#6 Bridging Gender Inequality through Project Girl Up Chikka by Dr. Jahnavi

Living the Word Today So, every time we open this book, it is a fresh opportunity for God to talk to us. Let's make sure, let's make very sure that we are listening to what He wants to say to us. LivingTheWordToday.com Look, the message of the Bible does indeed prepare us for eternity, but it also prepares us for the day we are currently living. Welcome to Living the Word Today. We invite you to spend the next few minutes studying God's Word with your Bible teacher, Jesse Wagner. As for Wagner's desire for you is not only to understand God's truth, but to help you live it today. More resources can be found on our website, livingthewordToday.com. Now it is time to open your heart and your Bible for your time in the Word. You can make your way in your copy of the Scriptures to Isaiah chapter 6 if you would. We're continuing our study that we're looking at a number of questions that God asks. And now we ask the person that heard the question in the first instance. These are questions that we would do well and God really expects us to answer in our own hearts and minds. Very familiar passages of Scripture here in Isaiah chapter 6, and as we go through it, we want God to speak to our hearts. Chapter 6 verse 1, Book of Isaiah. The question that is presented in this particular passage is found toward the end of our passage today. Actually it's all the way down to verse 8. The question is, "Who shall I send?" And I'm going to lead up to that question because the passage leads up to that question, but that's where we will end as well. The passage begins this way. "In the year that King Eusiah died, I saw. The Lord sitting on a throne, high, and lifted up. And the train of His robe filled the temple." This interesting begins with a chronological marker, if you want to say it that way. It says, "The year that King Eusiah died," that's about 740 years before the time of Christ, approximately. And Eusiah had been an interesting king. You can read his story in 2 Chronicles chapter 26 if you want to read the account that's in the scriptures of his life. He was a good king, and you remember some of the kings of Judah were good and some were bad. This one was very good, but in fact, probably him and Jehoshaphat were the two stand out kings since the time of Solomon. He became a king when he was 16 years old, which is fascinating in and of itself. And he reigned for 52 years, a long reign to God bless. God says specifically, "He followed the Lord in the things that He did." He has one blemish on his life that you can read about in 2 Chronicles 26 toward the end of his life, but nonetheless, he was a godly king. In fact, if you were under the age of 52, as probably Isaiah was, he'd never known any other king, but Eusiah. So this one king, it was, we should have had that sound effect a little later in this sermon, but they're a little early, but anyway. Eusiah was this stabilizing force. He'd been there, everything was good, and then it says, "In the year the king Eusiah died suddenly, there's a question in Judah about the throne. Who's going to be in charge? Has it going to go?" And interestingly, God opens this vision to show Isaiah the author of this, the recorder, I probably should say, much of this book that we call the book of Isaiah. He takes him and lets him have this vision of God. So earthly throne, there's some questions, but I saw the Lord sitting on a throne. High and lifted up. God reminds us as well. It might get a little unstable down here, and we wonder what's next or what has been or what will be, but God is on His throne, right where He should be. And He sees Him high, He says, lifted up. So He's looking upward into this blaze of the glory of God. And He sees in there, and He says He sees a throne, He identifies that. And He's sitting on this throne. I mean, He gets occupied. It's from that vantage point He's ruling all things. And then He gives this little statement, which seems to be a lot to us. And the train of His robe, the end of His robe toward the ground, filled the temple. If you study these events in which God allows a vision Himself, Ezekiel would be another one, and so forth, where Ezekiel looked up through the transparent foundation of heaven, and He saw a throne and someone on it at a rainbow. He didn't get a real, real crisp look at it. There's always some little caveat to say that even in these visions of God that God allowed people in first person, there's always this, He didn't see everything. He says, the one thing I really noticed, the one detail, I see a throne and someone's on it. High, lifted up above. The one thing I see is His, His, His, His, His, the train of His robe fills the whole temple. Just that, that sort of small detail fills everything. So it doesn't go into great detail, but He sees this one there, and it reminds us of this. And if we're going to answer this question, whom shall I send correctly, we need to start with some things that should just bring us to a place of wonder. Number one, we need to have the wonder of a great God, the magnificence of this God that He sees on this throne. There's also something accompanying this scene, and He begins to unfold in verse two. Above it stood Serafim. Each one had six wings, with two He covered His face, with two He covered His feet, and with two He flew. And one cried to another and said, we'll stop there for a moment. So these creatures, these angelic beings, are here identified as Serafim. The only place in the Bible that those beings are associated with that name, is it more, is it a noun, or is it more agitival, is it describing them, or is that their title? They don't know exactly, but they're magnificent in their description. It says they had six wings. Oftentimes we depict angels with wings, by the way, most of the time in the Bible, when you see angels, there's no mention of wings. So if you want to pull out of your hallmark ornaments that hang on your Christmas tree, you might want to do a little editing to make it more scriptural, I don't know. But these have wings, and not just one set of wings, they have three sets of wings. And it says they're doing something with them, and all this is symbolic to tell somebody, says what two they covered their face. Even in their exalted position, in the presence of God, they had to shield themselves from the blaze of God's glory, in a protective posture. With two wings, it says they covered their feet. Now, in ancient Near Eastern culture, your feet were considered that which was dirty and unclean, especially if you're walking around in that environment, with sandals on. In fact, one of the things that was rude, if you ever showed the bottom or the sole of your foot in public, especially in a social setting, that was considered all that's an embarrassment. So there's always something about the feet that was always to be covered or be out of sight. So probably this is a picture of their modesty before God. They understood that as it makes the difference that they are, God is higher, this one is higher, is lifted up. So it's a way of speaking their humility and their modesty. And it says with two, they flew. They had the ability to do and to go as God saw fit, and one of them is going to be going on a mission here in just a moment in this same scene, to do whatever God calls them, they could travel, they could be there, at whatever speed, at whatever place, whatever time for whatever mission, they were ready to do God's bidding. And I saw all these creatures there. And the word seraphim literally means burning ones. That's what the Hebrew means. Interesting description, whether that was the blaze of God's glory or their passion, or we're going to see a little trip to the altar later in this passage, but nonetheless that's what that means. Now they make a statement, and I want to come back to that in verse three, but I want you to look at verse four for just a moment. When they spoke it said, "And the post of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke." We get to the content of what they said in just a moment, we go back to circle back to verse three. And then, unless when they spoke it says this, it says, "The post of the door, the structure of this heavenly temple." By the way, he's not describing being in the temple of God on the earth. It's a heavenly temple, as you can see from the description. But even this structure built by God Himself, it shakes, as if it is moved by the power of their voice. This is a magnificent thing that just takes us back to how wonderful. If the honor guard is this impressive, how impressive is the one that they guard His honor of? Last Wednesday in Pensacola, Florida, there was an air show going on, and the Blue Angels, not the same angels, okay, just understand that. Which is the Navy's jet precision team, flying F-18s around, doing a performance there, and all the fans were out on the beach. Maybe you saw this, the video became sort of viral last week. But they do this one thing in their show where three of the planes are out over where you can see them doing maneuvers, and then one plane kind of sneaks off. So while you're looking out here, he's coming, he's going to fly over the crowd with this big noise and this big thing. Now the regulations for the Blue Angels, as they can fly, no lower than 500 feet. Now I've seen the video, and I'm not good at vestibling, but this person was way below 500 feet. So you're out there, and you see it, suddenly his noise and the camera turns up, and here comes this plane, poom, poom. By the way, that's the sound of an F-18 in case you're wondering. That's exactly what they sound like. And just a few seconds after the plane comes, here comes the wind blast. And there's umbrellas flying and beach tiles flying and people rolling and sand going everywhere. It's just like, just that boom, just that overwhelming experience. The only reason I tell you that is that when he says, when he's spoken, this place is shaking, it's something like that. So impressive. So powerful. Get the scene. You tune up your dial up your imagination, come along in the journey as we explore. So, back to verse three. And they cried to another and said, so that they were going to be there. This is back and forth, one shouts it, another one shouts it back and it goes back and forth. It's sort of this loop of repetition. And said, "Holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory." Then it will repeat, "Holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory." And on it goes. And so that's going on, that's shaking and quaking and sound. Isaiah just has to be in wonder at the greatness of God. Now in the Hebrew culture, if you wanted to really put an exclamation point on the sentence, we tend to raise the volume of our voice if we want to say something. What they would do would they would repeat the phrase. If you saw a child, "Oh, that's a beautiful child." That child is beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. If you said that dish, you're reading, "No, that is delicious. It's delicious. It's delicious." You'd repeat that phrase again three times. So it's a way of saying, "God is holy. He's holy. He's holy." To intensify this phrase, to put the emphasis on it, to put the exclamation point on the sentence. Now notice God does not, the angels did not say, "Um, God, I should say gracious, gracious, gracious is the Lord of hosts, the Lord Almighty," which is true He is. It does not say He's powerful, powerful, powerful, which is true He is, but that's not what they say. Or we can talk about mercy or any other of His attributes, but they pick out this attribute of God. Holy, holy, holy, because that so intensifies the reality of who God is apart from the contrast with who we are. We'll see in just a moment. The word holy in Hebrew literally means to cut or to slice. If you take something and you put a cut in it and slice it, you take that portion and it's separate from the other portion. It means to be cut off and separate in a different category. When we speak of God's holiness, we sometimes speak of His moral holiness. God is without sin, God is incapable of sin. We are not holy because we are sinful and only through the work of Christ are we holy before God. But nonetheless, it's the way of saying that that's how we understand it. But God is not just holy in His moral perfection. God is in a separate category by everything that is about Him. He's one of a kind, unrivaled, never duplicated. In a category, all to Himself, it belongs strictly to God. I saw a quote by A.W. Tozer and I'll just share it with you. Because sometimes in our modern culture, we sort of dialed God in our perception down to the human level. We should never do that. I had someone say me once a long time, I don't think they were believer, but I don't think they were trying to be disrespectful. They said, "Would you pray about this because you kind of got it in with the big guy." And you don't, you know, they're doing the best they could what they have, right? But he's not the big guy. He's not the man upstairs. He's God holy, holy, holy. The one who rules, the one who, the very angels that speak in His presence are with His shaking, quaking, the rattles, their voices are saying, "Holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, the Lord of hosts." The whole earth is filled with His glory. He's in a category all by Himself. Here's a quote I found from A.W. Tozer. I love how He says it this way. His holiness is simply His God-ness. In all of His attributes, works in ways. He is not like us, only bigger and better. He is in a different category. He is holy, all to Himself. So the wonder of God is this magnificent God. He's on a throne. He's high and lifted up. It's so magnificent. The outer part of His garment fills the whole place. They cried one to another and were saying this back and forth. The post of the door is shaking. It says at the end of verse four, "And the house was filled with smoke that takes you back to the earthly tabernacle where the cloud hovered over the presence of God." It says, "It was just this God seen." You and I in our worship, you and I in our perception of God, you and I in our study of scriptures, you and I in our offer of praise and singing and prayer to God need to come to the point that we connect with the fact that it's a wonder that God is who He is. And dwell on that wonder. And dwell on that exciting. He say, "I can't fully understand it." That's sort of the point. He's above us. And from that wonder we come to the next wonder, verse five, "So I said, 'Woe is me for I am undone because I am a man of unclean lips and as well in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes, for my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts.'" He says, "Woe I'm undone." That's the way of saying, "I'm going to die. I'm not going to survive." I've been put into a category that is unsurvivable, that I've seen God because I know who I am. Why? Because He says it right there in the text. "I'm undone because I'm a man of unclean lips. My lips are unclean. Everything comes out of my heart and out of my mouth. There's so much of that has been unclean and I'm before God. I'm just not qualified to be here." And everybody I know is in the same category. It dwells in the midst of a people of unclean lips. By the way, we are in that same category. It's in the wonder of flawed people. So He's wondering, "Why am I even here? Why am I seeing this? I'm the least likely to be here. In fact, all of us are the least likely to be here. You and I all dressed up in Sunday morning, you know, the least likely to be here because we understand our fallenness. We understand how far short we fall. We don't let the wonder stop there. One of the angels that are in that earlier scene, that's something very interesting. Verse 6, "Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live cold which he had taken with tongues from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it and said, 'Behold, this is touched your lips. Your iniquity is taken away and your sin perched.'" Now, for me, this is the, I mean, there's a lot of things that are dazzling and to our sensitivities and sensibilities way beyond the normal. This one seems just downright strange. You know, a live cold, okay? So, you know, think of a, think of a, a brick head off your, your barbecue, okay, with tongues and it's still red and hot and smoking. He comes and he touches his lips with it. My immediately think, "Oh, I don't even think about that." But the part is not about where it is applied, although that is important. The important part is where it comes from. Did you see it there? Taken with the tongues from the altar. Now, this is a heavenly tabernacle, heavenly temple, however you want to say it. But it somehow matches what he knew from the earthly temple. In the courtyard outside of the building that contained the holy place and the holy place where God's presence was and the cloud above it and all that, was a large altar made of brass or bronze. And daily, daily sacrifices were made, animals were killed, the blood shed, and then the bodies of those sacrificial animals were put on the altar to be consumed in the fire. It's a way of saying, "I know your flaw. I know your, have an equity. I know you're sinful. I know all those things and you don't have any business being in the presence of a God who is holy, but here, let me do something." He takes something from the altar and applies it to his lips, which is what he had specifically identified in his uncleanness that he perceived and said, "Your sins are perched. Your equity is taken away." The connection is back to the altar. Flashed forward 740 years or a few more. When Jesus was proclaimed to be the Lamb, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world and through that one singular sacrifice, his blood was shed and through our faith that supplied to us, and we can be safe forever. The wonder is not just that we're sinners. The wonder is that God would redeem sinners like us. He did it in Christ. For us, you see, we have a mission. We're going to get to that in a moment. We're here to fulfill a mission for God to do something for him. Isaiah is being called to that or Isaiah is being commissioned to that. But in reality, this is the motivation. You're a holy God. That should be enough. I'm a sinner that has access to the redemption of God. If you're one of his children, that should be what should propel us to answer the question we're about to ask in just a moment in the affirmative. For here, you've never trusted Christ to save your friends. It's only the work of the altar that can save you. Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking, "Well, I can be impressive to God. I can do something for God. God would never cast me away. I'm not a bad person. And maybe the rest of the world may think so. And maybe I would think so as well. But before God who is holy, in every aspect of his being, doesn't count for much." So I'll quote from Max Locato and I'm going to paraphrase it. He says, "If you want to impress the officials at NASA, you're not going to do it with a paper airplane." He says, "If you want to be impressive before Picasso, you don't want to show him your crayon drawings. It's a way of saying there's nothing impressive about us. All we have is I'm undone. A man of unclean lips. I'm going to miss the people of unclean lips and he says, "From the altar, your next witty is taken away in your sins purge your clean." If you're trying to come to God any other way than through what occurred on God's ultimate altar when Jesus died to pay the ultimate price, you're going to come up just as sure as trying to impress the NASA officials with a paper airplane. What you need to do is just open your heart and say, "Lord, I accept You as my Savior. I believe You die for me. I confess to You. By the way, confession always starts the process to admit that I'm a sinner and I'm unable to save myself. Therefore I need a Savior and Lord, You are that Savior. I take that from me." If you take that step, He will save you. He will purge you. He will cleanse you. And He will someday take you to the place where we will interact with the same God and all of His unveil glory as I saw it so many years ago. If you need help taking that step, I just encourage you to open your heart to that. You can do it in the privacy of your own heart even now. If you need to talk to somebody or confirm that you've taken that step of faith, we'll be excited to hear that. Talk to one of us as pastors. I'll be around after the service. We'd love to help you understand more what that means, but don't put that off. It is way too important. Then we come to the wonder not only of the flawed people and the wonder of this magnificent great God, but the third wonder is that the wonder of our service, that God could use people like us, people with unclean lips, flawed hearts. He thought he was going to die. I'm undone. I'm not going to survive. I'm the sinner in the presence of God. God sends this angel from holy worship duty to come and take the tongues and the coven the fire and purge the sins. Verse 8. Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, this is not the voice of an angel, not the voice of the seraphim. This is the voice of God, the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? Now when you're still looking at that text, that sentence in your Bible there, do you know something that sounded sort of odd? Whom shall I send singular? Who shall go for us plural? There's a singular pronoun and a plural pronoun and that is actually how it is in the original. It's a way of saying there's a hint there that God is more than they perceived him to be. Even though we look at this with new testament eyes and know that there is one God who eternally exists in three persons, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, that God is three in one. It's also that which is beyond our ability. It takes you back to wonder. God, you know, some people, I bet that pastor, would you explain to me the Trinity? I have a very firm answer on that, no I can't. The Bible teaches it. I can show you the Bible verses about it but my brain can't contain it. We have to say something about the wonder of God. And this God in all of his magnifices, the soul of his, we can't figure him out in this. He says to you, whom shall I send and who will go for us? Now I say, had a very specific, very detailed ministry which he's going to start describing throughout the rest of this chapter and it's not all pleasant by the way. He's not going to have everybody's going to love you and everybody's going to list everything everything you believe everything you say. It's not that kind of ministry but fortunately we have the chapters that make up the book of Isaiah. By the way, I love Isaiah because God speaks in the first person throughout most of the book. I will do this. I asked this question and he speaks in Isaiah in a very unique way. I heard the voice of the Lord say, whom shall I send? Who shall go for us? And then he says this very simple thing. Then I said, here I am, send me. And he said go and tell this people. This question is preceded by and predicated on the reality that God is God. He's this great and wonders holy one of a kind, absolutely unique in all of his attributes God. He is morally perfect yes but everything else he's absolutely perfect in. And that before him we were flawed, we were sinners, we were condemned but if we would trust in his grace he will purge our iniquities and forgive our sins. Then he simply asked the question, whom shall I send? Who will go for us? The question can be answered as simple as what Isaiah did. And by the way, this is the response we as God's people should give again and again and again and again through the days of our lives, through the twists and turns of our lives, through the challenges of our life, through the joys of our life, whom shall I send to go do this work in this world? Here I am, send me. Now usually we put that sometimes in the, you know, someone like a missionary that goes off to a foreign country. That's a calling of God. That's something special or someone who serves in some ministry capacity understand. But this is just simple as Lord, whatever you want me to do, whatever's next, whatever you prompt my heart to do. I'm, I want to have a bias to say yes. I want to say here I am, send me. And sometimes we pastors love to use this versus a recruiting tool. We have, we need workers here, we need workers here come. It's much broader than that. Much more pervasive than that. It's simply Lord, here I am, send me whether that means when I'm going down to the gym and the person, you know, sweating beside it means a word of encouragement. Or I go down to my cubicle or my office or the shop or the business or my neighborhood. Or here I am, send me into that. Let me do this for your glory. Maybe you spend time in your kitchen taking care of your family and some of our, of our younger folks with families are spending their days raising kids and taking care of babies. Your God's hands, your God's voice, your God's heart, your God's feet in this world. All He wants is a willing heart to say Lord, here I am, send me. May we be people who fully accept and are moved by the fact that we have a great God in the wonder of it. May we not ever be shallow in our understanding perception of the wonder of us as flawed people could be children of God. If that decision waits for you, I remind you to move forward on that. And the fact that He could use us for His business, for His work, His mission, His calling. Yes, it's interesting that confession precedes that. We want to have a clean heart just to be able to say Lord, whatever this day entails, whatever this week unfolds, whatever the direction my life is out there in front of me. Here I am, send me. That's His request, that's His question. And there's only one proper response. Fortunately Isaiah gives it to us, but we can borrow and use in our lives. Thank you for joining us for Living the Word Today. We appreciate your sharing and the study of the scriptures. Also, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast and platform so you will not miss a single episode. And thanks too for your prayers and for letting others know of this ministry as we seek to be living the Word Today. We would love to have your feedback and to hear from you, and the best way to contact us is through our website, oLivingTheWordToday.com. Until next time, make this blessing be yours.