The Jesse Tree: Day 16

Nobody wants to get coal in their stocking. Maybe once it was helpful, providing warmth through cold winters, but now, coal is just bad news. Because receiving coal means we’re bad. Honestly, it’s a hard message to receive. Because it involves acknowledging our own lack of goodness, admitting where we fall short. Most of the time, it’s easier to just sweep those things under the rug and hold out hope for candy, and not coal.

Isaiah may have been similar in this regard, until a single experience made his own lack of goodness unavoidably and dreadfully evident.

In a vision, Isaiah was taken into the throne room of the LORD. The room was filled with smoke, swirling about, clouding his vision. The floor shook and trembled violently. And massive angels, each with six wings, hovered and flew about, proclaiming the holiness of God, calling out:

And upon the throne sat God, high and lifted up, the train of his robe flowing down and covering the entire floor, fold upon fold of glorious fabric.

Isaiah was overwhelmed, sensing his own fragility like a dry leaf caught up in a gust, floating on the flickering edges of a colossal all-consuming fire, desperate to escape but entirely unable to even move. He was engulfed under a weight like the ocean, pressing upon him his own appalling lack of goodness—lack of holiness. He was horribly aware of his sin, as if it was some special disease obvious to all. And he knew that judgment was coming because of it. In a panic, he cried out:

Then one of these angels, a terrifying creature, flew to him with a red hot coal, still burning from the altar of God, and leaned in to put the coal on Isaiah’s lips. Just as Isaiah thought his life was over, the hot coal grazed his lips, and somehow he felt himself being cleansed. The angel said:

When Isaiah grasped his lack of holiness in comparison to God, it left him in a state of panic, near hysteria. Because he knew he deserved judgment. But instead of receiving it, God cleansed him. God purified him, removing his sinful filth, making Isaiah holy.

The truth is, whether we’ve found coals or candies in our stockings, if we were to experience the same thing, we too would be overwhelmed by God’s holiness and our dire lack of it. We too would cry out, “Woe is me!” with a dreadful lucidity that we too deserve judgment.

But thankfully, instead of administering our judgment, God provided a way for us to be cleansed. God sent Jesus, so that he could receive our judgment, and in turn we could be purified in him. Because of Jesus, we too have been made holy.