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Isaiah God's Messenger to His People By David Calderwood

02/09/2007

Isaiah 6:1-13

Damien, can we put that slide up, please?
Well, there he is.
Or there they are.
I don't know how many of you know the story of how Raymond,
and everybody loves Raymond,
came to have his photograph taken with Mr. Howard.
You should ask him because it's a good story.
But when you look at Ray with Mr. Howard,
it's obvious that meeting Mr. Howard...
Thanks, boys. You can switch her off now.
It's obvious that meeting Mr. Howard was a really delightful occasion for Ray.
I remember Ray telling me how he was quite surprised,
one, that he had the opportunity to meet with Mr. Howard,
and then secondly, that Mr. Howard was such a down-to-earth,
easy-to-chat-to person.
He said it was a little nerve-wracking because he kept thinking,
well, this is the Prime Minister.
It was memorable, says Ray, because, well, it's not every day
you meet somebody that important and have a barbecue with them.
But overall, for Ray, it was a pretty exciting thing.
So what would it be like then,
because that's what it's like to meet the Prime Minister,
what would it be like to meet the Queen?
Or the President of the USA, Mr. Bush?
And from time to time we hear of people who've had that experience,
and I think mostly it's just like what Ray would say,
only perhaps a couple of steps up.
So it was surprising to have an opportunity to speak to the Queen,
memorable, perhaps more nerve-wracking,
but overall just a really exciting thing.
And you still hear, I mean, I know of people who talk 30 years later
of the day when they met the Queen.
Ramp it up a little bit more.
What would it be like, do you think, to meet God?
Would the experience just be a few more steps up
as the Queen is a few steps up from Mr. Howard?
So would you use, do you think, the same describing words?
Would you, if you had met the Lord, say, well, gee, that was really surprising.
I didn't really expect to meet God.
Would you say it was memorable?
Would you use the term nerve-wracking, perhaps even a little bit scary?
But still, overall, a delightful experience,
like you might expect from visiting a grandpa or Santa Claus.
I think we're in trouble here at this point as we come to look at Isaiah Chapter 6.
We're in trouble for two reasons.
You're in trouble, first of all, because your preacher stands before you this morning
as one entirely unwilling to preach this morning.
I'm just not sure what to do with this passage Isaiah Chapter 6.
I'll tell you what my fears are about Isaiah Chapter 6.
That is just another few verses for us.
And I've worked hard on that all week and I don't know what else to do with it than what I've done.
But I fear that I've not done what I ought to have done.
So that's a problem if your preachers don't get that much confidence.
But there's another problem for us because I think for each one of us,
we're familiar with the words.
We talk about God and we talk about sin and we talk about judgment and we talk about salvation.
We talk about heaven and we talk about hell.
We talk about God as the mighty King.
And that's what we do. We just talk.
And I just wonder whether those words have actually really got any impact on us anymore.
It's just part of our vocabulary as Christians.
And so I think we've got a problem as we come to look at Isaiah Chapter 6.
In just trying to allow this to wash over us in the way that I sense it ought to be washing over us.
But perhaps haven't been able to do in my own preparation.
You see, when Isaiah meets the Lord, and he does in Isaiah Chapter 6,
then the words that Ray used to describe his meeting with the Prime Minister
and others would use to describe their meeting with the Queen are just not featured here.
When Isaiah met the Lord, the describing word here is that he was shattered.
He was shattered.
His life, as it had been to that point in time, essentially, he tells himself, ceased.
It came to an end.
He was never ever the same again.
Now that's a pretty big impact, isn't it?
And yet, as I was working with that this week, I'm just not sure what to do with that.
Because I sense that I've not experienced that which Isaiah has experienced.
I wonder if I should have, perhaps.
But honestly, it makes me say I haven't.
I don't think I stand before the Lord as a shattered man.
I don't think I've ever been like that.
To my great shame, perhaps.
This experience that Isaiah had completely transformed his life.
From this point forward, it was like you were having a different man, dealing with a different man.
A completely different perspective on life.
A completely different understanding of his purpose in life.
And dare I say it, no doubt, a completely different prioritizing of events and resources in his life.
Let's begin by putting the passage in context.
Because we've got to hear this passage this morning as God's people.
Because it's God's Word.
And because, in the way I've introduced it, we now have the option, as it were, through the scripture, of meeting the Lord.
And may I suggest to you that that is every motivation you need to be engaged this morning.
Because if it was the Queen coming in the back door, common courtesy alone would require us to recognize and honor her.
That's just common courtesy.
If I can speak this way, if the Lord of the universe was to come in through the back door, as it were, through the words of chapter 6.
Common courtesy.
Then some would require us to honor and acknowledge him.
So you need to be engaged this morning, perhaps in a way you've never been engaged in a sermon before.
This would have to be one of the most preached passages in the Old Testament.
And certainly one of the three or four or five parts of Isaiah's prophecy that Christians would know about.
But sadly and rarely, sadly, rarely is ever put in context.
And I need to do that now because otherwise we need to understand that this is not a passage that's there in the Bible for us to find out about missionary service from.
Although there's tentacles and applications that are quite legitimate from that.
But that's not what it's there for.
It's not a passage that's just simply there to tell us about the holiness of God.
Lots of sermon series have been preached using this passage on that alone.
Although that's also true.
The context of Isaiah chapter 6 means there's a slightly different nuance.
Remember, as I've been saying now for two weeks, Isaiah has written a preface or summary of his whole work which is what we call chapters 1 to 5.
It describes as a preface does in summary form God's intentions and actions among his people in the southern kingdom of Judah.
And whatever you say about the preface, you have to say the Lord dominates the preface.
Starting at chapter 1 verse 2.
Turn back with me and look at it.
Hear, O heavens, listen, O earth, for the Lord has spoken.
The Lord dominates such that when he speaks, the whole universe is commanded to listen.
Why? Because it's the Lord that's speaking.
And because his words have implications for the whole of the universe.
And the preface ends close enough to anyway at chapter 5 verse 24 and 25.
Look again at those words.
The end of the section on sin, dealing with the specific sins of God's people.
Therefore, as tongues of fire lick up straw.
And the imagery here is just so strong, so clear to us, isn't it?
You can almost smell the fire.
And as dry grass sinks down into the flames, so their roots will decay and their flowers blow away like dust.
For they have rejected the law of the Lord Almighty and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel.
Therefore, the Lord's anger burns against his people.
His hand is raised and he strikes them down.
The mountain and sheik and the dead bodies are like refuse in the streets.
And yet for all this, his anger is not turned away.
His hand is still upraised.
The Lord dominates the preface from start to finish.
The dreadful notice of impending judgment that those verses bring to us.
Impending judgment at the hands of first of all the Assyrians and then the Babylonians.
A judgment which will happen over the next hundred years in real time history on God's people.
Let that sink in.
The immediate future for God's people is judgment because of their sin.
But ultimately God and salvation restoring his people to blessing and security and obedience.
So that's the preface.
What that means then is that when we look at Isaiah chapter 6, we actually have in literature terms the introduction, the first chapter of the work.
And as an author would be like to do in the first chapter, like any good author,
Isaiah introduces us very quickly first up to the main character of the drama.
Because everything that follows in the drama is determined by and takes its shape from the main character.
Including the transformation of Isaiah's own life.
In other words, Isaiah's really sent us here in chapter 6.
Now look, once we meet God and understand who he is, then everything else in the drama that follows all the other chapters will fall into place.
Once we meet and understand who God is, then of course we'll understand ourselves.
We'll understand the problem of sin that God is aware of that has brought God to announce such a harsh judgment.
Such a complete judgment.
Those bits will fall into place once we understand who God is.
Of course we'll understand then the complete and utter need of God's people here for God's grace and mercy.
And in fact how God's grace and mercy is the only hope for them into the future and God's intention
that after judgment there will be regrowth into salvation and blessing and a new future for new people.
So when Isaiah said, I saw the Lord, what did he see?
Well, this is where it gets really difficult because what we have here is a view of God which I don't know how to summarize except as I've got there, God is unbelievably awesome.
Now let me say this, we need to remember that Isaiah is trying to describe what in the end is indescribable.
Now how do you do that? Well you do it typically by using picture language.
And so Isaiah is just, it's one of those points where he's just really saying close your eyes and come with me and just see the pictures of the Lord because I can't get a handle on how big the Lord is.
I can only give descriptive pictures.
And at the end of the day, the descriptive pictures, we need to be careful with them because we can actually use those descriptive pictures quite the opposite of what they're intended to.
We can actually use those descriptive pictures to reduce the vision of God if we think well God is just like this and we think one picture and put it inside a box and then we put another picture and inside the box.
But no, that's not what the language is like here. The language is pictures that's just okay well look here and look here and look here and look here and God's much bigger than all of it when we've finished.
I'm trying to describe the indescribable to you, says Isaiah, in effect.
And we need to make sure that we don't, in our preciseness of trying to wrestle every detail out of a picture which is our temptation as reformed people and it's a big temptation for preachers.
To look at the minute detail of every picture and at the end of the day effectively reduce the picture of God, not explode it.
Well God is unbelievably awesome. What does that mean? I mean how do you capture a description of God?
Well look at the verses.
I saw the Lord seated on a throne.
It's a picture. God's a great King and it's in contrast with verse 1. In the year that King Isaiah died the throne of Judah is empty.
Well not really because Isaiah is not really the king of Judah. The Lord is the king of Judah and the throne is filled and the Lord is seated on his throne. He's a great king but he's like no other king.
He's high and exalted.
The picture of him being seated on the throne is his absolute authority and power. This is no king who's sort of running around frantically trying to keep his kingdom together in the face of onslaught from the Assyrians or the Babylonians or any other nation in the world.
No, the Lord's seated. He's not frazzled. He's not frantic. He's seated because he's perfectly in control. He just clicks his finger and it happens.
He's got everything in his line of sight. That's the picture that Isaiah is trying to give us.
He has no rivals to his power and then we're told another, the image changes. The train of his robe filled the temple.
Those of you who can remember, we've all seen on the TV anyway, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth.
She's vertically down the front of the church and they're still bringing her the robe in the back door for goodness sake.
I mean it was a bit extreme but that's what you do when you're royalty because, especially in these days, your substance or value was measured by the clothes you wore.
And here's the Lord where to visualize him is absolutely resplendent.
The garments he wears not just sort of trails behind him but actually, you know, fills the temple and so you get the idea of all these people stuffing it in, trying to get in. It can't be contained.
The Lord's not simply an imposing figure. He totally fills the temple and there you see the picture transcends from heaven to earth.
Because you see this holy exalted Lord that's seated on his throne in heaven is actually also filling the temple. He moves equally between the two.
There's no separation for the Lord. His presence in the temple is the symbol of his presence. His resplendent power and authority and majesty is at the center of the life of his people and defines his people.
And as is fitting for such a great king, he's served by heavenly beings.
Now if more preachers stopped worrying about who the heck seraphs were and started worrying about the imagery here, we'd be a lot better off.
It doesn't really matter who seraphs are except to say they're heavenly beings, created heavenly beings, obviously of incredible power in themselves. But it's what they are in relation to the Lord that's on show here.
And so as you might expect, he's served by these heavenly beings because that's the sort of king he is.
And the very structure or the shape or form of these heavenly beings highlight God's incredible power and majesty. And so we're told that they get six wings.
Now I don't know whether these beings actually exist somewhere in heaven or not. It's not the point.
The point is that here Isaiah is describing how even these enormously powerful heavenly beings, we're down here puny little earthlings, they're up there, incredibly higher above us.
And yet they also, in God's presence, act with such reverence that two wings cover their eyes that not even they can bear to look on the Lord's complexion or face directly.
That's the picture between the heavenly beings and the Lord. There's still that much gap. Two wings, they cover their feet.
What on earth that means, I'm not sure, but perhaps it's saying, look, our feet that normally in ancient society were the ways you set your path.
Well, maybe the seraphs are saying, look, we're covering our feet. We have no path to set by ourselves. Our direction is entirely taken from the Lord's command.
Two wings. Again, hard to know what the imagery is. Perhaps there they are hovering around the Lord, ready to fly as it were to the earth to implement the Lord's command in an instant.
Whatever the imagery is, that's how we're supposed to understand it.
And they worship the Lord, we're told, in the most extravagant manner. Hebrew uses repetition, as Chris said earlier, for emphasis.
Holy, holy, holy is like, on your computer screen, putting words in bold, italic, and underlining them.
You get the idea that somebody wants to draw your attention to them.
The Lord's in a category by himself. And so you start to list. What does that mean?
Well, it means he's perfectly just. It means he's perfectly truthful. It means he's perfectly good.
And perfectly everything else that you can think of in terms of moral categories.
And his glory fills the whole earth. Well, what's his glory? Well, it's just the public face of God.
In other words, God is as impossible to miss as the sun coming up over the horizon early in the morning.
His character is just such that you can't miss it.
And when the Lord is seen in his world as he should be, verse 4, other things happen.
And again, Isaiah reaches for a different imagery, this time from Mount Sinai, back when the people of Israel came out of Egypt.
And they met with the Lord, or Moses met with the Lord, and then the people met with the Lord.
And the description of what it meant for the people to meet before the Lord again was terrifying.
Earthquakes, lightning, fire, smoke, everything that would induce fear in a person is used to describe what needs to be the thinking when God meets sinful people.
That's the imagery. This is not a grandfather figure that's been described here.
Well, it might be your grandfather. It's certainly not my grandfather figure.
And in spite of all those pictures, we're meant to understand, I believe, that the Lord is bigger than even those pictures can convey.
This was just an awesome sight.
Now, I have trouble with that. I've already said to you, because you listen to some sections of the Christian community, and God's a buddy.
Now, I don't know how to balance it, because in the New Testament, we're told that we've got a spirit that calls Abba Father.
So there is something personal, but there has to be something cautious as well.
Aslan is never safe, but he is loving.
So, I guess what we need to do is just make sure we go from one to the other regularly.
Rather than doing what I think we often do as Christians is focus on just the God of love, and he'll tolerate anything.
And we don't do much, or think much, or spend much time thinking of this awesome, terrifying God who in one second can shatter Isaiah and bring him apart at the seams.
See, that's my problem. I don't spend enough time thinking about that aspect of God.
And I suspect it may be a problem for most of us here.
But God is gracious and merciful as well, verses 5 to 7. The impact of understanding God's character is immediate, devastating on Isaiah.
He collapses. Why? Because, having seen God properly, he cannot but see himself properly.
And in God's presence, he knew he was done for because of a sin.
Now, we've got to remember that this is Isaiah. We're not talking about some mass murderer, or some rapist, or some drug dealer, some slimy creep.
This is Isaiah who was God's messenger to God's people, a man of integrity, a godly man.
And yet he collapses in front of the Lord. What that means is simply that if we compare ourselves to other people, we can actually sometimes make ourselves feel quite good.
But when we stand before the Lord, degrees of sin are insignificant.
And at the end of the day, that's the comparison we need to make, where again I think as Christians, too often, we justify ourselves by making horizontal comparisons.
Well, I'm not like that person.
But just when Isaiah realises his sin will destroy him, the Lord acts to deal with his sin and make him fit to be in relationship with him.
It's an incredible contrast here again, I think. No sooner had the Lord knocked him off his feet, and as it were, closed him out from any possibility of fellowship.
And he catches them by the scruff of the neck and stands them back on his feet again and brings them back home.
It's almost as if those two things were part A and B of one action.
The coal from the altar symbolises God's provision to deal with sin and restore his people to relationship and blessing, the very opposite of what they deserve.
God is gracious and merciful. And doesn't Isaiah know it? Even though, again, it's hard to know what to do with imagery here, and commentators do all sorts of things.
But the live call would suggest pain touched on the lips of Isaiah R.C. Sproul.
It says you can almost hear it sizzle and smell the cauterising smell and be thankful for it because the Lord has been gracious and merciful.
And thirdly, then, God does what he determines to do. He exercises strong rule over his unruly people, verses 8 through to 13.
Fully aware that in a real sense his old life had gone and that his new life is only by God's grace and mercy, Isaiah now responds to God's grace in a way that there's no other alternative.
He offers himself for a life of service to the great king. He was ruined. His life effectively has come to an end.
So if he has life now, which he does have by God's grace and mercy, then Isaiah, for him, it's a very simple connection. This life belongs to the Lord. It's been bought for and created by the Lord. It's his to dispose.
And that picks up again a contrast from Isaiah chapter, verse 1, sorry, chapter 6 verse 1. King Uzziah was dead but the throne wasn't empty as I've said before.
But more than that, you see, if you check back through the history, King Uzziah was the one who struck down with leprosy because he dared to take upon himself the priestly role and go into the temple.
In other words, he murked God's arrangement. He murked ultimately God's holiness and God struck him down with leprosy and for the rest of his life he was actually shut out from the temple.
He was isolated and alone as the king of God's people.
And the contrast is this, that the Lord would rule these unruly people in a way that Uzziah failed to do.
The Lord would rule his unruly people by bringing righteousness and truth rather than cutting corners.
And so the Lord as the true strong king would do what Uzziah failed to do and that is bring his people to account.
In a real sense then, Isaiah's own life would be a parable and a model to God's people.
As he saw the Lord, was forced to recognize his own sin, was forced to put himself simply at the mercy of God for grace to be restored and renewed, then God's people would need to follow the same path.
They need to get a new sense of God and in turn to see their sin, accept God's judgment and entrust themselves to God's mercy and grace to restore them and renew them in the future.
But if you look at the verses, that is not going to be an easy task that the Lord has given Uzziah.
Verse 9 onwards, even when Uzziah brings to them this picture of the Lord, they're going to dismiss it.
Now that's an incredibly sad statement, is it not? But a statement of the human condition and a statement certainly that just jumped off the page and grabbed me around the throat.
Such is the hold that sin has on God's people that even Isaiah's words of warning will not be heeded.
And in one sense we're told here that that would actually be part of God's judgment on many of them.
And so once again, in the light of that, then the imagery of God's judgment turns to severe pruning.
This judgment, because God's people will not heed God's warning, will not give up their sin, will not live the life of obedience that he calls them to live, the judgment is going to go on and on and on and on.
It's going to be a war of attrition. People shaking their fist at the Lord, determined to hold out to the last.
And the Lord said, fine, yep, let's see who's left standing at the end of the day. Let's see who's left standing.
Shake your fist at me and I'll shove it down your throat.
And so we're told again this imagery of pruning, chopped off like a chainsaw.
And it was actually very typical of the scorched earth policy that was used in those days.
An invading army cut down all the fruit trees because that was cutting down their economic base.
Well the Lord's going to cut them off just above the ground.
But it is still pruning and holds out the hope of regrowth in the future under the Lord's hands.
Now friends, there it is. I've done what I can do.
It's one of the most confronting passages of scripture anywhere in the Bible.
And it seems so weak at the end of the day but all I can think of doing is asking you, as I've asked myself this week,
have you seen the Lord? Isaiah said, I saw the Lord. Have you seen the Lord?
And the test of that will be, I think, like Isaiah, has your life been totally transformed?
I've already given you what my answer is to my great shame.
Now it's time for you to decide what your answer is.
We desperately need a renewed sense of God, both individually and as a church family.
We desperately need it. How do I know we need it?
Well ask the question, why is it that we're so casual in our response to God's grace in our lives?
Why is there so little fire in our bellies for evangelism and to make the Lord's name known among our friends?
For goodness sake, there's fire in our bellies for all sorts of things.
We get passionate about all sorts of things on any given week but rarely are we passionate to a similar level even when it comes to the things of the Lord.
Why is that? Why do we so easily live with sin?
Why do we, as I said last week, excuse our sinful practices or even justify our sinful practices as we're clever at doing in the name of freedom in Christ?
While ignoring opportunities to learn more about being godly and while we ignore the community which the Lord has put us into that we might encourage and help one another to be godly.
Why is this? Why are these things so much real for us, so much a part of us?
Well I think it's very simple because we've lost or perhaps never ever had a proper sense of God and therefore we cannot have a proper sense of our sinful selves and therefore we cannot have a proper appreciation of grace.
We cannot have a proper motivation to move away from sin out of fear of judgment.
We cannot have a proper sense of the need for one another to help us be godly.
Do you see how it all flows from that?
There's only a little step, you see, for us between us and the Lord.
That's how, that's at the end of the day how, certainly how I think.
You know my sin, yeah I'm a sinful person but it's not that big a step from where I am now to the Lord.
If it's only a little step then you don't need big things to bridge it do you?
We don't need to confront our sin and slackness and turn it around.
And I'll tell you my friends, I wasn't quite sure I was going to develop this.
But you know what my conclusion was as I was preparing?
We're even more guilty than Isaiah's people.
You know why?
Because we've actually got a clearer, better picture of God than what Isaiah did.
This is a big picture but the New Testament tells us we have the perfect picture in Jesus.
He reveals God in a way that nothing else did.
So confronting as this picture is, Jesus is more confronting.
He brings all of this and more, that is, a personal invitation to a life of blessing and security and obedience.
So we're more guilty than Isaiah's people.
So we need to pray for a broken heart.
Pray for a broken heart regarding God's honor and the seriousness of sin in Luke chapter 19 verse 41.
We have Jesus himself reduced to tears as he approaches Jerusalem.
Now what would reduce, as one commentator said, or it wasn't a commentator, it was an article I read.
What would reduce a toughened carpenter who'd spent the first 30 years of his life on a building site, what would reduce him to tears?
Well his heart was broken because he saw people who had all the trappings of happiness and prosperity but were empty
and in terrible danger because they were determined to reject their king and would face judgment accordingly.
That's what brought Jesus to tears.
Now friends, what that means is that we can talk all we like about being Christians and about being in this church
and the importance of seeing the church grow and we can talk about missions and we can talk about community projects
and we can talk about all these things till we're blue in the face.
And they're all good in themselves but nothing will be achieved really until we see our community through the eyes of Jesus.
You know somehow sometimes we look at our community not with the eyes of Jesus but the eyes of Satan himself I think.
Because we look at the community, instead of weeping, we sort of draw back and think, thank you Lord that I'm not like them.
We're arrogant. We're snobbish sometimes I think.
We need to pray that the Lord will break our hearts individually and corporately to see the lostness of people around us.
To see how we've made a mockery of the Lord by putting our confidence in the very things that the Lord said, don't put your confidence in.
We need to pray the Lord will break our hearts to transform our lives so it will be consumed with desire to work to see them be saved.
And finally, and perhaps ending on a more positive note if you think the whole thing's been too heavy and negative,
and that if it is then please forgive me because it reflects my preparation this week.
Let me leave you with another whisper of Jesus.
It's interesting that God's servant Isaiah so closely and so easily and immediately and completely identified with the sin of his people.
I live among a people with unclean lips.
Even though he certainly wasn't guilty of the majority of the sins that his people were guilty of.
Well it got me thinking in a similar way but in a far more profound way.
It anticipates what Isaiah himself comes to really appreciate by chapter 53 verses 4 and 12.
That there be another servant, the servant, the suffering servant that would follow down the line from Isaiah.
Who also would identify with the sin of God's people.
But by the time we get to Isaiah 53 such as this thought formed in Isaiah's mind that he realises that yes God's servant would identify with the sin of his people.
But this servant who would finally bring salvation to God's people would identify from a position of not having sin of his own.
He took up our infirmities, carried our sorrows, was counted with transgressors, bore the sin of many.
And Isaiah starts to form in his mind the greatest of consolations in the face of the reality of his own sin.
That the Lord would provide somebody who would identify with Isaiah's sin.
But who would actually do more than identify, would actually take it upon himself, the Lord Jesus Christ.
And himself would stand under the full fury of God's judgment that would just collapse him.
Tear him apart at the seams so that we might be restored and enjoy a new life of blessing.
A whisper of such beauty and God's holiness and grace intersect.
He must punish sin but he will do it in Jesus.
Graciously restoring those who have no right to be in his presence to full access as dearly beloved children.
Let's pray.
Lord by your spirit I pray that you might remove the numbness we have to passages such as this.
Tear down the familiarity that allows us to play around with these words until we get them to a point where we're comfortable with them.
Help us Lord to see you as Isaiah saw you.
Help us to see you in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And recognize Lord that our lives need to be totally transformed and have been totally transformed.
Help us to live, genuinely live, a life of service, worship, obedience to him.
Help us Lord to prioritize our daily affairs in line with his purpose for us.
To tell the world that Jesus is Lord and King. Amen.