"Here I Am, Send Me" | Isaiah 6:1-8 | Charlie Houck | Mesa Church San Diego

Isaiah receives a vision in the year King Uzziah died — a king whose reign began in faithfulness and ended in pride and leprosy. Into that destabilizing moment, Isaiah sees the Lord on a throne, high and lifted up, his robe filling the temple, seraphim crying "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts." Charlie unpacks why that triple repetition is unlike anything else in Hebrew scripture, and why God's holiness isn't simply sinlessness — it is "otherness," a complete distinction from all of creation. Even the most righteous human being stands just as far from God's holiness as the worst. When Isaiah sees it, he doesn't say "I'm not worthy." He says: I am coming apart at the seams.But God doesn't leave him there. A seraph takes a burning coal from the altar and touches Isaiah's lips — and his guilt is taken away, his sin atoned for. Charlie traces that coal all the way forward to Isaiah 53 and ultimately to the cross, where the holy God of Isaiah 6 becomes the merciful, suffering Savior. The fire that should have consumed Isaiah consumed the substitute instead — and that same substitutionary love is now the open door for anyone who repents and trusts in Christ.From that place of being made clean, Isaiah hears a still, small voice: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And he says the only reasonable thing a person can say after a love like that: "Here I am. Send me." Charlie closes by walking through every false fuel — guilt, fear, duty, comparison, adventure, inspiration — and showing why only God's love will last. If you have found the way back, you are called to share it.Mesa Church | San Diego, CAmesachurch.org