Isaiah's Vision of God's Holiness

A. W. Tozer wrote, speaking of Isaiah's experience as recorded in chapter six of his book:  “The sudden realisation of his personal depravity came like a stroke from heaven upon the trembling heart of Isaiah at the moment when he had his revolutionary vision of the holiness of God.  His pain-filled cry, ‘Woe is me! for I am undone;  because I am a man of unclean lips,  and I dwell in the midst of a people unclean lips: for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.’”  This cry, says Tozer, “Expresses the feeling of every man who has discovered himself under his disguises and has been confronted with an inward sight of the holy whiteness that is God.  Such an experience cannot but be emotionally violent.” 

I think you will agree with me when I say that the church today knows nothing of that experience!  To many church people, I might as well be talking in riddles.  Unlike Isaiah, we have never come face to face with our own depravity, sinfulness, uncleanness; we have never seen ourselves naked before this holy God, stripped of all our self-righteousness. We've never been in the presence of absolute purity, of that “holy whiteness that is God."  

We have never stood trembling before the holiness of God because of our sin.  NEVER.  That is an experience that is totally foreign to us today.   And we wonder why our Christian lives are as unspiritual as they are!  And we also wonder why the church is in the state she is on at this time.

Could it be that because she has lost Isaiah's view of God's absolute majesty and holiness, she is presenting a God who is no different from the plethora of other gods that men worship today?  And the world is not impressed!  Tozer is quite correct when he says that "the church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping men."

You only have to take a quick look at any church today to discover its doctrine of God.  Just a quick look will tell you all you need to know.  Watch how she worships, and that will tell you if it is Isaiah's God who is being worshipped.  Listen to the lyrics of many modern songs of worship, and you'll soon find out if their worship is being directed to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Sample the music, and you will know if it is the God of Majestic glory who is being sung to and about.  The heart is revealed in the works!  
Isaiah was humbled in the presence of the thrice holy God, but we boast and are full of pride when we enter the presence of the modern god.  Isaiah was broken by a consciousness of his sin; but our doesn't seem to matter!  Isaiah left the Temple in adoring silence with his mind fixed on his meeting with God; but we start normal everyday chatter the moment the benediction is pronounced!

Is there a difference between Isaiah and us?  There is!  Is the god we worship the same God that Isaiah worshipped?  Hardly!  And are we concerned about this distance we travelled along the ways of the world?  There's no evidence that the church today is bothered about such religious matters - the property, yes; the income, yes; but God.  NO.  And when we remember that the business of the church is GOD, it's no wonder He has left us to ourselves to invent ways of worshipping Him!