,’ ‘wipe on or off,’ ‘cover,’ etc.[5] What a beautify concept. You are clean. Go back to the image of the beautiful bride and the sweaty, messy groom. Atonement is cleaning up the groom. A thorough shower washes off the filth. A clean tux, dresses him appropriately for the occasion. He is no longer ashamed of his condition. He is ready to participate in the ceremony. Notice the dramatic change in Isaiah. 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” [6]Isaiah shifts from total despondent shame to an attitude of eager willingness to serve God’s purpose. It’s a beautiful thing, when God’s people fulfill their original intended relationship before God. We were not designed to stand shamefully before a Holy Almighty God. He created each of us to worship Him. Would you please bow your heads? I’m not sure where you stand in your relationship with God. For some, we still have yet to personally know this salvation that comes from Christ. For others, who have accepted Christ, what we have today is a far cry from what God intended. I’d like to give you some time to think about these things. If you want to make things right with God, in a few minutes, I’ll lead you in prayer to do just that. If you want to accept God’s gift of salvation, please pray this prayer with me. Father in Heaven, We come humbly before you to confess our sins. We ask for your forgiveness. By faith, we believe that Jesus’s death on the cross pays the penalty for our sins. We accept the gift of salvation that you have made available through his resurrection for all of mankind. We ask that you to be the Lord and Savior of our lives. Thank you Jesus for saving us from our sins. In Jesus Name, Amen