B, Trinity Sunday - Isaiah 6:3 & Romans 8:14-15 "Holy Abba"
Isaiah 6:3 (ESV) “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”
Romans 8:14-15 (ESV) For all who are led by the Spirit of
God are sons of God. For you did not
receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the
Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”
Today is Trinity Sunday and we celebrate God in his thrice
holy being. We can do so only because of
Jesus Christ who gives us access into the presence of one who is so almighty,
if we dared to have an audience with God without Jesus’ atonement we would drop
dead. Such is the omnipotent glory of
God in heaven and our human impotence.
If anything comes into the presence of a Holy God without
his chosen covering of mercy, one of two truths has to occur. God’s purity is diluted, and he is not really
holy! Or, any impurity, be it ever so
slight, has to be consumed by the radiance of his holy glory.
Isaiah was very well aware of this. He knew that to be in God’s presence demanded
nothing but perfection. Such is the
holiness of God, it cannot tolerate any error, lest it be unholy. Like Moses and Gideon before him, Isaiah knew,
to see God, meant death.
Isaiah also knew that the king of Judah, Uzziah[1],
sought under his own power to enter the temple of God in Jerusalem and burn
incense, not “consecrated”, or “made holy” to do so. Because he did the king lived the rest of his life
in separation as a lepper, despite doing what was right in the eyes of God right
up until this unauthorised entry into God’s holy presence.
So, when the vision of the Lord was revealed to Isaiah, of
God’s presence shaking the temple and filling it with smoke, with the seraphim
singing, “Holy Holy Holy is the Lord of
hosts” Isaiah cried out, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of
unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes
have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
(Isaiah 6:5 ESV) Like the King
who died in that year, Isaiah lamented he too was lost to death!
But rather than leprosy appearing on his forehead as it did
with King Uzziah, he didn’t die. Being
completely right in saying he was unclean and deserving of death for just
seeing a vision of the Lord in the temple, the seraph took a burning coal from
the altar and touched his mouth saying, “Behold,
this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
(Isaiah 6:7 ESV)
The holiness of God took away Isaiah’s guilt and atoned for
his sins. God now gave him the lips with
which to proclaim his word to his people who did not recognise their
uncleanliness before a Holy God. And it
wasn’t a pleasant message God sent Isaiah to say…
The Lord 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.” Then I
(Isaiah) said, “How long, O Lord?” And he said: “Until cities lie waste without
inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, and the LORD removes people far away, and the
forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. And though a tenth remain in it, it will be
burned again, like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is
felled.” The holy seed is its stump.
(Isaiah 6:9–13 ESV)
Immediately we will recognise a couple of things. God was disciplining his chosen people with
the harshest of judgements, to turn away from the Lord so that the Lord will
remove the people far away and the tenth who remain would be burnt to a
stump.
We also recognise the burnt stump that appeared to not have
any life within it, is in fact, the holy seed, the stump of Jesse, the promised
Son of David, Jesus Christ.
The prophet Isaiah proclaims the fullness of God’s Law and
Gospel. The holiness of God the Father,
the holiness of God the Son, and the holiness of God the Holy Spirit. The full supreme holiness of the triune God
in his perfect justice and jealous love, pours out his word of on his chosen
people.
In human eyes and understanding it appears we, like Isaiah,
and the Israelites, are dead men! And
rightly so before a God whose holiness cannot partake of anything short of
perfection, lest he has made himself out to be a liar.
But God is no liar, he is our God of truth, exposing what
needs to be exposed, so he can fix what needs to be fixed. God’s word is holy and with it he works to
make us holy.
Against this picture of God’s almighty threefold holiness,
shaking and filling the temple of Isaiah’s vision with smoke, is the picture
Paul paints for the Romans and us. Worked
by the Holy Spirit and not a human spirit of slavery this is a most beautiful
and gracious picture.
It’s a picture of Fatherly love, a picture of nurturing, a
picture of adoption, a safe picture of submission and stability, a picture of
inheritance together with our Lord Jesus Christ. This is a picture of the stump with the Tree
or Life growing out of it. This is our
Stump of hope. It’s our connection with
the holiness of God, it’s a picture of Jesus our brother putting us in our
Father’s arms.
Because of the truth of this picture, you’re called to
believe and receive you’re being gathered with God the Father and his Son by
the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enables
you and me to put to death the deeds of our flesh, through repentance, the
uncleanness that Jesus Christ has covered with his robes of holiness.
The Holy Spirit now touches our mouths with his holy fire
of faith, so rather than crying out, “woe is me in unbelief.” We can joyfully sing to each other before our
Loving Father, “Holy, holy, holy is the
LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Isaiah 6:3 ESV) This God who is so huge and almighty, who
fills heaven and earth with the hem of his holy, holy, holy glory, intimately
takes us in his arms, and as his children wills us to call him “Abba”, “dadda”,
“daddy”, “Father”.
Picture that display of holiness!
As I remember marvelling, in my smallness, at this
spectacle of nature in the colours of the aurora, it makes me look forward to
the reality of finally being face to face in the Father’s holiness, through the
holy atonement of Jesus Christ, in the holy fulfilment of the Holy Spirit. Where around the throne of God all the holy
will join the angels, the archangels, and the whole company of heaven, praising
God, saying, “Holy, holy, holy, is the
Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” (Revelation 4:8 ESV)
Picture this reality in your adoption as sons of God. Amen.
Let us pray. Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive
glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they
existed and were created.
(Revelation 4:11 ESV) For the kingdom, and the power, and the glory are yours,
now and forever, Amen.
[1] 2 Chronicles 26:1-23 (Uzziah was known as Azariah in 2
Kings 15:1-7)
