The Principle of Reverence
Tom Shrader examines Isaiah's threefold vision in Isaiah 6 to teach the principle of reverence - that there is one true God who should not be taken lightly. He shows how Isaiah's vision of God's majesty led to his recognition of personal sin, God's cleansing work, and readiness for service. Shrader warns against attempting service without first experiencing God's holiness and forgiveness.
“What happens to Isaiah in this moment is when he sees God, it puts himself immediately in context - he might have been a chief among the prophets and teachers and leaders and the most respected in the community, but compared to God, he says, woe to me, I'm undone.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Recovering Our Lost Legacy
Recorded: June 23, 2005
Duration: 38 min
Themes: reverence, holiness, service, sin, forgiveness, humility, worship, legacy, struggling with sin, seeking purpose, new believer, preparing for ministry, parent, mentor, feeling unworthy, young adult
Scripture: Isaiah 6:1-8, Philippians 2, 1 Corinthians 5, Proverbs 6:19, 1 John 2:9
Theological Themes: theophany, divine vision, sanctification, spiritual cleansing, biblical holiness, prophetic calling, transcendence, imago dei
Full Transcript
All right, if you have Bibles open them to Isaiah chapter 6. We are after today at the midway point through a series titled Recovering Our Lost Legacy. The principle of the series is that you have a legacy—you have it whether you're deliberately calculating, planning it or not. Having a legacy is not mandatory, it's not optional, it's inevitable.
When we think of legacy we typically think of family, kids, grandkids. For us, for the grand boys, baseball starts tomorrow night so we're ready for that. I think of the grand boys and the granddaughters and my own daughters, but legacy extends to people for whom you might be a surrogate aunt or uncle or dad and the things that you want to pass on to them. We've been looking at that.
It occurs to me, and this happens all the time as we get further into a series, that you'll really start to see those nuances and subtleties of the stuff that really are bigger than the obvious. One of them—and I don't know that this might be a bit of an overstatement—but part of what you see in the deterioration of the country around you today is a result of these principles no longer being really valued and taught.
The Crisis of Lost Principles
I was talking to a teacher the other day and she was saying that the kids have been so drilled to be independent. She said she'll have students who will come back in whose parents have urged them to come in and argue for those extra points on the test. So you have a deterioration of some of these principles. It's ironic to me that as knowledge is expanding you've got this lack of wisdom.
I really do believe that if you look at the world around you all of it has spiritual answers and that's really what we're looking at. Pretty serious topic. We look at the world around us on a theological basis anyway and we saw a time, maybe that 50s 60s time, when we worshiped God. We might not have been a Christian nation but there was a sense of a transcendence of a God.
Time magazine then declared that God was dead and if God's dead then I can act as though He's dead. And so everything breaks out and then in the 90s all of a sudden it's not that God's dead but a subtle change in the move of the new age movement—now you are God. There's a scene I've never read a Shirley MacLaine book nor do I think I've seen a movie that she's been in but I saw a movie about her and it was her spiritual journey. There's a scene where she's standing on the beach in somewhere in South America and her guru is leading her as she's chanting "I and God are one, I and God are one" and he's coaching her "I and God are one" and then there's a subtle flip and it says "I am God, I am God" and all I can think of is God help us.
The Principle of Reverence
That becomes the thought—there's this God and you're God. Well what we're getting at today is the principle of reverence. That's the idea that there is the one true God and you shouldn't take Him lightly.
On your outlines we follow the pattern that we have in the previous three lessons and we will in the last four. If you don't get this principle of reverence five things you'll see. Number one, you'll place little value on personal worship. Worship becomes—and it only makes sense—if I don't revere a God or I've created a God in my own image why would I worship Him? There'd be nothing super or substantial about Him. At best I could come up with a bumper sticker that said "God is my co-pilot" which kind of says I'll fly and if we hit real turbulence and it's scary I'll give you the controls just to get us through that tough time and then I'll take it back.
I was at the hospital almost all day yesterday just some tests, normal tests, nothing big. I said to Sandy at about 5:30 "This place—and this sounds obvious—is filled with sick people." There was a lady in the hall in a bed and I don't know what her destination was or where she'd been but she literally—I mean she was older, old, not just older, old—and she was sitting there with her mouth and she looked like she was dead. There's all sort of crisis if you sit around a hospital in the waiting rooms. There's all sort of nervous tension and crisis and there's that life-changing moment that many people have that lasts for a month or two. That moment where "I'll never do this again, I'll never smoke another cigarette, I'll never eat another cheeseburger" and the next time you see them it's at Five Guys outside sucking on a cigarette waiting for their cheeseburgers. So there's little importance on personal worship.
When God Becomes Distant
Here's secondly, you question the importance of God because you don't see God interacting in your daily life. You become Bette Midler—my God is a distant God. There might have been a God that started it, wound it up, got it going, but He is irrelevant to me today, doesn't interact with me today.
Here's the third thing and this is huge—you exalt self-determination. I presume that I am normal and that how I live is how you live. I fantasize a lot in my life about how things will be. Like one of the great awakenings I've had is that growing old and getting sick is nothing like I thought it would be. I thought it somehow had this movie type of thing to it. I underestimated the pain and the aggravation and the constancy of it.
The Fantasy of Self-Determination
One of the things I used to fantasize about was my funeral and this was a non-Christian. I had this scene where I would be in a church, my casket there, and there'd be this service and everybody be crying. Then they'd wheel me out and right as they did they would hit the CD player and they would play "My Way"—that was Sinatra's theme and it was perfect.
for Him. Let me read these words to you—I should sing them, I don't know why you're laughing—but let me read these words to you and let me try to do it slow and deliberate and have you really just kind of get them.
So it's Sinatra: "And now the end is near, and so I face the final curtain. My friend, I say it clear, I'll state my case of which I'm certain. I've lived a life that's full. I've traveled each and every highway. And more, much more than this, I did it my way. Regrets I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention. I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption. I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway. And more, much more than this, I did it my way. Yes, there were times I'm sure you knew when I bit off more than I could chew. But through it all, when there was doubt, I ate it up and spit it out. I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my way. I've loved, I've laughed, I've cried. I had my fill, my share of losing. And now as tears subside, I find it all so amusing to think I did all that. And may I say, not in a shy way, oh no, oh no, not me, I did it my way. For what is a man, what does he got if not himself then he has not to say the things he truly feels"—and think of the defiance here—"and not the words of one who kneels. The record shows I took the blows and I did it my way."
Yes, it was my way. I remember as a young guy, I remember that as kind of an anthem of self-determination, of take charge. But it really is the anthem of a self-centered "nobody's gonna tell me what to do no matter what."
The Cost of "My Way"
I've had regrets because I can tell you if you live this way, you'll have broken relationships. You'll have marriages that don't work. You'll have kids that don't speak to you. You'll have siblings that you haven't talked to for decades. You'll have ex-staff that can't stand to be in the same county with you. I mean, when you really listen to those words and to know for many of us, you might not have been so bold as to say "I'm going to have it played," but that's really what you felt: I did it my way.
Like I said, there's kind of a surface appeal—that sounds good, I'm independent. But it really has a "screw you" attitude with it. It really is "you do your thing and I do my thing." See how I'm saying these things pull relationships and countries apart? You do your thing, I do my thing, 380 million people do their thing. You can't run a country that way. You can't run a business that way.
Living Without Transcendence
Here's the fourth thing: you live without a sense of transcendence. So you've got a birth and you've got a death. You got everything that happens in between, but that's all there is.
Yesterday I was walking around, so I figured I'd go down to the cardiac rehab to see if any of my friends are still living down there. It's so silly—I'm standing there and on my left is cardiac rehab with a lot of old sick people in it. On my right is the maternity ward with all these brand new babies. I thought, "That's perfect." Sometimes you're standing in the aisle in the middle.
If I had no sense of reverence, this is all it is. Now play it out. I want to keep pushing you to think of the practical side of this. If that's my view and there's no transcendence, then I'm going to have a very different worldview. I'm only going to care about this. So "the one who dies with the most toys wins"—all those things make sense if that's how you see life.
Here's the fourth thing: you reject all sorts of absolute values. So you've discounted the concept of God—He doesn't exist. So you begin to determine your own, if you will (sounds goofy), you determine your own reality. You determine what's right and what's wrong. That becomes very pliable based on the tension of the situation you're in. Ethics, morals, values becomes very difficult.
Well, if I don't get this idea of reverence, that's the way I live. As we did with the other topics, you can see how this just breaks down a culture—culture at home, culture at work, culture at church. It begins to affect everything.
Isaiah's Three Visions
Well, Isaiah 6 is that moment. Now I don't have my Bible here, I have my notes. I don't have my Bible, but I think the heading in my Bible is "Isaiah's Vision." You can see how we get that. I want to suggest to you here that there are three visions that Isaiah has.
So here's the first one, Isaiah 6:1: "In the year that King Uzziah died"—it should be easy to figure out it's a vision—"I saw the Lord. I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted. And the train of His robe filled the temple. Above Him were seraphim, each had six wings: two wings covered their face, two covered their feet, with two they were flying. They were calling to one another: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is filled with His glory.' At the sound of their voices the doorposts and the threshold shook, and the temple was filled with smoke."
So there's vision one.
Here's vision two: "Woe to me, for I'm undone! I'm ruined! I'm a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." One of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand which he'd taken from the tongs of the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips. Your guilt has taken away and your sins atoned for." Isaiah has a vision now of himself. We'll come back to it.
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Who should I send? Who will go for Me?" Isaiah's vision—really a vision of his future—he said, "Here I am, send me." So now Isaiah's prepared for service.
Accepting the Testimony
We'll just follow your outline. A couple of things. Number one: accept the testimony. Accept the testimony that you see here: "I saw the Lord." This is a legitimate occurrence in 739 BC. Uzziah had been king for 52 years. He reigned over a time of peace. Now Uzziah's dead. Isaiah at this point was already a prophet leading the people.
Accept the testimony. Here's the second
thing. Observed His majesty. He's seated on a throne. He's the king. He's exalted. The train of His robe fills the temple. It's a pre-existing Christ. Remember we looked at last week Philippians 2 where Jesus emptied Himself and took the form of a man. He emptied Himself not of His deity but of this glory, of this moment, of this reigning, of this majesty.
Here's the third thing. Recognize His purity. The seraphim have the six wings and they're covering their faces and their feet and they're flying. They're seeing His purity, His holiness. In a sense He's almost unapproachable. You get those people, "I can't wait to get to God and heaven and ask Him about this and talk to Him about this." We don't see those encounters in scripture. We see encounters with that holy God like this. I don't think that driving question you have is going to be at the top of the list when you see Jesus. I think you'll be overwhelmed by His majesty and His holiness.
Consider His Sovereignty
Here's the fourth thing. Now we'll start to spend a little time on this. Consider His sovereignty. They're chanting holy, holy, holy. Here are these seraphim and here's this choir and they're singing holy, holy, holy. And that's a very difficult word for us to define because it means other than. So it's other than us. It's different than us. It's who God is.
He's sovereign. Not Sinatra but God can sing "I did it my way." Independent of, unlimited by anything. By any sort of authority or circumstance or jurisdiction. That's God.
Admit Your Deficiency
In light of that comes the next thing on your outline. You admit your deficiency. "Woe to me," Isaiah cried. "I am ruined." New American Standard says "I am undone." This is important. I can do okay based on how I grade myself. We love the idea of, at least I did in school, grading on a curve. That was always helpful to me.
Somebody the other day said, "Are you playing any golf?" I said, "I just can't. I can't take it back. I can't play." And they said, "Here's what they asked me. Are you a good golfer?" I said, "Well do you play golf?" He said yes. I said, "Well what do you shoot?" He said 95. I said, "I'm very good then." If you're going to shoot 95, not now, I couldn't break 120 now, but if you're going to shoot 95 in the old days, I'm going to shoot 84, 80, somewhere right in those four strokes. So compared to you at 95, I'm a good golfer. But Jordan Spieth comes in and he said, "Hey, are you a good golfer?" I'll say, "Well, not compared to you."
What happens to Isaiah in this moment is when he sees God, it puts himself immediately in context. He might have been a chief among the prophets and teachers and leaders and the most respected in the community, but compared to God, he says, "Woe to me, I'm undone." Maybe a little loose here, but the implication is I thought I had it all together and it all falls apart in the context of compared to you, the one true holy God.
"I'm a man of unclean lips." It doesn't mean that he's swearing all the time. Proverbs 6:19, these six, seven things that God hates, three of them deal with the tongue. What's coming out of his mouth is revealing what's unclean in his heart. I thought I had it all together, but there's this giant deficiency.
Experience His Sufficiency
Now you have to respond to that. You can experience His sufficiency, the next point. The seraphim flew to him, touched his mouth, and said, "See, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away. Your sin is atoned for."
We talked about it a couple of weeks ago. I'm teaching at Scottsdale Bible Church April 17th or 18th, something like that. And the section that I have in the next section that Jamie's doing is 1 John, I think it's 2:9. I don't know if that's right. "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." And in this series, Jamie wants to highlight one word each week out of that. And so the word I have is forgiveness.
In this whole idea, and it's something we talked about a couple weeks ago, and I think works into that. I haven't started on it yet. But it's that idea of what do I do when I'm guilty?
Four Responses to Guilt
Think of Isaiah here. He gets a vision of God. He comes face to face with his sin. What do you do in that moment? Remember what we said? We said there are four things.
One's to deny it. That's the rich young ruler. "Keep all the commands. I did it." The second thing is to admit your guilt, but be filled with despair. That's Judas. He's overwhelmed by his guilt. His guilt is undeniable. He's sinned. He's wretched. And he's overwhelmed by it. "I'm not worthy."
The third one is to admit your guilt. And this is what most people take as a course. Admit your guilt and try to fix it. So as you drive around town, in front of every church, you'll see this huge sign that says what? What's it say? Easter. Here's what they know. There's a lot of guilty people driving by and they don't know what to do with this guilt. And in their mind, they think I'll go to church and that'll fix it, sort of.
So like at our place, they add services and move things around and they have to change staffing for kids because you're going to have this influx of people who are not Christians, but who are riddled with guilt. They are guilty. They feel guilty. They want to do something about it. And step one is to blow into church at Easter. And here's the problem with that. For many of them, at the end of the day, they feel better and they shouldn't. They walk out and say, "That's twice in three months I've been in there. Right? I'm not a bad guy."
And then they'll start a little version of the game. "Okay, I'm going to clean my act up now. I'm going to start that Thursday morning Bible study thing. Not every week, that's too much. If there's something good on the news, I'll stay home and watch it. And if I've got a long Wednesday night hump day, I may not make it, but I'll make a couple of them. And I'm going to start treating my staff better and my family better. And I know I'm guilty. No question. But I'm going to fix it." All three of those answers
You went to step three. Here I am, send me, without ever coming to Christ in repentance and faith. And now you're tired because you don't have the Holy Spirit working in you.
I understand who God is. Step one, I've got to see the one true God. And when I do, by comparison, I'm immediately humbled, not humiliated, humbled. And I see the chasm. And I see there's nothing I can do. But I come in repentance and faith. I embrace Jesus. And Jesus alone is my salvation. And now here I am. I'm ready to go, hey, God says there's something to do. And you go, here I am. I'm ready now. I'm qualified now. I may need some training to fill in the gaps, but I'm ready because I'm a new creature with a new heart, empowered by the Holy Spirit. Let's go. Isn't that great?
The Principle of Reverence
Well, the principle of reverence is you shouldn't take God too lightly. If you want to fill out those blocks, and some of you do, the upper left-hand corner is reverence. It's fear of God, love God, reverence. That leads to obedience. If you love me, you'll keep my commandments.
Out of that comes judgment. Either condemnation for the unbeliever. For the believer, 1 Corinthians 5, we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive what is due him for the things he's done while in the body, whether good or bad. There's this thing called rewards, and God doesn't shy away from them.
Now, there's no point coming up afterwards and asking me to explain it because I have not yet in my own world figured out how that works. I do know this. He tells me that there is reward. Don't know what they are. People have different views on it. But there's a reward, and that judgment leads to that. It leads to reward.
Five Practical Steps for the Way Out
Number one, demonstrate your reverence for God. Respect and fear Him. Follow Him. Worship Him.
That's the second thing. Commit your time for personal worship. And since it's personal worship, I'm going to suggest to you it can kind of be what you think it needs to be if it fits you. The Christian faith is not one size fits all.
Personal Worship Examples
I was on a website, I don't know, a couple years ago, and the guy hosting the site had interviewed, I think, Dr. Grudem and John Piper and someone else. I don't remember. And asked each one of them about essentially their private worship time. And what struck me is that they all had a prescribed time.
Grudem's a big morning guy. He likes to get up. He likes to pray. He literally takes his day and prays over each meeting for his day. Asked God what He'd have him do in that meeting. Margaret bakes him these muffins he likes. He'll have a muffin or two and some tea. And then he'll study. And study is devotion for him. He'll read the scripture. He'll make notes. He's as disciplined as anybody I've ever been around.
Piper had a similar routine in that there was a time where it was him and the Word. That's that time of worship. I don't know what it is.
When Susan was very, very sick, she could not read much. Just to kind of muster up all that energy was really difficult. And somehow she found a book. And this book just lit her up. She loved it. I ended up buying dozens of these books for her to have to give away to people as they came to visit her. And the book has since become pretty popular. It's Jesus Calling.
Now I don't know much about the book, but I can tell you this, she loved that book. I don't know what was in there. I don't know if it was scratch and sniff morphine or what it was. I don't know what it was. Something in that book just lit her up. You need to find that tool. Now ultimately at the core of that, that book doesn't replace the scripture. But you get it. You need to have that personal worship time.
Involve Your Emotions in Your Faith
Here's the third thing. You need to involve your emotions in your faith. This should be an emotional endeavor. There is a guy whose name is Jonathan Edwards, but if you Google Jonathan Edwards and go to images, you're going to get the iconic picture of him, reported by many or considered by many the most or one of the most brilliant minds America ever produced. And these sermons that he delivered in a monotone way, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. And as he's reading this, people are clinging to the pew as they feel like they're slipping to hell.
But he wrote a book, my guess is in this day and age you can download it for free. If not, you can buy a paperback copy for not a lot of money called Religious Affections. And in this book, what Edwards is saying is our love for God should touch our affections. That as you begin to contemplate this, you're overwhelmed by it. Not incapacitated. There's that amazing idea of I begin to see the love of God. Almost everybody, if not everybody in this room has been in that position
where you're dating and somebody has to be the first one to say, "I love you." But you don't want to leave that hanging out there for fear you're not going to hear it back. "Oh wow, I like you." But God sends Christ and demonstrates love, because any love we have back and forth is that conditional love. I love Sandy, but how could you not? She's smart, she's pretty, she loves me. How could you not? But all of a sudden God loves me as I'm the most despicable. I am what He hates, I'm sin, but He loves me. He sends Christ to die for me.
What Edwards is saying, and common sense would tell you, that has to touch your emotion at some point. That sunrise today, I don't know if you got a shot of it, but I'm coming up the 101, and over the superstitions this morning is a pink, purple sunrise. It was gorgeous. The God that created all of that loves you individually and sent Christ to die for you. That ought to touch a chord somewhere. There ought to be times when you're almost overwhelmed by this.
I'm not saying it's a constant thing. I'm not saying you're incapacitated when you're sitting in a corner crying, you've been debilitated by this. But the love of Christ then, according to Paul in 1 Corinthians, the love of Christ is what compels us, what moves us on, what helps me not grow weary of doing well. The love of Christ compels me. It touches something inside of me. There should be that emotional connection. It's not dry, and that's why you have to be careful. My fear is that we turn our relationship to Christ into a seminary class where we just study new words and Greek words and nuance, and this word means that, and the subtlety of this. You go "wow," but it's another wow. It's not a wow that touches my heart.
Sharing God with Others
Here's the fourth thing: You desire to acquaint people with God's nature. You want to introduce Him to the people around you. Most natural thing in the world, if something means something to you. I had somebody the other day corner me and say, "Have you been to such and such restaurant?" For the life of me, I didn't hear him very well, but I could tell I hadn't been there, and I said no. They went on and on about this joint, and I said, "Where is it?" They said, "Well, North Central Phoenix." I said, "Why would I come on to Cave Creek to eat?" But boy, if you've touched it, you've done it, haven't you? If you saw a movie, or you saw a TV show, you can't wait to share that.
Well, the same thing is here. All of a sudden, you know God, and you want to make Him known to the people around you. We might call it evangelism, I guess we could, but it's sharing who the one true God is. It's being in tune with the people around you, where you hear them, and they say, "My God wouldn't do that. I don't like the God of the Old Testament." In a generally relational way, you have the opportunity to share who the one true God is.
Understanding Life Through Scripture
Here's the last thing: You begin to explain life from the scriptures. That lady laying in the hallway yesterday, I was down in Banner Med waiting only for 55 minutes. There were sick person after sick person by me, and the families behind them. In some cases, it would be an old grandma in that bed, and here's the old grandpa behind her. You know the story. They've been married for 60 years, and they've never been apart, and he can't fathom this. He's watching her, and he's saying, "I'd rather it be me." How do we understand all of life?
Here you go. Somebody was interviewing me last week for a project they're doing, and this came out of me. I don't know how, I don't know where it came from, but we were talking about teaching, and I said, here's what I think you need to convince, or teach. Number one is Genesis 3, so that's Adam's fall. I got to get that figured out. That sends me right to John's gospel: behold the Lamb of God. Then that theology, Romans or Ephesians. I'd probably teach Ephesians first. Romans is the Magna Carta, obviously.
Then came out of me this: as you get that, you got to have the book of Ecclesiastes. That's just the one that, for me, it may just be the stage I'm in, or how I'm wired, but that's the one that puts it all together. There's a time to laugh, maternity ward. There's a time to cry, cardiac rehab. There's a time to sow, and there's a time to reap. There's a time for war, and there's a time for peace. It's the cycle of life, and here's what I figured out: You can't change it. You can't stop it. It's the way life is. It's the explanation of it.
I remember my second day in cardio rehab, and there's a guy next to me that was a pretty cool guy. I'm putting on my heart monitor, that's always a bad thing, you don't want to say that in the morning. The guy next to me says to me, "How did we get here?" I remember my clever response: "Well, I came over Fry and took Dobson down." He said, "No." I don't know this guy from anyone. First time I saw him was the time I was in there before, but he and I seemed like the two cool guys in the place. He said, "No, I mean, how did I get here? I was just in college, I just got married, we were just having kids, and I'm in here strapping this stuff on." He said, "Look at these people." I said, "Buddy, we are part of this." You can't stop that. How do I understand that? How do I get it in perspective? All through scripture. Scripture begins to explain life to me.
It's the principle of reverence. It's to find the God, the God of the Bible, and to worship Him. You have to know Him, and the only way you can know Him is to study His word.