A Man of Integrity

There is much we do not know about the Old Testament prophet Isaiah who was first recognized as a prophet by King Uzziah sometime prior to the King’s death.  He continued in his ministry as a prophet for as long as 64 years through the reigns of Kings Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah.  We believe he was the nephew of King Amaziah, King Uzziah’s predecessor.  But one thing we do know is that Isaiah became a man of integrity in the year that King Uzziah died.

What is a man of integrity?  We have come to say that a man of integrity is a man of honesty, blamelessness, and innocence but integrity is actually something deeper than that.  The word integrity comes from an old French word, integrite which means “wholeness, perfect condition” and the Latin word, integritatum which means “soundness or whole” from which we get the term integer.  All of you remember from Algebra that an integer is a whole number.  Our words entire and entirety come from the same root.  So you see integrity means to be whole.  Integration means to be made one or whole and disintegration means to tear apart or scatter.

No one is born as a man of integrity.  The Bible tells us “there is no one righteous, not one”. No one is born perfectly integral.  But because Isaiah was born in the kingly line, was the nephew of the king and the prophet of his uncle’s successor, people would have certainly thought that Isaiah was “a man with his act together.”  But he was not!  How do I know?

In Isaiah chapter 6 we discover Isaiah’s imperfection but not before Isaiah is shown what integrity looks like.  The chapter begins with, “In the year that King Uzziah died…” (meaning in a year in which one of Isaiah’s foundations of security and position was taken away) “I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, high and lifted up.”  Becoming a man of integrity always begins with being shown who you are not (God) and then in the light of that revelation being shown who you are.  The passage goes on to say that God is so powerful that his train (the symbol of a King’s majesty) fills the entire temple.  A powerful King might have a train of his robe that filled the entire aisle upon entering the temple but no earthly king could wear a robe whose train filled the entire temple!  In addition the angels are crying, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of host” and the foundations shake and the temple was filled with smoke.  Isaiah thought Uzziah was powerful but now he had seen the Lord.

Isaiah’s response to seeing the glory of the Lord is “Woe is me, I am undone…”.  Because he is a prophet, literally he is saying, “I am accursed and I am unraveling!”  And why does he pronounce a curse upon himself?  Because having just seen the Glory of God he now sees the truth about himself – “I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips.”  He declares that he is a liar and he lives in a nation of liars!

Now Isaiah is ready to be remade.  He has come undone much like a ball of yarn having been wrapped tightly into a ball unfurls when released.  But he’s now ready to be put back together perfectly and become a man of integrity.  Only he can’t do it.  Becoming a man of integrity is something done to you and it always involves (1) an acknowledgement that God is God and you are not, (2) a declaration of your own sinfulness and the sinfulness of the people around you, (3) a surrender to your own emptiness, (4) a sovereign act of God purging you of your sinfulness, (5) hearing with believing that your guilt is taken away and your sin is atoned for.  In Isaiah’s case, an angel takes a coal from the altar and touches his lips and says, “Behold this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sins are atoned for.” When Isaiah hears and believes that he no longer needs to feel guilty and that his sins have been removed as far as the east is from the west through God’s work and not his own, he is made whole.  He is now for the first time in his life perfectly integrated without blemish – not in his own perfection but in the perfection of the Lord.  He is now a man of integrity.  God can now ask, “Whom shall we send?” and Isaiah can answer, “Here I am, send me!”