Amen, and please be seated. Now if you have a Bible, let me invite you to turn with me to Isaiah chapter 6. Beginning this morning until mid to late August, we're at least taking a break from our study and Matthew. Various reasons for that, but you know, variety is in spite of life.
And I'd like us to turn to Isaiah's experience in the presence of the greatness of God. True wisdom consists in two things, is John Calvin, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of self. Do you have this knowledge? Isaiah did, he does even still, and let's look at it together.
Isaiah chapter 6 verses 1 through 8. This is the holy and inspired Word of God. In the year that King Yuziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and the train of his road filled the temple. 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. 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. 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, amen. This is God's Word.
May he cut our hearts with it. Let's look to him in prayer, our Father in heaven, quicken our conscience by your holiness and feet our minds with your truth, and purge our imaginations with your beauty, and open our hearts to your mercy, and devote our wills to your purpose, for we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. The passage divides into four parts. Here's your outline, the sight of God's majestic glory, verses one to three, and then the undoing of the guilty center in verses four and five, followed by the grace of God's forgiveness by atonement verses six and seven, and then the willingness of God's grateful servant, verse eight.
And the grace of those first, the sight of God's majestic glory, verses one to three. Isaiah sees the sovereign king upon his throne, verse one, in the year that King Yuziah died. I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Now King Yuziah became king when he was 16 years old, and he rained for 52 years, and under his rule, living was easy.
The nation was prosperous and secure, but dark clouds were on the horizon. Israel was going to come under the threat of the coming Assyrian army in 722 BC, and it, when it did come, decimated the ten northern tribes of Israel. But 18 years before that, in 740 BC, Yuziah the king had died. The mortal king had died.
The immortal king lives on, and Isaiah is given a vision of this king of king upon his throne, high, and lifted up, yet clothed in visibility. And who is it that he saw? Well, it's Jesus. And I'm not speculating.
Consider John 12. In John 12, Isaiah 6, verse 10 is quoted, followed by John immediately saying, in John 1241, Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. That is, Isaiah saw the glory of Jesus and spoke of Jesus. It was Jesus who was Isaiah encountered in the temple, Jesus on his throne, and the train of his robe filled the temple.
His throne is high and lifted up. Above all other thrones. Once he's doing, he is sovereignly reigning as king of the ages. He is upholding the universe by the word of his power, and he is working all things after the council of his own will.
Though the human king of Israel has died and his plans and purposes with him, Isaiah has reminded that God rules and reigns. And we need to hear that today. A hundred years from now. Well, not a single ruler in any current village or town or city or state or nation will likely even be alive.
None of us will likely be alive either. But Jesus will still be sitting on the throne of the universe in charge of all things. And his throne is his right to rule. We don't give him authority over our lives.
We don't make him Lord or King. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now, not everybody likes God on his throne. Charles Spurgeon put it this way.
Men will allow, well, men will allow God to be everywhere, but on his throne. They will allow him to be in his workshop to fashion worlds and make stars. They will allow him to be in his own menry, to dispense his alms and bestown his bounties. They will allow him to sustain the earth and bear up the pillars thereof or like the lamps of heaven or rule the waves of the ever-moving sea.
But when God ascends his throne, his creatures then gnash their teeth. And we proclaim it and throne God's dispersion. And his right to do is he wills with his own to dispose of his creatures as he thinks well without consulting them in the matter. That is then, he says, that we are hissed and execrated.
And then it is that men turn a deaf ear to us for God on his throne is not the God they love. But it is God on the throne that we love to preach. It is God upon his throne whom we trust. He says, Spurgeon, do you trust the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, who is ruling and reigning sovereignly over all things even now as they had a sight of him.
And he also saw the majestic transcendence of Jesus, who is worshiped in reverence and all. Look at verse 2 above him, stood the seraphim. He had six wings with two, he covered his face and two, he covered his feet and with two, he flew. He was a seraphim or literally burning once, surrounded the throne.
And they worshiped Jesus and they are in awe of Jesus. They treat him with reverence and respect. With two wings they cover their faces. Perhaps because even unfallen creatures do not gaze directly at the glory of God.
His brightness is dazzling and His majesty overwhelming. With two wings they cover their feet, perhaps in recognition that they are unworthy to stand in His presence and unworthy even to move in His service. And with two wings they were flying, ready to be sent wherever he commands. Whereas Hebrews chapter 1 verse 7 says of Jesus, he makes his angels, winds and his ministers a flame of fire.
These seraphim are the creatures of Jesus made by him to serve him and they sinless as they are, are overwhelmed by the transcendent majesty of him whom they worship. Are we? And then notice Isaiah hears of the weighty omnipotence of Jesus. Verse 3, one called to another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
The whole earth is full of His glory. They raise their voices in praise of Him. They speak of His glory or of His weightiness, the Hebrew word kabod. That's what it means is His splendor and dignity.
He is no lightweight. He is a heavyweight. And they speak of His omnipresence. The whole earth is full of His glory.
He's everywhere all the time. He's with us. And He's around us. He's above us and within us for in Him we live and move and have our being.
There is no place that God is not. There are no empty spaces, no maverick molecules, no independent beings. We all live before His face. And He sees and He knows everything we do and say and even think and desire.
Now that thought on the one hand strike fear in our hearts, especially if we've not been reconciled to Him. But what great comfort it is to know He's this close, that He's present even here if you do know His love and forgiveness. And then notice His threefold holiness. Verse 3, the burning ones proclaim holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
And it's a threefold repetition. It's a super superlative. Now superlative is used for the purpose of emphasis. And we speak of something as good or better or best, right?
Better is a comparison of good and best is the superlative. It's better than good. And it's what's better than better. It's best.
And in the Hebrew language, the way to write a superlative is usually to double a word. When God warned Adam about the forbidden fruit of the tree and said if you eat of it, you will well, ESV translation surely die. If translating the expression, dying you will die. Or literally, you will die.
Die. It's doubling it as a superlative. And likewise when Jesus would want to emphasize something that was true, even though His words were always true, but He wanted His hearers to really hear Him out. He would say what?
Truly, truly I say to you. Well this is the way it is in Scripture in the Hebrew and Greek languages. They would double a word. And yet in this case, in one of the only cases in all of Scripture, this attribute of God is not doubled but tripled.
The basic idea here of being holy is that God is altogether separate and a cut above His creation. He's altogether different than His creation, set apart from the created thing as the creator is different than the creature. He's better than the best of His creation. Yet He's better than that.
He's on an entirely different level and of a different character. A.W. Tozer puts it this way, we cannot grasp the true meaning of the divine holiness by thinking of someone or something very pure and then raising the concept of the highest degree that we're capable of. God's holiness is not simply the best we know infinitely better.
We know nothing like the divine holiness. It stands apart and unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and unattainable. The natural man is blind to it, says Tozer. He may fear God's power and admire His wisdom, but His holiness, He cannot even imagine.
And here in this phrase, holy, holy, holy, we see that God is entirely distinct and a cut above all, separate. And yet there may even be here a hint of the triune holiness in this triple language. That is the triune holiness of the eternal trinity of persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in the one divine being. Why would I say that?
Well, verse 8, there's, I think, a hint of it as well. When God asks, who will go for us? Just as at creation, God said, let us make man in our image, in our likeness. These are our hints of the plurality of the divine majesty.
But in any case, Isaiah is given a vision of the sovereign king on his throne in majestic transcendence in weighty, omnipresence and triune holiness. And what effect does it have on him? Well, what's his undoing? Verse 4 and 5, it's the undoing of the guilty sinner.
Let's start with the temple itself. Verse 4, the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. The pillars of the temple are swaying, and the foundations of the threshold are shaking at the voice of the burning ones in worship. The whole edifice appears to Isaiah to be in danger of collapsing in the presence of Almighty God on his throne.
And the temple was filled with smoke. I'm not unlike, remember, at Mount Sinai when God brought his people to himself and when God stooped down out of heaven, as it were, and he spoke to the people in the great cloud of smoke with an earthquake and the trembling of the earth and the people were in awe and they trembled and it says they stood back and they said, hey Moses, why don't you go up to that mountain and talk to God for us? We'll stay back here. Now Isaiah is right here in the temple and he is himself a prophet of God quivering with fear.
I said, verse 5, woe is me, for I am lost. The effect on him is devastating. Woe means calamity is about to fall upon me. He says I'm ruined, I'm destroyed, there's no hope for me.
Two reasons. One, his lips to his sight, his lips, I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell among the people of unclean lips. We might be tempted to think, well I mean surely Isaiah wasn't that bad. I mean he was a prophet of God, he was a holy man of God.
He called to speak the Word of God. Surely he's better than most people, but Isaiah knew himself. He knew himself and he felt his depravity, he knows his lips are polluted and he knows the generation in which he lives is polluted and defiled and dirty. And then he thinks he's undone not only because he has a sight of himself but he has a sight of the Lord.
For my eyes he says have seen the king, the Lord of hosts. By comparison with other polluted people in his day we might be tempted to say Isaiah stood out as better than them, though I think Isaiah would have said with the Apostle Paul, I'm the chief of sinners. I was saying to you he was one of them, no better than them and he knew by comparison with God he was nothing. And worse than that he was twisted and bent and depraved and had no business being in the presence of God's holiness.
His vision was not unlike the vision of the Apostle John in the New Testament of Jesus in Revelation 1. He saw a vision of the exalted Christ and he heard his voice and he describes it this way. He says I saw one like a son of man clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest and the hairs of his head were white like wool like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace and his voice was like the roar of many waters.
In his right hand he held the seven stars and from his mouth came a sharp two edged sword and his face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance. And what reaction did this Apostle of Jesus have when he saw her Jesus in all his unveiled glory? Chapter 1 verse 17 when I saw him I fell at his feet as though dead. He was undone as was Isaiah.
Yet the one who terrified and brought relief in Revelation 1 17, Jesus laid his right hand on me and said fear not. I am the first and the last and the living one I died of all my life forevermore and I have the keys of death and Hades. Isaiah was undone, what was me? He's terrified, he expects to be immediately destroyed, he knows he deserves that.
And so let me ask you, have you ever come to the conclusion? The same conclusion in all your dealings with God? Again, says Calvin, until God reveals himself to us we do not think that we are men or rather we think that we are gods. But when we have seen God we then begin to feel and know what we are.
It's springs true humility. Have you ever fallen on your face before God realized you have nothing in yourself to command his love? Has your mouth yet been shut in the presence of God because you realize you have no excuse and no defense for yourself before the throne of justice? And if you were to escape what you have said and what you have done and what you have loved it will have to be a rescue from God himself.
So your only hope is mercy and not justice. You have that experience. You see yourself that way like I say, well, there's hope for you. There's hope for all of us in this room even if you haven't had that experience yet.
It's the hope that Isaiah had in verses 6 and 7, the grace of God's forgiveness by atonement and verse 6, then one of the seraphant 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 you're sinned atone for. Now what's going on there? Well, Coles of Fire were taken from the altar of sacrifice where the sacrifice was burned up before God and Coles were taken into the most holy place one day a year on the day of atonement by the great high priest.
Coles, as we said, from that sacrifice made to atone for sin. And here the seraphant takes the coal from the altar of burnt offering where the blood sacrifices of atonement were made for the sins of Israel and the seraphant applies it where to his lips. As Isaiah had confessed, he was a man of unclean lips. Now atonement is applied to his sinful mouth.
And the seraphant declares what? The good news. Your guilt is taken away and your sin atone for. He's forgiven.
He's released from what he deserves because the atonement by substitute has received what he deserves in his place. And his pardon is all of grace. It's not of Isaiah. The only thing Isaiah contributed to his atonement is the sin that makes it necessary.
If you're a believer today, don't imagine that this doesn't apply to you. It most certainly does. In Hebrews, chapter 13, verse 10, we are assured we have an altar. It's the place where Christ was taken outside the city gate and was destroyed in our place upon the cross.
In the donkey where they burned the rubbish, that's where your guilt is taken away and your sin atone for in Christ. The God who makes you see your filthiness is also the God who provides your cleanliness. The glorious gospel. You ever think about what life would be like if you didn't have an atonement provided for you, but you knew you needed one?
It was reading of the Japanese army and first air fleet of the navy in October 1944, Admiral Onishi. The war was turning sour for Japan and the Pacific. Onishi therefore proposed desperate measures. He said in my opinion, the enemy cannot be stopped only by can be stopped only by crash diving on their carrier flight decks with zero, that's the name of the fighters, carrying 250 kilogram bombs.
Hence, Kamikaze pilots, which were suicide pilots. And Onishi was adamant, quote, nothing short of all out use of special attacks can save us. Suicide attacks were much more successful than the conventional airstrikes. And by the time Japan did surrender in August of 1945, 2,519 men and officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy had sacrificed themselves as Kamikaze pilots.
On the evening of August 15th of that year, Admiral Onishi left a note, quote, to the souls of my late subordinates, I expressed the greatest appreciation for the valiant deeds in death I wish to apologize to these brave men and their families. And then he pointed to samurai sword into his own midsection, refused medical attention and suffered lingering until six o'clock the following evening, permitting no one to finish him off. And the tellers of that story conclude this, his choice to endure prolonged suffering was obviously made an expiation for his heart in one of the most diabolical activities of war the world has ever seen. There is no atonement on the blood of a samurai sword.
There is no self-appointed gore of even your own intestines that can dissolve your guilt. It is only when you receive the application of the blood of Jesus, do you hear your guilt is taken away, your sin has been covered. And then you don't need to worship the Lord in the terror of his holiness, but in the safety of his holiness. And what effect does that have?
What effect does that grace of God's forgiveness by atonement produce? Verse 8, the willingness of God's grateful servant. Verse 8, I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send? Who will go for us?
I said, here I am. Send me. God, you see, invites his people to serve him. And Isaiah hears the call, he offers himself.
Does the toning work of Christ for you touch your heart in such a way that it moves you to say, Lord, let me serve you. Lord, let me minister to others on your behalf. Does the love of Christ control you? In other words, because you've concluded this, that one has died for all and therefore all have died and one died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but live for him who died for them and was raised on their behalf.
And the most who know this grace of Jesus do respond in grateful service. So let me apply that service in three ways. Verse 6, Isaiah 6 is the path of Christian discipleship, whether you are Christian or non-Christian today. Reading the Bible can often make you feel very uncomfortable.
I mean, only a fool would think that to get really close to God only always gives peaceful, easy feelings. Now, Isaiah knew better. John knew better. Well, Peter knew better.
Luke chapter 5, you remember the story when Jesus got into one of Peter's boats. It was Simon's and Jesus asked to put it out a little away from the shore and he said, Simon, put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. And Simon answered, Master, we toiled all night and took nothing. You know, you're reading God's Word.
You and I are. And we think like Peter, Lord, I really do know better than you. I mean, you're expecting unreasonable things here. I mean, don't you know your counsel is just a dead end?
Well, Peter says something like that. But then of course commendably he follows up with, but at your Word, I will let down the nets. I've been fishing all night. I know they strag better than you, Mr.
Carpenter, but you've commanded it. We'll put the nets out and he puts the nets out and what happens? Well, when they had done it and closed a large number of fish and their nets were breaking. So many fish.
They signaled to their partners and other boats to come and help them and they came and filled both the boats so that they became the sink from the fish. Jesus in fact does know better than Peter because Jesus is no mere carpenter, not even a lucky fisherman. He's the sovereign king of land and sea, the sovereign king of fish and people. And how does Peter respond?
And he says, when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus and he's saying, depart from me. For I am a sinful man, O Lord. When you can't decide who Jesus really is, your gut says, get away from me, Lord. I don't belong in your presence.
I have no business with you being in my boat. You're the Holy One of Israel. And yet in mercy, Jesus tells Peter what? Do not be afraid.
Like with John, reaching out his hand. Fear not. The Holy One can dwell with you because the grace of the atonement he makes for you. So our aim is a church to be a ministry that gives you the freedom then to process this good news over time.
We don't expect you to make snap decisions or pressured responses, but what we want is for the majesty of God and the mercy of God to marinate in your heart. We want to have simply a one-time sense of God's glory and your guilt and God's grace, but to come back again and again and to hear again and again, fear not. That gospel produces its own fruit. The path of the Christian life then is to grow in this grace of knowing yourself in light of knowing God in the gospel.
And it's a lifelong path until you see him face to face. John Flawball says, when the corn is nearly ripe, it bows the head and stoops lower than it was when green. And when the people of God are ripe for heaven, they grow more humble and self-denying. That's the path of Christian discipleship.
Are you on that path? But then secondly, I want you to see that this is also the pattern of Christian worship. Isaiah 6 is. Worship begins with God.
As Isaiah 6 does, with an emphasis not on us, but on him. We come not to experience worship as people sometimes say, whatever that means. It usually means cultivating good feelings in the crowd. But we gather to worship God, to declare His worthiness to be adored and feared, loved and respected because of His transcendent majesty and mighty nearness and triune holiness as well as His gracious mercy in Jesus.
And so our worship service begins with the call to worship God speaking to us come and worship me. And it begins with an opening hymn of praise focusing on the adoration of God and His being and His character and His works. And then a prayer adoring Him and asking Him to be with us, followed by a trinitarian doxology of praise, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Worship begins with God.
And then of course we remember our guilt before Him, our sin, our failures, our need for Christ and His cross. And we remember how small we are and how unlike Him we are and how we need His forgiveness. And we're met with the word of His grace. The promise of God laying on Christ our iniquity.
And so we sing of Christ, we sing of the atonement, we sing of that peace of God we have because of Christ. And then we respond in gratitude and the rest of our service is gratitude. Lord thank You. Let me hear Your words.
Speak to me. Lord let me pour out my heart to You in prayer. Oh hear me. Oh Lord preach to me and strengthen me in grace.
Show me Jesus and meet with me at this table and reassure me again of Your love and then send me out with Your blessing that I might go like Isaiah for You. That's the posture we have. That's the hope we have as we leave this place because it's the pattern of Christian worship to lead us to say Lord I want to be what You want me to be and to love what You want me to love and to think what You want me to think and to do what You want me to do and say what You want me to say and go where You want me to go and to give away what You want me to give away. Lord let me serve You.
I'm so thankful for You. Let's have the gospel of Isaiah 6 shapes our worship and finally this knowledge of God. I don't think we have to see Isaiah's experience as his conversion experience actually he's been in ministry. It's along the path of serving the Lord that he has greater depths of experiential knowledge of the true God and of himself.
It's something that God does with each of us but if it's something he hasn't done at all with us well don't go into Christian ministry. We're prophets of course like Isaiah a few of us are called to preach but the Lord's a place of service for every one of us in his kingdom and his gospel equipses us to do it but we aren't ready to minister to others until we realize our own depravity and our only hope in God's atonement by Jesus. Otherwise what we'll end up doing is crushing people laying on them a burden they cannot bear laying on them responsibilities like a great boulder on their back telling them basically shape up and do better instead of Jesus can make you right with God and take away your burden of sin and guilt and shame. So if we haven't met this God ourselves we need to certainly before we speak up to others on his behalf and if we don't do that then even the non-Christians around us will be repulsed by us because nobody wants to hear that they should be honest about their sin by somebody who's self-righteously thinking and I'm better than you because I'm honest about my sin.
No no no if you think like that we must not do ministry not until you meet God and when you do meet him it's Oven King transcendent in majesty you get a glimpse of his glory and his holiness and a taste of his grace in Jesus finding relief for your soul well then you find that he is the sort of God who makes you want to say here I am Lord send me let's pray Father thank you for not sparing your own son that we might be spared in him grant each one to know that hope that promise that freedom and grant that we would all be stirred to love as we have been loved in Jesus name we pray amen let's stand together and sing.