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• In Isaiah 6, in the year that King Uzziah died, God sends Isaiah as a reporter with news that the people don't want to hear.

• Illustration: The front page of a newspaper had a picture of the president in his pomp and circumstance, juxtaposed with a tender picture of the first mother to adopt an AIDS infected baby. Chapell wonders which the greater glory is.
• While your mind can't weigh those things, your heart can.
• It's easy to see the great glory, it's harder to see the greater glory.
• In Isaiah 6, we see an image of God in heaven; is there a greater glory in this passage, though?

• God is untouched by the imperfections of this world.
• Not only is God separate from his creation, but his purity and glory are so radiant that the seraphs can't even look upon him and their words cannot contain his holiness.
• God's holiness is so overwhelming that it shakes the thresholds of the temple, and it requires so much sacrifice that the smoke from the altar even fills the temple of heaven.
• Isaiah's response shows total humility and devastation between what he sees God is and what he knows himself to be.
• If we perceived God's holiness for the glory it is, we would not have any questions about our sin for the horror it is.
• We as a people are no longer devastated by God's holiness.

• When the angel takes the coal and when God speaks to Isaiah, the infinite God becomes intimate.
• The even greater glory is God drawing near to a person of sin and devastation.
• Our holiness was purchased at the cost of the holiness of heaven.
• With others, we need to express not just God's holiness, but God's nearness and intimacy as well.
• God calls us to relationship and love; it is not our right to keep people at arm's distance.
• If we are to have this effective grace in our ministries, it is never enough to convict of sin. Our job is not done until we have convinced of grace.

The greatest glory is when the God of all creation bends down to touch the sin-diseased lips of people like you and like me, and to call us his own.