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July 10 - August 26, 2019
In a very real sense, the people entered the presence of God when the priest did, and whenever you go into the presence of God, you will look a bit more glorious.
Watch God on the move. Splendor re-enters the world by way of a group of old, bearded men—people you wouldn’t say were beautiful if you saw them walking down the street. But the garments on these men announce that God’s work of adornment and beautification is in motion.
When you wear a special garment, you are no longer a solitary outcast and you no longer act as you once did.
You share in the company’s prestige. You adopt its mission as your own. You also adopt the culture and values of the institution you represent. If
how much more should we expect that when we are connected to the King’s garments or actually wear them we will live in a new way? We now represent the King. We have received his honor, prestige, and beauty. We have accepted his mission as our own. We have become his emissaries.
No longer is life a way-too-long wait for death, as it is for people who live with shame. Instead, there is a reason to get out of bed and move toward other people.
This blessing works as first, you hear it spoken to you and then, you speak it to others.
Better yet, maybe you could imagine love. The prominent value in the kingdom of heaven is love. We receive God’s love; we give God’s love. That is the heart of the priestly blessing.
This next chapter in the story announces that cleansing is indeed possible and makes it clear that cleansing is not dependent on how precisely we follow the temple rules. God is the one who cleanses, and it is his pleasure to do so. But the familiar story of Isaiah adds a detail that could soon become your favorite. The point of cleansing is not simply that we can be clean and acceptable in the community.
To look directly at him would be too familiar, too brazen.
Since repetition in Hebrew amplifies or intensifies the original idea or word, this rare three-fold repetition left Isaiah completely surrounded by the overwhelming holiness of God.
So far, the comfort for those who experience shame is hard to find. Isaiah himself was only more aware of his shame as it stood in contrast to the perfection and purity of the Lord.
Not only that, but within the word holy lies the answer to shame. God is not a mere human. Humans disregard and ignore you; they stand over you in judgment; they shun, they avoid, they victimize. They accentuate your shame.
Other people may indeed be dangerous, but God can never be rightly understood if you are looking at him as if he were someone else, especially someone who has damaged you.
Holy means God cannot be compared to anyone else. He certainly cannot be likened to the worst person you know. He cannot even be compared to the best. His love and faithfulness endure forever.
At this point you have to listen to Scripture in a new way: you must listen with humility. Humility means that you acknowledge you don’t know everything, and you might be especially confused when it comes to God.
But when it comes to changing our spiritual perspectives, we can tenaciously hold onto our false beliefs and refuse to be persuaded that we have made that classic blunder of mistaken identity.
Listen as Isaiah’s vision spells out some aspects of God’s holiness.
GOD COMES NEAR
Here he shows Isaiah—and us—that he will take the initiative to cleanse those who come to him.
Ironically, our desire to clean ourselves actually minimizes the problem of uncleanness. It assumes we can give ourselves a good enough scrubbing to get a little holy before we meet the Holy One.
The reality is that unclean people can’t wash anything.
Just state the obvious: “I am unclean and I live with people who are unclean.”
Isaiah was forgiven, cleansed, and welcomed into the presence of God, where we are all intended to live. That is where we truly belong.
Surprising, isn’t it? None of this is what a person shrouded in shame expects of holiness. But since holiness is so not-human, it always has an element of the unexpected. You never expected that God himself would, by his representatives, actually come close to unclean people and touch them. The Holy One is not human. The triune God is not human. Don’t limit God’s character by your expectations of what a decent human king might do. You expect God to reject; he accepts. You expect him to turn away; he turns toward.
Think of yourself as someone who has a delusion. Shame is not your delusion. Shame is very real. But your knowledge of God’s defy-all-expectations holiness is a delusion.
We couldn’t persuade him of his grandiosity unless he trusted and loved us. Unless, in humility, he was willing to accept our version of reality over his own.
Even if your neighbors don’t think bad things happen to bad people, a person filled with shame does.)
You are being asked to imagine shame’s opposite: honor, glory, renown. Think in terms of prizes, awards, medals, being chosen for an important position, and all of it happening in public.
Though the situation might seem overwhelming to us, our Heavenly Father knows better.
Some things seem too good to be true, and you keep hope heavily guarded until you are certain it is safe to release it. But listen. These are not the words of a sunny optimist who wants to make you feel good but can’t really deliver. These are the very words of God, who is the Truth and only speaks the truth.
The closer the relationship, the greater the contamination you feel.
To be identified with nothing is a curse.
Why is poverty shameful? You are worth nothing.
Why might orphans experience shame? They have nothing besides themselves with which to identify. They are unwanted. They have no apparent worth to anyone else.
They were alone and rejected: Isaiah called them a wife deserted, though Israel was the one who did the deserting. Now they were unloved, and love is what forges most of our good associations with others.
Marriage is the closest association we can have.
She would go from being identified with nothing to being the bride of the Creator God, and she would not have to cleanse herself first. He would take care of that. That was the Servant’s job.
The bride is glorious because of her husband. Her husband is the Holy One, and she now participates in that holiness. Shame was associated with another life, another person.
So the cause of shame can be from our associations or the absence of them. The cure for shame will always be found in how we become connected to God.
In a similar way, your life changes when a king turns his face toward you. It means he is going to act favorably on your behalf. When the King turns his face to you, it means that blessing is on the way. It means he is committed to you and will be faithful as you live under his protection.
The worst curse? That the Lord would hide his face or turn away (Psalm 27:9). The greatest blessing? “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you” (Numbers 6:24–25).
We, in response, seek his face (2 Chronicles 7:14). We turn away from emptiness and nothing and turn to our Maker and Husband. In the case of shame, we turn away from the actions or people that once defined us and turn to the Holy One. That turn is a lo...
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“Sinners” are both the guilty and the shamed.
Shame says, “You are alone; don’t tell anyone.” In protest, believe that the King is with you and that he brings you into a community. As one expression of your newfound radiance, you could say to a friend, “Help. Could you pray for me?”
The biblical version of this principle is much better: the less attractive spouse starts to look like the more attractive one. In other words, our Maker doesn’t start looking more like us as he turns toward us; we look more like him. He looks glorious; we begin to look glorious too.
Imagine if the fiancé had a perfect love and was of inestimable worth. Your task is to know the better Lover and trust in him.
Kings simply don’t live as he did, which is great news for common people who are familiar with shame.
All these are unmistakable signs of royalty, yet the King “made himself nothing” (Philippians 2:7).
Jesus identified himself with things and people considered to have no value.
