“Look. This coal has touched your lips. Gone your guilt, your sins are wiped out.” And then I heard the voice of the Master: ‘Whom shall I send? Who will go for Us?’ I spoke up, ‘I’ll go. Send me!’ He said, ‘Go and tell this people...” Is. 6:7-9.
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Every family is full of stories. Some told over raucous laughter at tables filled with food; some told with shame before domestic judges with pleas for leniency. God’s family is no exception. Whenever I have questioned God regarding my own family background, I sense Him urging me to take a look at His family tree in Matthew 1.
I find myself numbed by a giant list of names, most of which I cannot pronounce and wondering why God would start His story of redemption by boring us. I sense God urging me to look again more closely. Upon closer examination I realize some people are given special attention. There are three notations accompanied next to names: Boaz (his mother was Rahab), Obed (Ruth was the mother), and Solomon (Uriah’s wife was the mother). When recording the genealogy of the Son of God wouldn’t it be tidier to exclude the uglier side of this genealogy? Really God, a prostitute, an outsider, an adulteress, and a murdered faithful husband killed by Your friend David? Nothing I’d be eager to bring attention to, much less a record for the world to read!
This causes me to ask, why would God volunteer this information so loudly? It’s as though He has their lives on trophy display for our benefit. Perhaps He knew that there’d be ugliness in our lives we would think too shameful to lay before Him for redemption? Did He think we’d get caught in our dysfunctions and forget to look to Him to be the Redeemer of our weighty messes? These three people bring hope filled tears to my eyes. God doesn’t hide His ‘failures,’ He highlights them to show us how He redeems His people who don’t come so neat and tidy.
Neat and tidy are the last words anyone would have used to describe my family growing up. My family’s story has been marked by a shame that I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to rise from the ashes of. Often I’ve doubted God’s ability to really use me in His plans with such a legacy of dysfunction. Then I read Mth.1 and I see God’s in the business of redeeming shameful pasts and making them a part of His grand plan.
God’s not afraid to highlight our junk and show His grandstanding way of incorporating it all right into His plan if we will partner with Him. If any of our junk was too shameful for Calvary, than Calvary would be incomplete. If Calvary is incomplete then the perfect sacrifice of the perfect Son of God would have to come with an exclusionary clause. I’ve never seen the clause, ‘abortionist need not apply for grace’, ‘abusive men find yourselves a new Savior’, ‘cheating wives need not apply,’ ‘raging addicts—no thanks.’ It’s just not there. Scripture is clear to say that for all He lived, died and rose again. In fact He said those disreputable people He was accused of spending too much time with were the ones who would lead the way into heaven.
Some live their lives like the lepers of biblical times, announcing their presence shrouded in silent cries of ‘Unclean, Unclean, Unclean’ to warn others to stay away. Believers living the lie that they are ‘unclean, unclean, unclean’ and should approach God in shame make the Cross small and incomplete. It’s not humility; it’s a lie. It’s an attempt to trump God. He decides what gets covered and He said it’s all sins.
There is a difference between Isaiah’s awe of God which caused him to proclaim ‘I am undone’ and our shame that keeps us far from God (Is.6). Isaiah approached God and was undone in the presence of God. He is undone and the first thing God does is wipe away His sins, then secondly He commissions Isaiah. Scripture directs us to come boldly to the throne of grace, not ashamed, because He has made us clean (Heb 4:16). We fall in awe of His holiness and lay our filth at His feet, not shrinking away from Him still mired in our guilt and sin. That is Satan’s plan for our life---sit in your guilt and never experience the freedom that comes from an encounter with Him. Hide away in a futile attempt to keep your sin from God and sink it the ugliness of it all. Not so with God. God beckons us come and lay down all that’s ugly in our lives and allow Him turn our crimson stains to white.
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