We shall divert our attention from Jehovah titles and instead examine another name for God –Adonai. The Hebrew name Adonai is translated in the NIV as ‘Lord’, using only an initial Capital letter ‘Lord God’, the rest being in lower case letters. This is to distinguish it, as we said earlier, from the Hebrew name ‘Jehovah’, which is also translated ‘Lord’ but using an initial capital and small capitals –‘Lord’ as Seen in Gen. 2:7 where our God is addressed as ‘Lord God’ which means Adonai. Although the first appearance of this word Adonai, which means ‘Lord God’ is used in connection with the patriarch Abraham, when he pleaded with God calling Him Lord to spare Sodom as Seen in Gen 18:27. I have not dealt with it before as I consider its meaning comes over with fuller force when seen in the context of the beautiful and moving we have just read –Isaiah 6. The literal meaning of Adonai is ‘Lord and Master’, and the word contains the thought of ownership, lordship, and divine authority. Following the death of the godly King Uzziah in 740BC after a long and prosperous reign, a period of national darkness settled upon Judah. In the midst of the crisis, however, Isaiah is given a vision of an eternal throne on which sits the Lord and Master of the universe Lord God Almighty. It is as if the Almighty is saying, ‘The throne of Judah may be empty and its occupant dead but such is the nature of Adonai’s throne that it is never unoccupied and never unattended, which makes the difference between the immortal God and mortal man’! From the vision of the holy, sovereign God who rules from His throne in heaven, Isaiah draws a good deal of comfort and courage, and moves forward into a powerful, prophetic ministry. How true it is that sometimes we do not see God as Adonai until an earthly power has let us down, then, and only then do we realize the extent our pride and ego have ruined us. Let us always humble ourselves before God realizing that He is the only One Who saves and gives eternal life!

Now let us read Isaiah 6:1-13; In the year that King Uzziah died, [in a vision] I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the skirts of His train filled the [most holy part of the] temple. 2 Above Him stood the seraphim; each had six wings: with two [each] covered his [own] face, and with two [each] covered his feet, and with two [each] flew. 3 And one cried to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory! 4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who cried, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 Then said I, Woe is me! For I am undone and ruined, because 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! 6 Then flew one of the seraphim [heavenly beings] to me, having a live coal in his hand which he had taken with tongs from off the altar; 7 And with it he touched my mouth and said, Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity and guilt are taken away, and your sin is completely atoned for and forgiven. 8 Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send? And who will go for Us? Then said I, Here am I; send me. 9 And He said, Go and tell this people, Hear and hear continually, but understand not; and see and see continually, but do not apprehend with your mind. 10 Make the heart of this people fat; and make their ears heavy and shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and turn again and be healed. 11 Then said I, Lord, how long? And He answered, Until cities lie waste without inhabitant and houses without man, and the land is utterly desolate, 12 And the Lord removes [His] people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. 13 And though a tenth [of the people] remain in the land, it will be for their destruction [eaten up and burned] like a terebinth tree or like an oak whose stump and substance remain when they are felled or have cast their leaves. The holy seed [the elect remnant] is the stump and substance [of Israel].

What is the main point of Isaiah chapter 6? The Lord tells Isaiah the message He wants His prophet to give to the people of Judah. They are to hear without hearing and see without seeing. In other words, the Lord knows the people of Judah are too far gone into their sin and rebellion to receive Isaiah's warnings about God's coming judgment. Is this not the same situation the world and its people are in today, too far gone into their sin and rebellion with God and the things of God to receive Isaiah's warnings about God's coming judgment for our generation! What is the lesson of Isaiah 6:1-13? Nothing God did produced the desired result of repentance and healing. So now God will do all He can do to save His people. He will send Isaiah with His message of doom, so that the sin of His people will finally result in their death as a nation. There are some moments in life that you don’t need to work to remember — they are ingrained in your mind in a way that remains even after other things fade from your memory. It could be something momentous like a graduation or a wedding or the birth of a child, perhaps something sad like a funeral of a loved one. But some memories remain not because they are a momentous life event, but because some realization came over you at a point in time, some new awareness that you had previously been blind to. Why is it that we humans cannot learn from all the things that have happened before and be warned, making efforts to help ourselves while God helps us? Illustration: I was 20 years old and it was summer, I was an employee of the McDonald’s corporation working in a resort town in New Jersey on the East Coast of the United States. People would flock to this town called Ocean City for vacation, and young people like me were needed to do things like put frozen hamburger patties on a hot grill and flip them over 45 seconds later. My shifts were 5am-1pm, I would work and then walk back to the place I was staying, perhaps to take a nap or as I did on this particular day try to find a shady spot to sit and read in the afternoon. On this particular day I walked a few blocks over to the local high school, a half a block from the ocean, you could see the water stretching out to infinity. Next to the school building there was a football pitch and track around it. And inside the chain link fence was a picnic table under an oak tree. I sat down at the table to read the Bible. I was a new Christian, I had heard the gospel from a fellow student the previous year, he had given me my first Bible, which I had begun to read voraciously. I had it there on the table, and I think a journal and a pen to write down my thoughts. I assume this sort of scene happened many times in my life that I’ve forgotten about, but I remember this one 30 years later with crystal clarity. I was sitting and looking at the tree and the grass and the sky. And then it was as if everything became focused on a single point, a single thought — I am not alone here. God is here Jehovah Shammah. I don’t really know how to describe it … But I don’t mean that I was thinking about this concept that God is there and knows things and sees things. I mean that I didn’t want to move or speak or do anything except sit and be conscious of Him. And I don’t think I am over exaggerating to say that I was never the same. It was like a hearing about God and knowing about God changed into more of a knowing God as one who was actually there, who saw me and communicated with me. Now I want to be careful because experience is only a reliable guide as it is interpreted by God’s word; and not the best teacher as the world would teach us, but we know that God, Who is our Lord and the Word, is the Only and Best Teacher! I wouldn’t have known how to explain or understand what happened to me sitting under that tree in the summer of 1993 if I hadn’t been reading the Bible. And I also don’t want to say to you that your religious experience has to look the same as mine. God encounters us in diverse ways! But on the other hand we want to be really clear that the God who is there is not an idea or a concept, He is person, who can be known, indeed who has made Himself known. He doesn’t want us just to know about Him, but to know Him as He really is. He wants us to know Him rightly. We are here this morning because He is in the business of revealing Himself to us, so that we can know Him and serve Him rightly. The text we are going to look at this morning is a crucial one in the book of Isaiah, after his introductory 5 chapters he tells us how it is that he was called to be a prophet in the first place. And I am persuaded that he has done this rather unusual thing of not placing his calling narrative at the beginning for a reason. He spent 5 chapters telling us how bad things are in Israel because he wants us to say — What can be done? Just as a lot of us are asking the same question of what can be done in a world so filled with uncertainties. Though Israel as a whole may be headed for exile, individual Israelites can still find their way back to God. How can they do that? In the midst of a wicked and depraved generation, how could they return to knowing and serving God? This is exactly the question which every true child of God should be asking and seeking answers; how would I return to rightly knowing and serving my true God in the midst of millions of people who do no longer care for Him! God show me how and continually lead me a right.

The main idea of our text is this: Knowing God rightly leads to serving God faithfully It’s my prayer that our time together in God’s word will help us all to know and serve this God who is there and here faithfully. Knowing God rightly (Isa 6:1-7); This first section breaks down into Isaiah’s vision of God in Isaiah 6:1-4, Isaiah’s response in Isaiah 6:5 where he pronounces woe on himself, and then in Isaiah 6:6-7 with God’s gracious act of atonement. Let’s observe a few things: First, Isaiah gives us an important time stamp that this vision happened in the year that King Uzziah died. This is the 8th century BC. Uzziah was basically a good king who sought the Lord and received blessing for it early in his reign. But he didn’t finish well. At the end of his 52 year reign he grew strong and proud and experienced God’s judgment in the form of leprosy. 2 Chronicles 26 would be a good quiet time for you this afternoon or this week — to think about the dangers of pride knowing that it is said that pride goeth before a fall, many people who would have made it for God got egotized with their life attainment, get carried away and got ruined by pride but still people have not learnt their lessons as to always avoid being proud. But geopolitically his death meant that the looming Assyrian threat was even more dangerous. The king is dead! What is going to happen? Isaiah is in the temple and he sees this amazing vision. Look at all the detail we get. The Lord is sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, with the train of His robe — helm of His robe is a better translation, filling the temple. The idea is that the very bottom of His robe is enough to fill Solomon’s grand temple. So the ceiling of the temple must be transparent to allow Isaiah to see this enormous throne stretching from earth up to heaven. There is no doubt what this means. The king is actually not dead, because earthly rulers and monarchs are not like this. This is the true king. Like a true king, He has attendants around Him. When it says above Him stood the seraphim, He is seated, they are hovering on the same plane as Him but not seated, they are actually flying not standing. Now we don’t know what exactly seraphim are — they are clearly angelic beings. The root is the same root as for snakes in Hebrew, so some have speculated that they are serpentine in appearance, but it is also a cognate with the word “fiery” so fiery snakes is what some have proposed — I’m not sure. What is clear is that the imagery of their wings powerfully communicates that these perfect angelic beings are still unable to even look on the glory of this King; they have to cover their faces to shield themselves from His glory. And they cover their feet — reminiscent of Moses being told to take of his sandals for he is standing on holy ground in the presence of Yahweh in Exodus 3, can you see how the Word of God is always consistent. This King is too Holy and too Glorious even for angels to behold not to talk of man! And these angelic attendants have a job; they are calling to one another in an antiphonal song. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory! (Isa 6:3) — that is what hosts means. It refers to the angelic armies of the Lord, the legion and myriad angels who do His bidding. And they are also saying the whole earth is full of His glory. Now what does this word “Holy” mean? You know it is never fully defined in Scripture in part because holy is by definition what God is — He is transcendent and distinct from His creation, and that transcendence and distinctness is described by holiness. When you are looking at a sunset or a newborn baby you are not looking at God—you are looking at the creation of God — He is transcendently above all He has made. In addition to transcendence, in the Old Testament, holiness is often connected with the divine attitude towards ethical behavior. God’s law draws the parameters of His holiness, of what it means to be God. Israel is supposed to be a holy nation because they keep God’s law — “Be holy because I am holy” God said in Lev. 11:44. He does what is right, what is good, what is pure — in that sense all the attributes of God are holy attributes. Holy love, holy wrath, holy wisdom. Maybe that is why this is the only thrice repeated attribute in Scripture. But these angels don’t just tell us that He is holy, they model for us the right response to God’s holiness. They don’t look directly at the creator, for that would be too overwhelming, they cover themselves in humility but at the same time sing His praises. The vision here finishes with an earthquake and smoke — both typical of theophanies (theophany is the appearance of a deity') is an encounter with a deity that manifests in an observable and tangible form.), appearances of God to humans that we have read about in many places in the Scripture. One of the things people will often say is that they would believe in God if He did something to reveal Himself to them — if they could see a miracle or maybe some vision of this sort. And maybe we could feel the same as we come to a text like this — Isaiah saw the Lord in a way that you and I haven’t. But friends realize that while God is under no compulsion to reveal Himself in a certain way to anyone — the history of redemption is a history of God’s gracious self-revelation. He is in the business of revealing Himself to people — that is what the Old Testament prophets were all about — they received revelation from God to deliver to the people. And supremely that is what the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ was about — Lord Jesus was God in the flesh so that people could see who God is, what He is like, and the preaching of the apostles and the writing of the New Testament was about helping people see the Lord our God; and yet people do not want to use all these available to see and know God. You and I put ourselves in position to know God when we pursue Him — in the fellowship of His people, by opening His inspired word and sitting under the teaching of it. All of these are ways to see and know God! While you and I can’t demand God to reveal Himself to us, we can take a lesson from Isaiah here in his pursuit of God. Notice that this revelation happened while he was in the temple. In this time of great political and I assume personal instability; he had gone to the temple to seek God, wanting to know Him just as many people are currently doing. You and I put ourselves in position to know God when we pursue Him — in the fellowship of His people, by opening His inspired word and sitting under the teaching of it. Your spiritual life can only progress to the level that you understand who God is. Is that why you are here? Would you describe yourself as someone who is seeking to know God? So that is the vision, now look at the effect. Now there is an immediate and spontaneous effect on Isaiah here, we see it in Isaiah 6:5. He says “woe is me.” Woe is a pronouncement of doom. Older translations say, “I am undone.” I am coming apart at the seams. This is a shattering vision for him. Why? Well, this vision of God somehow shines a spotlight on him Isaiah. This glorious vision of God produces horror as he then turns to himself. Look at what he Isaiah says: “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” (Isa 6:5). Do you now understand, whenever you are seeking God in truth, in reality and in sincerity, you don’t have to see a vision or have a miracle before you will see Him, by inspiration or any other way, He will make Himself seen and known to you just as He did to Isaiah and immediately Isaiah began to see and know realities about himself, how unclean he is, and seeking God to transform and cleanse him and God sent the angel to cleanse him off all his sins, which is the biggest thing that would happen to anybody! Change your perception of God, seek God rightly and sincerely and He will show Himself to you the way He see fit! The Hebrew people always assumed that to see God was to die. You may remember Jacob wrestling with the angel in Genesis 32, afterward he can’t believe is God he saw face to face, wrestle with Him and is still alive. Remember in Exodus 19 the people of Israel see a theophany ( a visible manifestation to humankind of God) on Mt. Sinai and plead with Moses not to led God appear to them because they are sure they are going to die. We even see this in the New Testament — in the miraculous catch of fish when it dawns on Peter what just happened and who he is standing next to in the boat — he doesn’t say “hey this is awesome, let’s do this every day.” He says — go away from me, for I am a sinful man. The unholy is repelled by the presence of the holy, this is the realistic experience of man when he encounters or meets with God in reality. Isaiah is terrified, and he thinks he is going to die, which is exactly how you or I as true child of God would feel if we encounter God in reality. So it is unbelief that makes man to want to seek to see God, if man really fears God, everything that is written or said of God so far is enough to set the fear of God in our minds or hearts if really we are true children of God! Except something happens — one of the angels has taken a burning coal from the altar of burnt offerings there in the temple-and he takes it and puts it on the lips of Isaiah. Now why lips? Why did Isaiah say he is a man of unclean lips rather than an unclean heart? Some have proposed that it is because this is a part of Isaiah’s calling to be a prophet and speak for God; I’m not persuaded of that view because he said he lives among a people of unclean lips who were not called to be prophets. I think more to the point is Lord Jesus teaching that out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks — our words are the external expression of our hearts — and thus the first place that Isaiah locates his sin, is he thinking about the words he has said that are untrue and unkind and unworshippful and unclean. Like the person who realizes that their chat history can’t be deleted, and their social media posts are still there — except this is his whole life laid bare before the omniscient and the holy God. He is unclean. Unworthy. He can’t stand before God! How many of us can feel this way when we are in God’s presence, with your heart pounding, you feel of a thing or things you did wrong that very day or other days, you feel what exactly God is going to do to you concerning those things, but today, we hardly see people who feel exactly that way, rather people regard God just as they regard humans and even tend to deal with Him thus! The fear of God they say is the beginning of wisdom! But God says, Isaiah, really your lips are unclean, well now I will cauterize them with burning fire, cauterization is a medical practice or technique of burning a part of a body to remove or close off a part of it in an attempt to mitigate bleeding and damage or remove an undesired growth. I will refine you with the fire of judgment from my holy altar — where the blood of sacrifice has been shed. That is where that coal came from. The angel says “Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity and guilt are taken away, and your sin is completely atoned for and forgiven.” (Isa 6:7). The word atone is a precious word, it means covered, done away with, rendered moot. That is what our Lord Jesus did for us with His sacrifice, hence we are to trust and believe in Him with all our heart, mind and soul. Isaiah is telling us that this is the burning revelation that changed everything for him. And it should be the burning revelation that changes everything for us. For every one of us if we are to know God we have to pass through this same channel — of seeing who God is and ourselves as undone in light of that revelation. The person who is clinging to this idea that they can somehow work their way to God through good deeds, and by being a little better than the person next to them is believing a fiction. One glimpse of God’s holiness should dispel any thought of that. You and I have to come to the end of ourselves if the work of Lord Jesus Christ as the atoning sacrifice for sin is going to make any sense to us. We live in an age where psychological therapy and discussions of mental health have taken center stage. And the common approach to understanding what is wrong with us is quite different than what we see and read here in prophet Isaiah’s case. So if you do much reading on the web or in popular books and journals, you will notice that the discussion often surrounds the concept of self-esteem, as if self can solve any problem not to talk of the complex problem the world as a whole is currently facing. So Web MD recommends this approach to low-self esteem: “Adjust your mindset: You’ve been able to identify the times where you’ve felt a blow to your self-esteem. You’ve become self-aware about how and why you have the thoughts and feelings towards those events. Now you can take a step back and analyze those thoughts and emotions. You now have the power to change your thought patterns to raise your self-esteem. Remember to think and feel hopeful statements, focus on the positive aspects of all situations, and don’t be afraid to relabel upsetting thoughts. And most importantly, don’t hesitate to forgive yourself. No one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes. It doesn’t make you a bad person—it just makes you human.” You can see the strategy there is to try to deal with what we know is wrong with us, what we’ve done wrong, and thought wrong and felt that is wrong. You can try to relabel upsetting thoughts — I am a greedy anxious person, but let’s call that good money management! Or focus on the positive not the negative — I have been unkind to Uncle Tony, but I’m pretty nice to Aunt Doris! And you can try this strategy of forgiving yourself. But friends the Scriptures tell us this is all a dead end, reasoning and thinking in all of the ways mentioned above are human attempts to see if they can help free their troubled minds/hearts off all besetting sins but it is not working because the steps are not Scriptural and they have no place in the Gospel either. It is trying to put more gauze on a wound that is improperly stitched up. You can’t relabel what is wrong, you can’t get rid of it by not thinking about it, and you can’t forgive yourself when you are not the offended party, God is! Do you know that all our sins and wrongs gears towards God, and that is exactly why He is the Only One Who has the Right to Forgive Sin, and blot it off or cover it for us, no one else can! So let us go to Him seeking forgiveness! Only Jesus can Save! What if you found your worth not in a relabeled fiction or a hopeless comparison with others or a myopic focus on the positive but on the atoning love of God. Beloved, God offers the better solution, the true solution — it’s atonement. God is more holy than you have ever dared realize. And you are more sinful than you every dared face. But in Christ you are more loved than you ever dared believe. What if you found your worth not in a relabeled fiction or a hopeless comparison with others or a myopic focus on the positive but on the atoning love of God. Two wonders here, that I confess, my worth and my unworthiness. My value fixed, my ransom paid. At the cross. John Bunyan pictures this beautifully in Pilgrim’s progress: Christian is carrying this massive burden on his back through the whole first part of the book, you realize is the burden of his sin and guilt. His woe. Then you read, “Christian ran till he came to a hill; upon it stood a cross, and a little below was a tomb. So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up to the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the tomb, where it fell in, and I saw it no more. So I wonder as we conclude this first point and think about application — do you see yourself rightly in the light of the holiness of God? Sometimes we are afraid to say we are wrong and undone when in reality that type of true confession is exactly what will bring us divine healing—because it is the precursor to understanding the atoning grace of God. Surround yourself with counselors who knowing God through atonement are knowing Him rightly. Christ has atoned for all our sins, all we need do is trust and believe in Him in reality and live life according to His Gospel and the Scripture, keeping your heart, mind and soul bodily centered on Him in reverence, honor and worshiping Him in praise!

For the first time God speaks here. And there is something quite unique to the call of Isaiah as a prophet — God asks who will go — rather than tells him to go. With Jeremiah, or Ezekiel or Hosea or Jonah — God just tells them to go or calls them to go. Some suggest Isaiah is different because of how difficult his ministry will be. The “us” there in the phrase “who will go for us”" in Isaiah 6:8 may be a hint at the Trinity. God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God in 3 distinct persons is largely a New Testament revelation, but we get hints of it in the Old Testament like in Genesis 1 where God says “let us make man in our image” (Gen 1:26). God is asking who will be His ambassador, who will go as a spokesperson for Him. And Isaiah doesn’t need any time to consider. The person who has seen God’s holiness and His sinfulness and been redeemed by grace of all his sins needs no convincing, no coercion; they are ready to volunteer for whatever God wants. Coercion is the practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats. We should let that question rest on us — who will go for us? If you struggle with the idea of serving God, if it feels like a great burden or duty to you to serve God, consider going back to study the character of God and the nature of the atonement. Maybe pick up a book like R.C. Sproul’s “Holiness of God”, “The Cross of Christ” by John Stott or “Knowing God” by J.I Packer at the bookstall. Read through them, and see how you will feel thereafter! If really you are human. We should have a ready “Send me! I’ll go!” What a delight to serve the One Who has saved us! Isaiah 6:9 is what Isaiah is to say to the people: “Go and tell this people, Hear and hear continually, but understand not; and see and see continually, but do not apprehend with your mind.” This obviously not the sum total of what he will preach, the book of Isaiah is a fraction of all he would have preached — I take this to be a summary of his message. He is to tell Israel that in the midst of their idolatry and hoarding and hedonism and replacing God, despising His Word — they will now no longer be able to understand or perceive the spiritual truth he Isaiah and other prophets bring to them from God. Isaiah 6:10 is the result of their falling away from God — His preaching will make their hearts more dull, ears heavy, eyes blind, so that they will not turn and be healed because they are now trusting their idolatry and hedonism. In other words his preaching is not going to bring about an awakening of the people, but rather a hardening of the people. In Isaiah 6:11 the heart of the prophet shows through when he asks the Lord how long this situation of ungodliness would be for. And the words that follow are not encouraging. It says, until the land is an uninhabited waste, and the people taken away — thus speaking or pointing to the exile to come when the people will be carried away captives. And then it closes in Isaiah 6:13 with this image of a tree that has been cut down and there is only a stump left. I do not know why people cannot see the handwriting on the board whenever God is speaking, instead, we allow ourselves to be taken unawares! So what does all this mean? We’ve thought about things thus far from the perspective of Isaiah and how that relates to us, the more challenging thing we need to do is to ask what this teaches us about God. Most times Isaiah 6 is read people stop in Isaiah 6:8, I’ve heard this passage used at many a missionary commissioning and they always leave off Isaiah 6:9-10 because they seem so discouraging with that portion, not realizing that there lies all the wisdom. Why tell Isaiah that his ministry is going to be largely unfruitful? We have to face what is being taught here squarely. Of the more than 80 times that Isaiah is quoted in the New Testament, Isaiah 6:9-10 are by far the most quoted. Every one of the gospels and Acts, Romans all quote it, so we need to dig in and understand it. We described the place that Israel had reached — we looked at the 6 woes. Hoarding wealth, hedonism and self indulgence, mocking the idea of judgment that he is being warned of, redefining right and wrong, enthroning self, just as we are currently doing and damming the consequence. For many years Israel had heard this prophetic warnings, there had been temporary reprieves and judgment delayed, but none of that worked to bring Israel to repentance. God has now decided that what is needed is the complete rock-bottom cleansing that only exile can bring. And so it is with our God that many people are yet to know and understand, that when God waited for man to change and man refuse to, He God will permit one thing to hit man so strongly and jolt man out of all his nonsense! With God there is a point of no return. A series of decisions to ignore Him, harden yourself to His word, reach a point where you no longer have ears to hear. So what that means for us is that with God there is a point of no return. A series of decisions to ignore Him, harden yourself to His word, reach a point where you no longer have ears to hear. Lord Jesus quotes this in Mark 4 to explain how the disciples are enable to understand the parables but the uncommitted crowds do not. Luke quotes it at the end of Acts to explain how the Jewish leaders in Rome refuse to respond to Paul’s preaching but the Gentiles do. Paul himself quotes it in Romans 11 again to explain the same thing. In every case it is not that people didn’t have the chance to hear and respond at some point — but rather that having heard and refused to respond God gives them over to their hardness of heart to a tragic end. I wonder if you’ve thought about how serious a thing it is to listen to the word of God. Whether it is read or preached, you are always either letting it shape you good or hardening yourself against it to your ruin. If you harden yourself today, maybe the preacher is talking about not making money for your God and using it compassionately and not being dishonest with it…but you have this area you aren’t ready to confess to Him and begin to live rightly. Or maybe you are dallying in a relationship that you know is ungodly, but you tell yourself that this is just one area, and anyway you don’t intend to live that way forever, but for now you’d rather not go there. So somehow you do it, you rationalize or just tune out, try to forget it just as we read above. How do you know whether that is the last time you will even be able to make a choice? How do you know that your action hasn’t vaccinated you to the truth? That the next time it comes up and the Spirit is speaking to you, the same wall doesn’t come crashing down. A little faster. With more finality. Beloved, it is a serious thing to hear the word of God. Don’t harden your heart to the words of eternal life! These are sobering words, but I want you to notice God does not leave us without a glimmer of hope. That last sentence gives us a ray of light amidst the darkness of impending judgment. The tree is pictured in Isaiah 6:13 cut down to a stump, but we are told that “the holy seed is its stump”. Now what does that mean? Saying that the stump is actually a seed points to the possibility that it will grow again. And the fact that it is a holy seed points to the fact that the remnant of true believers will remain after judgment just as it was during Noah’s time that there is a handful of people remaining after the flood, so it points to, that maybe after judgment there will be a remnant of people. So Isaiah should take heart that his ministry is not in vain. Now let’s put the pieces of the chapter together. We’ve said that Isaiah wants us to see his own call as a prophet as a model for us. A model of discipleship. He is telling us that knowing God rightly leads to serving Him faithfully. That all of us need to go through this same process — • Seeing God rightly in all His holiness, reverence and majesty. • Despairing of our own utter inability to do anything except pronounce doom on ourselves. • Receiving then from His hand atonement for our sins. • Rising to the question who will go for us and saying—me Lord, send me! I will serve you! Having considered how He saved you, there is nothing you can do for Him but give yourself! • Persevering through all the hardship that faithfulness to God requires—even when things don’t turn out like we might like trusting that God is aware of the situation with divine plans for good. It is natural for us to ask — how did all this play out in Isaiah’s life? Did knowing God rightly lead to serving God faithfully? Did it give him staying power in a life of faithful service to the Lord? Well his Isaiah’s life wasn’t easy. He began his ministry married and then had 2 kids as we’ll hear about in the next chapters. His ministry didn’t make him very popular as we can imagine from the content of what he was to preach about the coming exile. He has to watch Israel decline spiritually, he would see the exile comes on the northern tribes and then looms for the southern. I don’t know when he died exactly but he perseveres in this difficult work for 6 decades of ministry. 60 years. Eventually tradition has it he is killed during the reign of Manasseh — but it is a bit stronger than tradition. When Hebrews 11 speaks of those of whom the world was not worthy and says, “they were stoned, they were sawn in two” that is referencing the rabbinic tradition that Jeremiah and Isaiah were killed in those two ways, respectively. However Isaiah met his end, I don’t think we would conclude that he lived his best life now. Because Isaiah saw God rightly, he was able to serve Him faithfully — regardless of how things went. But beloved he was indeed faithful. And I think it all goes back to what we read about here. Because he saw God rightly, he was able to serve Him faithfully — regardless of how things went. I don’t know where you are at this moment — whether in a time of plenty or a time of want. Whether what God is calling you to feels overwhelming. Maybe to love a prodigal child over years and decades of unresponsiveness. Maybe to try again to share the gospel at Chinese New Year with family members who have shrugged you off again and again? Maybe to do the often thankless work of a caregiver to an ageing relative. Maybe to keep teaching 7 and 8 year olds in Children’s ministry — you know when they don’t pay attention but are no longer cute. Maybe much harder things than these — what will sustain you? What will give you staying power? Beloved knowing God rightly will. Seeing the King will. There is a wonderful verse in John 12 when John quotes the verses about blinded eyes and hardened hearts he says that they are fulfilled in the unbelief of most of the Jewish people. But then he says something interesting. He says “Isaiah said these things because he saw the glory of Jesus and spoke of Him” (Jn 12:41). Now how could Isaiah have seen the glory of Lord Jesus 700+ years before He was born? What John means is that the King on the throne high and exalted that Isaiah saw was King Lord Jesus Himself. The second person of the Trinity. He was the King on the throne in the year Uzziah died. He would come as the Holy Seed out of the stump of Israel in the fullness of time. And at the end of all things He will return. Isaiah saw the glory of Lord Jesus and spoke of Him. Do you see the Lord this moment? Do you see the King high and exalted? Are you redeemed by His grace? Then say with Isaiah, Here I am Lord, send me. I’ll go, even if it’s hard. Send me!