Our society and culture tell us, “If you don’t like they way the game is being played, change the rules. Make the rules and guidelines so that they fit what you want and ultimately create an environment where you can win.”
Sounds good until you think through the scenario and realize if everyone did this, then the rules would be changing all the time and ultimately only one person would win but only after leaving behind miles and miles of wrecked relationships and friendships. The devastation would be so great that the so-called “winner” would have no one to share the prize with, because everyone would be looking out for the No. 1 person in their lives—themselves.
God’s people—past, present and future—are no exception to this temptation and trap. The prophet Isaiah was warning God’s people of this very thing in chapter 5, and we hear him (God through him) reasoning with the people: “You’re calling evil good and good evil; bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter.” There’s no way this can be true but the nation was deciding for itself what it wanted to call good and sweet. And these are the very things God already had decided on. It’s like they heard God speak to them and they said, “Thanks, God, we’ll take what you’ve ‘suggested’ under advisement and then make our decision.”
Crazy, huh? But hauntingly familiar to so many of us even today when we are confronted with the decision to listen to what God says and has said, or listen to what we want or think we deserve. This decision is before us numerous times each day. Will I listen to God or do my own thing?
Take this for example: 2+2=4. Done. But what if you decide 2+2 should equal 3.8 and not 4 because you just don’t think that way anymore? You can live your life thinking and believing that 2+2=3.8 but that never will change the fact that 2+2=4. What a frustrating life you will live, and you probably will frustrate everyone around you as well.
What an incredible passage Isaiah 6 is. Imagine you’ve been given the privilege of taking a look at the throne room of heaven. Isaiah was God’s chosen, his mouthpiece, to the nation and look where we find him—on his face before the holiness of God with the complete realization that no matter how “good” he is or thinks he is, compared to God, he falls way short.
Perhaps that’s part of what’s wrong with God’s people today, we need to find ourselves before him in complete and total surrender, recognizing him as sovereign and holy. When was the last time you took the time to do nothing but yield yourself and your will to God? Acknowledging that he knows what is best for you, and no matter what he says, you are willing to obey him.
Notice everyone’s position in this scene from Isaiah 6: the Lord is on the throne, the angels are worshipping him and giving him praise, Isaiah is on his face and wrecked. The throne is the place of authority, whoever is on it is the boss. And that would be God. Never do we see God giving up his throne. Why? Because he is in charge, and what he says goes. Our positions in relationship to God’s position determine where our opinions rank.
Isaiah conveys an interesting scene to us in verse 1, where he says, “the train of his robe filled the temple.” The presence and character of God was in every possible place in the temple. There wasn’t an inch of the temple that was not filled with himself and his glory.
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Read that again. God does not leave a little space open for someone else who might like to come in and share some of his space. Now fast forward several hundred years to Paul writing to the church at Corinth. He makes it very clear that you, as a Christian, are now the temple of the one true God (1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19). You are the temple, where God desires for his glory and character to fill every inch of and not willing to give way to or submit to anyone or anything else.
And yet how many times do we try and push and shove some of God’s glory and character in ourselves over to make a little room for our own opinion? Want to know why you sometimes have a difficult time convincing God of your opinion and getting him on board with your line of reasoning? Easy, God doesn’t have an opinion, he only has truth.
Paul writes to the church at Rome that we are all on the same level playing field. We have all fallen short and our starting points all originate at the same place—separated from God by our sin. No one escapes this no matter how “good” they may have been, or are, in their lifetime. The idea that Jesus died for everyone except Mother Teresa and Billy Graham because they were so good in their lives that they didn’t need a Savior is ludicrous. Everyone was in need of the perfect sacrifice in Jesus Christ in order to be reconciled back to God.
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