Face To Face With God

When Face To Face With God

Isaiah 6:1-13

Introduction

Imagine with me, if you would this scene. You have arrived at church on Sunday morning, and you know that something wonderful is going to happen. You have entered into the church with the full expectation of encountering God.

As you enter through the doors you are captivated by the sight, which you behold. Seat, elevated front and center, in the auditorium is God seated on high throne. The radiance of God’s glory has you captivated as it fills the entire worship center. And you are nudged back to awareness by the most beautifully sounding choir, a choir for the ages, the voices of angels. As the choir sings, it declares in its song how God is unlike any other.

In the midst of the resplendent majesty of God, how would you respond? If you stood face to face with the Lord of glory, what would you do?

Isaiah had that experience at a rather young age, and he could never be the same. God is available to you. You could encounter God, like Isaiah, and it could change the rest of your life.

Isaiah 6 tells of Isaiah’s encounter with God. It also tells of his changed life.

(Read the text)

In Isaiah 6, we have three parallel pictures of how God responds to man, when man acts upon his encounter with God. When man comes face to face with God, and acts upon that encounter, God will respond.

1) God Reveals Himself To Them That Seek Him

As the story opens we find Isaiah entering the temple. Isaiah was well aware of the fact that the temple is where God’s presence resided. Isaiah entered into the temple expecting to have an encounter with God, probably not an encounter of the magnitude he experienced, but he did expect an encounter. For Isaiah knew God reveals himself to them that seek him.

When you walked through the doors this morning, did you expect to see God. Were you prepared for God to reveal himself to you in all of his majesty? Did you expect something to happen?

Or did you walk through the door with false expectations and false motives. Are you here only to salve a guilty conscience? Are you here for the business sense, so that people will see you, and it will encourage business with you? Are you here for the purpose of seeing friends, and them alone? Are you here because this is where you are suppose to be on Sunday morning?

If you are here for any other reason than to encounter God this morning, you are going to miss the miracle of His presence. You will not know what an encounter with God will do to your life. Your own smug self-righteousness has placed blinders over your eyes.

How can we expect God to reveal himself to us? Will we see him displayed in all of his glory right before our very eyes? Will he appear to us in a flash of light, like he appeared to Saul on the rode to Damascus?

I would dare say that several of you present today are waiting for that same experience. You are sitting back saying, "Come on, God. If you are there, show yourself. Let’s see something that only you could do. If you make your presence irrefutable then we’ll believe." But the truth is that God doesn’t often work in that kind of way.

God has made his revelation complete. If you are looking for an encounter with God, the place that you will find it is in the written and spoken word. You will probably encounter God through the words of a song, a prayer spoken, a verse read, or a word spoken. As worship takes place, God will step in to give you a glimpse of his presence.

God revealed himself to Isaiah in all of his holiness and glory. The glory which filled the world, a statement that proclaims the Lordship of God over the universe. The revelation experience reaches it’s peak in Isaiah’s statement, "I have seen the King, the Almighty God."

Isaiah could not have offered a more complete statement of God’s authority over his life than to call him the King. In a land filled with kings, the one above them all is the King of Kings. He is the ruler and controller of my life. To him I yield my will and my desires for he is my God.

How do you see God? How has he been revealed to you? Is he the old man that smiles at his creation with all of the charm of Santa Claus? Do you prefer to look at him as a doting Father, someone who could never be displeased by what we say and do? Or may you see someone who is no threat to who you are.