Wounded for Our Transgressions: The Holiness of God and the Cross

I honestly did not plan it to come out this way (someone else must have), but this is certainly appropriate for Good Friday.

Dr. W. Robert Godfrey, the president of Westminster Theological Seminary in California, spoke on the atonement. The American attitude toward sin is that we like it and we like it that God indulges us and forgives readily. This is, of course, a complete lie. If we don't know God and don't know ourselves we don't know anything worthwhile. American church life is trivial--we are a country full of Christianettes. Isaiah 6:1-7. The reign of King Uzziah (background information in 2 Chronicles 26), a good king who reigned 52 years and did many wonderful things. Judah prospered under him materially. But he became proud and desired to fulfill the role of priest as well as king (in imitation of surrounding pagan cultures and even some of the kings of Israel). God's judgment was to strike him with leprosy, which ended up being his legacy. It was in the year that Uzziah died in disgrace after trying to exalt himself that Isaiah had his vision of the exalted Lord. Isaiah sees the true king high and lifted up. Quite a contrast. What is the significance of the smoke? It's a common Scriptural description of the surroundings of God--his glory, his inapproachability, his veiledness. Maybe also an allusion to the altar of incense. God is very serious about how he is to be worshipped and how sinners may not approach him without the provisions he has stipulated. Isaiah is acutely aware of his sin and unworthiness and his helplessness. A seraph purges his lips with a burning coal from the altar. God initiates and accomplishes salvation. Isaiah 52:13-53:12. Only Messiah is rightly priest-king. We tend to take lightly the cost of salvation, what Christ had to give up, to endure, to pay. Psalm 116.