Isaiah 6 - The Lord Ascended and Active

I was over to Isaiah chapter six, isaiah six.

If you're visiting with us or new here, you can find a Bible in front of you and if you turn to page 600, that'll get you to the first chapter of Isaiah and we'll be in Isaiah chapter six.

You just go a few pages further in and you'll find the chapter that we're gonna be looking at today.

I also wanna say to you, if you don't have a Bible and you would like a Bible, that Bible in front of you is yours.

You can take it home with you.

It's a gift from us.

We'd love for you to be able to have God's word at home and we've got others we can replace in the pews.

But if you don't have a Bible, please take one and consider it a gift from us.

If you've already got a Bible, please put it back in the pew from us.

If you've already got a Bible, please put it back in the pew.

We're not gifting everybody all the time.

We find ourselves in Isaiah chapter six and for many of us this is a familiar chapter.

Familiar because it brings to us the call of Isaiah to his public ministry as a prophet.

Call of Isaiah to his public ministry as a prophet.

This is nothing new.

As we come into scripture we find other calling narratives in scripture how the Lord dedicated certain people to particular areas of service.

We can read about Moses.

We can read about Joshua, jeremiah or Ezekiel, others who also have these sort of calling narratives in the midst of the places where we read about them.

But there's something unusual about this.

Isaiah's call to ministry comes six chapters deep into the book.

You would think it would be the first thing we read about.

In chapter one we're introduced to Isaiah the prophet, we understand how he became a prophet and then we hear his prophecies.

Well, that's not how this chapter opens up or this book opens up.

We've just covered the first five chapters together of Isaiah and you might have noticed, but there's nothing in those first five chapters that gives us any indication of when those prophecies took place.

It's quite possible that the first five chapters of Isaiah are prophecies that took place later in Isaiah's ministry, not at the beginning of them, but they were put at the beginning of the book.

So we have to ask ourselves why are those first five chapters there in the beginning and why is Isaiah's calling delayed until this sixth chapter?

Well, I believe the reason is, is because the prophecies that sit at the front of Isaiah do a great job of summarizing Israel's problem, the problem of their rebellion, the problem of their deserved judgment and of their great need for redemption and reconciliation with God, and of promises of a hope that that will happen, of promises of a hope that that will happen.

And then, chapter 6, comes Isaiah's call to ministry, as a bridge from those first five chapters into the next section of the book.

So let's just lay this out very, very quickly.

Chapters 1 to 5, israel, a sinful nation, so sinful it raises a question for us that we need answered.

How can they ever possibly be aligned to a holy God?

That's how sinful and disobedient they are.

Chapter 6 gives us an answer to that question that arises.

The call of Isaiah as a prophet shows us something of what the people need.

What Israel needs is what Isaiah receives, and when we look at this chapter, as we'll do in just a moment, isaiah receives a vision of God, he receives an experience of forgiveness and he receives clarity about his mission in this world.

And so what he receives in this chapter is exactly what this sinful nation mentioned in the first five chapters ought to be looking for themselves.

But chapter six also is sort of an introduction into the next section that we'll be looking at, and that's chapter seven to 12, where Isaiah has a number of conversations with Ahaz and speaks prophecies into a very concrete situation that the king and the people were going through at the time and instead of receiving the vision of God and the experience of forgiveness and a clarity about their mission in this world, we find Ahaz and the people continue to rebel, and Isaiah 6 speaks about that as well.

So Isaiah 6 really does stand not just as a calling of one prophet for us to read and be curious about how he came into the ministry.

It stands as an example and a paradigm for how the people of God in that day should view their God and view themselves and view their role in this world.

But it also stands for us as the same a paradigm for us to understand that we too, in our generation, need clarity about who God is, clarity about what salvation is and clarity about what our role is in this world.

For us to represent the Lord in our generation and for all of the missionaries that we support or send out from our body, these three elements are essential for us to be able to walk wisely in this world, to be able to fulfill our lives in a way that gives God glory.

And so this morning, I'd like for us to view these three things as we see this calling of Isaiah bringing to him clarity about God and clarity about salvation, and clarity about his mission.

May it give us the same clarity as we go about our lives.

So, first of all, I'd like for us to notice that Isaiah gained clarity about God.

Let's look at the first verse.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, and the hem of his robe filled the temple.

Seraphim were standing above him.

Each had six wings, and with two they covered their faces and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew, and one called to another Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of armies.

His glory fills the whole earth.

The foundations of the doorway shook at the sound of their voices and the temple was filled with smoke.

Isaiah receives here a very personal, vivid and powerful meeting with God.

He has a firsthand glimpse of the supernatural realm, isaiah as he comes into this, all of his images about what God is like and all of his religious instructions about how to approach God are all suddenly overpowered by the reality of this overwhelming experience as he gains a vision of the awesome presence of God.

For Isaiah, this was a shocking, awesome and life-transforming experience, because this vision is what he needed and it is a vision that we need to fulfill our role, just as it was for him to fulfill his role as a prophet.

Well, what did he understand about God in this vision?

The first thing he understood with clarity about God was God's majesty.

With God's majesty, when we come into this, we see an image of God in a courtroom on a throne, and it might be easy for us to project that throne room beyond the known universe, standing over the sphere of everything that's created, into the outer reaches of the third heaven, and there, above and beyond it all, is the throne room of God and the angels and this courtroom.

But take a look at the passage, because it gives us a different location.

In verse 1, it says the hem of his robe filled the temple, and then in verse 4, the word temple in the CSB is used again, but the Hebrew is a different word.

It's house, or the house of the Lord, which is a common term for the temple.

You see, the vision setting is not above and beyond and outside all things created.

It's right in Jerusalem, in the temple, that Isaiah is capturing this vision, this place where Yahweh, who is, yes, the creator of all things, the ruler of all things, above all things, is actually right in the middle of the sinful people of Judah, he's manifesting his majesty as the sovereign God of Israel.

In Israel, the temple complex was made up of three parts.

The whole complex had three sections to it.

There was the outer courtyard, and in the outer courtyard you would find the bronze sort of basin, large basin, a laver where the priests would wash themselves.

You would find the altar where they would make the sacrifices, and then you would go inside that courtroom, into the building, which had two sections itself.

There would be, first of all, the entry courtroom of the temple, called the holy place, and there you would find certain pieces of furniture, like the altar of incense and the table of showbread and the menorah or the candlesticks or candle stand.

But behind that, behind this imposing curtain, would be another place called the Holy of Holies, and there would be only one thing in there, the Ark of the Covenant, and only one person the high priest would be able to enter into this room but once a year, so the visibility of what was inside that room was a very rare display One person out of the whole nation.

In only one day per year did he go in there and only one day per year did he go in there.

This is that section that Isaiah sees.

He is behind the curtain, he is in the Holy of Holies and he doesn't mention the Ark of the Covenant.

Interestingly, he mentions a throne which might be above or replacing the Ark of the Covenant.

For all we know, we don't know.

And rather than seeing the normal glory of the Lord in between the cherubim over the Ark of the Covenant, we see a throne room.

We see a throne with the Lord sitting on it and we see the Lord's robes coming out of the Holy of Holies and encompassing the whole temple area, flowing out of the Holy of Holies, out over the holy place, out over the courtyard itself.

His robes encompass the whole complex.

To accentuate this vision, isaiah speaks and he gives us not a depiction of God.

He doesn't say a thing about what God looks like, how glorious His brilliance is, brilliance is.

He points us to the angelic creatures that surround God and are praising Him and all the verbs here are in the imperfect, talking about continuous action of an ongoing nature that these seraphim are standing around Him, they're covering themselves and they're calling to one another.

There's all this buzz of activity and motion and sound and movement as he gets this vision of God.

It's very brief, but it's also describing to us something that's beyond human speech.

Isaiah is struggling to find the adequate words to capture it all.

In this picture that's before him A glorious divine king, the hems of his robes stretching out over the whole complex of the temple, these winged creatures praising God and moving around the building, shaking the cloud filling the whole area.

This vision is reaffirming what Isaiah chapter 2 said.

Isaiah 2 · chapter mention

This vision is reaffirming what Isaiah chapter 2 said the Lord alone will be exalted.

Isaiah 2 · chapter mention

On that day, the pride of mankind will be humbled and human loftiness will be brought low.

This is the throne room of the palace, temple of the Lord God, the inner sanctum dedicated for his presence.

This is mysterious and this is frightening to Isaiah.

The understanding of God for us, however, is more personal and familiar and welcoming, because the scriptures tell us that the glory of God came to us isn't reserved in the place where none of us can reach.

And John in his first gospel said the word was made flesh and dwelled among us and we beheld his glory.

The glory is the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth.

The glory of God is revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ, not reserved to a vision in the inner sanctum of the Holy of Holies where no one could go into, but is before us all in the person of Christ.

This majesty is something that Isaiah is capturing and it's causing him to quake and shake, like the building is quaking and shaking.

It's causing his mind to be filled with cloud, like the whole building is filled with cloud.

The movement of the angels and the amazement of the sight is causing him to wonder at how he could be in this very presence of God himself.

And he learned something more, not just about God's majesty, but about God's transcendence, his holy otherness to the rest of creation, because he listens to what these angelic beings say and they cry out holy, holy, holy.

Now they didn't just stop at three, they kept on saying it.

In Hebrew language, to repeat something is to accentuate something, to make it stronger.

This is why Solomon in Ecclesiastes says vanity, vanity, all is vanity.

He says it twice in order to drive the point home.

Twice in order to drive the point home, these angelic beings are saying holy, holy, holy.

Just so unholy people like us can understand that God is ultimately different than us all.

He is transcendent in his person.

This is the essence of God's nature.

Supreme revelation of God is to speak about his holiness, because it tells us that he is different than we are.

He is separate from us, that there's nothing on earth by which we can compare to him.

Everything is a contrast in some measure.

But there's something else here.

He sees more than just his majesty and his transcendence, his holy otherness.

He also sees his eminence or his closeness.

Take a look at the verse it tells us here, in verse 4, the foundations of the doorways shook at the sound of their voices and the temple was filled with smoke.

When we read the rest of Scripture about the temple being filled with smoke, it's associated with God's appearance or God's presence in that place.

Yes, somewhat to conceal our eyes from that presence, but also to reveal by very, very tangible way that he's there, that he's there.

So this God who is wholly separate from us wholly different than we are.

God, who is wholly separate from us, wholly different than we are, glorious in his majesty, wholly beyond compare, is here.

Here that his remoteness is not aloofness, that his separateness is not disdain for us, that the fact that he's different from us doesn't mean he doesn't care about us, that he's here.

He's here.

And this is why, in chapter 12, isaiah says the great God, the Holy One of Israel, is among you, is among you.

We'll talk about that more in just a moment.

But there's something else that he receives about God here that God is sovereign, that he is ruler.

He's not just above us all, he's with us all, but he's over us all.

Majestic and sovereign king, take a look at verse 1.

I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne.

He's on a royal throne.

And then take a look at verse 5.

I said woe is me, for I'm ruined because I'm a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips because my eyes have seen the king, the king.

But then take a look also at the last phrase of verse 5, the Lord of armies.

He is ruler of all powers, seen and unseen.

He is the king of everything, the earthly kings of empires on this earth would have been the most powerful ruling authorities of that day.

And so God here reveals himself as the great sovereign king over everything in this place, everything in this place, and his kingship draws together the fact that he's the creator, that he's the protector, that he's the savior, that he's the lawgiver, that he's the warrior in chief, that he is the judge.

All of this is wrapped up in this word king, king.

He's the king of creation, he's the king of powers, he's the king of comfort, he's the king who gives his word out that must be obeyed.

He is the one to whom all of us must answer.

He is the king of judgment.

He is the king of judgment, he is the king.

So Isaiah experiences this in a moment, and all of his thoughts about how to approach God are just gone.

At the moment.

All of those thoughts that he had about what God must be like are just wrapped up in the realization of this image of God's presence, and he comes aware of the fact that he is before God himself.

Let me talk for a moment about this eminence part, the fact that God is with us.

Look at what the seraphims say about him in verse 3.

Holy, holy, holy, separate, separate, separate.

Holy other, holy other holy other is the Lord, god of armies.

His glory fills the earth.

What do they mean?

That this holy other God could have his glory fill the earth?

How could these angelic beings claim that this sinless God, who is different than us all, could be among a sinful and rebellious world?

This is exactly the question we should be asking ourselves.

How could this God be here when we are the way we are?

Scriptures answer that question In that beautiful prologue of the Gospel of John, where John steps out as a narrator of a story and begins to speak before he pulls the curtain back to show you the drama of redemption and he says something about what you're about to watch and he says in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

All things were made by Him and without Him there was not anything made that was made.

And he begins to talk about this one who is the Word and he says that he is the light, come into this world, that this Word was made flesh, not just appeared above us in the skies, not just shown in the middle of a building like the temple, but came in human form and we beheld his glory.

The glory is the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth.

How could this holy God be here?

He came here in human flesh.

That's how close he is to us, and John, in his prologue, said that he is the true light that gives light to everyone coming into the world.

He was in the world and the world was created through him, and yet the world did not recognize him.

He came to his own and his own people did not receive him.

John, after he opens up the curtain of the gospel of John and allows us to see the movements of this one, we've been introduced to the Word made flesh.

We read about his life as Jesus goes from childhood to adulthood, as he goes through his ministry in and out of Jerusalem and as he comes to the very cusp of his death at the cross cusp of his death at the cross.

In John, chapter 12, we find the last public ministry of Jesus, the last things that he will say to the people, and there he says the light will be with you only a little while longer.

John 12 · chapter mention

Walk while you have the light so that darkness doesn't overtake you.

Walk while you have the light so that darkness doesn't overtake you.

Jesus is calling to the people recognize who's here, recognize what's available to you, come to the light while the light is near you.

And John takes back up the narrator role and in John 12, verse 37 says even though he had performed many signs and many miracles in their presence, they did not believe in him.

John 12:37

This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet, and he quotes Isaiah 53 and Isaiah 6.

Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

Isaiah 53.

They were unable to believe because Isaiah also said he has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts so that they would not see with their eyes or understand with their hearts and turn.

And I would heal them see with their eyes or understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.

Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke about him.

The NIV renders that word his glory as Jesus' glory and spoke about him.

That Isaiah here is capturing a glimpse of God.

Here he's getting a view of who Jesus actually is the holy, separate God who is here?

Who is here?

Who is here?

Who is here Now?

What is the significance of this vision for Isaiah and what is the significance of this vision for us?

Well, isaiah is about to step into his prophetic role.

His life has a very narrowed focus to be a spokesman, a mouthpiece for God among this generation in which he lives.

And if he didn't understand God fully, he would be vulnerable to the desires what they say about themselves or what they say about God than he would about what God says about himself.

He was about to go into a culture that was antagonistic.

They had their own views about who God was.

They had their own views about what it meant to be right with this God that they had conjured up in their mind, and they had their own ideas about what were comforts and priorities about life itself.

Just like we do, just like our generation has, the people of God were coming out of a season of prosperity and peace.

Uzziah the king was a king who reigned a long time over a fairly peaceful era, and so they were very comfortable with the way life was at the moment, not realizing it was about soon to plunge into uncertainty and trouble and to have a prophet speak to them and say that they were sinful and that they were in danger was not something they wanted to hear at the moment.

Would Isaiah stand true to his calling?

Would Isaiah be able to continue to speak to a culture that was antagonistic, to people that were unwilling to listen?

Well, only if he knew who sent him, only if he had a real understanding of who God is.

When the Apostle Paul spoke to Timothy at the end of Paul's life, he told Timothy to take a hold of the charge to preach the gospel, to minister the word faithfully.

And Paul had this same notion that Isaiah is capturing in this vision.

And listen how Paul speaks to Timothy about discharging his responsibilities as a church leader and notice how he starts with an orientation to God as the ultimate aim for Timothy to keep in mind as he goes about ministering day to day to people.

He said in 2 Timothy 4, I solemnly charge you before God and Christ Jesus, who's going to judge the living and the dead, and because of his appearing and his kingdom.

You see that he fixes Timothy on God before he fixes Timothy on his responsibilities.

Preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, correct rebuke and encourage with great patience and teaching.

And then he tells him you need to be fixed on who God is and you need to be fixed on your responsibilities, because you're going into an environment where, as he says, the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine but, according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear what they want to hear.

They will turn away from hearing the truth and will turn aside to myths.

But you exercise self-control in everything.

Endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

In order to strengthen Timothy for the hard labor of speaking to people with itchy ear syndrome, he needed to remember who called him into the ministry and who he was going to answer to about that ministry.

And so when we face our culture, when we face our generation, where do we start?

We start by understanding God.

That's how we start, because understanding God is necessary for a solid foundation to life and our mission in this world, and it will be tested.

It will be tested.

I sat in a worship or after a worship service with someone who spoke directly to me with anger about what I preached, and you know, sometimes that's very, very oriented.

Sometimes I say things I shouldn't say behind the pulpit.

But that day I did.

What I gave was an exposition of God's Word and it was clear.

And this guy was arguing about the truth of Scripture.

He didn't like the messenger, that was me, but he didn't like the truth of God and he tried to strong-arm me into changing my message.

And I said to him that day I said, sir, with all due respect, I'm going to go before a living God and I'm going to give an account of my ministry to him and I'm going to tell you one thing I'm going to stand before him and I am not going to say to him that I was more afraid of you than I was of him.

I'm not going to do that than I was of him.

I'm not going to do that.

We all need to be in that posture Because there are going to be forces that are going to say look, I don't like what you're saying, I don't like how you're living, I don't like the decisions you're making.

They make me feel bad, they don't accord to my way of thinking and unless we have a firm grasp of who God is and what God has to say, we might bend to that pressure.

He needed clarity about his God in order to fulfill his ministry.

We do too, but let's go on.

He needed clarity about salvation also.

In verse 5, he starts to see himself and he starts to understand, in relationship to this God, that he's just viewed, that there is something wrong, and it's him.

And he sees his own worthiness and terror strikes his heart.

He realizes he's come close, and too close for comfort, to the majesty of the glory of God, and he's struck here, not by his humanity, not by his mortality, but by his sinfulness, and he cries out woe is me.

He's uttering this cry of woe about himself, realizing that he's in a position of threat, that his life is in danger, that he is liable to destruction because of who he is and who God is.

Now this woe in chapter 6 joins the woes of chapter 5.

In chapter 5, there are a lot of woes.

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.

Woe to those who consider themselves wise and judge themselves clever.

Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine.

Woe to those who acquit the guilty for a bribe and deprive the innocent of justice.

Woe to them.

Woe to them.

Woe to them.

Woe is me, woe is me.

I'm ruined.

He only got there in a knowledge about himself, once he understood who God was, and he unites his fate to that of the peoples.

I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips.

Why did he need this understanding?

Because if he didn't realize how sinful he was, it would be easy to go woe is you and woe is you, and woe is you and woe are you.

I've done my job as a preacher.

Well, just God, burn them, let them be judged.

It would be easy for him to get into the position of thinking that God's judgments ought to be embodied in his attitude.

And how self-righteous and priggish is that.

How hypocritical, actually, because anybody who would have examined Isaiah's life would have said oh yeah, you who teach others, do you not teach yourself?

It would have been easy for him to stand in that position of arrogance and judgmentalism.

He can't do that anymore, because once he got a vision of God, that turned into an understanding of himself.

This is now something completely different, because we are in a place of woe, we are sinful people and he understood that he needed to speak to people as equal with them and not as if he were equal with God.

And this is why, in the book of Titus it tells us this that we are to be gentle to all people.

And he said this.

He said submit to rulers to obey, be ready for every good work, to slander no one, to avoid fighting, to be kind to always show gentleness to all people.

Why?

Why?

Because we too were once foolish and disobedient, and deceived and enslaved by various passions and pleasures.

Why am I to be gentle?

Because there's the gentleness of God, our Savior, who came to us to save us, not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to His mercy".

And sadly, we can be too much like the judgmental, arrogant, self-righteous person, and we need to capture the vision that Isaiah had of who God is and who he is before holy God, to be able to rightly speak the truth to our generation.

Isaiah receives also a recognition that there's only the hope of this salvation.

This clarity of salvation starts with an understanding of himself.

But as he's sitting there mourning and grieving his sinfulness, realizing that he has seen the king and doesn't deserve to be in his presence, verse 6 says one of the seraphim flew to me and his hand was a glowing coal that he had taken from the altar with tongs and he touched my mouth with it and said now that this has touched your lips, your iniquity is removed and your sin is atoned for.

And your sin is atoned for.

Isaiah confessed his sinfulness and God reached out, not to judge him but to forgive him.

Isn't that wonderful.

This is an act of God's grace.

Isaiah didn't do anything to get this forgiveness.

He was sitting there saying I can't fix this because I can't fix me.

He didn't offer any sacrifices.

He didn't promise to turn over a new leaf and do something different tomorrow.

He had no power to save himself from this ruin.

God moved.

God moved to remove his guilt and he took a coal from the altar, the place of sacrifice, and this picture touched the tongue of Isaiah with it.

These weren't magical coals.

This is a figurative vision to represent this marvelous, magnificent act of grace on God's part to forgive him.

And he tells him your iniquity is removed, your iniquity is removed.

There's no reason for you to be punished now.

Your guilt is gone, it has been atoned for.

Something has accomplished the needed peace between you and me, and I'm now applying it to you.

You're forgiven.

Sin now no longer separates Isaiah from God.

Notice the progress.

He understands first of all that he's sinful, which starts with understanding who God is, and then he recognizes that he is liable to judgment for it and admits it, and then God moves to deal with it.

This is salvation.

Let me encourage you right now, in the light of what we've understood about God here in this passage of Scripture, that he is holy and other than all of us, and he is the one who will judge all people, all of us.

The one who will judge all people, all of us, that you are to compare yourself, not in relationship to your mirror mighty fine looking guy in that mirror.

You're not to examine yourself in light of, you know, the worst in society.

I'm better than the murderers or those that are in prison.

You're not to compare yourself to the rest of your family and that crazy uncle that you're going to have turkey with in a couple of days.

You're not to compare yourself to your peer group.

You're not to compare yourself to anybody but him, and in that comparison none of us stand.

To view ourself in the light of the awesome majesty of God.

Almighty is to come to the place of reality about ourselves and to stand as Isaiah did, concerned, even terror-stricken.

But instead of running away, let me encourage you to run to God.

I know it sounds counterintuitive the first impulse when you've been caught out is to get away.

But don't do that, because instead of running away from the one that you've offended here, isaiah finds the solution as the one who was offended, comes to him and meets him with grace and forgiveness and not judgment.

Offer yourself to him as you are sinful and needy, not perfect, and hear him say you're forgiven, your sins are atoned for.

See yourself as you are a sinner, admit it before God and receive the gift offered in Jesus Christ as he gives himself as the atoning sacrifice for our sins as we enter into this world.

That is our message.

This was the answer to the problem of the people of Israel.

It's the answer to the problems that are in our world.

If we don't have a firm grip on the importance of salvation and the forgiveness of God in Christ, we're going to spend all day spinning our wheels on issues, yes, that are important but not ultimately primary.

In this world, we cannot supplant salvation with giving money to the poor or feeding the hungry, or educating the uneducated, or giving health to the sick, as important as those things are, because one day that poor person will meet the living God, one day that uneducated person will meet a holy God.

One day that uneducated person will meet a holy God.

One day, all of those people that we have ministered things to will find themselves standing before God to give an account.

And we don't want to be saying, well, I gave him some bread last week and forgot to offer him the bread of life.

And so, as Isaiah realizes with clarity who God is and with clarity what salvation is about, he now has understanding of the clarity of his mission.

He now has understanding of the clarity of his mission.

I heard a voice of the Lord's asking who will I send?

Who will go for us?

And Isaiah pops up here I am, send me.

I think I'm ready.

Now.

He's not coerced into service.

He makes a ready response.

He doesn't know exactly what he's going to be saying, where he's going, how long it's going to last all of this, but he's ready to go.

And God replies to him and says say to the people keep listening, but don't understand.

Keep looking, but do not perceive.

Isaiah's like okay, you mean my message is going to be one that is going to dull ears rather than open them.

You mean, my message is going to be one that is going to dull ears rather than open them.

That's going to close eyes rather than open them.

That's going to but be committed to Scripture nonetheless, isaiah, tell them to keep listening, tell them to keep looking, tell them what they need to hear, even if they don't want to hear it, even though they may not comprehend it.

You need to be committed to the truth of speaking that message.

Just like Paul said, preach the word, even though they're going to have itching ear syndrome and will give themselves to fables.

Preach the word.

Don't try to coddle them in their error.

Continue to give them the truth.

And he tells him to be prepared for suffering.

In the midst of this, he said you're preaching in verse 10.

It's going to make the minds of these people dull.

It's going to deafen their ears.

It's going to blind their eyes.

It's not going to be an easy ministry, isaiah.

These people who have repeatedly refused to follow me are going to repeatedly refuse to hear you, and what you're offering to them is going to be a confirmation of their judgment for most of them.

And this is why Paul said we're a savor, we're a fragrance of Christ to everyone.

Some the smell of death, to those who will be judged, but to others there's a fragrance of life, to those who are called.

There's a fragrance of life to those who are called as we step into our mission in life.

Not everybody's going to care to hear what we have to say, but be committed to it.

The long term.

In verse 11, isaiah asked the question until when, Lord, until I get tired of people always answering me back, until I run out of energy.

Until when, lord, until the city lies in ruins without inhabitants, fulfill your duty.

Or, to quote Bill Belichick, do your job.

Just do what you have to do Now.

At first this sounds very hard and it is because there are going to be a lot of people who are hardening their hearts, moving toward judgment.

But there's something else in here.

In verse 13, the Lord in verse 12, will drive people far away, leaving great emptiness in the land.

But he does give a glimmer of hope.

It's a small glimmer, but it's a glimmer.

A tenth will remain in the land.

There's going to be people that are going to hear.

Won't be a lot, won't be everyone, certainly It'll be a very small minority, but there's going to be people who are hearing Isaiah.

Your ministry will bear fruit.

Small as it might seem, it's going to be fruit.

These words that Isaiah hears here are the very exact words that all four gospels repeat, and they repeat them in one of two places.

And they repeat them in one of two places.

The synoptic gospels Matthew, mark and Luke repeat them as Jesus finishes the parable of the sower and when Jesus talks about the four soils.

Three of them are unfruitful soils.

Three of them are unfruitful soils, but there is one soil that receives the word and grows to fruitfulness the stump that's talked about here in verse 13, the 10th.

There is going to be life in that stump.

There is going to be a holy seed bearing fruit.

It is going to be those people that hear the message of Jesus who are delivered.

This is why the Apostle Paul said I'm an Israelite and I've believed on the Lord Jesus that there is a people.

There is a people coming out of Israel.

There are people that are going to grow out of what looks like a dead stump.

It's going to begin with the branch, who is the Savior himself, and then there's going to be his people that believe his message, and then there's going to be his people that believe his message.

And then, in John 12, john speaks these words, the last words of Christ's public ministry and I've quoted them already where he says that those who believe on Christ, though many won't, are going to be the part of that holy seed.

That here.

So this passage, it's not just a curiosity passage, isn't it interesting how Isaiah got called to the ministry of being a prophet?

It's a paradigm.

It's a paradigm for the people, because the people of Israel, as Isaiah will say later, are meant to be the instruments of God, as mediators of his truth to the rest of the nations, his truth to the rest of the nations.

How would they do that?

Only by following what they hear in Isaiah 6, by getting to know who God is with clarity, his majestic nature, his sovereign rule, the fact that he's wholly other.

And yet here, the only way they can do that is if they realize, in light of who he is, that they need his forgiveness, they need his salvation.

And the only way they can fulfill that mission is when their heart is spurred with a sense of grateful return to the God who's forgiven them, who's willing to say here I am, send me, I'm ready to go.

What do I need to say?

How long do I need to be there?

I'll do it, even if it means suffering.

And this passage stands as a paradigm for us as we engage our culture, as we engage our generation, as we speak to our neighbor, as we talk about Christ in our house.

It has to start with the knowledge of the living God.

It moves from knowing his forgiveness and salvation and then it motivates us for service, and then it motivates us for service.

To miss any of those will turn us aside, to other priorities and wrong attitudes.

But, as we understand this rightly, we will be humble and we will be eager to stand for the living God among a people just like us, people with unclean lips who need the same Savior who's come to us.

Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you for this word and, lord, we want to hear it well.

We don't want to be those who are hearing and do not perceive.

To hear it well.

We don't want to be those who are hearing and do not perceive.

We do not want to be those who are always looking but don't see.

Lord, we pray that your word would implant itself in our hearts and, lord, I pray for any of those that are here this morning, who don't know you, who don't understand salvation.

I pray, father, that this word of yours will awaken them to the realization of their need, as they have been brought to a revelation of yourself, as they've been brought face to face with just how holy you are and how unholy they are.

And we pray, father, that the grace that you showed to Isaiah will be displayed to them.

And we pray, father, that they would be longing to look to Christ for deliverance and saying touch my lips with the coals of the sacrifice and say to me my sins are forgiven.

Say to me that my iniquity has been atoned for.

Oh Lord, bring them to that point, father.

We pray that in all these ways we might give you praise, and we ask this in Christ's name, amen.