01 03 08 Awake My Soul(II)

Woe Is Me!

“And I said: ‘Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips,
and I live among a people of unclean lips;
yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!’”
(Isaiah 6:5 NRSV)

If this does not humble us, nothing will. Before God, every human being is found worthless….left for dead! We are simply unclean before a holy and perfect God. Every one of us deserves nothing but death in His sight. There is nothing we can say. “WOE IS ME” indeed! However, as the version above states “yet my eyes have seen the King”! As much as we deserve to be utterly destroyed, God has revealed Himself to us through Jesus Christ and offered us a chance at redemption through His blood, and only through the blood of Jesus.

Many however, will reject the chance and one day face God as an unregenerate man or woman with no legitimate excuse when face-to-face with a holy God. He will pronounce his own condemnation! Without the cleansing of our soul by His blood, (signified to Isaiah when he heard from the seraphs, “Your evil is removed; your sin is forgiven” [Isaiah 6:7]) none of us has any right before God.

A sinner is indeed in the hand of an angry God and without hope. As Mr. Edwards said long ago, “The corruption of the heart of man is immoderate and boundless in its fury”.1 The believer has hope however. Just as the burning coal from the altar of sacrifice represents a cleansing of Isaiah, the blood sacrifice of Jesus on the cross cleanses every one who comes to repentance and acceptance of Christ as their Lord and Savior. But even the righteous man, one cleansed by the blood of Christ, still must answer to God, as we’ll see with Job later……(Job 38)


1 Edwards, Jonathan, Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God, July 8, 1741