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Please remain standing for the reading of God’s word
as we continue our consideration
of the book of the prophet Isaiah.
We are in a very significant turning point
in Isaiah’s prophecy, his prophetic book.
Isaiah chapter six verses one through 13,
the entire chapter.
You’ll find that on page 678 in your pew Bible.
Isaiah chapter six.
Dear ones, this is the word of God.
Let us hear it with reverence and awe.
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 thresholds
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.
And 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 inhabitants
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 10th 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.
Dear ones, the grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God endures forever.
Let’s seek the Lord’s blessing
upon the preaching of his word.
O Lord and Father in heaven, we would pray
that by your spirit that once again,
you would help us to behold wondrous things from your word.
We would pray that you would open our minds
to see the relevance and importance of this portion
of your God-breathed, inerrant, infallible word.
And we pray that by your spirit,
you would once again set a guard over my lips
that I, your unworthy servant, might only speak forth
that which is faithful and true to the word
and for the benefit of your people.
We pray these things through Christ our Lord
and all of God’s people said, amen.
You may be seated.
Title of my sermon this morning
is Superlative Holiness Sobering Commission.
And there’s a number of key words
I’d encourage the young people to listen for today,
the words holy or holiness, king, throne,
atonement, and commission.
Well, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
here in the West and especially here
in the United States of America,
we live in a time of what could be described
as the age of casual Christianity.
You see, popular American Christianity today
has a very casual, a very laid back, if you will,
attitude towards God.
American Christians in general tend to view God
in very chummy, informal, familiar terms.
I’ve sometimes, and perhaps you’ve heard this as well,
but I’ve sometimes heard even professing Christians
speak of God as the man upstairs.
You ever heard that?
I even remember I had a friend
in the Christian fellowship I was involved with in college.
She once described God, I believe her words were
big daddio in the sky or something along those lines.
Many Christians today seem to have
almost an allergic aversion to any approach to God
that seems overly serious in their views.
Any approach to God that is serious minded
is often interpreted as, you know, stuffy
and overly formalistic and so forth.
I mean, after all, we want a relatable deity.
We want a God with whom we can, quote, hang out, right?
Another way to say this is to say that few of us Christians
today approach Almighty God with the deep sense
of reverence and awe that he rightly deserves.
I would suggest to you, beloved,
that one of the reasons for this is that few of us
have experienced what could be described
as the trauma of holiness, the trauma of holiness.
We say, what do you mean, pastor?
Well, my friends, when we look to the scriptures
and when in the Bible, God reveals His holy presence
to sinners, that revelation of the holy presence of God
is not usually a comforting or inspiring experience
for the one receiving that revelation of God’s holiness.
It is usually deeply traumatizing.
In the Bible, encountering a revelation
of the holy presence of God
is a traumatizing experience to sinners.
And our passage for this Lord’s Day morning
records Isaiah, the son of Amos’s traumatic encounter
with the thrice holy God, as Isaiah here in this chapter
recounts for us his call and commissioning
to be a prophet of the Lord.
Now, it’s interesting that Isaiah does not begin his book,
his collection of oracles, with this call account.
Jeremiah, for example, begins his book
with an account of his call to be a prophet of the Lord,
but Isaiah’s call to prophethood
does not come until chapter six.
Again, the record of Isaiah’s commission
was probably postponed until this point in the book
so that it would, in the words of one scholar,
so that it would serve as a climax
to the opening series of oracles
and to provide warrant for the shocking announcements
of judgment that they contain.
The people had mocked the Holy One of Israel,
as we learned back in chapter five, verse 19.
And now he has commissioned Isaiah to call them to account.
So what do we have in this portion of holy scripture?
What do we learn from this portion?
What do we see here?
Well, what we have here in this passage of scripture
is a vision of the divine king on his heavenly throne.
That’s the first point in your sermon outline
if you’re following along.
We have here a vision of the divine king
on his heavenly throne.
It says in chapter six, verse one,
in the year that King Uzziah died,
I saw the Lord sitting upon the throne and so forth.
This language that Isaiah uses, that he sees the Lord,
this is the language of vision.
He is receiving a supernatural vision from the Lord.
This is a supernatural revelatory vision
that the Lord gave to Isaiah, as seen in the words, I saw.
Indeed, friends, this is probably, as I’ve mentioned,
this is probably Isaiah’s inaugural vision,
representing his call to be a prophet of Yahweh,
the true and living God, the faithful covenant-making
covenant-keeping God of his people Israel.
Now, remember that biblical prophets were called
to receive new, fresh, divine revelation.
Now, there’s a more informal sense
in which we can speak of a prophet.
There’s a sense in which preachers have a prophetic role
in that they are to declare and expound the word of God,
but the biblical prophets, in the technical sense,
were directly called by God,
and they were called to bring new, fresh, divine revelation
to the people of God.
And usually, this revelation to the people of God
was a revelation that exposed the people’s unfaithfulness,
their breaking of the covenant.
Sometimes prophets, biblical prophets,
were described as engaging in covenant lawsuits
against the people of God,
declaring their faithlessness, their breaking of the covenant,
calling them to renewed repentance,
and offering them God’s grace and forgiveness
for their trust in the Lord.
And so that’s what we have in this passage for today,
Isaiah’s vision of the Lord.
When did he receive this vision?
Well, we’re told in verse 1,
and it took place in the year that King Uzziah died.
And I have to be careful,
because Isaiah and Uzziah kind of sound similar,
so I’ll try not to mix up the two.
They’re very different individuals.
But what do we know about King Uzziah,
and what was the year of his death?
Well, most scholars agree it was sometime around 740 BC.
And what about King Uzziah?
Was he a good king?
Was he a bad king?
Well, King Uzziah is spoken of in the Old Testament
in good terms.
He was basically a godly king.
And though he presided over a lengthy period
of national prosperity,
and he did many good things for the nation,
the covenant nation of the Southern Kingdom of Judah,
you know, he helped to build up their military
in the kingdom and so forth.
He was used of God in that way,
and he presided over a period of great peace and prosperity.
He reigned 52 years.
He started reigning when he was 16 years old.
And yet, if you’re familiar with King Uzziah,
the Lord struck him with leprosy when he became proud
and presumed to offer incense to the Lord in the temple.
That was something, that was a no-no.
That was something that only the priests were allowed to do.
And let’s just get some background on him.
Turn with me, if you would,
to 2 Chronicles, chapter 26.
I just want to read, not the whole chapter,
but a portion of this chapter.
2 Chronicles,
that’s in the Old Testament.
2 Chronicles, chapter 26.
Let me read the first five verses.
It says this.
And all the people of Judah took Uzziah,
who was 16 years old,
and made him king instead of his father, Amaziah.
He built Eloth and restored it to Judah,
and the king slept with his,
after the king slept with his fathers,
which means he died.
His father had died.
Uzziah was 16 years old when he began to reign.
And he reigned 52 years in Jerusalem.
His mother’s name was Jekaliah of Jerusalem.
And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.
In other words, he was one of the good kings.
He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord,
according to all that his father Amaziah had done.
He set himself to seek God in the days of Zechariah,
who instructed him in the fear of God.
And as long as he sought the Lord,
God made him prosper,
and a very good beginning to his reign.
But then let’s skip down to verse 16.
The intervening verses describe
many of his accomplishments,
especially in building up the military in Judah.
But it goes on to say this in verse 16.
But when he was strong,
he grew proud to his destruction.
For he was unfaithful to the Lord his God,
and entered the temple of the Lord
to burn incense on the altar of incense.
But Azariah the priest went in after him,
with 80 priests of the Lord who were men of valor.
And they withstood King Uzziah and said to him,
it is not for you Uzziah to burn incense to the Lord,
but for the priests, the sons of Aaron,
who are consecrated to burn incense.
Go out of the sanctuary for you have done wrong,
and it will bring you no honor from the Lord,
from the Lord God.
Then Uzziah was angry.
Now he had a censer in his hand to burn incense.
And when he became angry with the priests,
leprosy broke out on his forehead
in the presence of the priests in the house of the Lord
by the altar of incense.
And Azariah the chief priest and all the priests
looked at him, and behold he was leprous in his forehead.
And they rushed him out quickly,
and he himself hurried to go out
because the Lord had struck him.
And King Uzziah was a leper to the day of his death,
and being a leper lived in a separate house,
for he was excluded from the house of the Lord,
and Jotham his son was over the king’s household
governing the people of the land.
So King, it was in the year that this king, King Uzziah died
that Isaiah receives his vision,
his call to be a prophet of the Lord.
Well, when you think of King Uzziah,
what does he represent?
Uzziah represents a leprous, unclean,
and ultimately dead king.
But there is another king that we read of in this passage
who is contrasted with King Uzziah,
and that king is described by these words,
the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up.
Unlike King Uzziah, who was unclean,
who became a leper, having to be excluded
from the assembly of the Lord,
basically be excommunicated for his unfaithfulness,
in contrast to Uzziah, who died,
is the holy, living, exalted, divine king.
The Lord, high and lifted up, sitting upon his throne.
And the word here for the Lord in the Hebrew,
it is the word Adonai.
This is a word which means sovereign with a capital S.
The language here stresses the Lord’s sovereign kingship.
And so it was in the year that King Uzziah died
that I saw the Lord, the sovereign,
sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up.
And then it goes on to say,
and the train of his robe filled the temple.
Now this language about the Lord being on a throne,
high and lifted up, again, the language here
appears to clearly emphasize
the Lord’s exalted cosmic sovereignty.
And what about the imagery here
of the train of his robe filling the temple?
What temple is this referring to?
Now, many scholars believe that Isaiah received this vision
while he was at the temple in Jerusalem.
And that indeed is a possibility.
Isaiah may very well have received his vision
while he was in the Jerusalem temple.
However, in his vision, he sees the Lord sitting
on his cosmic, heavenly throne.
And so the setting of this vision, beloved,
appears to be not the earthly temple in Jerusalem,
but ultimately the setting appears to be
Yahweh’s heavenly throne room, his heavenly temple,
of which the temple in Jerusalem was but a picture,
a copy, a type.
The imagery here of the train of the Lord,
this is his royal robes,
the train of his royal robes filling the temple.
Again, this is a vision.
This is not to be understood overly literalistically
as if the Lord literally sits on a literal throne
and wears a literal robe and all of that.
This is pointing to the glory of the Lord.
And the imagery here of the train of the Lord’s robe
filling the temple appears to point to the majesty
and the glory of Yahweh’s royal, kingly reign.
And what does Isaiah see?
As he sees the Lord high and lifted up,
sitting on the throne with the train of his robe
filling the temple, his heavenly palace,
his heavenly throne room,
goes on to say in verse two,
above him stood the seraphim, each had six wings,
with two he covered his face,
with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
Now let’s pause there and consider the language here.
We read of these creatures that are known as seraphim.
In the Hebrew, it could literally be translated
the fiery ones or the burning ones.
The seraphim were and are a class
of glorious angelic beings who are tasked with praising
and extolling the thrice holy God.
And again, how are they described?
Well, they’re described as having six wings.
What’s the significance of the six wings?
Well, this is likely meant to signify their great power.
However, notice these are glorious, holy beings.
These are beings of burning holiness,
and yet before the thrice holy God,
even they shield their eyes and cover their feet.
They use the wings that signify their power
to humble themselves.
These glorious, holy beings humbly shield themselves
in the presence of the superlatively holy God
whom they worship in truth and sincerity.
And humility, by the way, is especially suggested
by the fact that they covered their feet.
Oftentimes when God manifests his holy presence,
there’s a call to do something with your feet.
What happened to Moses when he encountered
the theophany at the burning bush?
What did God say to Moses?
He said, take your sandals off.
You’re standing on holy ground.
But here, these glorious burning angelic beings,
these seraphim, these burning ones who are so holy,
they cover their feet in the presence
of the thrice holy God.
Again, indicating they’re humbling themselves,
their humility before the presence of the Lord.
And what do they cry out to the Lord?
Well, we sang that beautiful hymn earlier in the service,
holy, holy, holy, and that hymn is based
on passages like this one.
It says, and one called to another,
they were engaged in a heavenly liturgy,
an antiphonal call back and forth to one another.
They called to one another and said,
holy, holy, holy is Yahweh of hosts, the Lord of hosts.
The whole earth is full of his glory.
This holy, holy, holy is called the Trisagion,
or the threefold description of holiness.
And it emphasizes God’s superlative,
indeed, his infinite holiness.
God is not just holy.
He’s not just holy, holy.
He is holy, holy, holy.
This is repeated for emphasis,
and many, including many of the early church fathers,
viewed this Trisagion, this threefold ascription
of holiness to God as an Old Testament hint
to the doctrine of the Trinity,
and I would tend to agree with that.
The doctrine of the Trinity is not fully revealed
in the Old Testament.
That has to wait for the coming of Christ
in the New Testament, but nevertheless,
there are hints of the truth of the Trinity,
even in the Old Covenant scriptures.
And then it goes on to say in verse four,
and the foundations of the thresholds
shook at the voice of him who called,
and the house was filled with smoke.
So there was a shaking, there was like an earthquake
in his vision of the heavenly glory temple,
and there’s a shaking, and it’s filled with smoke.
The house is filled with smoke,
just as when Solomon dedicated the temple in Jerusalem,
the holy presence of God, the Shekinah glory of God
filled the temple.
The glory of the Lord filled the temple
to such an extent that the priest could not even stand up.
And so we have an awesome glorious picture
of the holiness of God, and it says the whole earth
is full of his glory.
The term glory in the Hebrew is kavod.
The kavod of God is used of God
in his manifestation to his creatures.
The essence of deity, God in his divine eternal essence,
is inscrutable, we cannot comprehend or know it,
but something of his glory can be seen
if God is pleased to disclose it,
as one commentator rightly points out.
But what we have here in verse four, my friends,
we have echoes of Mount Sinai.
Let me have you turn to Exodus 19,
and let me read verses 16 through 20 of Exodus chapter 19.
Now, the scene here in this passage,
the people have been rescued from their slavery in Egypt,
they’ve been brought through the Red Sea on dry land,
and the Lord has brought them to the foot of Mount Sinai,
and he is preparing to declare his holy law to them,
to reveal the Ten Commandments to them.
And this is what we read of that takes place
on that occasion.
Beginning in verse 16, it says,
on the morning of the third day,
there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud
on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast.
This was no ordinary lightning and thunder and thick cloud.
This is a supernatural manifestation,
what the theologians call a theophany,
a visible manifestation,
a visible supernatural manifestation
of God’s glorious presence.
There’s a trumpet blast,
so that all the people in the camp trembled.
Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God,
and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain.
Now, Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke
because the Lord had descended on it in fire.
The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln,
and the whole mountain trembled greatly.
And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder,
Moses spoke and God answered him in thunder.
The Lord came down on Mount Sinai on the top of the mountain,
and the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain,
and Moses went up.
And of course, the people are terrified
at the presence of God.
The people experienced the trauma of the holy.
But again, what we have in verse four
of our passage for today
are echoes of that theophany from Mount Sinai
as we read of smoke filling the temple and so forth.
These are signs and evidences of Yahweh’s presence
in his heavenly temple.
And how does Isaiah react to all of this?
He sees this glorious supernatural vision.
Does he say, oh, great to see you, Lord.
So glad we could hang out together.
No, look at verse five.
And I said, woe is me.
That term woe could imply a curse.
He says, I’m cursed?
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.
In declaring a woe upon himself,
Isaiah is struck by his utter unworthiness and uncleanness
in the presence of the thrice holy God.
He is terrified and undone.
He feels completely out of place as a sinner
in the presence of the thrice holy God,
and he encounters the trauma of holiness.
He says, I am a man of unclean lips.
This vision of the glory and holiness of God
draws forth from Isaiah an honest confession
of his own sinfulness.
You know, we are often so foolish.
We sometimes think we can hide our sins from the Lord.
How foolish that is.
You can’t hide your sins from the omniscient one.
He knows us through and through.
He knows you and me better than we know ourselves.
And so Isaiah, in the presence of this holy God,
he acknowledges his sin.
He says, I’m a man of unclean lips.
Unlike the pure lips of the seraphim
who offer pure, acceptable worship,
Isaiah recognizes the impurities of his own words
and his own worship.
And then he goes on to admit that he lives
in the midst of a people of unclean lips.
The fact that the people were guilty of unclean lips
was seen back in chapter five, verses 18 through 20,
which record the blasphemy and the scoffing
of the people of God.
Let me just read those verses again.
If you look back at Isaiah five, verses 18 through 20,
it says this,
Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood,
who draw sin as with cart ropes,
who say, let him be quick.
Let him speed his work that we may see it.
Let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near
and let it come that we may know it.
These are mocking, scoffing words.
The Lord says he’s gonna judge us.
Well, let him do it.
Where’s his judgment?
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,
who put darkness for light and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
But then he says,
for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.
My eyes have seen the King.
My sinful eyes have seen a vision of the thrice holy God.
Isn’t it the case that no man can see God and live?
How terrified and how out of place this sinful prophet
with unclean lips felt in the presence
of the superlatively, infinitely holy God
and his holy angelic seraphs.
Well, dear ones, God is a loving God, a gracious God.
And we can indeed have a personal relationship with him.
Praise God for that, a saving relationship with him.
But we also need to realize
that our God is a consuming fire.
He is the holy God.
Dear ones, God’s name is to be treated as holy.
As we are told in the third commandment,
you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain,
for the Lord will not hold him guiltless
who takes his name in vain.
Taking the Lord’s name in vain means much more
than simply using God’s name as a curse word.
Although that’s one way to take the Lord’s name in vain,
using the word God or Jesus Christ as a swear word,
or referring to the attributes of God like holiness
and ascribing those attributes to mundane things
like holy cow or whatever.
Indeed, my friends, at his heart though,
the taking of the Lord’s name in vain
means treating his name,
treating his being, his attributes,
his words and his works as holy,
or neglecting to treat his name as holy.
That’s what it means to take his name in vain,
not treating his name as holy,
as set apart and pure.
The word holy means set apart in its primary meaning.
It also indicates moral purity and righteousness.
But God is holy in the superlative sense.
He is set apart, he is distinct, he’s transcendent,
he’s the creator, we are but creatures.
And not only that, he is perfectly righteous and good.
And we in Adam are fallen and sinful.
We pray in the first petition of the Lord’s prayer,
hallowed be thy name.
In other words, Lord, may your name be treated as holy,
which is the opposite of taking his holy name in vain.
But friends, we can only begin to truly hallow God’s name
and avoid taking it in vain if we are renewed
and born again by the Holy Spirit.
Only those who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God
can hallow God’s name as holy.
And if you are apart from a saving relationship
with Jesus Christ, if you’ve never been born again,
from the moment of your conception to this very day,
you have never not taken the Lord’s name in vain.
Your life is profane.
You need to be renewed.
You must be born again or you will not even see
the kingdom of God.
And that is a gift of grace and grace alone.
Dear listener, are you born again?
Are you indwelt by the Holy Spirit?
By God’s grace, do you strive to treat God’s name
as holy, as holy, holy, holy?
Or do you take his name in vain?
Well, how is it that this gift of the new birth
is made possible?
It is made possible by the grace of atonement
that comes through Jesus Christ.
And that brings me to my next point.
Notice next, atonement for unclean lips.
Atonement for unclean lips.
It says in verse six,
then one of the seraphim flew to me.
After Isaiah is unraveled, after he is distressed
by his lostness, his unworthiness in the presence
of the thrice holy God, God is merciful to him.
It says, then one of the seraphim,
one of these glorious holy beings, 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 has taken away, and your sin atoned for.
The true and living thrice holy triune God
is revealed in scripture to be a consuming fire,
a God of infinite white hot holiness.
This is represented by the burning coal
that is taken from the altar.
But while God’s all consuming holiness burns up
the sacrifices on the altar, the altar also represents
not just God’s consuming wrath against sin,
it also represents God’s amazing grace
and forgiving mercy in providing atonement
for the sins of his people.
The holy God provides atonement for his people’s sin,
which his wrath burns up on the altar
where the atoning sacrifices are offered.
And here, the burning coal represents God’s provision
of atonement for Isaiah’s sins,
especially for his unclean lips.
All of this, of course, points forward
to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
For God the Father, out of love for us sinners,
sent his son to offer himself on the cross
as an atonement for sin, to bear the wrath of God
as our sin bearer, our substitute.
Christ, the lamb of God, was consumed
by the holy wrath of God against our sins
on the altar of the cross of Calvary.
That’s the final altar, by the way.
We don’t need altars today in the new covenant.
Jesus did away for the need for altars
by dying on the cross as a perfect atoning sacrifice,
a propitiation for all of the sins
of all of God’s people throughout all of time.
And all of this, again, points to Christ.
Christ, who bore our sin in his body on the cross.
Christ, the lamb of God, as I said,
was consumed by God’s holy wrath against our sins
on the cross of Calvary, and by the spirit of God.
The atoning work of Christ is personally applied
to all of those who, through sovereign grace,
come to believe upon him, to trust upon him alone
for their salvation, just like that burning coal
was applied by the seraphim to the lips
of the prophet Isaiah, declaring his sins to be forgiven.
So the Holy Spirit, through faith in Christ
in his gospel, brings forgiveness
and applies that forgiveness to us.
Verse seven, it says, again,
and he touched my mouth and said,
Behold, this has touched your lips,
your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.
That is good news for a man who has been traumatized
by the holy presence of God,
knowing that the sin which he deserves to be punished for
has been forgiven, that his guilt has been done away with.
This, and the burning coal here in this prophetic vision
almost serves as a sacramental sign to Isaiah
that in the words of the seraphim,
your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.
This angelic absolution assures Isaiah
that Yahweh has graciously atoned for
and cleansed him from his sin.
So what do we learn from this section of our passage?
Well, first of all, friends, by his saving work,
Christ the Lord has provided full and perfect atonement
for the sins of all who trust in him alone
for salvation with a penitent faith.
Do you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
to save you from your sins?
If you do, that will assure you that you’ve been born again
because only by the Spirit can we believe.
Come to Christ.
His arms are open wide to all who recognize their sin
and who are willing by the grace of God
to come to him in faith and repentance.
And brothers and sisters in Christ,
in the gospel word and sacraments,
God assures us that our guilt is taken away,
that our sin is atoned for.
Through such means as the gospel call
and the promises of the word,
by the sacraments of holy baptism in the Lord’s Supper,
which symbolize and seal the word,
and also through the assurance and declaration of pardon
pronounced by God’s servant
in response to our confession of sin.
Through these means, the Lord assures us
that we are forgiven and accepted by God.
May this assurance of grace and salvation
strengthen our resolve to live lives of grateful obedience
to our gracious Father in heaven
who has loved us with such amazing grace and mercy.
And this brings me to my final point.
It’ll be a brief point.
We’re not gonna have time to cover all of this today.
And so I’ll return to the latter part of this passage
on the next Lord’s Day.
But let’s briefly consider the prophet’s sobering commission,
the prophet’s sobering commission.
Now in view of Isaiah’s woe is me,
which he declares in verse five,
this is a very sharp turnabout.
Says this in verse eight.
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.
What a change of heart and attitude
the assurance of forgiveness brings.
Isaiah has gone from the traumatized woe is me
to the joyful, here am I, send me.
Isaiah goes from a trembling, overwhelming terror
in the presence of the Holy One
to boldly, courageously, and cheerfully
answering the Lord’s call to service.
And then it goes on to say in verse nine,
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 be healed.
There’s a lot here in this passage
that we don’t have time to get to today.
But what we basically have here,
we see Yahweh’s sovereign judicial hardening
of an arrogant, rebellious, unbelieving people.
The word of God, we learn in this passage,
among other things that the word of God
ends up hardening those who persist in rejecting that word
and refusing its calls to repentance.
And this leads Isaiah to cry out in verse 11.
He says, then I said, how long, O Lord, how long, O Lord?
And he’s given this answer.
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.
Isaiah inquires, how long?
Now this question would seem to mean either,
Lord, how long must I continue preaching judgment
and being an instrument in your hands
for the hardening of the people?
Or it could mean perhaps, how long before your judgment
gives way to mercy?
Whichever is the case, this passage,
though it is gloomy in the commission and call
and sobering in its commission and call to Isaiah,
it ends on a note of hope.
Look at verse 13.
And it says, and 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.
This sobering passage ends on a note of hope
for the future renewal and restoration of God’s people.
Again, in wrath, God remembers mercy.
So in closing, my friends, let us be warned
against rejecting God’s word
and resisting his calls to repentance.
Let us not be fools as were many of Isaiah’s contemporaries.
But let’s also take to heart how God’s gracious forgiveness
in Christ can transform our motives for serving the Lord.
Many try, many preachers sadly try to motivate
God’s people to greater devotion,
greater obedience by guilting them.
Now there is a place for preaching God’s law, of course,
especially if I were preaching to a group of folks
that included many unbelievers,
I would emphasize the law of God,
especially if I were preaching to those who were convinced
that they were basically good people
and didn’t need a savior, they need to hear the law,
they need to be crushed by the law.
The law exposes our sin and our need for Christ
and it needs to be faithfully preached.
But God’s people are not motivated
to grateful service by being guilted.
Gratitude is the greatest motivator.
Isaiah expresses that gratitude almost joyfully.
We can almost sense joy as the Lord says,
whom shall I send?
And I can just picture Isaiah jumping up,
here am I, send me.
You’ve forgiven me, Lord.
You’ve brought me from the trauma of holiness
to the joy of forgiveness
and I desire to serve and please you.
That is what ought to motivate us.
What motivates you to serve the Lord?
Why are you here this morning?
Is it because of a sense of duty?
It is our duty to gather as God’s people on the Lord’s day
but by grace, our duty becomes a delight.
May we be motivated by gratitude
for God’s amazing grace and forgiveness given to us
in our Savior Jesus Christ, amen.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, Sovereign and Eternal God,
we praise you and thank you, Lord,
that you have provided atonement for our sins in Christ
and we thank you that you have renewed us
and caused us to be born again by your Spirit
that we would see our sin and would come to confess
and trust Christ alone for our salvation.
We pray, Lord, that you would enable us, Lord,
to treat your name as holy, to hallow your name
and not to take it in vain
by living lives of grateful obedience
to you, the God, the holy God, the thrice holy God
who loved us and gave your Son for our redemption.
In his name we pray and all of God’s people said amen.
Let’s respond to what we’ve heard by rising
and we’ll sing as our hymn of commitment,
number 502, All for Jesus, 502.
Let’s rise and sing together.