Burning Coals
This morning I was reading the chapter on holiness from "Seeking Him" by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. I had missed that week during our church's ladies Bible study. The scriptural passage was from Isaiah 6:1-7.
I have heard sermons on this passage, but don't recall a certain insight I gleaned this morning. When Isaiah compared himself to God in terms of holiness, he was undone.
When he was undone, he was a quivering mass of protoplasm, prostrate on the floor, claiming he was a man of unclean lips, and living among people with unclean lips. He was utterly broken.The seraph, directed by Almighty Holy God Himself, then touched his lips with a burning coal. After that, Isaiah was a changed man, powerfully used by His loving Master.
I had always seen the burning coal as an instrument to purify. That was all. But this morning I connected it with phrase from Romans 12 about repaying evil with good. Doing that is like heaping coals upon your neighbor's head. (And for those like me who didn't know this was a GOOD thing till about seven years ago, take heart.) It was a practice of sharing your source of heat with someone's who had gone out. Coals were used for heat to cook food, purify water for drinking and for warming bathwater. Having burning coals, which people carried in a bucket on top of their heads, meant a person and his family could be warm, well fed, and less likely to get sick from germs. How tempting it could be to watch your enemy's coals burn out after he or she had offended you. How kind (and supernatural) to dump some of your burning coals onto their burned-out ones.
Jesus poured his burning coals on my head at Calvary. I was His enemy, and I had no source of life. I had sinned against Him. Yet He returned good for evil. When I stop to think about this, REALLY, REALLY think about it, I am undone. When I think about repaying evil with good, I realize I am a quivering mass of protoplasm. Lord, change me. Make me holy, even as also You are holy.
I have heard sermons on this passage, but don't recall a certain insight I gleaned this morning. When Isaiah compared himself to God in terms of holiness, he was undone.
When he was undone, he was a quivering mass of protoplasm, prostrate on the floor, claiming he was a man of unclean lips, and living among people with unclean lips. He was utterly broken.The seraph, directed by Almighty Holy God Himself, then touched his lips with a burning coal. After that, Isaiah was a changed man, powerfully used by His loving Master.
I had always seen the burning coal as an instrument to purify. That was all. But this morning I connected it with phrase from Romans 12 about repaying evil with good. Doing that is like heaping coals upon your neighbor's head. (And for those like me who didn't know this was a GOOD thing till about seven years ago, take heart.) It was a practice of sharing your source of heat with someone's who had gone out. Coals were used for heat to cook food, purify water for drinking and for warming bathwater. Having burning coals, which people carried in a bucket on top of their heads, meant a person and his family could be warm, well fed, and less likely to get sick from germs. How tempting it could be to watch your enemy's coals burn out after he or she had offended you. How kind (and supernatural) to dump some of your burning coals onto their burned-out ones.
Jesus poured his burning coals on my head at Calvary. I was His enemy, and I had no source of life. I had sinned against Him. Yet He returned good for evil. When I stop to think about this, REALLY, REALLY think about it, I am undone. When I think about repaying evil with good, I realize I am a quivering mass of protoplasm. Lord, change me. Make me holy, even as also You are holy.
posted by Zoanna at
8:52 AM
1 Comments:
Wow! I never understood what "heaping burning coals on his head" meant. And I like the verb "heaping" because its not just giving the bare minimum to keep one from freezing. It makes me think of somebody exerting all that they have for the good of somebody else. And like you said, Christ poured out all He had...he heaped onto us His own righteousness to keep us from Hell. I will never look at that verse again...Thanks!
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