Woe is me!

Today as I sat in awe of what God was saying through Part 2 on the series on Holiness, I realized that my 'miserable' week has been preparing my heart to receive and grasp God's Word today.

In fact, my whole life thus far has been preparing me to further grasp the 'holiness' of God. As it was said today, the 'Good News' cannot be fully understood or welcomed until the bad news has really sunk in, and for me, that has been taking my life thus far.

This week as I listened to a clip of George Beverly Shea singing "The Wonder Of It All" (see 2 posts below), I realized that the older we grow in our journey of faith, the more we grasp our unholiness in the light of His holiness and that the two cannot commingle. Just like a drop of water disintegrates when put on white hot heat, so it is with our hearts when confronted with the holy God. It cannot stand. Ronald Goetz in his discourse, Woe Is Me says:

For us to stand as sinners in the naked presence of the Holy God would annihilate us, "No man sees God and lives." We could not bear to sin in his holy presence, and yet we cannot exist for even an hour except that we fall. Our own hearts betray us. Wasn’t it Pascal who said that if everyone knew the innermost thoughts of everyone else, there wouldn’t be five friends left on earth? What a relief it is that if God searches out the innermost thoughts of everyone, at least we rarely have to feel his scrutiny. How pathetic is the comfort we derive from the fact that he leaves us alone so often, just as though he never existed.

Like the prophet Isaiah, we would fall apart at the seams, become undone, ruined.

After the prophet Isaiah in the first 5 chapters had finished pronouncing 'woes' on nations, in the sixth chapter, he pronounces a 'woe' on himself when confronted by the holiness of God: (Isaiah 6:1-5, The Amplified Bible)

1IN THE year that King Uzziah died,

[in a vision] I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne,

high and lifted up,

and the skirts of His train filled the [most holy part of the] temple

2Above Him stood the seraphim;

each had six wings:

with two [each] covered his [own] face,

and with two [each] covered his feet, and with two [each] flew.
3And one cried to another and said,

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;

the whole earth is full of His glory!
4And the foundations of the thresholds

shook at the voice of him who cried,

and the house was filled with smoke.
5Then said I, Woe is me!

For I am undone and ruined,

because 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!

Ronald Goetz goes on in his discourse on Isaiah 6:1-7, entitled Woe Is Me! says:

If God, terrible in his holiness,

were ever to become immediate to us,

then what would happen to us?

We would become undone.
To be searched out, so that all our lusts, our little murders, our envies, our vanities, our avarice, our gluttony and, above all, our atheism were to be exposed. . . . If a whole life of betrayal were in a moment revealed to the One against whom all our betrayals are ultimately directed, we would go mad with shame.

Perhaps that is why, God reveals our sinful state a little at a time, in His grace, or perhaps brings a crisis to create a sacred milestone like He did here. Nevertheless, being exposed immediately brings horror and shame.

But that horrendous moment is immediately met with His grace when to our knees we fall in repentance. Immediately, we know His grace, His mercy, His forgiveness. Donald Goetz finishes:

...One of the seraphim declared to Isaiah,

"Your guilt is taken away and your sin forgiven."

When God exposed himself,

and the light of that exposure

permeated the very being of Isaiah,

revealing all,

showing Isaiah exactly why he deserved to die,

Isaiah did not die; he was forgiven.
This is why, though we must acknowledge our sin, though in the presence of God we cannot help acknowledging our sin, we ought never to be morbid. ... God does not declare unto us our sin in order to destroy us. In the very moment he accuses us as sinners, we are already forgiven.
The fact that we are forgiven even before we are accused makes our sin all the more humiliating -- to respond so badly in the light of such love. It all keeps coming down to the same thing; it is by grace that we live and move and have our being.

Indeed, the greatest wonder of all is that my God loves me.

Please go here to download Part 1 & 2 of the series on Holiness.

Isaiah 66:2 (The Holy Bible, NIV Version)

Has not my hand made all these things,

and so they came into being?"

declares the LORD.

"This is the one I esteem:

he who is humble and contrite in spirit,

and trembles at my word."

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Father, as I search Your Word, I pray that You will confront me with Your Holiness and renew my mind.