God is Untamed

Are you ready for a warning as we head into this kind of the surgeon general's label on this whole series? Let me explain it to you with a story a few years ago. My family went to Africa with me. I was speaking at a conference in Kenya, which was such a blessing. For a couple of days, we went on a drive into the country on Safari, and we were delighted to see, after we drove just a few miles into the Masai Mara Park, zebras right alongside the car. The kids were so excited about this, and I want to show you the pictures I took. I want to emphasize, and you'll see why in just a minute, I took these with just a little point-and-shoot camera, not some camera with a big long zoom lens or something. This is exactly how close these animals were to the car, and the kids saw this and they were going, "Wow! Look, you know, it's like the Lion King."

Then it became even more like the Lion King as I had an unexpected opportunity to teach the kids a lesson about the circle of life when lions proceeded to devour a zebra right in front of us, just showing, "Listen to all of you, it's the circle of life, my friends." But there they were, and of course, the kids were going, "But Simba and Nala love all the jungle creatures. Why are they doing that?" And I said, "Well, kids, it was an evil zebra. It was a bad guy zebra, and they were forced to kill him." And then it got even more interesting because a little bit after this, Simba and Nala decided that my kids looked like dessert and they drew a bead on the kids and sauntered over to the car with a look that I only see in you people when you are eyeing the donuts I am using in a sermon illustration. I just have to tell you right now, and as you can see, as the father, I bravely took pictures of the whole thing. But about one second after this, two of the young male lions leapt up onto the car windows and they were roaring and they were snarling and looking at our kids, especially our littlest, David, with just this great hunger.

To make it all even more freaky, one of the windows was partly rolled down, and this little bit—we were in some big Safari SUV. We were just in a small little, you know, aluminum car—and I gotta tell you, that was more than a little freaky. All right, the hair stood on end on my neck and on my head and on my arms for about a week. I was walking around just going, "Lions! Lions in the wild wanted to eat my children!" You know, talk about the Lion King in 3D. Let me just tell you, seeing lions in a zoo or seeing them on a documentary or reading about them in a book ain't nothing like the real thing in the wild. Because the real lions behave unpredictably. The real lions don't fit into your little Disney Lion King box, right?

Well, listen very similarly, I gotta warn you heading into this series. When you start sincerely asking God, "I'm here to meet with you. Reveal yourself to me. I don't just want knowledge of you. I want knowledge of you." Let me just tell you, you are encountering a real being who is wild, who is untamed, who does unpredictable things, who does not fit into anybody's little Disney box of what a god should be like. It reminds me of a scene in C.S. Lewis's classic, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Show of hands, how many of you have read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? What a great book, right? Well, in the book, one of the children, Lucy, asks a Narnian about Aslan, the great king and lion, and says, "Is Aslan quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion." And the Narnian replies, "If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or just plain silly."

Then he isn't safe, said Lucy. "Safe? Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe, but he's good. He's the king, I tell you." And of course, what C.S. Lewis was getting at is that's true of God. He's not safe. If you think that God is going to let your preconceptions go unchallenged, if you think God's primary interest is your comfort, if you think the thing that God lives for is to make sure you're happy, then he's not safe. But he's good. Grab your message notes, and today let's talk about it. Let's talk about how God is untamed. Are you ready to have your cage rattled a little bit? If you've got your Bibles, turn to Isaiah 6 and meet the God who makes your hair stand on end. Isaiah 6—this is the go-to passage for how God is out of the box, and it's the perfect passage to start our series, starting in verse 1.

Isaiah writes, "In the year that King Uzziah died." Now press pause and stop right there for a second. Because that opening line, which to us can sound like blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, let's get to the good stuff, is very important because Isaiah's setting the scene. What happened the year King Uzziah died? Well, we know from history what year this was. It was 740 BC. You say, "Big deal." Well, this meant something to people. They didn't call it 740 BC; of course, they called it the year that King Uzziah died. What happened that year? Well, Uzziah had had a 52-year reign as king in the country of Judah, which was the southern kingdom of Israel, and he was not just a long-lived king; he was a beloved king. This is Rembrandt's painting, King Uzziah, and kind of the glow there is part of what Rembrandt's trying to get across. Uzziah was almost like King Arthur of Judah, and his 52-year reign was almost like Camelot. It was a golden age. He was by far the best king Judah ever had.

The only real problem was that the faith of the people, their religion, had grown cold. It was sterile. It was kind of a, you know, go to temple, kneel down, say your ritual prayers, do your kind of little ritual sacrifice, and then leave. And as long as we say our prayers and do our sacrifice, then God's gonna bless us, and it's been working for 52-plus years. So apparently, that's what God wants from us. It was kind of this magical idea of God. Unfortunately, that's often the God of a country in prosperous times. "Well, God must really love us because look at how well things are going." And so we're just gonna expect 50 more years of uninterrupted blessings from God as sort of our loyal court advisor. They wrapped God in kind of the flag of Judah. It was this little parochial magical idea of God.

And then suddenly, in rapid succession, the king dies, and then the economy collapses. I won't go into detail on this, but if you want some more detail, read Isaiah, particularly Isaiah 5, the chapter that comes before this, and Isaiah talks a little bit more about how their economy collapsed. It's interesting and relevant for us because part of it was because of rampant real estate speculation. He talks about how people were buying up land, and then suddenly it all collapsed, and now there's mansions standing empty because nobody can afford to own land anymore. It's fascinating, but the whole economy collapses in Judah, and then enemies surround the country. So, king dies, famous king, legendary king dies, right? Economy collapses, enemies surround the country. Those three things happen in the year that King Uzziah died.

To help you relate to how Isaiah and his countrymen are feeling here, do you remember where you were when JFK died? Or maybe you remember, if you're younger, where you were when Princess Diana died, when these sort of icons passed away? Now remember where you were when September 2009 and the financial crisis happened. Now remember where you were at 9/11 or maybe Pearl Harbor? Well, put those three shocks together: the shock of a political or celebrity dying, an icon dying, then the shock of an economy collapsing rather suddenly, and then the shock of being threatened by enemies and attacked, and that is what is happening in this one phrase: the year that King Uzziah died was not a good year. Saying the year that King Uzziah died for these people was like saying at 9/11. It was like saying shortly after 9/11 because the year that King Uzziah died, Camelot ended, and the people are worried and skittish and thinking, "What is going on? What's gonna go wrong next? What about that God that we did all of our prayers for? Does he not exist? Is God still in control? Is God not on his throne anymore? Is he being threatened by some other nation's God?" And maybe what they were hoping for was kind of a grandfatherly hug from their little grandpa God, and instead they get this.

Isaiah says, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I had gone to the temple to do my temple duty." And then he says, "I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne, and the train of his robe filled the temple." And above him were seraphim, and this is a kind of angelic being, each with six wings, and with two wings they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with the other two wings, they were flying. What's that all about? We'll get to that in a minute here. And they were calling to one another, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of his glory." And at the sound of their voices, the doorposts and thresholds shook, and the temple was filled with smoke.

Now I want you to try to imagine what Isaiah was feeling here. It was the year that King Uzziah died. It was 9/11; it was the death of Camelot, and he was bummed, and he's wondering what's going on. And then this. Have you ever unexpectedly experienced awe? I was at the Salinas air show. Some friends of mine took me there last year. How many of you have ever been to an air show of any kind? Well, at one, I took some cell phone pics here, and I again say that because this is not, you know, a zoom lens. Here, this is how close what you're about to see actually was to us. And there seemed to be a lull between acts. Everybody was kind of eating junk food from the stands and going, "What's going on? I guess there's some sort of dead air delay here." And I look back behind these stands, and I noticed that there were Air Force jets sneaking up behind us. There they are, but you couldn't hear a thing yet because apparently, these military jets are made to sneak up on you, which makes a lot of sense, right? You really could barely hear a whisper. Nobody was paying attention. Everybody else seemed to be chatting and, you know, eating nachos like this, and all of a sudden, these jets blasted through the sky right in front of us, and everybody's nachos were now in the air, you know? And you suddenly understood the phrase shock and awe.

Some of you experienced this past Monday this very feeling when that fighter jet intercepted the biplane right over Aptos. How many of you ever heard that kind of cracked the sky? Just incredible! In fact, I have to tell you, I got an email last night from a woman here in the church who said, "Well, you know, last weekend you encouraged us to go out for 30 minutes and just listen to the voice of God." And she said, "I did that on Monday, and I went outside and I said, 'Just Lord, just reveal yourself to me.'" And she said, "In that instant, that military jet just went wham!" And she said, "I ran into the house, and I'm never praying again!" Not exactly the impact that I was hoping that that time would have, but something like that happens in Isaiah 6. Isaiah goes to the temple, and he himself describes the religion of the people at that time as their lips worship God, but their hearts are far from him.

So it's sort of this, you know, Isaiah was probably better than most, but it was still kind of a ritualistic thing, and then suddenly, wham! The God jet thunders in front of him, and he sees all of this, and in this moment, God is saying to him, "Isaiah, I am so much bigger than your country's politics and so much bigger than your imagination and so much bigger than your fears and so much bigger than your enemies and so much bigger than your emotions." And this morning, if you feel skittish or scared about the world situation, or maybe you feel like your faith has gone sterile, the first thing you need to do as we start this series is to renew your view of God. God is still on his throne, and he is way bigger than your problems, and he is way mightier than your imagination.

And I see three ways to finish the sentence "God is" right here in this passage that I hope will put your nachos in the air and also encourage you. Jot these down in your notes. Number one: God is wildly different. God is wildly different, way outside any category I could possibly put him in. We saw how the angels sing, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty." But you know, just hearing me say that or reading it on a piece of paper, I don't think captures the goosebump awe that Isaiah must have felt. Later on in the Bible, these angels are described by the Apostle John as each having voices that sound like many waters or like a multitude or like thunder. And so I want us all to read this phrase together as a church and say it loud and hear what you will hear resonating in this room, and that's what one of these angels would sound like according to Scripture. All right, let's read this together. Here we go: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty."

So Isaiah is going, "Wow! So that's what it sounded like." But let's look at the content. Why do they repeat the word "holy" three times? Well, when the Bible repeats a word, it's always done for emphasis. It's like circling it, underlining it, highlighting it, putting it in all caps, bold font. God is not just holy or holy, holy. God is holy, holy, holy. And in Hebrew, that third number carried an implication of perfection. It's like saying he's holy times infinity. Well, now you gotta ask, okay, what's holy mean? In our culture, when we think of somebody holy, it's almost become a synonym for religious, right? "Oh, he's so holier than thou." Holy is often used; it's almost an insult. "Oh, they're so holy, so religious." Is that what they're saying? That's not what the word means at all. The word holy here is the Hebrew word "kadosh," which has a couple of different layers of meaning. First, it means other, as in alien. Think about it: if there is a God who made all the galaxies and all the planets and all the star systems, this God would be the most alien being in the universe, right? The one who created the aliens and the humans, if there are aliens that exist, would be very alien himself.

These angels are saying to these people who had made God into their little personal pet, "God is other. God is alien. God is wildly different, unlike anything else, out of the box. There's nothing like him. He is other, other, other. Alien, alien, alien." Later on in Isaiah, the prophet puts it this way: "Can you compare God to anything? Can you compare him to an image of anything?" In fact, dozens of times in the book of Isaiah alone, let alone the rest of the Bible, this truth that God is other, that God is wildly different, that God is alien is reemphasized repeatedly. Why? Well, because we humans keep trying to tame God. In the days of the Bible, people worshiped idols, supposedly images of God. But you know something interesting? You can always learn a lot more about the ancient people from looking at their idols than you can learn about God, right? You look at their gods, and you learn about them more than you learn about the God of the owners. For example, you look at this idol, and you learn how the people who made this idol dressed. They like to wear traffic cones on their heads, for example, apparently, but you know, they seriously, they like pointy hats, and she's braided, so they like braids. And you learn about their mythology, and you learn what they valued. You learn what they feared. You learn who their enemies were by looking at their gods.

Now you could say those ignorant ancient people, but hang on. Because I think you and I can very easily slip into this: we make God into images that look like us. Think about it: could I learn a lot more about you from your image of God than I could learn about God? Ask yourself, is your God angered by all the very same things that anger you? Is your God impressed by the very things that impress you, likes the things you like, hates the things you hate, would vote the way you vote, and even has all your faults? I've noticed the way you complete the sentence "God is" is often a reflection of the way you finish the sentence "I am." If you were honest, how would you finish the sentence "I am"? Maybe you'd say, "I am temperamental and moody at times." Then you're likely to think God is temperamental and moody at times. Or maybe you say, "I'm tolerant of every behavior, that there's no right or wrong." Then you'll probably think God is open to everything; there's no right or wrong to God. Or maybe you say, "I'm a perfectionist. Really, that's me. I'm a nitpicker." Then you'll tend to think God's a perfectionist, a nitpicker. I'm a clean freak; then your God's a clean freak. But listen, if your idea of God is just like you at every turn, you better take a second look at your idea of God. Because God, he says, is wildly different.

He says in Isaiah 46:5, "Can you compare me to anyone? No one is equal to or like me." Back to idols for a second. Most people imagine that these ancient idols were giant statues, kind of like Raiders of the Lost Ark kind of giant looming statues. But only a few ancient idols were like that. By far, most of the idols of the ancient world were pocket-sized, literally. Did you know that? That's why they find hundreds of them at archaeological sites so that people could carry their gods around with them. They were pocket gods. They were little good luck charms. So let me ask you, do you have a pocket-sized God? Kind of a little good luck charm God? And somebody told me when you said you have a pocket-sized God, I reached into my pocket and looked at my iPhone and I thought, "Yes, I'm idolizing that," but that's not exactly what I'm talking about. Literally, what I mean is do you kind of think of God as being in your pocket? The one you kind of turn to and kind of whisper a prayer to when you want good luck or when you want a blessing, and then when you got that, back in the pocket again?

So many people I meet tell me they have lost faith in God, but I think they've really lost faith in their pocket God. They're mad because God didn't fit; he didn't fit in the box they made for him. But God doesn't fit in anybody's box or anybody's pocket. He's wild. Now, if I really let this sink in, what's my response? Honestly, it's really only when I think of God as wildly different that I can possibly experience something, something that everybody's heart longs for, something that the angels experienced in Isaiah 6, and it's this: just awestruck wonder. Just wonder at the mind-blowing differentness of the alien God. Notice how the angels say, "The whole earth is full of his glory." What are they saying in the cultural context here? They're saying God's glory is so great it can't fit in anybody's pocket or anybody's box or anybody's idol, and they're saying this in the temple. What they're saying is God's glory can't even fit in this big beautiful box you've built for him called the temple. It spills out of that box and fills the whole earth. They're trying to say, "Get your mind blown by the fact that God is bigger than even the earth. The earth just reflects his glory."

Think of what this phrase means: "The whole earth is full of his glory." These are some scenes from the show Planet Earth. I love this show. But think of the angels' phrase: "The whole earth is full of his glory." That means clouds and mountain ranges, whole continents, forests, canyons, the seas, animals, plants—the whole earth is full of his glory, pumping through hearts and pounding in waves and thundering in waterfalls and billowing in clouds and growing in grass and blossoming in flowers and reflecting off the oceans and chirping in birds and roaring in lions. The astonishment I feel when I look at nature's big and small wonders, when my spirit soars, is really astonishment at the reflected glory of God, which does not fit in anyone's box. And if I'm amazed at the work of God's fingers, then how much more glorious must the maker be who put all this together? Way bigger than some pocket God. The whole earth is filled with his glory. But usually, I miss it because I'm not looking.

This is why one of the things that we want to emphasize in the God Is book is finding ways every day to train yourself to open your mind to God's glories all around you, which by God's grace you will see in his word and in his world. You know, when our three kids were little, little kids, they tended to walk around like this, kind of like looking around at their feet and just to the path in front of them all the time. Did your kids do this when they were little too? I think it's probably because three- or four-year-olds, they fall a lot and it hurts, and they don't want to get hurt again. And so they're just kind of like looking down here at potential problems, you know, and pitfalls. The problem is they would do this even when we go to the Redwood Forest or the Grand Canyon. And so we had to have to say, "Don't just look down; look up! Look around!" Right? You have to tell your kids, "Just look around!"

Well, I think most of us walk through life the exact same way, always just looking down at our own troubles because we got hurt last time, and we don't want to get hurt again. So we're kind of looking around at all the potential pratfalls. But God in this passage is saying to Isaiah, in the midst of all the trouble he and his country are going through, the first thing you need to do is look up and look around. Because God's glory is greater, bigger, better, stronger, mightier, and more majestic and wildly different than the problems that you see right in front of you. And it gets even more mind-blowing because the second thing that I think we're meant to see here in this passage is this: God is wildly pure. I say wildly because sometimes the word pure can almost be an insult to it; it can imply sterile or lifeless or boring. But not in God. His purity brings life. That's the second meaning of holy, holy, holy: kadosh also means pure. God is pure, and he's not just pure or pure, pure; he is pure, pure, pure, pure to absolute infinite perfection.

Just let this roll around in your head for a little bit. What does this mean? God is not contaminated by impurity at any microscopic level. God has no flaws, God has no cracks, no blemishes, no stain. God has no imperfection, no impurity, no inadequacy, no lack, no sin, no fault, not a dust speck of vice. Not for an instant in all eternity did God ever lose his temper or do anything unfair or say anything unkind or do anything unjust. In God, there is no pollution; there are no shortages. His accounts are all in the black. God could never take a self-improvement class because there's nothing he needs to improve. God could never be beautified because his beauty is perfect. God is unblemished, uncorrupted, untainted, and that is unlike anything else you can possibly think of right now. Try to think of something untainted. Just try to fix something untainted. Everything you've ever seen is tainted. Lake Tahoe, it's a beautiful clear blue, but it's tainted. Snow is white, but it's tainted. We don't even know what untainted looks like. But Isaiah got a glimpse of it. The angels got a glimpse of it, and these angels, beings who in and of themselves would blow us away with their glory, they were blown away by the pure, pure, pure beauty of God, and that's my response when I think of this: pure worship, awestruck worship.

Let me ask you this: why were even the angels covering their faces and their feet? I want to show you something on the screen here to explain this. The angels were covering their faces because of something that they were feeling. They were overcome by something, and let me try to explain it this way. I read an article this week about Lechuguilla Cave, which I'm probably mispronouncing, but it's a recently discovered cave down in New Mexico. It's only a few miles from Carlsbad Caverns, but it was just discovered about 20 years ago. It's not very well known, but they say its beauty surpasses any other cave. There are formations in it like this one that in any other cave on earth people have only seen grow to lengths of two or three inches, and here they're just spectacular. Now, to even get to these formations, you have to swim in a cave 150 feet underwater. But once you pop up into this cave system, you see things that are just amazing. One explorer described it this way: "Everything is alien." These caves are so beautiful that you just have to leave; you just can't take it. That's a great quote, isn't it? So alien and so beautiful you just can't take it.

Well, I think that's what Isaiah and what the angels were feeling because that's point one and point two in that quote right there. Isn't it? Point one: God is so alien. Point two: God is so beautiful. And this is the emotion the angels are feeling when they're covering their faces, and yet they're also flying because they don't want to leave this emotion of wonder and reverence because God is so alien and so purely beautiful. And so here's the million-dollar question: How does an impure being survive contact with a being so alien and so beautiful? Well, I am so glad that there are some more verses in Isaiah 6 that show us how God is number three: wildly forgiving.

Wildly forgiving. Verse 5, look at Isaiah now. He's responding to all this. "Woe to me!" I cried, "for I am ruined. I'm a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips." I used to wonder, what did he mean by that? Did he mean like he swears a lot or something? What does he mean, unclean lips? I think this is related to the fact that Isaiah says people worship God with their lips, but their hearts are far from him. He's like, "My whole life I've been going to temple, you know, church services, whatever, going, 'Oh God, God is great, God is good, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,' and now he sees the real God that he's just been lip servicing up to this point, and he goes, 'Wow! I'm a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have now seen the king, the Lord Almighty!'"

I think Isaiah probably thought before this vision he was a pretty good guy. I mean, we know something about Isaiah. He was not your stereotypical prophet who grew up in the wilderness and wandered around in rags, you know, and was a weirdo his whole life. Isaiah was highly educated. He served in the courts of kings. He was an aristocrat. He was religious. He came from a good family, and probably he had thought something like, "Compared to everybody else, I'm pretty good." Not compared to God. It's kind of like when I stand under the stars and I get that feeling of how small am I, and it's an accurate feeling because compared to the stars, I'm pretty small. But when I see the Lord's perfection, I see my imperfection, and it's a very accurate feeling because I am sinful; I am wicked.

And look at what God does next. God doesn't have the angel say to Isaiah, "No, you're not. You're not unworthy. Let's take a heavenly self-esteem class here. You're the man, Isaiah. You got what it takes." He doesn't give him a pep talk; he cleanses him. And then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, this glowing burning coal, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. And with it, he touched my mouth, and I think Isaiah at this point—I mean, what would you expect? He's thinking, "This is gonna hurt! Oh, I gotta be burned up! I can, I like spontaneously combust right now here because I'm a wicked man in the presence of God!" And instead of hurting, look what happens: "See, this has touched your lips," says the angel. "Your guilt's taken away, and your sin atoned for." Now don't miss this. Does he say, "Right! Glad you've noticed your guilt. Now go on a quest and work off your guilt," like the pagan gods would ask in a myth at this point in the story, right? Those myths like Jason and the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece and so on: "Go on a quest and prove yourself worthy." No, he doesn't do that. Does he say, "Right, Isaiah, you've had this vision. Now you're gonna have a few more years of life. I hope that now that you see what you'll be seeing when you die, this is God in heaven. I hope you're now motivated to behave and be a good person so that when you die and go to heaven, having seen this warning shot across the bow, you know, you might be good enough for me to forgive." No, that's not what he does. Instead, he just goes, "Right, Isaiah, you've seen your guilt. Now hold still. BAM! You're clean!"

Your sin's gone. Isaiah stands there and does nothing but admit his guilt. He's not even hoping for redemption; he's just going, "Well, I'm toast." And God goes, "Right! Your guilt's taken away." That's grace. Your sin is atoned for, paid for by what, by the way? By a coal from the altar that touches—how could a piece of coal atone for the guilt of a human? That's impossible! Only a human could atone for the guilt of a human. So where's the atonement? Where's the payment in this passage? Well, think of this: this whole study, God's gonna keep blowing your mind because to God, who exists outside of time, the atonement for Isaiah happens 700 years after this when Jesus atoned for Isaiah's sins 2,000 years ago to us, but all the same moment to a God who exists outside of time. You talk about wild! God is so wildly forgiving that like a wild lion who decides to come after me and my kids, this pure, pure, pure, untamed holy being comes into this impure world to come after you and free you and to pay for all your sin on the cross to devour your sin, not you.

And guess what? Of all the mind-blowing implications of this passage, here is the most mind-blowing: that means that you too can hear this phrase: "Your guilt is taken away, and your sin is atoned for." Just let that wash over you. That thing, that mistake you made, that sin, that wickedness that sometimes maybe still haunts you in the night, or maybe it's not one thing ten years ago or a day ago, maybe it's a habit you can't seem to break, maybe it's some personality flaw that makes you feel regret and shame and guilt—that thing—you can hear this: "Your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for," a hundred percent! I spent so much in my Christian life thinking, "Right, Jesus did his part; now I have to do my part." But he does not say, "Your sin is partly atoned for; now the rest is up to you. Prove yourself worthy." No, it's just done.

Now maybe you're thinking, "Well, that's fine for Isaiah, who you just said was a religious aristocrat, but not me. I'm too bad to forgive." No! Pure, pure, pure God would love an impure, impure, impure person like me. Let me tell you a story. This summer, I was in Arkansas for my wife's grandma's 100th birthday party, which was not at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. But at her birthday party, I met with some of her friends who were involved in volunteer ministry at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, this prison in Angola, Louisiana, and I was so taken by what they told me that again I took little pictures of their photographs, which they had in a little pocket photo album, and I thought, "I've got to tell you people about what's going on down there." Once called the bloodiest prison in America, it's now totally changed, and a lot of the credit goes to this guy, the warden, Bert Kane. He has taken some real risks, including this: he relentlessly tries to help each inmate find a relationship with God. Chapel services are packed. There's a huge emphasis on confession of sin. These men are encouraged to confess their sins to each other and ask for healing every day. Now, these are guys who for their whole lives have been doing the opposite. They've been justifying their behavior, and now they're saying, "Yeah, I'm a man of unclean heart," and they receive forgiveness in Christ.

And my friends told me, "Renee, the highlight of the year is the day that the warden sets aside the whole exercise field and says, 'I want to invite your families here for a picnic.'" Now, this is a max security facility when nothing like this has happened until recently, and he says, "I want you at the picnic to spend time with your sons and your daughters and your wives and tell them what God has been doing in your life. I want you to tell them face to face you love them and tell them that God loves them." This is one of the inmates here hugging his son, and he says, "Because your kids need to know what's going on in your heart so that the cycle of crime can stop with you. That's something you can do for them." And the warden even refuses to let these kids see their dads in their prison blues, and folks from churches all around bring street clothes for the dads to wear when they meet their kids, and they get to hug and play and kiss their families. And our friends who gave me these pictures told me, "Renee, we have seen miracles; lives of the most violent offenders are changed."

Well, here's what I'm saying. Precisely because God is holy, holy, holy, he can go into the unholiest places and the unholiest hearts and make something holy of them. I mean, look at those faces. These men were violent criminals, yet when you meet the one who is wildly different, you become wildly different. And then what happens to you? You just want to tell people what's happened to you. That's my response to God's wild forgiveness: willingness to do whatever he wants me to do. Look at Isaiah next. I love this. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I! Send me!" I love that. This is like 10 seconds after he felt so ashamed he wanted to die, and now there's almost like a childlike, "Oh! Pick me! Pick me!" in Isaiah, right? "I'll do anything you want!" And that happens to you and me too. The untamed, wildly powerful, perfect, forgiving God sets me free.

It's amazing to me to think how people think meeting Holy God is gonna make life boring, that it'll somehow tame them. What a joke! It's meeting the untamed God that, as G.K. Chesterton said, allows the good things in me to run wild. Since I started with a lion story, I'm gonna end with one. At the end of one of the Narnia stories, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Aslan, the lion who's the Christ figure, is resurrected, and the girls, Lucy and Susan, who have mourned his death, are now overjoyed that he's alive. And then this happens. Let me read to you one of my favorite pages from that book.

Oh children, said the lion, "Catch me if you can!" He stood for a second, his eyes very bright, his limbs quivering, lashing himself with his tail, and then he made a leap high over their heads and landed on the other side of the table. Laughing, though she didn't know why, Lucy scrambled over the table to reach him. Aslan leapt again, and a mad chase began round and round the hilltop. He led them, now hopelessly out of reach, now letting them almost catch his tail, now diving between them, now tossing them into the air with his huge and beautifully velveted paws and catching them again, and now stopping unexpectedly so that all three of them rolled over together in a happy, laughing heap of fur and arms and legs. It was such a romp as no one has ever had except in Narnia. And whether it was more like playing with a thunderstorm or playing with a kitten, Lucy could never quite make up her mind. And the funny thing was that when all three finally laid together, panting in the sun, the girls no longer felt in the least tired or hungry or thirsty.

And now, said Aslan, presently to business, "I feel I am going to roar. You had better put your fingers in your ears." And they did. And Aslan stood up, and when he opened his mouth to roar, his face became so terrible that they didn't dare to look at it. And they saw all the trees in front of him bend before the blast of his roaring as grass bends in a meadow before the wind. That is something of what it is like to encounter the untamed but very good God. I hope you encounter him today, right now in communion. As we take communion, what I want you to do is to juxtapose the idea of God on his holy throne and then to think that he came down there to the cross. And whether we're looking at the throne of God or looking at the cross, we can say, "I see the Lord in his glory." What wild love! And if you will receive it, Jesus touches us all with his shed blood at the cross and says, "See, this has touched you; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for." Let's go on a romp.

Thank you, Lord, for your great holiness. We just stand in wonder and worship of you. God, help us in these next 50 days to see you in your wild perfection, not our little idolatrous boxes. Thank you that you, the Holy One, came into our unholiness to make us holy. And we remember how you did that now as we come to the Lord's table. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.