Rev. Stephen H. Wilkins

Georgetown Presbyterian Church

August 28, 2005

On my first Sunday here, I used the apostle Paul’s words to the Romans to talk about why I am so eager to be here and to proclaim the gospel among you. What I would like to do today and next Sunday is give a basic sketch of what that Gospel looks like. Really, at its most basic, the Gospel is broken down into two parts: what God has done for us, and our response to what God has done. This morning I want to focus on what God has done for us.

Hear now the word of God as it comes to us from the book of the prophet Isaiah, the 6^th chapter, beginning to read in the 1^st verse…

I love Bible trivia. I’m kind of a nerd when it comes to things like that. There are all sorts of interesting facts found in the Bible. For example, how many of you think that the shortest man in the Bible is Zacchaeus, a wee little man? Well, he’s not the shortest person in the Bible. That designation belongs to one of Job’s friends, Bildad the Shuhite. (Get it? "shoe-height")

Or did you know that there is a person recorded in the Bible who didn’t have any parents? It was Joshua, son of Nun.

Do you know what kind of man Boaz was before he got married? He was Ruth-less.

Now, let’s see how well you were paying attention to today’s lesson from Isaiah 6. What was the name of Isaiah’s horse? It’s "Isme". It says so right in verse 5 of the Revised Standard Version – "Woe, Isme!"

We have two classic texts before us this morning. Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus contains what is perhaps the most well-known verse in the whole Bible – John 3:16. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son, that whosoever would believe in him will not perish but have eternal life." Martin Luther called that little verse "the gospel in a nutshell," and he’s right. It tells of God’s undying love for you and me, and indeed for all the world; it tells of how God deals effectively with our sin by sending his Son; and it tells of the eternal hope that we have because of God’s love for us.

There you have it – the gospel message in a nutshell.

Some people think you have to turn to the New Testament to hear the gospel proclaimed. That’s simply not true. The gospel of salvation by grace is as old as the third chapter of Genesis. Salvation has always been by the grace of God. Even in the Old Testament. That’s why I love this morning’s text from Isaiah. I love it because in those verses, written some 738 years before Christ, we find a clear proclamation of the gospel that Christ fulfilled. It’s a gospel proclamation that starts with God, then it exposes our sinfulness and our need for a savior, then it shows that salvation comes to us by the grace of God, and the proclamation ends with Isaiah being a new creation, given a new life.

Any telling of the gospel must start with God. Even John 3:16 starts with God – For God so loved the world that God sent his only-begotten Son… You see, we worship a God who is sovereign over all of the world, and nothing takes place apart from the will of God. That’s why salvation never starts with our search for meaning or significance in life. Salvation always comes at the initiative of God. Even before we can ask, "How can I be saved," God is at work in our hearts. God always takes the initiative. The gospel always starts with God.

When Isaiah is worshiping in the temple, he suddenly finds himself in the presence of God. God’s glory fills the temple, as the cherubim surround God and cry out, "Holy, Holy, Holy!" Immediately Isaiah is overwhelmed at the glory and holiness of God.

Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever been in the presence of a greatness that leaves you speechless? Have you ever felt yourself overwhelmed with awe at who God is? Those kinds of moments don’t come very often. I know that God is always present everywhere. I know that there is nowhere I can go where I can flee the presence of God. But there are some times when God’s presence is more real, more overpowering. God’s complete and utter holiness, his other-ness, is more clear, more real in those times. You can’t create those moments, but when they happen you know it. An awareness of God’s complete and utter holiness is an important first step in our salvation, because it’s how God gets our attention.

And it’s when you become aware of the complete and utter holiness of God that something else happens – you also become aware of how unholy you really are. When we behold God in all his glory and splendor, we become aware that it really is true that we all fall short of the glory of God. A by-product of the awareness of God is an awareness of our sinfulness.

That’s exactly what Isaiah means when he says, "Woe is me, for I am lost. For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." The reference to unclean lips is broader than just the things we say. In the biblical world the lips are identified as the locus of sin, because the lips are the audible and visible gateway to the human heart, where all sin originates. And so it is for Isaiah that when he finds himself in the presence of real holiness he realizes how un-holy he really is.

That’s what being in the presence of true greatness does to us. It shines the light on our own imperfections. I dare say that even the best golfer among you would be self-conscious, embarrassed, or maybe even ashamed of your game were you to play a round with Tiger Woods.

Being in the presence of greatness evokes a sense of awe, but it also makes us aware of our own shortcomings.

And so it is that the closer we draw to God, the more aware we become of our own sinfulness.

You’ll notice that the confession of Isaiah has both personal and corporate dimensions to it. "I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips." Every individual person and the entire human race are afflicted with the same malady. Both individually and corporately, we confess our sin and our need to be saved from our sin.

Here’s the clincher: No matter how hard we try, we simply can’t erase the difference between where we currently are, and where we are supposed to be in terms of righteousness and holiness. No matter how hard we try, God’s standard of righteousness and holiness are unattainable for us – the bar has been set too high.

The bad news is, we can’t heal ourselves. The good news is, this opens the door for God’s grace to do for us what we cannot do on our own.

That’s what happens to Isaiah. He is left speechless and hopeless as he considers his condition. But in that vision an angel takes a burning hot coal from the fire and touches it to Isaiah’s lips and says, "See, this has touched your lips. Your guilt has been taken away, and your sin atoned for."

And with that simple gesture comes one of the most profound truths of the gospel, namely that God does for us precisely what we are unable to do on our own. He doesn’t push us away because of the ugliness of our sin. He doesn’t watch from afar as we try in vain to save ourselves. He jumps directly into the fray of humanity, taking the form of human flesh, and redeems us from our sin by his outstretched hands on the cross of Calvary.

One hot summer day in Midland a couple of years ago, I took our children to the community swimming pool. On most days that particular pool crowded to capacity with a mass of screaming, squealing, splashing children, and the day we were there was no different. I was sitting by the side of the pool reading a book when I heard a series of whistles, and suddenly the pool became silent. It seems that a little girl had gone off the big waterslide, only to find herself literally in too deep. She couldn’t swim, and were it not for the alert lifeguard who jumped in and pulled her out, this little girl may have drowned.

That’s what God does for us. He doesn’t sit idly by and let us drown in our sin; God jumps in, offers us the lifeline, and says, "Take this, and come with me." That’s exactly what God did for us by sending Jesus—he threw us a life line. The good news of the gospel is that God does for us precisely what we cannot do on our own – he rescues us from our sin.

When we might expect God to smite the sinner, what we find instead is grace. Instead of condemnation, what we find is that in his love for us God clears the way for forgiveness.

For God so loved the world… For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world may be saved through him.

When the angel said to Isaiah, "See, this has touched your lips. Your guilt has been taken away, and your sin atoned for," the angel may as well have added, "you have been born again," because that’s what happened.

The term "born again" has been batted around in evangelical circles for years, and for many it has become a litmus test of true Christianity. And it’s true that one must be "born again", as Jesus said to Nicodemus. But the modern-day understanding of "born again" is probably a far cry from what Jesus was describing. For many of us, the words, "born again" create discomfort when we hear them.

Have you been born again? For many Presbyterians that question is a conversation stopper, because the subject makes us uncomfortable. We think you have to have a dramatic conversion experience, or a vision, or some major crisis in your life. And for some people, those kinds of experiences do happen. But being born again is not so much a matter of what kind of outward experience you have, as it is a change in your heart that God brings about as he reveals his love and grace to you. Maybe the way Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians is easier for us to accept: "Whoever is in Christ is a new creation, the old has gone, and the new has come."

To be born again is to know the love and grace and mercy and compassion of God in a personal way. To be born again is to experience the love and forgiveness of God and to open your heart to a new way of living. To be born again is to hear Jesus knocking at the door of your heart, and you open the door to let him in as your Savior and as the Lord of your life.

What does being "born again" look like? It looks like Isaiah who ran to God and raised his hand and said, "Here am I, send me." It looks like the grateful response of a person who has encountered the love and forgiveness of God, and that person wants to make Christ the lord of his or her life.

It may even look like Nicodemus, after his encounter with Jesus.

Poor Nicodemus. He really doesn’t deserve his bad reputation. He’s afraid of what other might think, so he goes to see Jesus under the cloak of darkness. He stumbles through his conversation with Jesus, not understanding half of what Jesus tells him. And then he leaves, and we assume he didn’t get it.

Or did he? You see, Nicodemus appears again, at the end of John’s gospel. After Jesus has died on the cross, Joseph of Arimathea gets permission to give Jesus an honorable burial. And there with Joseph of Arimathea we find Nicodemus. The disciples were nowhere to be seen, for they had all scattered. But here was Nicodemus, making sure that Jesus was buried with dignity.

Maybe he did get it, after all. Maybe something Jesus told Nicodemus made the light go on. Maybe Nicodemus did understand what it meant to be born again.

What does being born again look like in your life?

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him."

That’s the gospel in a nutshell. It’s about what God has done for you. To God be the glory. Amen.