Responding to Holiness (Part 1): Conviction and Wonder

Perhaps the most intriguging aspect of both Isaiah's and Ezekiel's visions of God is their immediate response. I think I am stirred just as much by the response of these two men as I am by the way in which they convey God. Notice Isaiah's response upon seeing the Lord in his holiness, 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; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!

The first reaction that standing in the presence of holiness impresses upon Isaiah is a sense of conviction. I also think that it is a worth noting, the part of the body that Isaiah decries as unclean or sinful. He mentions his mouth. This is a man who was called to be a prophet to the nations. In other words his profession was to SPEAK the words of God. This should probably have been the most sanctified bodily member for God's prophet. But it is the first thing that is drawn to his attention upon seeing the holiness of God. There is a sense in which standing before the holiness of God, brings a out a sense of our own filth in light of his holiness. Those who are truly standing in the light of the King of Glory should feel somewhat of a sense of what Isaiah is feeling. Standing before God brings to the forefront our sin and the apparent gap between us and God.
This may seem foreign to some readers at this point and that is quite understandable because the Isaiah 6 experience is foreign to most of the modern American evangelical church. Sadly, there is so little sense of the holiness of God in our churches. Our worship services are light and fluffy. They don't carry the weight of God's magnificent holiness with it. Be sure of this, if there was a sense of transcendence anid holiness in our churches, we would see more responses like that of Isaiah. The fact that we don't see people reduced to "rubble" in our church services (believers and unbelievers alike) is because this sense or this vision of God has been snuffed out. It has been filled with a corresponding lightness in which God is light, he is easy... he is over a cup of coffee or over a bar stool sermon conversation. Tragic. Blessed will be the day when we once agains see Luther and Brainerd like conversions. Blessed will be a day where we cherish the holiness of God in a way that we haven't in many decades.
In examining Ezekiel's experience, I see much of the same realities at work (though perhaps not as explicit) Ezekiel notes his own reaction by saying:

Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell on my face...

So Ezekiel sees the glory of the Lord and the only thing that he can do is fall on his face in response to what he has seen. Are we falling on our faces in personal devotion? Am I falling on my face in personal devotion? This is something that I know I have felt and done too litte of lately. But this is the God that we encounter when we face the Christian God. Such is his wonder and beauty that one of the few adequate responses to seeing God in his glory is to fall on our faces. O, that God would recapture my heart, our hearts and the hearts of the American church to see his glory and his holiness and have biblical responses therein.