Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. Welcome to our program. I'm glad
you could join us today. If you'd like to follow along
in your Bibles, I'm going to be preaching from the Old Testament
book of Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah. He prophesied about 700, 750
years before the actual advent of Christ. And I'm going to be
looking at chapter six, the first part of chapter six of the book
of Isaiah. which actually Isaiah recounts
his conversion. Now let me give you the title
of the message in three words. Holiness, Sin, and Salvation. That's the title of the message.
Holiness, Sin, and Salvation. Now of course we know that holiness,
the way we normally think of holiness, is the opposite of
sin. Sin the opposite of holiness.
And then salvation. Salvation is the work of a holy
God in light of the sinfulness of people, all of us by nature. And that's salvation. So holiness,
sin, and salvation. But let's look at Isaiah chapter
six. This is where Isaiah, in his
prophecy, he's thinking back. He's reminiscing. about his own conversion. And
in this conversion, as in all conversion, and let me just say
this, you've all heard of the new birth. You must be born again. What does the new birth consist
of? Well, it consists of the Holy
Spirit sent forth from the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit
bringing God's elect Christ's sheep under the preaching of
the gospel, or we might say it this way, the communication of
the gospel, where he imparts spiritual life, spiritual life,
and that's called regeneration. call that regeneration, because
by nature we're fallen in Adam, spiritually dead in trespasses
and sin. Ephesians 2.1 says, and you who
were dead in trespasses and sin, hath he quickened, you hath he
quickened. Quickening is regeneration, giving life. He imparts life
and he brings sinners under the gospel to conversion. In other words, He changes our
minds and our hearts, our wills, our consciences, all of that,
the very heart. Jeremiah described it this way.
He gave you a new heart. You need a new heart because
the natural heart, the old sinful heart, will not receive the things
of the Spirit of God, the natural man. And so in that regeneration
and conversion under the gospel, in the power of the Holy Spirit
now, all kinds of people hear the true gospel and it never
affects them. And that's what theologians call
the general call. In other words, if I hear the
terms, the words of the gospel apart from the power of the Spirit,
I won't believe it and you wouldn't either. And I'll show you that. But in the power of the spirit,
the gospel brings, under the gospel, the spirit brings sinners
to be born again. Regeneration and conversion. And that's what the new birth
is. Well, Isaiah here in chapter six is recounting his conversion
experience. And it's very interesting how
it come about. Look at chapter six in verse
one. He says, in the year that King
Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and
lifted up, and his train, or his robes, filled the temple. Now what Isaiah is seeing here
in this vision, and it is a literal vision that God gave this man,
Isaiah, is a vision of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, representing
the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, revealing the Godhead
to Isaiah, who God is. And it says in the year that
King Uzziah died. Now why is that significant?
Well, King Uzziah was one of the better kings of Judah, the
southern kingdom in Jerusalem, He was a very successful, very
productive king. He improved the situation for
the people of Judah militarily in their defenses and civically
in those things. Uzziah was known, his fame began
to spread throughout the land and throughout much of the world
then. What happened to Uzziah is he
became proud. He became puffed up, as the Bible
says sometimes, enthralled with himself. And he forgot and failed
to humble himself before the Lord. You know, the successes
that we have in this life ultimately are owing to the Lord. Anybody
who gets rich or anybody who's healthy and all of that, I tell
people all the time that the next breath you take is a gift
from God. Now to some people, all those
positive things that men call blessings ends up being a curse
because they, like Uzziah, fail to glorify and honor God and
thank God for these things. But there are really only blessings
to God's people who die in the Lord and live forever. But Uzziah
became puffed up. And he took it upon himself,
he became so enthralled with himself and so proud that on
a given day he took it upon himself to enter the temple and go into
the holy place to burn incense before the Lord. And he had no
legal right under the law of Moses, the Sinaitic law, to do
that. Because that was a task that
was only given to the priest, the tribe of Levi, the descendants
of Aaron. Uzziah was the king, he was from
the tribe of Judah. And he had no right to do that,
and he took upon himself. He got so proud of himself that
he did that. And you know what happened? The
Lord struck him with, well, I think there were like 80 priests who
tried to stop him, and he went through anyway. And the Lord,
right before them on that day, struck him with leprosy. And
he lived the rest of his days in isolation because of that
leprosy. And then when he died, this is
what Isaiah, the year that he died, this is when Isaiah saw
the Lord in the new birth, regeneration and conversion. Isaiah, obviously, the whole
situation here just shows us that Isaiah thought much of Uzziah. In fact, he could have been a
relative of Uzziah. A lot of scholars believe that
Isaiah, in his natural family, was a member of the royal family.
And like King Uzziah could have been a distant relative, an uncle,
I don't know. But Isaiah was enthralled with
Uzziah and he thought a lot of Uzziah. But through what Uzziah
did and God punishing Uzziah with leprosy, he brought Isaiah
to think about things that Isaiah as well as all sinners need to
think about. and that is the holiness of God. So that's the first word in the
title, holiness. Now listen to it again. In the
year, verse one, that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting
upon a throne high and lifted up. This is God in his majesty. This is the sovereignty of God.
His train, his robes filled the temple. That's the presence of
God. That's the Shekinah glory of
God. The word Shekinah, that means
to be present. This is God's presence. And it
says in verse two, above it stood the seraphims, these attendants,
these angelic attendants. Each one had six wings, and with
twain or two he covered his face, and with twain he covered his
feet, and with twain he did fly. This is the humility and the
activity of worship And look at verse three, one cried into
another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of host. Now the Lord of host is the Lord
of a great army that cannot be defeated. This talks about the
omnipotence of God. And it says, the whole earth
is full of his glory. God is the sovereign God of this
universe, of this world. And the earth is full of His
glory even though man by nature doesn't recognize it and doesn't
see it. The earth is full of God's glory
in its creation. He's sovereign in creation. God
created the world. One old preacher said, he stood
on nothing and spoke to nothing and created something. That's
the majesty of God. And then God's glory is in providence
in the workings of this world. And I know this is a place where
people really go awry. God is in control. Now I know
a lot of people say that, but they don't believe it. They picture
God as some kind of a cosmic chess player that you make your
move and then he makes his counter move and keep on going, or what
I call a cosmic janitor. We mess it up and he comes behind
us and straightens up what we messed up. No, God is a God who
worketh all things after the counsel of his own will, Ephesians
111. And that's the only way that
Romans 8.28 can be true. All things working together for
good to them that love God, who are the called according to His
purpose. Who love God, who are the called according to His purpose.
So God is, His glory is in Providence. He's the governor of this world.
And then, especially, God's glory is set forth in salvation. And we'll talk about that. But
holy, holy, holy, thrice holy, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the whole earth is full of
his glory. And it says in verse four, the post of the door moved
at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with
smoke. And that smoke is indicative of the presence of God. like
the pillar of the cloud and the pillar of the fire that followed
the Hebrew children in the wilderness and settled in the tabernacle
above the holiest of all. So this is the holiness of God. Now that word holy is a word
that you need to learn if you're going to understand the Bible.
Most people think of holy as moral perfection or moral purification. But the word holy involves more
than that. The word holy and the word sanctified
are virtually the same thing, both in the Old Testament and
the New Testament. To be sanctified is to be holy. To be holy is to be sanctified. to be made holy is sanctification,
sanctified. What does that mean? Does that
talk about moral perfection? Well, the Bible says that the
people of God are sanctified by His grace in Christ. Now,
if sanctified there means morally perfect, then my friend, there
are no true people of God. There is no holiness, no sanctity,
because what are God's people but sinners saved by grace, still
imperfect in ourselves. Now we can claim a perfection,
but that's only legally and representatively in Christ. Christ is my righteousness
and His righteousness imputed to me, charged to me. And what
is His righteousness? It's the merit, the worth, the
value of His obedience unto death as my surety, my substitute,
my redeemer, my life giver, and my keeper, my preserver. And
so I stand before God washed clean from all my sins by the
blood of Jesus Christ. And that is a legal representative
matter. That doesn't speak to me in my
state here on earth, because in my state here on earth, I'm
in a warfare within, the warfare of the flesh and the spirit,
the Holy Spirit. And my flesh, which is sinful,
You see, the Spirit who is holy. And my flesh, which is sinful,
rears its ugly head within my mind and my affections and my
will, and it wrestles in that sense. It seeks to draw me away
from Christ and His word. And it's a struggle. Paul described
it in Romans 7, verse 14 through 25. And he concluded, O wretched
man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death? So
when we talk about moral perfection, we're not talking about what
believers are in this life. So if we're holy, you know, the
writer of Hebrews talked about holy brethren. Well, that's what
a sinner saved by grace is, a holy brother or sister in Christ. When you think of the word holy,
now granted, if you found a person who was morally perfect in this
world, that person would be holy, but there's none like that. But
believers are like that in Christ. His righteousness, his blood
only gives me a legal standing before God. That's what justified
means. We're just, if you're a believer,
that means you're justified. You're forgiven of all your sins,
washed in the blood of Christ, and you're declared righteous
in God's sight. That's what justification is.
That's the heart of the gospel. And now sanctification is a wider
term, and here's the way you need to look at sanctification
and holiness. Holy, set apart. Set apart for a specific purpose,
a specific use. And when God is called holy,
that means this, God is so unique. God is set apart from anything
and everything. There's only one God, there's
only one like God, there's nothing like Him, nothing to compare
Him with. He is holy, He is sanctified in that sense. He's set apart. He set apart from you, set apart
from me, and certainly He set apart from idols. Holy, holy,
holy is the Lord of hosts. And that's what that means. Now
God is morally perfect. He is the height of moral perfection. And that certainly sets him apart.
He's all powerful. No one as powerful as God. He is alone in that sense. He's omnipresent. He's all wise. He's mercy and grace and love. God alone. And God is just, which
means he must be just in all of his doings. When God deals
with us, on this earth and in salvation, mark this down. This is holy, holy, holy now. God must be just. If God chooses to condemn a sinner
for that sinner's sins, God is just to do so. Mark it down,
as I said. Some people say, well that's
not fair for him to do. Oh yes it is, my friend. You
don't know what fairness is. You're not God. And neither am
I. God must be, let me put it to
you this way. God, if God does it, whatever
it is, it is right. Read Romans nine on that issue. Whatever God does. If God chooses
to save one person, He'll do it justly. And if God chooses
to condemn a person, He does it justly. Do you believe in
that God? Because that's the only God there
is. So the question of questions that comes up is how can God
be just and still justify and save sinners like me. Well, let's
go on. Now look at verse five. The first
word is holy, holiness. Here's the second word, sin.
Look at verse five. Isaiah says, then said I, woe
is me, for I am undone. That word undone means I'm cut
off. I'm out there in the hinterland.
With no hope. Because I'm a man of unclean
lips. I'm a sinner. And I dwell in
the midst of a people of unclean lips. Everybody I know's a sinner. Somebody said, well, speak for
yourself. Oh, no. When it comes to sin,
the Bible says all have sinned and come short of the glory of
God. Not only that, it says all of us fell in Adam. Where did
we fall to? We fell into a state of sin,
spiritual death, and depravity. He says, I'm a man of unclean
lips. I dwell in the midst of a people
of unclean lips. How do you know that, Isaiah?
For mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts. I've seen
God. I can look at you and you can look at me and we can compare
ourselves with ourselves and we can say well You know, we're
not perfect, but we're not that bad on but if you ever see God
by the power of the Holy Spirit and Who God really is and how
just and righteous and holy he is You'll be brought down into
the dust of depravity And that depravity is described all through
the Bible. The Bible says there's none righteous,
no not one. There's none good, no not one.
And even our best efforts at religion, at morality, sincerity,
love, charity, even our best will not make us better in the
eyes of God. That's why salvation is never
by works. It's not by works of righteousness
that we do because we don't have any works of righteousness that
we do. We're sinners. We deserve, if God ever gave
us what we deserve and what we've earned, it would be death and
hell. When we talk about the doctrine of total depravity,
we're not saying that everybody in the world is raving lunatics
or murderers of men, just the worst of the worst in
that sense, as compared to other people. We're not saying that
nobody's religious because even our religion is depraved. Man's
religion of works, salvation by works, by the works and the
wills of men, that's depravity. Because it doesn't glorify God.
It denies Christ. And so that's sin. Sin is falling
short, coming short of the glory of God, and the glory of God
is only found in Christ. We'll look at the next verse
here, verse six. Now we come to the third word,
salvation. How can a holy and just and righteous
God remain such, and he will, and save a sinner like me? How
can he do it justly and still be holy? Well, look here in verse
six, Isaiah says, then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having
a live coal in his hand, like a hot rock. And where did he
get that from? Which he had taken with the tongs
from off the altar. What altar is he talking about?
Well, he's talking about the altar of sacrifice. Remember
in the temple, in the tabernacle, you had the brazen altar. And
what was that brazen altar for? It was given to slay the lambs
and the bullocks and all of those that represented Christ, the
Lord Jesus Christ, going under the wrath of God in the place
of His people whom God had given Him before the foundation of
the world, having their sins imputed, charged, accounted to
Him, He went under the wrath of God for his people. That's
substitution, see? Christ the surety, bearing the
sins of his people. He wasn't made a sinner now.
He wasn't corrupted by the sin, but the sin was charged. The
sin debt was charged to his account. And he went under the wrath of
his father, and he drank damnation dry with his death. And that's
what that live coal from off the altar represents. Christ died, he was buried. He
arose again the third day. So in other words, what Isaiah
is showing here in type and picture in this vision was a picture
of Christ who died for his sins, was buried, and arose again,
because it's a live coal from off the altar. Now, some say
this is the altar of incense. Well, that's Christ too, who
did die, who was buried, who did rise again. He was raised
again because of the justification of his people. And this is the
word of salvation. This is what the gospel says.
Paul wrote in Romans 1 16, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel
of Christ, for it is the power of God and the salvation to everyone
that believeth, to the Jew first and the Greek also, the Gentile,
for therein is the righteousness of God revealed. What is that
righteousness? That's what this live coal represents,
this live coal from off the altar. the righteousness of God, worked
out not by you, not by me, but worked out by Christ as the surety,
the substitute, and the redeemer of his people, paying the price
of the redemption of his sheep, his church, his brethren. And
he paid it in full. He put away our sins and he brought
forth a righteousness that enables God to be just and holy and still
save sinners like me. That's what he did. That's salvation. Therein is the righteousness
of God revealed from faith to faith. And then it says, he laid
it upon my mouth. He gave Isaiah this word of salvation,
holiness, sin and salvation. That's what he did. He made it
clear to Isaiah and he brought him to saving faith in Christ
and repentance of his dead works and gave him the message, laid
that live coat on his lips, put it in his mouth, put it in his
heart. And that's what Isaiah preached
in the book of Isaiah. holiness, sin, and salvation
in Christ. Hope you'll join us next week
for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, write us
at 1102 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia. Contact us by phone at 229-432-6969
or email us through our website at www.TheLetterRofGrace.com. Thank you again for listening
today and may the Lord be with you.