Isaiah 6


I have a bit of history with this passage of Scripture. I was converted when
I was a junior in high school. It wasn’t until I got to college that I
really began to grow. It was then that I was taught things like I need to
read my Bible and say my prayers each day. The first prayer meeting I ever
attended was at college. It was an exciting time as I began to see more
clearly what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. And it was in college that
I first encountered Isaiah 6. As I think you can appreciate, this passage
fits in with an exciting time of discovery. Here, I saw a striking picture
of my God. So, Isaiah 6 takes its place next to the healing of blind
Bartimaeus as special bits of Scripture that the Spirit has used in my life.
It is my hope that some of the wonder of this text might become clearer to
you this morning.

The first thing that I want to do is to help you to see the text. Most of
the Bible is narrative. Yes, there are epistles, but most of it is
recounting events and experiences or the telling of stories. If the truths
of Scripture are going to be impressed on our souls we need to stop and see
what’s pictured in the text. So, let’s look at our text with this in mind.
Isaiah enters the temple. And just as when you enter this room, he was
expecting to see what he always saw. But that’s not what happened. Isaiah
sees what he never saw before. He sees God. More specifically, as John’s
Gospel tells us, he saw Jesus. And where is He? Jesus is high and lifted up,
seated on a throne. The signs of royalty are all around Him as His royal
robes fill the room. And then there was the smoke, just as there was smoke
on Mt. Sinai. These things are all designed to make Isaiah feel small. And
just as he was trying to digest what he was seeing, Isaiah hears the angels.
Now, these weren’t Presbyterian angels. If they were they would have said,
‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ in that very calm, formal Presbyterian way. No, these
were charismatic angels. So they shouted, ‘HOLY! HOLY! HOLY!!!’ Doesn’t it
say they cried out? And then, just to make sure that Isaiah got the point,
the building began to shake.

Here’s the first lesson. I won’t do much beyond mentioning it. Did you
notice that Isaiah’s senses were involved in this experience? His eyes see,
his ears hear, he smells the smoke, and he feels the shaking. The only sense
left out was his taste. Jesus appeals not just to Isaiah’s mind. This isn’t
the equivalent of listening to some lecture on your mp3 player. Jesus
includes the whole person in this experience. There is more to the faith
than what involves the mind. I suspect that we will come back to this in the
future.

That’s the picture Isaiah sees. Now, how does he respond? Isaiah suddenly
becomes terribly aware of his sin. ‘Woe is me! For I am undone …’ Because of
this experience of Jesus, Isaiah sees himself a bit differently from what he
used to. And the reason for that is that he sees Jesus a bit differently
from what he used to. Now, please notice that this was no generic sense of
sin. Isaiah didn’t have some vague, undefined sense of being a sinner that
he could easily confess. [After all, we’re all sinners.] His conviction of
sin had a specific focus. ‘Woe is me! For I am undone; for I am a man of
unclean lips…’ The Spirit commonly acts in this way convicting us of some
specific sin. Here, Isaiah is aware of the sins of his mouth: things like
lying, gossip, bragging, cutting others down instead of building them up.
Isaiah is made aware of a specific sin that needs to be confessed,
specifically. What should happen at this point is condemnation. Isaiah,
sinner, is confronted by the holy God. But instead we see the fruit of the
Gospel. There is forgiveness. I hope that you never get beyond the wonder of
forgiveness. But note how this forgiveness is conveyed to Isaiah. There is a
ritual. The angel takes a burning coal from the altar and touches it to
Isaiah’s mouth, the place of offense. This wasn’t some vision. It was a real
coal from the real altar held by real tongs in the hand of a real angel. And
this hot coal really touched Isaiah’s mouth. It burned and left a scar, a
reminder of the experience. Jesus uses this ritual to communicate this fruit
of the Gospel. Words alone were insufficient. Once again we see Jesus
involving the whole person.

Now, we’ve walked through the account of this very powerful experience in
Isaiah’s life. What actually happened? How shall we understand it? How shall
we label it? It was worship. Isaiah meets with Jesus. He sees Him more
clearly as the holy God, and he sees himself more clearly as a sinner, now
graciously forgiven. These things are the fruit of worship. My point is not
that each time you worship, the experience needs to be this intense. That
wasn’t the case for Isaiah. No, my point, rather, is that each time you
worship, it needs to be this real. You and Jesus meeting together in a way
that makes a difference. As with everything else, this is yours as a
blessing of the Gospel – if you can believe it. Faith in Jesus is the key.
Worship is not merely some sociological event. It’s not just us here doing
what we do. Jesus is here. And if you enter in believing the Gospel you will
be changed.

Our text is not done. We’ve only worked through the first part. What’s next?
Another fruit of worship. ‘And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom
shall I send, and who will go for us?"’ Isaiah hears Jesus’ call and
responds. ‘Here am I! Send me.’ In this we see one inevitable fruit of real
worship: mission. Jesus calls, and Isaiah responds. He volunteers. ‘Send me.
’ And what has Isaiah volunteered to do? He doesn’t know. Jesus hasn’t said
yet. Isaiah signs a blank check, something that is dangerous to do – unless
it is for Jesus. Then it is the only thing to do. With Him we never decide
how much to fill it in for. That is Jesus’ prerogative. So, here we see
evidence that Isaiah has really met with Jesus, really worshiped. The
resultant change is manifest. Isaiah sees himself as a disciple for Jesus to
use in whatever way He wants. Mission.

That a disciple is at Jesus’ disposal is not news. What I do want to stress
is that becoming that kind of a person is not possible apart from real
worship. A sense of mission that is not based on real worship will fail. The
Pharisees tried that. They tried to pursue and enforce the Law. That was
their mission. But what did Jesus say? ‘This people honors me with their
lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching
as doctrines the commandments of men.’ [Matthew 15:7-9] Because they
attempted mission without real worship they made things worse. Worship, real
worship, an honest meeting with Jesus by faith, is the necessary basis for
mission, for faithful discipleship.

Now, what is the mission for Isaiah? Jesus tells him. ‘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.” ’ [Isaiah 6:9-10]
Here’s Isaiah’s mission. Go and declare God’s curse upon His Church. Jesus
declares that the time for rebuking His Church is just about up. Now comes
the time to be broken. Can you imagine such a task? Isaiah is horrified and
asks, ‘How long, O Lord?’ And Jesus’ reply? ‘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 6:11-12] Consider the cost to Isaiah of
proclaiming such a message. The personal cost, the emotional cost. Isaiah
pursued this mission, declared this message, for some forty years. How
wearying that must have been. To be faithful to such a mission would have
been impossible, if it weren’t based on worship, those times of meeting with
Jesus as the great and holy Lord. A lifetime of mission cannot be based on
one solitary experience at the beginning. A lifetime of mission can only
occur if it is supported by a lifetime of worship. Again, I don’t mean the
empty habit of so many, but the reality. Sometimes, it is an intense, almost
overwhelming experience, but that isn’t the key. It just must be real. It
just needs to be a time of meeting with Jesus by faith. But even if it isn’t
all that emotionally intense, it is still a time when your soul will be
affected.

Let me pull this together with a couple of thoughts. First, I hope you see
the prime importance of real worship. That includes the corporate worship
that we have here each Sunday. But it also includes family worship to be led
by you fathers as well as individual worship, something that I hope you are
not only in the habit of doing but also teaching to your children. Last week
I told you that it would take a series of sermons to explain the simple
sentence, ‘Worship is the key to life.’ This sermon is a small attempt to do
that.

The second thing I hope that you have seen is the fact of mission. We are
all called by Jesus to mission. It is an integral part of being a disciple
of Jesus, and it is an inevitable fruit of real worship. There are many ways
to pursue mission. Many churches pursue mission in a way that focuses on
events held at the church’s building. In many cases, that is fine. But not
for us. It won’t work for us. Instead, for us, mission will be something
that is decentralized. The focus won’t be on church-sponsored events. The
focus will be on you as individuals and families out there in the world.
Your lives are to embody mission. And so, for us, it boils down to this. We
gather here to meet with Jesus as a church. We worship. But then He sends
you out into the world to change that world as the Gospel evidences itself
through your lives. This may be a different method than some churches, but
the goal is the same. And the dynamic that makes it work is the same:
worship and mission. Your life, and the life of the whole of the Church of
Jesus, is to be an expression of this dynamic. As you ponder these things
you will see that this is demanding and will require changes in us. It was
that way for Isaiah. But is there an alternative?