Isaiah 6: 1-13 (Peter Reid)

So the second reading is taken from Isaiah chapter 6, beginning at verse 1, and that can be found on page 534 of the P-bibles. In the year that King Eusiah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim, each had six wings, with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew, and one called to another and said, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory, and the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said, 'What was me for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.' Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar, and he touched my mouth and said, 'Behold, this has touched your lips, your guilt is taken away, and your sin a tone for.' And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?' Then I said, 'Here I am, send me.' And he said, 'Go and say to this people, keep on hearing, but do not understand, keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.' Then I said, 'How long, O Lord?' And he said, 'until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, and the Lord removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.' And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again, like a tear-bent or an oak, whose dump remains when it is felt. The holy seed is its dump. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.' I am definitely on. I want to add my welcome to Peter's, I am actually called Peter as well. It is just a really easy food remember. I am a student worker here at church, and it is great to be able to share God's word with you. We are going to be a nice IS-6 this evening. I wonder in life, do you ever fail, like you just need a reset? Like something in your life, or maybe your life in general, is it a point where you think, 'How on earth did I get here? When did this happen?' Maybe it is to do with your health, health, maybe I have eaten so badly these past few months. My frittin veg intake is non-existent. My sleep schedule is completely up the left. I am more and more reliant on coffee, red bills to get me through today. And you think, 'How on earth did I end up like that?' Or maybe it is a fitness thing? 'How on earth did I end up like that?' I am climbing up, I am flying to stairs, or 'How am I not able to run a kilometer without stopping with a sore chest and feeling sick?' 'How did I end up here? When did this happen?' Or maybe it is relational, maybe you are mad and you got up one day and it just, you haven't really said anything sweet or romantic to your wife or your husband in weeks. You are once getty to see them, but now your communication with them is increasingly transactional. They feel more like a colleague and you wonder where this work has gone. 'How did I end up here?' We need a reset. I wonder if that is where you feel like you are with your own walk with God? Maybe you think to yourself, 'I remember being in my teens or at uni or two or three years ago, I was so fired up for God. I was going to live for Jesus with everything I had. I was going to pursue full-time ministry. I was going to be a missionary. I was going to be an evangelist all my friends. I was a radical. I was waged and warred every sin in my life with ruthless intent. I wasn't going to be content with anything in my life that didn't scream this guy belongs to Jesus. I know I look at my life and I think I have none of those things. My sin doesn't bother me the way I used to. The hells I was willing to die on, well I don't even care about them. I go to church and I go to growth group, but I haven't really led Jesus real over my entire life in a long time. How did I end up here? Or maybe you needed a reset in a different direction? Maybe you were so excited about the Lord and you were so excited about the thought of belonging to Him. You felt loved and you felt cared for. You were aware of your sin, but you confessed it cheerfully and it didn't hold you down. You felt forgiven. But the gospel now I fear as later feels a bit harder to hold on to. The persistence of sin has got you down. You confessed those sins a couple years ago and they felt dealt with, but they popped up again a few years later. You felt like they were defeated, but here they are in your life still. And so now it feels easy to die at the gospel. You died for your forgiveness because you looked at yourself and you just say a big failure. And so you don't tell people about your faith because you just feel too overwhelmed by how weak and how fable it feels. How did we get here? When did this happen? How did we reset this? In terms of health and fitness and relationship, there's some really great people who could help with those things and that's probably not my job this evening. But in the spiritual world, I do think there's help available. We end up in those places where we are crying for a reset because we lose sight of God. And we forget who He is. We forget what He's like. And we drift and we don't mean to. We don't mean to. We love Jesus. We want to serve and we want to belong to Him. But we lose sight and we get distracted. I think Isaiah 6 is the antidote. Isaiah 6 is the reset. It's getting back to where we belong. Because in it there's a vision of God. A vision of God to get caught up in. A vision to transform the bored, beat down Christian into someone who feels on fire for God. But before we get to that, let's pray as we come for the Lord. Heavenly Father, we pray if any of us are bringing in wrong thoughts of you this evening, low thoughts of you that we will all leave with high thoughts of you. May you're going to passage speak to us tonight. May I, Isaiah 6 speak to us. Please show us your glory this evening. And we pray this from Christ's name. Amen. So let's get stuck into this passage. Isaiah 6. And so verse 1 begins with the phrase, "In the year King Isaiah died." Now that seems like a weird detail to start with. But King Isaiah was a king and jitter in the 8th century BC. So we're immediately grinded in reality here. As you can see from the passage, we're going to be swept up into a vision of glory. But it's not one that's separate from our lives. This is real, it's really happened. But who was King Isaiah? He was actually a pretty great king, up to a point. In 2 Chronicles 26, we hear of how he followed the Lord and he served his nation and was all-riding pretty great, until he became strong. Verse 16 of that chapter says, "But when he was strong, he grew pride to his destruction. For he was unfaithful to the Lord, his God." And what happens in 2 Chronicles 26 is King Isaiah tries to enter the temple and he tries to burn incense. He tries to take on the job of a priest. It's not his role. In his pride, he lost respect for the God-given roles. And what happens is he gets struck with laprosy and has to live out the rest of his life in solitary confinement, away from the palace and the temple. So, Isaiah sets the scene. He has a vision in the year of the death of a king who's lost his respect for God. Judah isn't in a good place. Isaiah and the five chapters before this has spent Lutus five chapters, becoming mostly God's judgment on him. And following that, their prideful, disrespectful king has just died. They've lost sight of their God. The king and the people who have forgotten who he is. They've gone their own way in wickedness. Just the way our country probably has, and how many of us have as well. And so God redeems himself to the prophet sent to Judah. Let's read those four verses again. Verse four verses. In the year that King Isaiah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and the tree in him was robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim, he had six wings, with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory, and the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him he called, and the house was filled with smoke." That's quite something, isn't it? That's pretty life-older, and if that sinks into our psyche. And I certainly feel, as I'm up here, my words do know justice to that kind of vision. I sat down to write this, and I got really stuck at this point. I kept trying to rephrase and rewrite, because there's something otherworldly massive about what we've just read. How does Annie preach for a follow-up? The overwhelming glory of God himself before Isaiah's eyes. But in humility, We're going to try and see a few things. And I apologize to my preaching. tap into the glory of this and the way I wish it good. But focus in here. Even if you don't hear what I say, listen to the text, read it up in the screen. Forget about what happened tomorrow or what happened yesterday and let the words of Scripture hit you this evening. Verse 1 and 2. "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood this saratham, each had six wings, with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. We have already shown our dead disrespectful King Uzziah, but Isaiah moves to show us another King. The Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. The very temple that Uzziah was cursed with laprosy for entering improperly, the temple that was so holy, so set apart for God that he is to punish those who treat it with contempt. That temple can't even contain God's royal robe. It is filled with the train of his robe, or potentially even the hem of his robe if the footnote in our Bibles is more correct. The holiest place on earth at that time was the temple. It was a place of radical purity. Our priests, a place where priests had to follow all kinds of rituals before they could minister. A place where dishonor and disrespect bring death because of its radical holiness and glory. A place of holy that you and I as Gentiles could not even get in close if we were alive in the epicenter. That place can be filled with the train of the robe of God. Do you see how God is so much greater and so much more glorious than we could follow? He is not the big man upstairs as some people dishonor him by saying he is not on the trifle west to be careless with to ignore. If we need more proof of that, look at who is Serine God, verse 2, above him stood the seraphim. Seraphim means burning ones or fiery ones. Nuclear par glory serines God at all times. These holy burning ones without sin, perfectly obedient, who won't even look at God. Look, they had six wings with two they cover their faces. God is too glorious for them to even lay eyes on. Look at the honour a servant of fiery pureness gives to God. It is radical reverence. There is no, I can't really be bothered to go to church tonight. Or I'll make a joke of God's expense or I'll maybe take his name and be in. Or this isn't really that big of a day. God won't really mind. They won't even look at God because he is so pure and holy. And they also cover their feet with two of their wings, which is probably to do with covering a less honourable part of themselves to do with modesty. And look at their ongoing song, their call and response prayers, verse 3 and 4. The whole earth is full of his glory and the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called and the house was filled with smoke." Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. The Old Testament of the Bible is written in Hebrew and when you want to emphasise a positive thing in Hebrew, you don't capitalize, you don't bold, you don't underline, you do the talek. Instead, what you do is you repeat it. And God is called lots of things in the Bible. We can learn so much about them. Amongst other things we learn we learn he is just, he's righteous, he's faithful, he is love, he's merciful, gracious, mighty, everlasting, jealous, wise, true and good. But holiness, but holiness of God is the only attribute that is given a three-fold repetition. So it's not repeated once, it's repeated twice. So three times, holy, holy, holy. It's as if this is the fullest truth of who God is. If you could only use one word to describe God, then holy is probably the best fit. To speak in a human way, it's like, you know the child doesn't know how to express their love and he says, "I love you times a billion." It's like, God is holy times a billion. And the three-fold repetition is not one plus one plus one. It's like perfection times perfection times perfection. But what actually is holiness? As a word we probably hear at lots of times church, we sung the last time only holy God. And it seems to be used two ways in the Bible that are related. Firstly, which is how we use it most, but it's probably how the Bible use it less. We use it to describe moral purely. When we say something as holy, we say it's morally pure, which is a proper usage of the word. But that use of the word is dependent on its more prominent usage in the Bible. And that means separate. And think of all the things the Bible calls holy, which can't have anything to do with moral purity. Holy ground, ground can't be morally pure, holy mountain, holy city, holy land, holy temple, holy sanctuary, holy altar. In sense, anointing oil, garments, crying utensils, please, bread, thy sacrifice gifts, you get the point. It goes on and on. So when we say something as holy, we mean it's separate. We mean it's other. So holidays or holy days are a great example of this. A day that is other, it is separate to a normal day. Even when we use it for moral purity, we rely on this primary definition of separate. So when we say God is holy, we are emphasizing His transcendence, His glory, His magnificence. We are emphasizing the reality that in everything God is higher and superior to anything else that can't exist, that does exist, could ever exist. There is nothing in creation in any way that is higher or superior to anything to do with God. When we say any of that big list is holy, it's not because anything in them is innately holy. They are holy because of the touch of God, because they've come in contact with Him, because they are set apart for His use. Things are holy when they have a special relationship with God. So saying God is holy is saying everything about who He is all at once. It's magnifying His Godness. He is not like us, only bigger. He is not like the grandfather of the figure in the sky who doesn't care. If you think about God like that, you've got the wrong God. This is not a God to be unbothered about. This is not a God to treat with anything other than holy fear. Sometimes we talk about fear in the Bible being on respect, but fear is also fear. God is not like you and I. He is so far beyond what we can think in purity and goodness and glory that if you saw Him, you'd burn up, you crumble and die. This is a God worth serving. This is a God whose ongoing angelic prayer is caused earthquake like shutters and overpowering smoke to fill the temple. Prey is from the new seraphim who saw in like low flying fighter jets, bringing trembling and smoke wherever they go. Look at this God. As back said, this is a God worth leaving your middle class life for. This is a God worth killing sin with radical rithlessness for. Please don't tell me that anything in this world is worth even a moment of knowing this God. He's worth giving everything for. Whenever I look at my life, I'm embarrassed. Whenever I look at the sin that's in my heart in my life, I'm embarrassed that I would hold on to these things instead of pursuing this God and living for Him. When I look at my life, my comfort, I'm embarrassed that I would dream of putting a career or something else in my life or maybe a rondling off on a Sunday before coming before Him with His people every Sunday. This is a God to be worshiped and adored because of His thrice Holy nature. We need to get on fire for Him. We need to return to that wide-eyed young Christian who would have done anything for Him, who would risk at all for God's glory. And how does our friend, Isaiah, respond to all this? Well, he sees his sin and his shortcomings. Verse 5, "And I said, 'Woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of the people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts.' Then one of the saith and fluteening, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar, and he touched my mind and said, 'Behold, this is tost your lips. Your guilt is taken away, and your sin not toned for.' "Woe is me. Isaiah understands who God is. He sees him for who he truly is, and he trembles. He's overwhelmed by God's majesty, by his purity, by his magnificence. He's seen God and he trembles because he knows he is ruined. Just like us, if we're with our Christ, when we stand before God, rightly condemned and cast away. He says, 'His lips are impure. The lips of his people are impure.' He can't even dream of joining this course of angels, this course of seraphim. Singing about this three-time perfect holiness with impure lips would make them melt like wax. He knows he is undone. His eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts.' Isaiah has seen God on his finely seen reality. What right do I have to [BLANK_AUDIO] to eat God's food, to enjoy God's gift, to see God's glory when I've rejected Him. "Well, with me, I am done." He's not thinking about God. Well, he's lucky to have me attractions on this. I'm gonna go once every two weeks. As I was not thinking, "I'm glad, well, I've beaten that sin that my friend hasn't." He's not thinking, "Well, it's a good job, my own godly brother wasn't here because he had had to stand where less of a chance than me. All he's thinking is he stands before God with his God given clearly is woe is me. I am lost." But what does the thrice holy God do? What would you expect him to do? He responds in radical grace and mercy. Grace and mercy that is separate, that is other, that is beyond what we can imagine. This read verse 6. "Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken the tongs from the altar, and he touched my mouth and said, 'Behold, this has touched your lips. Your guilt has taken away and your sin atoned for.' So the altar in the temple was where sacrifices of atonement were made for the ancient people of God. This is where animals were offered up when the people had sinned. And the New Testament is very clear that all these sacrifices, all the rams, the bulls, the goats that were sacrificed, all pointed forward to the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ and his death on the cross." And so what does God do? Unholy, insignificant, tiny Isaiah is confronted with the overwhelming glory of the living holy God. He stands before him, a man with unclean lips just like a horse. No, no died so much wishing that there's things he could unsee. Sexual jokes, dark humor, callous insults, cuddling rebukes, careless gospel, careless gossip. And God doesn't berate him. He doesn't say, 'Yeah, we finally get it. How dare you have treated me with such contempt your whole life? How could you have been so wicked?' No, he doesn't lore his sin over him. He doesn't hate more and more condemnation to make him feel worse. He doesn't half with him. Immediately he applies the grace of Jesus in the gospel. In the midst of the pure blinding holiness of God, signs forth his mercy and his grace. This is his holiness on display in mercy. His mercy and grace is so other. His forgiveness is not like our forgiveness. It's instantaneous. It's deep. It's lasting. And I want to note one other thing before we move on. We had noted that the altar is a picture of the finished work of Christ. The call is a burning shadow of the forgiveness offered in the gospel. And I want you to do this one thing with me. Do you see how the seraph handles the call with tongs? Now we've already established that the seraph are the burning ones, the fiery ones. That's what they're named in this. The seraph need tongs to handle the calls. He needs tongs, not because of the hate, but because of the holiness. The sinless burning seraph cannot handle the shadowy picture of the gospel because of the Holy Glory. You and I, if we're followers of Jesus, if we're Christians, get you experienced by faith something that the seraph cannot even touch the shadow of. The glory is burning, angel, who circles the throne of God, praising him night and day, cannot touch what is yours through Christ. So don't ever get blasé with the gospel with your forgiveness. It's not a joke, it's a laughing matter. Don't lose sight of the Holy Glory that is shown in this Holy, Holy, Holy God, taking on the weakness of humanity and dying, falling under the curse for your forgiveness, for you, for me, for Peter read, for put your name right there. The God of the universe who has the seraph increasing in night and day would endure a coin of thorns, the spitting of soldiers, kneels through his hands, the agony of crucifixion, the terrible wrath for sin, for you, and for me. That's love, that's mercy, that's holy love, that's holy mercy. Pure glory and don't lose that. And so where to you if you're considering gospel ministry we heard from Tom Vax earlier, or maybe you've closed the door to it in the past, if you think medicine or law or teaching or finance or a house in BT9 or a house in cultural, has more glory than sharing the gospel, then you're listening to the wrong voices, ignore your parents, ignore your culture, and listen to your God. That's what Isaiah did, verse it. And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Hum shall I send and who will go for us?" Then I said, "Here I am, send me." The Lord speaks for the first time in this passage, and he asks for a preacher. And Isaiah responds immediately. He's not thinking about his own ideas, his own dreams, his own goals. He's thinking about God. "Here I am, send me a sight of the holiness of God and the frigidness of his sin, and he's awakened to live his life in the service of God. If you aren't the servant of God that you wish you were, what do you need? Do you need a sight of his holiness or the sight of your frigidness?" She is after God and ask him to help you see his holiness and to know your frigidness deep down. Memorize Isaiah 6. Make sure you know who this God is and what he thinks of you. And it would be very, very, very easy to stop the sermon here. We've got the Holy God and the forgiven preacher. But what he's told to go on in preacher is quite surprising. Let's read verse 9. And he said, "Go and say to this people, "Keep on hearing but do not understand. Keep on seeing but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes, less they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn, and behave." Isaiah has called to hearten people. How I cannot be. Like, surety there should be something here about radical forgiveness. Yet Isaiah is called to preach to them so that they won't turn. He is to preach to them good news, but due to their hard rebellious heart, that good news will make them harder and harder to the good news so that they reject it ultimately. And this is tricky. And yet these verses are coded in the New Testament five times. This is the most coded part of Isaiah in the whole New Testament. It's in each of the Gospels and it's in Acts. And we don't have time to go through each of them. But one thing you want to notice in each time in the New Testament, and I'll give you the references at the end if you want them, you have national Israel rebuked for their rejection of Jesus. But in each case, the rejection of Jesus led to further salvation. For example, in Matthew 13, 14 to 15, which was our first reading, in that Jesus quotes these words, "When people ask them why he speaks in parables." And he says this is why, so that people are hardened. And yet, now when we read the Gospels, the parables are open to us. They're all explained. So this was a very specific thing from Jesus in a very specific time. He speaks in parables because he needs Israel to reject them. So that they'll crucify him so that he can see of his people, so that he can see of you and me. Or in Acts 20, Paul quotes these words and says, "Because Israel has rejected the gospel, I'll take the gospel to the Gentiles, and they will believe." And this is the point that Paul also makes in Romans 11, 11 and 12. The rejection of Jesus as Messiah sets events in course for the salvation of all God's people. We couldn't be saved without Israel rejecting Jesus their Messiah, because without them crucifying him there is no salvation. The Jews rejecting their Messiah meant salvation for the world. And this is consistent with Isaiah 6, read verses 11 to 13 with me. Then I said, "How long will Lord?" And he said, "Until city's lie weest with art and halvedance and houses with all our people, and the land is a dazzling weest and the Lord removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. And through a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again, like a tarabinth or an oak who stumped for me when it has fell. The holy seed is its stump. As our cries out, "How long?" He is dismayed that his preaching is clinked or redemptive. And God responds, "Weet until I have a tiny remnant of people, until faithful believers are to Israel what a stump is to a great oak. Because Israel would reject them as a, they would reject their God. This happens so that there would be a stump. The clearing of the grind was to create room for new life and growth, like a wildfire burns and it ash makes the grind freshly fertile. Because from that root, from that stump would come forth a shoot. There shall come from a shoot, this size I 11, verse 1. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from its roots shall bear fruit. From the destroyed, disobedient Judah, would come a see of your Jesus Christ, who would come to a largely unfaithful Israel who were occupied by the Romans, and the rejection of His people because of their hardness of hearts would lead to His crucifixion, which would lead to the salvation of the people of God. God rejected Isaiah's generation for the salvation of you and me. He needed an unfaithful people to put His Messiah to death. The gospel had had Judas play a role, but it also had a hard and Israel play a role for the salvation of you and me. And this is a wisdom that we just can't get our head drawn. That's what can only be described as holy wisdom, a wisdom that is separate from our categories, a wisdom so other that we can search a die for all eternity, and so we'll close with these words, echoing Paul in Romans 11. "O the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, how insurcutable are His judgments and how I inscrutable His ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been His counselor, or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid, for from Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to Him be glory forever." Amen. Let's pray as we can.