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Well dear friends, please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word as we are continuing
our series, Gleanings from Isaiah.
We consider today Isaiah chapter 6 verses 8 through 13.
You’ll find that on page 678 in your Pew Bible.
I’m going to read the entire chapter.
It’s a brief chapter to again remind us of the context here.
But here we have Isaiah’s call and commissioning to be a prophet of the Lord.
And so let us hear once again, dear friends, God’s Holy Word.
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 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 threshold shook at the voice of him who called, and the house
was filled with smoke.
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 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 atoned 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 terebinth or an oak,
whose stump remains when it is felled.
The holy seed is its stump.
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.
Let’s pray for the Lord to bless the proclamation of his word.
O Lord and Father in heaven, we are a people of unclean lips.
Lord, cleanse our lips that we might speak the truth of your word, and we would pray
especially that you would cleanse my lips this morning, that I might speak forth only
that which is faithful and true to your word.
And we would pray, O Lord, that you would cause the soil of our hearts to receive the
seed of your word.
We would pray that by your spirit your word would bear much spiritual fruit in our hearts
and lives through the word this day.
We ask these things, O God, in Jesus’ name, and all of God’s people said, Amen.
You may be seated.
Dear ones, the title of my sermon today is, How Long, O Lord, and there’s a number of
key words that the young people can be listening for today, Holy, Quartz, Harden, Word, Judgment,
Hope, and Seed.
Well, dear friends, many today treat God’s holiness as a very light, unimportant, or
even irrelevant matter.
How many folks today in the course of ordinary conversation speak of the holiness of God
or take seriously the holiness of God?
Dear friends, the word of God assures us that it is no light matter for a sinful person
to encounter the holy presence of the infinitely holy God.
Now what does the term holy mean?
It certainly has moral or ethical connotations to it, but at a fundamental, basic level,
the term holy basically means separate.
It means set apart.
It means distinct, different.
The thrice holy God who is revealed in this passage, this passage which records Isaiah’s
commissioning as a prophet of the Lord.
This God is a God who is holy like no other being is holy.
God is described in this passage as being not merely holy, nor is he even holy, holy.
Beyond that, this God that we worship, beloved, is holy, holy, holy.
As the seraphim call out to one another in verse 3, and what do they say in the presence
of this heavenly holy king?
They say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord, is Yahweh of hosts.
The whole earth is full of his glory.
Beloved, our sovereign thrice holy triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a God
of superlative holiness.
And as we considered on the last Lord’s Day morning, Isaiah’s experience of being confronted
by this vision of the superlative holiness of the transcendent God of Israel had the
effect of deeply troubling him, deeply traumatizing him, perhaps even terrifying him to the
very core of his being.
We see that in the way that he responds to this vision.
We see that by his woe is me reaction as recorded in verse 5.
As Isaiah catching a glimpse in this vision of the Lord whose glory fills the temple,
he says what?
He says, woe is 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, Yahweh of hosts, the Lord
of hosts.
But once Isaiah acknowledged his sin before the Lord, the superlatively holy God, whose
holiness had terrified the prophets, revealed himself to be the superlatively merciful and
gracious God, the God who provided atonement for his sin and who forgave his guilt.
And this is what is implied in the imagery of the seraphim with tongs taking a burning
coal from the altar and touching Isaiah’s lips with it.
As we read in verses 6 and 7, it says, then one of the seraphim flew to me, and no doubt
this seraphim had been sent on behalf of the Lord to bring assurance and absolution to
Isaiah.
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, your sin atoned for.
Oh, what blessed relief Isaiah must have experienced, knowing that this God who he has seen, this
superlatively holy God was not going to destroy him, that he was not going to be consumed
by the holy fire of God’s righteous wrath against his sin, but instead he was going
to experience the forgiveness.
Indeed, he had experienced the mercy and forgiveness of the Lord.
And as a result of Yahweh’s superlative grace toward him, Isaiah goes from the trembling,
terrified, traumatized, woe-is-me reaction of verse 5 to the bold, courageous, and eager,
perhaps even joyful reaction of here I am, send me, as we read in verse 8.
Now once again, beloved, it’s important to remember the context of this powerful passage.
This chapter indicates that Isaiah received his call to the office of prophet sometime
around the year 740 BC.
In other words, as verse 1 tells us, in the year that King Uzziah died, and I spoke a
little bit about King Uzziah on the last Lord’s Day morning.
This record of Isaiah’s commissioning to be a prophet, you might wonder, well, why does
Isaiah wait until this far into the book of Isaiah to record his call to be a prophet?
Jeremiah records his call to the prophetic office at the outset, at the very beginning
of his book, but here Isaiah does not record this until chapter 6.
Well this record of Isaiah’s commissioning to be a prophet was probably postponed until
this point in the book of Isaiah so that it would, in the words of one commentator, serve
as a climax to the opening series of oracles and to provide warrant for the shocking announcements
of judgment they contain.
The people had mocked the Holy One of Israel, as we saw back in chapter 5 verse 19, and
now he has commissioned Isaiah to call them to account.
Well let’s dive into our passage for this morning, and the first thing I would draw
your attention to in verse 8 is we have in this passage a prophet in the heavenly court.
We have here a prophet in the heavenly court.
Look at verse 8.
Isaiah recounts this vision.
He says, 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.
Now again, remember the setting here.
Isaiah has a vision of the Lord high and lifted up in the temple, meaning the heavenly temple
of which the earthly temple was but a copy and a type, a picture, and in this vision
he sees the seraphim, these glorious angelic beings flying about.
The clear context here, the clear setting is the heavenly council, where the Lord is
speaking to these angelic beings.
He says this in verse 8.
The Lord says, Whom shall I send?
The Lord is going to send someone.
He’s looking for someone to send, and then it goes on to say, And who will go for me?
No, who will go for us?
Who is this us that the Lord is referring to here in verse 8?
Some have suggested that he’s addressing this question to the angels, but again, it’s clear
from the context of this passage, the angels are not looking to send someone out to proclaim
judgment to the people.
The Lord is looking to send someone, and so I believe my friends that the us here is probably
best understood as one of the numerous Old Testament hints of the doctrine of the Trinity.
The fact that there is a plurality of persons in the one being of God.
Now the doctrine of the Trinity, the truth of God as a triune being is not fully revealed,
of course, until the New Testament scriptures, until after the incarnation of Christ.
But nevertheless, there are numerous hints in the Old Testament of this truth of the
plurality of persons within the one being of God.
And so this is one of those instances where we have hints at the doctrine of the Trinity.
But notice that God, this thrice holy God makes this statement again in the context
of a vision of the heavenly council and in the presence of the angelic seraphim.
And that’s amazing when you consider it because the fact that Isaiah, Isaiah, a sinful man
is allowed to address the Lord in the heavenly council.
This has led some biblical scholars to point out that one of the things that distinguishes
a true prophet from a false prophet in biblical times was that a true prophet of God not only
received a true direct message from God to convey to the people, not only does a true
prophet receive the true word of God from the true and living God, but a true prophet
of God was also given access to stand in the heavenly council of the Lord.
That was one of the characteristics and one of the qualifications to be a true prophet
of the Lord, as some scholars have argued, and I tend to agree with that.
We see this reflected also, for example, in the book of Jeremiah.
Learn with me if you would to Jeremiah chapter 23.
Jeremiah is right after Isaiah.
Jeremiah chapter 23.
Let me start reading at verse 16 and read through verse 18 to give you the context of
that passage.
Jeremiah 23, beginning at verse 16.
The Lord is giving a word to Jeremiah to speak against the false prophets of his time and
it says this, thus says the Lord of hosts, do not listen to the words of the prophets
who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes.
They speak visions of their own minds.
In other words, they give you a word that is cooked up in their own brains.
They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord.
They say continually to those who despise the word of the Lord, it shall be well with
you.
To everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, no disaster shall come upon
you.
And notice what he says in verse 18.
For who among them, who among these false prophets has done what?
Has stood in the counsel of the Lord to see and to hear his word or who has paid attention
to his word and listened.
And then skip down if you would to verse 22.
It says, but if they had stood in my counsel, then they would have proclaimed my words to
my people and they would have turned them from their evil way and from the evil of their
deeds.
Now getting back to our passage for today, the reason this is significant is because
Isaiah is here presented to us as a prophet in the heavenly court.
And the amazing thing, my friends, is that in this account, we see a human voice finding
acceptance in the heavenly court.
You see Isaiah’s lips are no longer unclean.
For now his lips being purified by the burning coal from the altar, Isaiah’s lips are now
enabled to speak pure words before the Lord.
And now as a divinely commissioned prophet, Isaiah’s lips will speak God’s word to the
people.
As one commentator puts it, from this moment on, Isaiah is a servant in God’s court and
proclaims God’s message to kings and people alike.
Isaiah is given authority by God greater than the authority of those who are in king’s courts
for he serves the heavenly king and he has access to the heavenly court of the Lord.
And of course, when God calls for someone to send, Isaiah eagerly says, here I am, send
me.
A couple points of application.
First of all, friends, and I mentioned this on the last Lord’s Day, but I want to emphasize
it once again, consider what an amazing difference God’s grace can make, especially when it comes
to our motivation for serving the Lord.
I pointed out how Isaiah went from cowering fear, the cowering fear of woe is me, to eagerly
volunteering to serve the Lord as a sent one.
And it was his experience of God’s forgiving grace as symbolized by that burning coal that
touched his lips.
It was God’s forgiving grace that had filled him with such an eagerness to serve.
Dear listener, has grace made a difference in your life and does grace motivate your
service to the Lord?
Sadly, many today, many Christians and even many Christian preachers, I’m sad to say,
will often use guilt to motivate God’s people to faithful service.
Now don’t misunderstand, there is a place for preaching the law of God.
God’s law is holy, it’s righteous, it’s good, it must be proclaimed.
Because the law of God shows us the standard, God’s moral standard, it shows us what God
requires of us.
And so it confronts us with our sin, it shows us our need for Christ, and as believers it
directs us into the ways of holiness.
The law of God is important.
But it is the kindness and mercy of God that motivates grateful service.
Why are you here today, brother, sister?
Are you here merely out of a sense of duty?
Certainly it is our duty to gather together to not forsake the assembling of ourselves
together.
But for those of us who have tasted the grace and the goodness of the Lord, our duty should
be our delight.
We should be here because Jesus is here, his people are here, and we have tasted the goodness
of the Lord.
We’ve known his forgiving grace, we’ve experienced the amazing grace of God, and we’ve received
Christ as our Lord and Savior, and we are overjoyed because he has forgiven us.
He’s adopted us as his children, he’s bound us together as a community of brothers and
sisters in Christ.
That should be our motivation.
That gratitude, that gratitude for God’s forgiving mercy is what motivated Isaiah the prophet.
May that be what motivates us.
Dear listener, do you know this grace of which I speak?
This grace of God, this undeserved favor?
The good news of the gospel is that though we are sinners and though we, like Isaiah,
are people of unclean lips and unclean hearts who deserve to be consumed by the holy wrath
of God, nevertheless, out of love for sinners, God sent his son Jesus to die for our sins
and to rise from the dead so that we who trust in him alone for salvation might be forgiven
and might receive the gift, it’s a gift, of everlasting life.
And that’s really what we celebrate today as we are preparing to partake of the Lord’s
Supper together.
Thankfully, we don’t have to take to our lips a burning coal, but we are given the
emblems of our Savior’s broken body and shed blood, and that assures us that as we trust
in him and him alone for our salvation, Jesus says to us in this sacrament, this is my body
given not just for all who believe, though that’s true, this is my body given for you
and for me.
And so may grace motivate us and not guilt and not mere duty.
But what about the issue of standing in the counsel of the Lord?
There are many today who claim to be prophets or claim to have the gift of prophecy, and
I know that an argument can be made that the term prophecy can be used in a more general
sense.
In fact, I believe some of the Puritans often referred to preaching as prophesying in a
more generic sense.
But in this special sense in which Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel were prophets of
the Lord, conduits of new and fresh divine revelation from the Lord, in that sense there
are no more prophets, for the word of God is complete, the canon of Scripture is closed.
So what do you do then the next time you run into someone who claims to be a prophet or
have to have the gift of prophecy?
I once encountered a woman, I was at an evangelistic seminar put on by Evangelism Explosion, and
I remember it was a multi-denominational seminar, and I had mentioned something in the course
of conversation, and one of the classes that I had a burden on my heart for a particular
family member who didn’t know the Lord, and this woman came up to me after that session
and said, you know, I’m a prophetess, and the Lord has told me to tell you not to worry
about this individual.
Now I was polite, I didn’t say anything, but I remember thinking, you’re no prophetess,
you’re no prophetess.
You mean well, but you’re trying to comfort me, but you’re no prophetess.
And that particular individual that she mentioned has since passed away, and I do not know whether
this individual passed away in the Lord or not.
But in any case, what do we say to those who claim to be prophets today?
We should ask them, have you stood in the heavenly counsel of the Lord?
Do you have access to his heavenly court like Isaiah did?
If not, you’re not a true prophet of the Lord.
Dear friends, there are many false claims out there, many false prophets, many false
teachers.
We need to be discerning.
Let us be discerning, especially since there are so many false teachers and false prophets
out there.
Let us exercise spiritual discernment.
Let us be grounded in the word of God.
So we see a prophet in the heavenly court, but as we move on in this passage, we see
a hardening word of judgment.
As we look at verses 9 through 12, we see here in this passage, a hardening, indeed
a disturbing word of judgment.
Here Isaiah is, he’s enthusiastically accepted the responsibility to be sent by the Lord,
to bear the Lord’s message to the people.
And then he gets this commission, and it must have sunk his heart to hear this commission,
because the Lord says to him, look at verse 9.
Let me read verses 9 through 12.
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.
In other words, this is a prophecy of the exile that the people would experience, being
cast out of the promised land.
It was the Lord’s land.
The people were only there by God’s mercy and grace, but now the Lord’s kicking them
out of the land.
He’s expelling them from the land.
That’s what’s going to happen.
And the Lord removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst
of the land.
Paradoxically, the prophetic word that Isaiah was called to proclaim to the people, a word
that would declare God’s mercy and pardon to those who repent, this word would actually
have the effect of further hardening the people in their sin, and this by the sovereign decree
of God.
Now our Lord Jesus quoted from this passage in his explanation of the parable of the sower,
if you were to read Matthew 13, 13 to 15, for example.
The point here, beloved, is that for those who persist in rejecting the Lord and His
word, His word does not bring them to repentance, but instead ends up becoming a means of confirming
them in their spiritual deafness and their spiritual blindness.
God’s word has the effect, as one has said, God’s word has the effect of closing the way
of God to those who are hypocritical, arrogant, and rebellious.
Now we cannot avoid the fact that this passage does indeed have a strong predestinarian flavor
to it.
God is decreeing that His word of grace, in the case of some, would bring hardness rather
than mercy.
We need to keep in mind, at the same time, that God’s sovereign will to use His word
to further harden rebellious sinners in their sin is not in any way contrary to the equally
biblical truth of man’s responsibility for his sin.
And it is clear, my friends, from the broader context of Isaiah, that this hardening is
a judicial hardening on the part of God.
The people had heard the prophets proclaim to them over and over and over and over and
over again, repent, God will forgive you, return to the Lord, and He will have mercy
on you.
And they had stiffened their necks, they had dug in their heels, and refused to repent,
and the fault was with themselves and themselves alone.
And so God basically says, okay, have it your way, and He says, I’m going to actually use
this word, proclaimed by Isaiah, to harden you because you’ve already hardened yourself.
God as a righteous judge judicially hardens persistently unrepentant sinners, even by
the means of the word of God which He uses to soften the hearts of others.
But does that mean that the word of God is, that God doesn’t mean what He says in His
word?
Is there a problem with the word of the gospel?
No.
Now the problem here is not the word of God.
The problem is the sinner’s rejection of the word of God.
John Calvin comments on this blindness and hardness that Isaiah speaks of in this way.
Calvin writes, such blinding, says Calvin, and hardening influence does not arise out
of the nature of the word, but is accidental and must be ascribed to the depravity of man.
And Dr. E.J. Young in his commentary on Isaiah says, the evil effects come not from the word,
but from the heart of man, which stands in desperate need of regeneration.
But again, Isaiah says, how long, O Lord?
In other words, how long will this hardness persist?
How long before God again shows mercy?
How long until God’s people are restored to the Lord and restored to the land?
The Lord’s answer is again a prophecy of exile from the promised land, but a prophecy that
ultimately results in renewed hope.
My friends, the gospel of Jesus Christ is an aroma of life to those who are being saved,
but it is also an aroma of death to those who are perishing in sin and unbelief.
As we are told by the Apostle Paul, let me read briefly 2 Corinthians 2, 14-17, 2 Corinthians
chapter 2, verses 14-17.
But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through
us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.
For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those
who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from
life to life.
And then he says, what every faithful preacher should say, who is sufficient for these things?
For we are not like so many peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity as commissioned
by God in the sight of God, we speak in Christ.
Oh, may God grant us the grace to hear and to receive his word with faith and repentance,
that the word may bring us life and not death.
But finally, the very last verse of this passage, verse 13, gives us a hope for restoration
and a holy seed.
This verse speaks of a hope for restoration and a holy seed.
It says this, and though a tenth remain in it, a tenth, a remnant here, this is Isaiah’s
remnant theme, though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again like a tarabinth or
an oak whose stump remains when it is felled.
The holy seed is its stump.
The point of all this is that God always preserves for himself a chosen faithful remnant.
The remnant theme, as I mentioned, is an important theme in the book of Isaiah.
Here Isaiah uses the picture of a tree that is cut down to its stump and burned, but still
capable of producing new shoots and thus capable of bringing forth new life after the burning.
One commentator reminds us that the Middle Eastern tarabinth and oak trees can produce
new shoots even when they appear to have been cut or damaged beyond all hope.
As Dr. Young writes, just as the fallen tree has life and substance within it, so in the
tenth which has again become a burning, there is also substance, and this substance is the
holy seed.
This seed is holy.
It is the elect, those who are preserved by the mercy of God.
A remnant which can be called holy, as earlier in the chapter God himself was designated
holy, is one which can survive.
Hence it is a spiritual seed, partaking of holiness, and in such a holy seed the promises
of salvation are to be realized.
Beloved, even though this passage is permeated with a note of judgment, it ends on a note
of hope.
In the larger plan of God, this historic judgment upon his professed people, this judgment that
would occur with their exile from the land, that judgment would ultimately result in a
purified, refined, renewed people of God.
And we should remember that, especially in the dark days of the church.
If you study church history, the history of the church is not all encouraging to read.
There were many dark years, dark centuries even in the history of the church, yet God
always preserved a remnant and God always caused his truth to shine forth in the end.
So even in the darkest days of the church, let us never lose the light of hope.
And the reason that we should not lose the light of hope is again because God always
preserves an elect remnant, a holy seed.
But we need to remember that this holy seed, the chosen elect, the chosen remnant that
God preserves is only a holy seed because of Christ, the seed of the woman who would
crush the head of the serpent.
Jesus Christ himself is identified by the Apostle Paul in Galatians 3.16 as that seed
of the woman.
Let me just read that as we close our time in the word today.
Galatians 3.16, we read these words.
Now, the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring, it does not say and to offsprings
or seeds, referring to many, but referring to one and to your offspring, who is Christ.
Christ is the holy seed.
And we, brothers and sisters, are a holy seed in union with Christ, the holy seed.
So let us take courage and encouragement from God’s preserving, sustaining mercies as declared
in passages like this one.
Amen.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, Sovereign and Eternal God, we praise you and thank you for raising up
great prophets of old like the prophet Isaiah.
We would pray that you would help us, Lord, to take these truths to heart and by your
spirit.
May these truths bear much spiritual fruit in our hearts and lives this day.
We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said.
Amen.
Dear friends, as we prepare to gather around the Lord’s table together, let’s rise and
we’ll sing number 200, soul adorn yourself with gladness, 200.