Isaiah 6:1-5: in context

In the year King Uzziah died, Isaiah is given a vision of the Lord. He sees him seated on a throne, high and lifted up, his robe filling the temple, with seraphim above him calling to one another, Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Armies; the whole earth is full of his glory. The thresholds shake, and the house fills with smoke. And Isaiah's response to this vision of God's holiness is not exaltation but a cry of undoing: Woe is me! I am ruined, for I am a man of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of Armies.

What Isaiah sees is the holiness of God, and what it produces in him is a profound awareness of his own uncleanness. The seraphim cry, holy, holy, holy; and in the presence of that holiness, Isaiah does not feel elevated or affirmed, but undone. Woe is me, he cries; I am ruined; I am a man of unclean lips. The nearer he comes to the holy God, the more clearly he sees his own sinfulness. It is not that Isaiah was worse than others; he was a prophet, a good man. It is that the vision of God's holiness exposed, as nothing else could, the uncleanness he had not fully seen before. This tells us something about the true response to God's holiness. We can grow casual with God, familiar, presuming, approaching him lightly. But those who are given a real sense of his holiness respond as Isaiah did, with awe and a humbling awareness of their own sinfulness. When Peter glimpsed the holiness at work in Jesus, he fell down and said, depart from me, for I am a sinful man. When Job finally saw God, he said, now my eye sees you; therefore I abhor myself and repent. Nearness to the holy God exposes our uncleanness; and the honest response is not casual familiarity but the humbling recognition of what we are before him. And this undoing is not the end but the beginning. For Isaiah's vision does not stop at woe; in the verses that follow, a seraph touches his lips with a coal from the altar, and his guilt is taken away. The sense of our uncleanness before God's holiness is the doorway to cleansing, not a place to remain. God does not show us his holiness, and our sin against it, to leave us in despair, but to cleanse and then to send. This searches how we come before God. Have we grown casual and presuming, approaching him lightly, without a sense of his holiness or our own sin? A true glimpse of his holiness, like Isaiah's, humbles us, exposing our uncleanness and drawing from us not casual familiarity but awe and honest confession. And that undoing is the beginning of grace, for the God whose holiness exposes our sin is the God who cleanses those who see themselves truly and come to him undone.

Have I grown casual and presuming before God, approaching him lightly without a sense of his holiness or my own sin, or can Isaiah's vision, which left him crying woe is me, I am a man of unclean lips, restore in me the awe and humbling self-knowledge that the holy God rightly draws, so that I come before him not with casual familiarity but undone, and find that this undoing is the doorway to his cleansing?