“O God, You are my God; early will I seek You; my
soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where
there is no water. So I have looked for You in the sanctuary, to see Your power
and Your glory” (Psalm 63:1-2).
Where do you go when you’re thirsting for Jesus? Although
God can be everywhere all at once, He’s chosen to meet with us in the
sanctuary. That’s where the prophet Isaiah first saw Him in all His glory.
As he stood under the portico of the temple, the
prophet’s thoughts were on the work before him. It couldn’t have been easy, for
Judah
The sins of God’s people were quite easily traced
to her leaders. For “by their apostasy and rebellion those who should have been
standing as light bearers among the nations were inviting the judgments of God.
Many of the evils which were hastening the swift destruction of the northern kingdom,
and which had recently been denounced in unmistakable terms by Hosea and Amos,
were fast corrupting the kingdom of Judah” (Prophets and Kings, pg. 305). Is it
any wonder that Isaiah shrank from his formidable task—to warn and reprove such
a people?
But what was Isaiah like? As he stood at the
threshold of the sanctuary, was he worthy to speak for God? Did he thirst for
God’s righteousness? Unfortunately--No. He thought of himself quite like Nicodemus did. Others may have fallen from
grace, but not me. I have no need of warning or reproof. Everything is okay
between me and the Lord.
Isaiah “imagined himself in a righteous state
before God; but when the glory of the Lord of hosts was revealed to him, when
he beheld the inexpressible majesty of God, he said, “I am undone; because I am
a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts (Review & Herald,
6/4/89).
Seeing God’s power and glory opened Isaiah’s
eyes—perhaps for the 1st time. He saw that his righteousness was
only filthy rags. What he thought was clean and white was actually polluted by
self-righteousness and sin. He was a man of unclean lips. And how much he
needed the Lord!
It’s easy for us to be like Isaiah—to have little
idea that we need revival and reformation. We’re the ones standing in the need
of prayer. We need the divine coal to burn away our sin. But we get caught up
in the urgency of every day stuff or just in the hectic pace of our lives—even
in spending ourselves for others—that we don’t take the time necessary to
examine our hearts and to look up to Jesus in His holy sanctuary.
Just one glimpse of His holiness will be enough to
strip away the veneer of our hearts and see what’s really down there. And God
knows we’ve got to see ourselves before He can help us. We’ve got to realize
that in His presence we are a people of unclean lips. We are sinners in need of
divine grace. We are “wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked” (Revelation 3:20 ).
But Jesus has the remedy for our sinful hearts. He
says, “I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be
rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your
nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eyesalve, that you may
see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the
door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me” (Revelation 3:18 -20).
What is Jesus offering us? The gold of His love,
the robe of His spotless life, the oil of His cleansing Spirit. Jesus is
offering Himself to you and me! Is that
what you are thirsting for? When you feel empty, God is whispering, “I will
fill you up. I can come in and My life can be yours.” And that means more than
just being forgiven. It means being filled with all the fullness of Christ.
“When we submit ourselves to Christ, the heart is
united with His heart, the will is merged with His will, the mind becomes one
with His mind, the thoughts are brought int captivity to Him; we live His
life. This is what it means to be clothed with the garment of His
righteousness. Then as the Lord looks upon us He sees, not the fig-leaf
garment, not the nakedness and deformity of sin, but His own robe of
righteousness, which is perfect obedience to the law of Jehovah” (Christ’s
Object Lessons, pg. 311).
Christ’s perfect life will cover us. And His
perfect life will be seen in us. And we
will say as Isaiah did, “For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts”
(Isaiah 6:5).
No comments:
Post a Comment