Everyday Church
See God for Who He Is
(upbeat music) - Hello, friend. Welcome to today's podcast, Everyday Church, with Pastor Jason Keefer. Everyday Church is a daily podcast where believers learn together, grow together, and serve together. - We see this view of God in verse one. The Bible says in the year that King Aziah died, I saw the Lord. And I saw him sitting upon his throne. He was high and he's lifted up, and his train fills the temple. Isaiah sees this view of God that causes him to fear God. Like he sees a view of God that changes his perspective of himself. Like he has this view that forces him into a different mindset of who God is and who he is. And I believe this, when you and I, when we see Isaiah gone out of our life and we really begin to see who God for who he is, man, it changes a lot about our perspective in different areas. Like I listen, our purpose in coming to worship together, it is not simply so that we can sing songs that we like and we enjoy and it brings some camaraderie and it brings us closer together. Listen, our purpose in corporate worship is Jesus and that we might see him in the power and the grandeur and being king of kings and Lord of lords. It's so that when we begin to sing and praise him, we realize, whoa, he's really God. Like he's really God. And while our physical eyes will see him sitting on a throne, like Isaiah's did, our spiritual eyes, our heart, our longing and our desire for God, it sees a God that is sitting on a throne, a sovereign God, a God that is in control of mind in your circumstances. A God is who is in control in spite of all the chaos that we see going on in the world today. A God who wants to reach down and be part of the details of mind in your life. And Isaiah sees this God. He sees him as holy and righteous. And so he sees the presence of God. He sees the presence of God. I mentioned earlier that you and I will never know the power of the resurrection without experiencing the presence of the Savior. Like those two go together. Like you and I, we know we need the power of Christ. We know we need that overcome sin. But somehow we've convinced ourselves we can have it separate from the presence of Christ. And what we've really done is we've just made ways to overcome sin ourself, right? I mean, we come out with good ways to fix this and fix that. If I have this problem, I can work through that and I'll manage that problem as long as I keep it managed and keep it within parameters or maybe I have this going on in my life, but I know I've got a good way to work through that. And God said, whoa, whoa, whoa, I wouldn't work through that. And we experienced the power of God through the presence of God. So Isaiah not only saw the presence of God, he did in fact see the power of God. When we read down the Bible says above it, above the throne of God, the seraphms were. And each one had six wings with twain he covered his face and with twain he covered his feet and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory. But notice verse four, and the post of the door moved. Wow, it moved at the voice of him that cried. The power of God was present, so present that the physical temple begin to move. And so when you and I see, when Josiah's moved out of our life, when we acknowledge that there's some things in our life that we are just going to hold on to, and we've got a tight grip on. I mean, we've got one of them baby grips on it. We're not letting go. And God, the only way it's going to get let go is if God prides our fingers off of it. And we get rid of Josiah. And we begin to notice, and we begin to see the presence of God. Hey, then we begin to experience the power of God in our life. I think like Josiah, I think that when you think about the doorpost of the temple, I think of what God told them all the way over there in Deuteronomy when he was talking to them about loving the Lord God with all your hearts so in mind and about keeping the law of the Lord and the covenant of God and the words of God. And one of the things he told him was to write this upon the doorpost of their house. The doorpost of the house, having the word of God attached to it as I can to the doorpost of our heart, where the word of God is hidden, as David said that word, have I hidden my heart that I might not sin against you thee? And I say this that you and I, we need the power of God to move in our hearts and to shift some things around. I mean, I think we would all agree if we went back to Leviticus and numbers and we saw how God designed the temple, the tabernacle to be built and how these doorposts to be built. Like that was a good thing and yet God still sees the need in his house to come around and move some things around. And you and I, when tribes not present, we have no problem with God coming in and moving some things around in our life. Would you agree with that? Like you and I, listen, when we've humbled ourself and we begin to draw my into God, I think sometimes we don't wanna draw my to God because we're afraid he's gonna come shift some things around in our house. Like, he's gonna come and he's gonna move some things around a little bit. I remember when my wife and I first got married, she didn't do this as much, but I remember about every six weeks she changed the house around. Like she just moved the house around, not literally the whole house, the inside of the house, clarify. I mean, I would come in and the living room was still in the living room, but all the furniture was in a different place. Our bedroom was still the bedroom, but everything was moved in a different place. And I was just like, man, you know. Now I grew up with a mom that did that. My mom did that. She was always moving some things around, but Tanya, she'll tell ya. She said my mom doesn't move things around. Like to this day, she'll still go to her mom's house and she'll say, "Mom, y'all gotta take that off the wall." I could've been there for 45 years. You should move that. Like if my mother-in-law smoked, she doesn't smoke, but if she did, it'd be like one of the things where you take it off the wall and have all the nicotine stains on it. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, you and I, we allow things to stay exactly the way we want in our life, don't we? Because it's real convenient. It's real cozy. And it's just really the way we like it. And modern Christianity really does not want to move of the power of God, because it's gonna be some shifting around in our life. Like God's gonna recognize there are some things in my life and in my heart that it may need to go. There may be some good things in my life that God's like, you know what? I want to move this around with it. I just let me work. In Isaiah, he begins to see the power of God. I think of how often we talk about the power of God and the presence of God, but I also think how that when Paul warned Timothy and he said that in the last days, there will be those that have a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof. They deny the power thereof. Like we mentioned earlier where Paul said that I might know him and the power of his resurrection. I mean, listen, God wants us to experience the power of God. I am convinced that in 2022, that God still wants to work in a mighty and a miraculous way the same way he always has. And we don't have to fall into this mindset that well, you know, while God does work in different ways and he does work in different ways, right? We just mentioned it. Like I'm thankful that when I do something wrong, God doesn't just pick a boulder up and throw it. That works well for me. 'Cause I don't know about you, I do things wrong sometimes, right? I'm thankful that when pride creeps up in my heart that God doesn't kill me, right? Because pride creeps up in my heart sometimes. But I do know this, that God still has power. How many of you agree that God still has power? And oftentimes you and I were so, we just become satisfied and love the sleep with the problems and the chains and the bondage in our life. And we say, well, you know what? God's good, he's gracious. And by his mercies, I'm gonna tough it out and make it, one day it'll be a whole lot better. While we will experience trials in this life. And while those who will live God in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. We still serve our God. I am convinced with all my heart that wants to pour his power out on his people and enable us to overcome sin. It's never God's will that we be conquered by sin. Like it's never God's will that we be overcome by sin and we become satisfied with sin. And so he saw the power of God. And then he saw the perfection of God. Notice in verse five, he says, then Isaiah begins to speak. He says, then said, I woe is me. Woe is me for I am undone. I mean, Isaiah comes to this place where he imposes this sentence upon himself. We see a self-imposed sentence. Isaiah says, woe is me, I'm undone. Isaiah understands the problem with being undone in the presence of God. Like he understands the problem of being unrighteous in the presence of God. Like he knows that means death. There's no hope for that. There's no help for that. But thank God, listen, I gotta tell you, the purpose, the plan of God is to reconcile people to him. Listen, if you're here this morning and you've never trusted Christ as your savior, you're like Isaiah in that sense. Like you are undone completely. You stand before God as unrighteous. And the only, listen, the end of us standing before God as unrighteous is death, right? The Bible says the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. And so if you've never trusted in the work of Christ, you've never trusted in what Christ has done for you and called out to him. Listen, he wants you to do that this morning. Like he would this morning that you trust him as your savior and you come to the place where you can stand in the presence of God. But even as believers, when we stand in the presence of God and we begin to see the perfection of God and we realize, oh wow. Yeah, that bad attitude I had before church, that was not godly, right? You know, oh wow, that thing I said a while ago, yeah, that was not good. I shouldn't have said that. And you know what we begin to do is when we see the perfection of God, we begin to quit excusing our imperfections. We're pretty good at that, aren't we, right? Like, oh, you know, I'm flesh. You know, I'm flesh and I'm struggling with this 'cause we all have struggles and we all have these, we live in this flesh and this flesh is part of who we are until the day that Jesus comes and takes us home until the day that we die. But sometimes you and I, listen, without the presence of God, without the power of God, without us seeing the perfection of God, we begin to make excuses for that, right? And God's like, I don't want excuses. I just want you to let me help you. I just want you to let me in and be part of what's going on in your life. That's what God wants for all of us this morning. So we see this self-imposed sentence and then we see the society that's filled with sin that he's part of. He says, not only am I a man of unclean lips, but the people that I dwell with, they're unclean too. And when he sees God's perfection, he understands that, wow, society as a whole is a mess. And the only thing that's going to fix it is the presence and the power of God. Society as we know it today is a mess, isn't it, right? But notice this, and I want to tell you, if you'll read through the Bible, every time that God did something great among his people, whoever was in the leadership with Daniel, Daniel, when he begins to pray to God and he begins to call out the sins of the people of God. You know what he does first? He calls out his own sin. He calls out his own sin. Isaiah does that. Jeremiah does that. All those minute, you know what they'll do? They'll find out, you'll find out that they call, they saw their own sin first. And that's, you as believers, listen, if we'll see our own sin first and we'll begin to acknowledge our own sin before God and our own imperfection before God and say, Lord God, please, please change me through your power. Please allow me to overcome through your power and through your presence. Then we can be a help to society. I mean, the church is not very much of a help in society today. Like the church is not very much of a help in society today. And we can say, well, that's because society doesn't want us to be a help. I got to tell you, in Paul's day, society didn't want Paul to be a help. Like when you read over there in the book of Acts, they didn't want Peter to be a help. Like they didn't want them disciples and them apostles and them early Christians. They didn't want them to affect their society either. And the Bible says they turned the world upside down. Like what a difference they made, right? When they begin to experience the power and the presence of God. And so we understand this morning that there is this view of God that'll change us. And that's what he wants. But. - Thank you for listening to Every Day Church, a daily podcast where believers learn together, grow together, and serve together. If this episode was an encouragement to you, be sure to hit like, share it, and subscribe for future content. (upbeat music)