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Sermons

"A HIGHER STANDARD"
OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE TEXT:
ISAIAH 6:1-8

DAVE RING, PASTOR
LOS ALAMOS 1ST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
SUNDAY MORNING, AUGUST 31, 2008

SCRIPTURE LESSON: 1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another:

"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory."

4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. 5 "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty." 6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for." 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"
PRAYER: Lord, may we hear Your Word clearly in the message to follow. And may we fervently embrace what it says. Amen.

MESSAGE: Today's subject is one that is too-rarely discussed in contemporary churches, but it's a core concept of both Christian faith and Christian discipleship - and especially important to those of the Wesleyan, or Methodist, persuasion. The subject is holiness. Christians as a body are called to be a holy people. Individual believers in Jesus are called to live lives of holiness.
Let me introduce the subject via an illustration from my own life. In the household in which I grew up "cussing" was normal language. No sentence was complete without at least two x-rated four-letter words; no conversation finished without scatological references.

At the age of 20 I became a Christian. And soon thereafter I began to personally notice, as well as to have others call to my attention, that Christians didn't "cuss," or at least didn't so do anywhere near as often as I did. It took a handful of years for my vocabulary to fully change, but gradually terms like the nasty "s" word and the repugnant "f" word fell into disuse. Much as he did for the young man Isaiah, God cleansed my unclean lips. My language gradually assumed a higher standard than before.

And now that I don't "cuss" anymore, or at least much more rarely, am I a holier person? Probably not. Though using "clean" language may make a person more socially acceptable in church, it doesn't really change that person's status vis-à-vis holiness.
Let me further illustrate what I'm trying to communicate by employing a simple example. The tallest person in this room today is probably ___________. He's almost a full foot taller than I. I'll bet he has to worry about hitting his head when he passes through low doorways. I, on the other hand, rarely if ever encounter such a problem. In relation to the measure of a doorway, he's much taller than I.

But suppose an airplane, flying 1,000 feet above ground level, were to pass over _______ and me. To someone looking down from that aircraft both of us would appear as "dots" on the surface of the earth. Measured by that higher standard, neither of us has any claim to fame in relation to stature. There's little or no difference between us.

United Methodists, because we are such hard-working people for the Lord, tend to "rate" ourselves, consciously or unconsciously, in regard to holiness. "I spent all of last weekend working with the prisoners in Santa Fe. God's bound to be pleased with me." "I took a week of my precious vacation time and went on a mission trip to Patagonia. God must be overjoyed with my devotion." "I worked my fingers to the bone cleaning all the built-up grease off the stove in the church kitchen last Saturday. Undoubtedly, God owes me."

The last thing I ever want to do is to discourage any hard-working United Methodist from giving their all to the Lord. But what I must tell you, and to some extent I'm preaching this to myself as well, is that's not how holiness works.

Holiness is a matter of God's doing, not ours. That's how it was for the young man Isaiah: When he beheld the thrice-holy God, he clearly realized his own wretched state, crying out "Woe to me!" So God sent an angel with a hot coal to cleanse him. Only after God declared him purified was Isaiah able to effectively serve the Lord.

For Christians, our cleansing agent is not an angel with a piece of coal, but the shed blood, on the Cross, of Son of God Himself. Like Isaiah, we approach God not on the basis of works righteousness - "Look at all I've done for you, Lord" - but rather in recognition of complete unworthiness. As the writer of I John puts it, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he (that is, Jesus) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Keep up the good work, people of God. But even as you do so, realize that you are ultimately accountable to a much more significant measure. Good works are good things, but holiness - which is ultimately a gift from the Lord, is the standard to which each of us is called. And thanks be to God that we can, in fact, be holy people - through the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ. Amen.

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