Copyright Mike Sullivan, 2018.
This study is part of a ten-week teaching series on Isaiah given at Xenos Christian Fellowship in 2017 and 2018.
We are studying the book of Isaiah, written by Isaiah the prophet. He is relaying visions—messages from God—to the rebellious people of Judah and Jerusalem.
In chapter 5, God compares the nation of Judah to a vineyard. God did everything he could to help his vineyard grow. He led them out of slavery in Egypt, guided and protected them in the wilderness, and established them in their land. But despite all that care and attention, his vineyard was yielding a bad crop. Instead of obeying him, the people mocked God, rejected his law, called good evil and evil good, and mistreated the poor!
God loves Judah and wants them to return to him, but they won't listen, so Isaiah warns that God...
5:26 ...will send a signal to distant nations far away and whistle to those at the ends of the earth. They will come racing toward Jerusalem... 28 Their arrows will be sharp and their bows ready for battle. 29b ...Growling, they will pounce on their victims and carry them off, and no one will be there to rescue them.
This is the first of many places where Isaiah predicts the people of Judah will be carried off into captivity. So the future for Judah looks grim...
5:30 ...If someone looks across the land, only darkness and distress will be seen; even the light will be darkened by clouds.
This verse reminds me of the dark clouds gathering around Mordor in The Lord of the Rings, and it raises an important question: will darkness and evil have the last word? Will Judah persist in rebellion and self-destruct? And if that happens, what will become of God's promise to renew Jerusalem that we studied last week? It is with this question hanging in the air that we open chapter 6...
Isaiah 6
6:1 In the year of King Uzziah's death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. 2 Seraphim [a type of angel] stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called out 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 trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. 5 Then I said [Isaiah said], "woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts." 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. 7 He touched my mouth with it and said, "behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven." 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I. Send me!"
What an amazing experience!
Isaiah sees God in his throne room. God asks, "who will go for us?" ...who will represent our interests in these dark times? And Isaiah responds, "here I am, send me!"
I've often wondered what I would have done had I been in this situation. One reaction might be, "I'm flattered, God, that you would invite me to do something for you." I flew on an airplane for the first time when I was 4 years old. During the flight, a stewardess asked me if I would like to come forward to the flight deck to meet the pilots. I couldn't believe it—a little kid like me invited to meet the people flying the airplane! I immediately said yes.
But another reaction might be to try to be invisible. When a teacher is doing a goofy demonstration and says, "I need some volunteers," most students try to hide behind the person in front of them and avoid making eye contact with the teacher.
What about you? How would you have responded if you heard God ask, "who will go for us?" This is a relevant question because the day is coming, maybe it has already happened, when you will be invited to go for God!
God's invitation to go
Not just for Isaiah.
If you know Christ, God has a vision for YOU serving him.
Ephesians 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
Some read this and say, "yeah, God has generic good things like loving each other prepared for everyone." But look more closely. Paul says we are God's workmanship. He has hand-crafted us. God has designed you for specific tasks. He has specific ways of serving in mind for you. These good works are tied to how he built you.
Will you learn what these tasks are through a vision like this? Probably not. More often, when you are praying and reading God's word, he will gently nudge you to do something through his Holy Spirit. It might involve teaching the Bible in a nursing home, helping a friend with marriage problems, or hosting a high school home church. It could be a big thing or small thing. But God will ask, "will you go for me?" I can't tell you what it will be or when it will happen, but I can assure you God has good works in mind for you.
Often comes during a time of uncertainty.
Did you notice when Isaiah had this vision? It happened in the year that King Uzziah died in 739 B.C. Prior to his death, Uzziah had been a fixture, a point of stability for the nation of Judah. He ruled welli and was faithful to God for 52 years!!
Now he was gone. And that meant change was coming. Under Uzziah, Isaiah had access to the royal court. Would that continue under the new administration? Uzziah had been faithful to God. Would that be true of the next king?
Some of us are in a similar time of change and uncertainty. Maybe you've lost someone who was a point of stability in your life. Or your routine has been disrupted by a serious illness. Or you are headed into uncharted waters in your career. Or a door has closed on an important opportunity.
These crises can knock us off balance, no doubt. But they don't exempt us from God's invitation to go. He knows what you are going through, but isn't afraid to ask you to serve him right in the middle of challenging times. Do you know someone at work who always asks you to do something at what seems to be the worst possible time? God can be that way. Why? Perhaps because when we feel fragile, we'll be more likely to cling to him!
Often without providing many specifics.
When Isaiah heard God's invitation, no details were provided. God simply said, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?"
If I was Isaiah, I would have been tempted to respond, "go and do what? What am I signing up for?" But God didn't provide specifics. He wanted to know up front who would go for him.
I've learned from hard experience there is wisdom in knowing what you are getting into. When I was in high school, my friend said, "I know about a short-term job on a farm. It pays $10 per hour. They need two people. Wanna do it?" He said the job had something to do with chickens, which should have been my cue to ask a few more questions. But $10 per hour was enough for me. So his parents drove us to the farm and dropped us off, committing me and my friend to the job, whatever it was. We learned that the farmer needed us to move 10,000 live chickens from one barn to another. Ever try to move a live chicken? The moral of the story is look before you leap, or something like that...
God's invitation often leaves out details. You may get, for example, a specific nudge to care for a particular person. But not much more direction than that. As you step out to serve, you will often have many unanswered questions.
So God extends his invitation to Isaiah and to you, often in trying times, and often without many specifics. It makes you wonder why Isaiah said, "here I am, send me."
Reasons to go
Let's go back through the experience Isaiah had and explore the reasons why Isaiah was willing to go.
God didn't try to pump up Isaiah's confidence: "Isaiah, I know you can do this task. I have so much confidence in you! You're great at this kind of thing. Go for it!"
And God didn't pitch Isaiah on what a great opportunity this was: "This is a great task I have for you! It's so rewarding. You're going to love this."
Nevertheless, Isaiah said yes. And he said yes despite the uncertainty in his life, despite having no clue what God wanted him to do. That's remarkable! What persuaded Isaiah to go?
Here are two reasons...
First, he saw the Lord sitting on his throne.ii
6:1 In the year of King Uzziah's death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple.
King Uzziah had just died, and other kings of Judah would come and go during Isaiah's ministry. But God? He was on his throne the whole time! He was a constant during Isaiah's life and he still is today.
Paul says,
1 Timothy 1:17 All honor and glory to God forever and ever! He is the eternal King, the unseen one who never dies; he alone is God.
Your life is going to change, your job will change, this church will change, our city, our economy—all of it will change. But God won't. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Perhaps seeing the Lord this way, seeing him secure in his power as king, not threatened by failing crops or an invading army, seeing that God was, is, and always will be in charge—perhaps this led Isaiah to think, "I want to be aligned with the guy on the throne, I'll go where he asks me to go."
Second, Isaiah heard that God was holy and glorious.
6:2 Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called out 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 trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke.
Isaiah hears angelic creatures called seraphim crying out, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts." I know the word holy is a church word with lots of negative connotations. But it simply means to be different or distinct from something.
This is a box of Rice Bitz cereal (show pic). There is nothing special about it. There are many variations of cereals like this—Rice Chex, Rice Crispies, Rice Puffs. So there is nothing unique to see here. But this [box of Golden Grahams]... this is different... holy. Golden Grahams are the best—cold cereal in a class by itself.
That's a pretty pathetic example. But these angels, by calling God holy, are calling attention to how distinct and different God is from everything in creation.
We're created; God is not.
We're finite; God is limitless.
We're sinful; he is the living standard of moral perfection.
God isn't just older, stronger and more good than us and the angels. He is holy in the sense that he is in a completely different category. God is in a class by himself.
Isaiah also hears the angels cry out, "the whole earth is full of God's glory." Glory is a weightiness, an overabundance. In God's case, an overabundance of power, goodness, love, wisdom—of every good thing.
The seraphim, the angels surrounding God, are themselves glorious. Their name means "burning ones" because they shine bright with glory. Their voices shook the temple, and if you saw them, you'd be tempted to bow down to worship them. And yet, as glorious as they are, they have to shield their face from God's even greater glory!!
So, God is sitting on his throne, and he is holy and glorious. Why did these reasons move Isaiah to say, "send me"?
Well, when God asks, "who will go?" we tend to focus on ourselves: Am I the right person to do this? Am I qualified?
OR we tend to focus on our situation: Is this a good time to act given these different circumstances in my life?
OR we focus on the nature of the task: Just what, exactly, will I be doing, and how will I go about it?
But what did God want Isaiah to focus on? His throne, his holiness, his glory!
I'm not saying other factors are irrelevant. But the first thing you need when God asks, "who will go?" is not a better sense of your qualifications, or more insight into your situation, or a better grasp of the task. The first thing you need is an expanded view of God. You need to better understand the God who is calling you to go.
If God is on his throne, if he is unshakable and sure to accomplish his purposes, if God is holy and glorious with an overabundance of every good thing, able to supply us with whatever we need to serve him—if all that is true, doesn't it make sense to say "here I am, send me" when God asks, "who will go?"
Let's look at two more reasons why Isaiah said "yes" to God...
First, Isaiah realized he was sinful.
When Isaiah saw God, he became deeply aware of his sin...
6:5 Then I said, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts."
"Woe is me" is what you say when your favorite NFL team is 0 and 16. It's what you say when you're in a burning house and can't get out. "Woe is me" is a call of desperation. Why is Isaiah having this reaction to seeing God?
We've said God is holy, holy, holy—very different than us. And here Isaiah is feeling the stark difference between himself and God. God is the living definition of moral perfection, but he is sinful.
That is why Isaiah says, "I'm a man of unclean lips," a man contaminated by sin. God didn't have to tell him that. As he stood before a morally perfect God, Isaiah knew it in his bones. He knew he was stained with sin. This is a typical response when humans come before God.
Maybe you have heard the story about Jesus helping his disciples catch an enormous net-full of fish. It was clearly a miracle. Do you remember Peter's reaction? It wasn't, "wow, Jesus, I should take you fishing more often!" He looked at Jesus, realized he was in the presence of God, and he said,
Luke 5:8 "Depart from me for I am a sinful man!"
That's how people feel when they come before God. That's why Isaiah said, "Woe is me." The only logical thing to do when we stand before God in our sinful state is to die.
Some might try to play down the problem: "Hey, Isaiah, everyone sins. You're not that bad. You're not a serial killer! Lighten up. You're not worthy of death." But Isaiah would not have taken comfort in comparing his sin to the sin of other people. He had seen God on his throne. He knew the only comparison that mattered was between him and God. And he knew he hopelessly fell short, just like we all do.
A long time ago, I drove my minivan with four other friends to Montana to go hiking in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness area. We hiked for a week, then drove home. On the two-day trip back, we took off our boots and piled up our sweaty, grimy clothes. You can imagine how the van smelled, and as we drove home, the stench ripened. Of course, we had been around each other all week and didn't notice it much. Once we were back, my wife came out to greet us right as we opened the van's sliding door. She stopped in her tracks and started back-pedaling, overwhelmed by the stench coming from the van. I said, "how about a hug?" But she held her nose and waved me off. The smell didn't bother us, but apparently it bothered her!
That's an exceptionally gross but fairly accurate picture of our situation. God is different than we are—he is pure and untainted by sin. But we have unclean lips and we live among a people of unclean lips. We sin, we live in a sinful environment, and sin pervades every part of our lives. That's why we get used to it.
Encountering God opened Isaiah's eyes to the extent of his sin problem, and then…
Second, God forgave him.
6:6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. 7 He touched my mouth with it and said, "Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven."
This sounds strange. Why would touching Isaiah's mouth with a burning piece of coal take away his sin? Isaiah says the coal was taken from the altar of the temple where God's people offered sacrifices. When they sinned, God instructed them to kill an animal and present it on the altar. This prescription taught the Jews a simple but important lesson: God requires DEATH as a penalty for sin.
Why does God require death? This goes back to what we just talked about—God is morally perfect and we are not. He can't be in the presence of sin. To have a relationship with us, our sin must be dealt with. Either we die, or someone dies in our place.
These animal sacrifices—animals dying in the place of the people—taught that sin must be punished by death, but they didn't actually fix the people's sin problem.
Hebrews 10:11 Under the old covenant, the priest stands and ministers before the altar day after day, offering the same sacrifices again and again, which can never take away sins.
If animal sacrifices were insufficient, why were they offered? They foreshadowed Jesus' future sacrifice on the cross for us. He offered his life and suffered the death penalty for our sin in our place.
Hebrews 10:12 But our High Priest [that's Jesus] offered himself to God as a single sacrifice for sins, good for all time.
So, when the angel flew to Isaiah and touched his lips with this piece of coal, the angel was applying Jesus' death to Isaiah in order to forgive him. That's what the burning coal from the altar symbolized.
We look back at what Jesus did on the cross. This passage looks forward to it.
So, Isaiah was sinful, and despite that, God forgave him. Why would this move Isaiah to say, "send me"?
Think about this tension: on the one hand you have this "lofty and exalted," morally perfect, glorious God who is "holy, holy, holy." And yet, in Christ, he was willing to enter our world, live among us, and die for us. He was willing to take our sin onto himself and give us his perfect righteousness.
What are you left with? Amazement and gratitude that a transcendent God like this would move toward us in love. And that gratitude only increases when you realize what it cost for God to make our forgiveness possible—it cost the death of his own son!
When a God like that asks, "whom shall I send?" doesn't it make sense to say, "send me!"?
So, Isaiah saw God on his throne, holy and glorious. And despite being undone by his sin, God forgave him. These are the reasons why Isaiah said yes to God. And notice that these reasons for saying yes to God are...
Independent of your strengths and weaknesses;
Independent of your circumstances.
Independent of the nature of the task.
These reasons for going really boil down to who God is and what he has done. We often want more reasons why we should say yes when God calls us to go, but these are reasons enough!
What happens when we go for God?
A key first step
Notice before Isaiah could go anywhere for God, God had to forgive him of his sin. But how did this happen?
Was it because Isaiah cleaned up his life? No. He was too stained by sin to do that on his own. Was it because he agreed to serve God? NO! That happened later.
God forgave Isaiah because Isaiah acknowledged his sin and allowed God to take it away. He didn't push the coal away. He let the angel apply it to him. That's why God forgave him.
You may feel the same tension Isaiah felt—a sense deep down that things aren't right between you and God. That's not just your imagination. We all have real moral guilt before God. What's the solution? The only way to remove that guilt is through what Jesus has done. You can do that by owning the fact that you're sinful, like Isaiah did, and asking God to make you clean and forgive you. If you ask God to do that, he will.
What happened to Isaiah?
Let's look at what happened with Isaiah when he responded to God's call. After Isaiah said, "I'll go," God provided a few more details about the job:
6:9 [God] said, "Go, and tell this people: 'Keep on listening, but do not perceive; Keep on looking, but do not understand.' 10 Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull, and their eyes dim, otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and be healed."
What God wanted Isaiah to do is clear: "Go and tell this people"—take these messages I give you and share them with the people of Judah and Jerusalem.
But the outcome God tells Isaiah to expect is disturbing: "Render the hearts of this people insensitive."
It sounds like God doesn't want the people of Israel to listen, like he was hoping the effect of Isaiah's preaching would be to close hearts, not open them. Why would God want that? I thought he loved his people! This sounds sinister.
Well, we have to be careful here. This is a place where the nuances of Hebrew don't always come across in English. There is a painful sense of inevitability in what God is saying. This isn't what God wants; he's describing what he knows will happen.
All through this book God pleads with the people of Judah to turn to him. That's what he wants. But God knows how dark their hearts are, and he knows every time Isaiah speaks, the people's resolve to rebel against him will deepen.
So, God says, "Go ahead and preach. The people will harden their hearts against me, but you must say something."
What was the alternative? Should Isaiah stay quiet while the rich oppress the poor, just to avoid hardening their hearts? No way! God is a truth-speaking God. What the people are doing is wrong. Isaiah must say something, even if he knows they won't respond.
Isaiah couldn't have been very excited to hear this. So, he asks...
6:11a Then I said, "Lord, how long?"
Isaiah wondered, how long will I preach and get no response?
6:11b And He answered, "Until cities are devastated and without inhabitant, Houses are without people and the land is utterly desolate..."
I wish I could say the people of Jerusalem finally recognize the error of their ways and thanked Isaiah for caring enough to correct them. But that's not what happened. He kept preaching and they continued drifting away from God. There was some movement toward God during parts of his ministry, but by the end of Isaiah's life, the people of Judah were more set against God than ever.
If Jewish tradition is correct, Isaiah met his end when King Manasseh put him in a tree and had him sawn in two with a wood saw. Hebrews 11:37 indicates that this is the way some of the prophets were executed.
So, there you go. When God invites you to go, say "yes" to him, and when you do, you'll be hewn in two with a wood saw!
Does it really make sense to go?
Good question. What should we make of Isaiah's situation? Did evil have the last word? Did Isaiah waste his life preaching to totally unresponsive people?
If you were just evaluating the sixty years that Isaiah lived, you might conclude it was a waste. But God is an eternal God. He takes a longer view.
Later in the book, Isaiah makes this amazing assertion...
Isaiah 55:10 "For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout... 11 so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; it will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.
How could Isaiah say this knowing full well that few would listen to his message? Clearly, his confidence in God's word wasn't based on the results he was seeing or on how people were responding!
For many of us, our confidence does rise and fall based on our circumstances or the impact we think we will have. Not Isaiah. His confidence was based on God himself and the power of God's message.
Was Isaiah's confidence well-founded? Now that 2,700 years have passed, we can clearly see how God powerfully used Isaiah. The book of Isaiah went on to become one of the most influential books in the Bible. Over the years, Isaiah's message has brought thousands and thousands of people into a relationship with God. One example of this is in the book of Acts. A Christian named Phillip happened upon a eunuch from Ethiopia who was reading a passage in Isaiah filled with detailed predictions about the life of Jesus. Starting with this passage, Phillip told the Eunuch the good news about Jesus. The Eunuch was so blown away he became a Christian on the spot!
I wonder what it was like when Isaiah met the Ethiopian eunuch in heaven and heard his story?
I wonder how Isaiah felt as history unfolded and he kept meeting more and more people from all over the world who came to God through his message? Isaiah's confidence in God was well placed. His word didn't return empty!
We have to realize if God is who he is, and he has done what he has for us, then not only does it make sense to go, it makes sense to be confident that when we go it will be worth it! We can't know, and really don't need to know, the ripple effect of saying yes to God. That will be visible in time, and it will be tremendous! For now, we can know this: God is on his throne, and God has forgiven us. Those are reasons enough to say yes and to be confident that the outcome of saying yes will be good.
Final thoughts
Is God calling you to go? God is at work, here in this room and around the world, inviting people to go for him—
To go meet with a younger Christian to help them learn more about God,
To go help addicts,
To go tell a neighbor about Christ,
To go teach a meeting like this,
To go lead a home group,
To go start a new ministry no one has thought of yet.
I don't know what God is saying to you or what he wants you to do. But will you say yes to him, right now? Will you tell him, "Lord, if at some point I become aware that you are indeed calling me, I will go. I know who you are, and I know what you have done, and I will go!"
And what should you do if you think you've heard from God but aren't sure? How can you know that it is God calling you to go and not just your imagination?
Well, if you don't know Christ and sense God is drawing you to him, that's not your imagination. Own your sin, thank Christ for taking your sin onto himself, and ask him to forgive you. He'll do it.
If you do know Christ and sense he wants you to do something, ask yourself, "is what I sense God wants consistent with scripture?" If it might lead you to violate God's will, you're not hearing from God!
If responding to God's call involves making major changes in your life, seek the counsel of spiritually mature Christians. You are more likely to accurately discern God's call to go if you seek input from other believers who love God and know you well.
And what if you've done all that and you know you've heard from God and you're paralyzed with fear? Whether it's a small task or a big one, remember who he is and what he has done, and go!
i Uzziah fielded a well-trained army. He was victorious in battles against the Philistines. He recaptured and rebuilt some border towns and rebuilt the infrastructure (irrigation, etc.) to support agriculture.
ii David Guzik, Blue Letter Bible: "Almost everyone in the Bible who had a vision of heaven, was taken to heaven, or wrote about heaven spoke of God's throne. The prophet Michaiah saw God's throne (1 Kings 22:19), Job saw God's throne (Job 26:9), David saw God's throne (Psalm 9:4 and 7, 11:4), the Sons of Korah saw God's throne (Psalm 45:6, 47:8), Ethan the Ezrahite saw God's throne (Psalm 89:14), Jeremiah saw God's throne (Lamentations 5:19), Ezekiel saw God's throne (Ezekiel 1:26, 10:1), Daniel saw God's throne (Daniel 7:9), and the Apostle John saw God's throne (Revelation 4:1-11). In fact, the book of Revelation may as well be called 'the book of God's throne,' because God's throne is specifically mentioned more than 35 times in that book!" – https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/guzik_david/StudyGuide2017-Isa/Isa-6.cfm?a=685001, accessed June, 2017.