"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." Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for."
Isaiah 6:5-7
Isaiah knew his own unworthiness in the presence of God. The seraphim offered a solution, and Isaiah seems to willingly have opened his mouth to be cleansed. Would I have been so willing?
Today I heard a story about a Christian woman in China who suffered and was tortured for years because she believed in Christ. She recalls one point of wanting to give up when she looked down and noticed her footprints shaped in the pools of her own blood. She thought of Jesus walking to the cross possibly leaving footprints in his own blood- for her. Her strength was renewed.
Would I willingly accept a live coal to be placed on my lips so that I could draw closer to God? Would I willingly trudge through my own blood through hours of pain to be more like Christ? Will I accept temporary discomfort in this life if it is how the Lord desires to cleanse me of my sin and conform me into the image of his son? What if that discomfort is ridicule? persecution? torture? death?
If I am unwilling to have a live coal placed onto my lips, when will I ever be willing to die for Christ? Matthew 10:38 says, "he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me."
I do not have a literal live coal being offered to me tonight or any other day. Instead, I have the opportunity of my own cross set before me to make me worthy. Jesus does justify us, but it is our choice to take up our cross and carry it to our own death-to-self that sanctifies us; and, according to Matthew, makes us worthy.
Isaiah choose to be cleansed in a manner God preferred- a way that probably wasn't all that comfortable, and a way that probably didn't make much sense to him. But he still choose to trust God, obey, and endure whatever temporary consequence he suffered in order to be made worthy. And then, after his faithfulness, he was rewarded with the presence of God.
One of my favorite verses in the entire Bible follows this choice of Isaiah's to be made clean:
"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!"
Isaiah 6:8
Isaiah's obedience gave him the opportunity to be used by God.
Will you, dear brother or sister in Christ, choose the live coal that is placed before you every day? It is your choice to accept the recurrent cleansing God offers, cleansing that only comes from dying to self.
