Abstract
At dinner, I was seated next to a somewhat Bohemian-looking woman, whom I judged to be somewhere in her seventies. When she learned that I was a vicar she told me at once that, at her time of life, she was hedging her bets and going along to the parish church in the village in which she and her husband had a country cottage. She would only go to a service where they were using the Book of Common Prayer, because she loved the language. But she did balk at having to confess that she was ‘a miserable offender’.
“I’m not miserable,” she said, “and I don’t think I’m a particular offender. I may have done a few naughty things once upon a time, but I think I’m basically a good person.”
Perhaps that is what Isaiah thought before he saw the Lord. The prophecies in the first five chapters of his book, if they are in chronological order, suggest that he was well aware that he lived among a people of unclean lips, but was he aware that that meant him as well?
But then he saw the Lord, “high and lifted up,” and heard the cry of the seraphim, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory,” and then he 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!”
I said to my neighbour at dinner, who was thus protesting her comparative innocence, “I guess we all think that, until we find ourselves in the presence of God. Then, I think, we shall all have to confess that we are indeed miserable offenders.”
The desire to justify ourselves is everywhere in our society today. What else is this mania for eulogies at every funeral and memorial service? It used not to be like that; the mourners brought with them their own memories, good and bad, and were led in prayer. But not now: no such occasion is complete without at least one lengthy commendation of the deceased, to the general public and to God. No television report of the death of a murder victim or a fallen soldier is complete without a testimony to how wonderful, fun-loving and devoted they were. But when we stand before the throne and the books are opened, the only thing that any of us will be able to say is, “Woe is me! For I am lost.”
It is a notable fact that in every revival known from past history, the pattern of the conversion and call of Isaiah has been repeated. Somewhere and somehow people are brought face to face with God and, like Isaiah, know immediately their sinfulness and their need of cleansing and forgiveness.
And this is a blessing, because it is only when we are in that place that we are really able to hear the gospel and receive the forgiveness and cleansing that only God can bring. It was only when Isaiah was under such a conviction of sin that he could receive the angel bearing the burning coal from the altar, and hear the words, “This has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin forgiven.”
There is no formula for bringing people, or ourselves, into that place of existential awareness of the power and holiness of God, and hence of our need of forgiveness. It is fundamentally a work of the Holy Spirit. “He will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.”
On the other hand, the witness of such historical revivals is also that this sovereign work of the Holy Spirit is always associated with the preaching of the Word. So, we do need to find ways of speaking and preaching about these things today that resonates with the people of the 21st century.
‘Sin’ is not in the popular vocabulary. Perhaps people will understand, ‘turning away from God’, ‘rebelling against God’ or ‘thinking that we know better than God how to live our lives’. ‘Repentance’ is not in the vocabulary. Perhaps people can understand ‘turning back to God’ and ‘reordering our lives in obedience to God.’
Returning to the dinner table – my neighbor paused for a moment and thought about what I had said about standing in the presence of God, but then continued, “But it is not a very good message, is it? That we are all ‘miserable offenders.’”
“No,” I replied, “but that is only the first part of the message. The second part is that God loves you all the same.”
She looked straight at me for a long moment. “That’s the nicest thing that anyone like you has ever said to me.”
And I hope that she took it away after dinner and kept it in her heart.
The sense of our sin and the call to repentance is only a preliminary, even though a necessary preliminary, to the declaration of the gospel. The burning coal from the altar is the news of God’s love for poor sinners, of the immense lengths and cost to which God has gone to redeem us and justify us through his Son. We have no need to justify ourselves before God, because God has justified us already through the death and resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ. All we have to do is to let go of this insistent desire to justify ourselves, and trust in Jesus to take away our guilt and cleanse us from our sin.
That step of letting go and trusting in Jesus brings for us, as for Isaiah, another existential experience of God: the experience of peace with God, of purity, freedom and new life.
The final step in Isaiah’s conversion and call is to consecrate that freedom and new life to the service of the God who has saved us from our sin. “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” the Lord asks. And we need to reply, as Isaiah did, “Here am I! Send me.”
The result may be a radical change in our lifestyle or occupation. It may be a call to travel or to move house. It may on the other hand be the instruction to, “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.”
For Isaiah this was altogether a life-changing experience. He went on to become the greatest of the prophets of old. Who knows what God will do with anyone who, through some mysterious moving of the Holy Spirit and the hearing of the gospel, reaches this point of life-changing encounter with God, realizes their own sinfulness, receives the assurance of God’s gracious mercy and forgiveness, and dedicates their life henceforth to the obedience and service of the Lord. History is changed in some small way by every soul that thus comes to repentance and faith in Jesus, and the calling of each one of us, as followers of the Master, is to enlarge his Kingdom wherever and whenever we can – even at the dinner table!