Trinity Sunday - Sent

Scripture: Isaiah 6:1-8

Isaiah 6:1–8 NIV

1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” 4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. 5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

5/26/2024

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Graduation Celebration

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Week 4: Ministry Celebration (Graduates)

Opening Prayer:

Jesus, lead us to do as You will. Holy Spirit, strengthen us for the work of Your Kingdom. Blessed Trinity, fill this place and us with Your presence. Heavenly Father, lead us into the world You love and help us to glorify You in all that we do.

Sent

Simple and Intricate

Cognitive Science shows that most people can only pay attention to a maximum of three to five things at once. Most days, three things at once are probably pushing it for me. While we sometimes take pride in our ability to multitask, the law of diminishing returns shows us that the more we put on our plate at once, the less careful focus and attention each item gets.

We have tricks that we learn to help us keep on top of our more intricate work. We set timers on our stoves and microwaves so we don’t have to watch that food constantly. We use written recipes or instructions on our projects to guide us along each step of the way so we don’t have to figure it all out ourselves. Perhaps our most famous multitasking tool is the shopping list that allows us to get into and out of Walmart with the things we need instead of everything else we find there. I suspect the psychological warfare of moving the aisles around occasionally overwhelms our focusing ability and shifts us from fulfilling our mission, leaving us vulnerable to whatever they have prominently displayed on their sales racks.

It occurs in music as well. Almost every hymn has only two melodies to learn: a verse and a chorus, and some of the oldest ones only have one. They may have twenty verses, but the same two tunes cover them all. Some of the songs you hear on the radio might have up to three melodies. Then, there is Bohemian Rhapsody, which breaks all those rules.

But it is not just things we create. It is in nature itself. We cannot memorize and recognize the stars in the sky, but when we group them in constellations, we can navigate them. We can search from elements to molecules, atoms, and the tiny particles that make up everything.

And then there is God. Our God, who is greater and more intricate than all of creation combined, and yet somehow simpler and purer as well. We have at least 6,000 years of history in our Bibles that testify to Who God is, which He revealed over the millennia. Today, we celebrate Trinity Sunday as a kind of graduation of our understanding of God - finally experiencing Him as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Three aspects, for those of us on the low end of focusing ability, but held together as one God.

God is simpler and more intricate than our minds can ever fully fathom, but He reveals Himself to us in those three persons, like a song with a verse, a chorus, and a bridge that brings you back to this song that never ends. He is like a song that calls us to sing to and with Him, filling ourselves with His presence as God calls us to go to those who will not come to Him.

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Caught Up

Our passage begins with a date. King Uzziah, the king of Judah, was one of the more decent kings in the history of God’s people, but he contracted a skin disease that left him confined to the palace. After several years of peace and complacency, the Assyrian Empire raised up a new emperor far fiercer than any other before him. He planned to mow through Israel and all their small neighboring nations on his way to conquer Egypt. The people desperately hoped King Uzziah would find a way to keep them safe. The date that this passage begins with is the year that King Uzziah died.

In the year that their hope in the nation’s leadership died, Isaiah was caught up into heaven, into God’s throne room, into the true Holy of Holies that made the Temple in Jerusalem seem like a child’s playhouse. This experience was the real deal. And there, in the presence of God, Isaiah saw that God was so great that the hem of his robe, the very bottom piece of it, filled the entire Temple.

Angels and heavenly creatures surrounded God, singing Holy, Holy, Holy. In English, when we want to compare things, we add -er to the end of the word to make it holier. Hebrew grammar does not do that. Instead, it repeats the word for emphasis. So, the Holy Holy Temple is the one holier than the single Holy Temple. But of God, they sing Holy Holy Holy - three times, indicating the holiest of all. And there at the foot of God’s throne stood tiny Isaiah, a simple priest of God, desperate and without hope, stupefied in God’s presence, and realizing that there was something in this beautiful picture that did not belong: him.

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Sin Complications

Isaiah cries, “Woe to me, for I am ruined!” Like the Hebrew people at the foot of Mt. Sinai, afraid to even touch the mountain out of fear of God’s holiness, Isaiah knows he is doomed. He wholeheartedly believes that sinners cannot stand in God’s presence.

Isaiah recognized his sin, specifically that he had “unclean lips” and was from a people of “unclean lips.” I don’t know if this was a reference to eating unclean food or, more likely, speaking with language not in line with godliness. Perhaps, in contrast to the praise lifted before God, Isaiah realizes that his sinful nature taints everything from His mouth. He cannot even praise and thank God without messing it up with sin.

Have you been there? Have you found yourself surprised by God’s presence and then turned your eyes back upon yourself, feeling unworthy and like you just wanted to melt into the floor? A part of you knows this is the best place in the world to be, but another part of you is itching to get away from God as quickly as possible. That was Isaiah, and as a priest, he knew better than most how good God was and how sinful he was.

But one who can praise God, one burning with the praise of God, comes to His rescue and takes a lump of hot coal with a pair of tongs, pressing it to Isaiah’s lips. Dr. Oswalt suggests that this might be the charred remains of the sacrificial lamb, given as a burning sacrifice, at the altar of God. It sears Isaiah’s lips painfully, forgiving and freeing him of that sin.

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Sent

Finally forgiven and free from that sin, Isaiah can look back up at God again. He catches a new vision of Who God is: enormous and more intricate than He can grasp with his eyes or his mind, yet simple and pure in His nature of majesty and love. As he experiences this vision, He overhears God expressing the problem of His people, conquered by sin, in need of salvation - not from Assyria, but from their sinful nature. Looking around the throneroom of heaven, at all those praising Him, God asks, “Whom shall I send?”

Isaiah replies, “Here I am, send me.”

No one knows the distance between the broken, sinful, desperate people and the holiness of God better than Isaiah. No one knows the experience of being caught up by God unawares, saved by grace, without even asking for it, and welcomed into God’s loving arms. No one knows better than this prophet how great God’s love is for His people and how tiny their problems are compared to God. So Isaiah says, “Here I am, send me.”

The vision of God, Who He is, shows us who we are when we allow Him to work and shape us in His image, a people after His own heart. As he transforms us, we see the mission before us in bringing other broken, sinful people, just like us, into God’s presence to be forgiven and transformed. It comes across in so many different ways, with grace given in the perfect measure for each individual who comes to God, moment by moment. We could never fully understand how God’s grace works, any more than we could predict how many raindrops will fall and where they will land each day. But we know what grace does when it shows up, and we can see God moving in, around, and through us. We know each drop of rain comes from heaven with a specific purpose to accomplish, and God calls us to do even more than the raindrops.

Isaiah would have to stay focused on that vision to fulfill this mission. If he lost sight of that Holy, Holy, Holy God and God’s love for creation, if he forgot his own sin, the grace that brought him forgiveness, and the invitation to be in God’s presence, he would fail. He would lose the only thing He had to offer. Isaiah was not the savior of His people. The verses that follow this passage tell us that God’s message for him to carry would not win them over to the Lord but would instead harden their hearts. The enemy would indeed come and mow them over until they were nothing but dead stumps and dry bones, and it was only then that a shoot would sprout from one of those stumps named Jesse. A child of his branch, and yet not entirely, would be born in the city of David, who would not only bring the message of salvation but would be that message brought to life - God’s word made flesh.

It would have been easy for Isaiah to try to fix his people, save them from the enemy, or even get them to stop sinning. But God gave him a different message to focus on. He gave Isaiah that vision of heaven, perfect peace, and harmony, filled with God’s presence and love, and let him know that surrender was the only way to get from here to there.

We are more apt to fight. When two or three gather together, you will have differences of opinion. We try to avoid inevitable conflict by preventing the gathering and keeping our experience of God to ourselves—or, even more, our lack of experience with God. We can keep our ignorance and shame a secret if we keep quiet and fight it ourselves. Most of all, we fight against God’s attempts to draw us into His presence by keeping ourselves busy doing things for Him instead of working with Him and leading others to Him. We run from that because we think we are incapable of that call, even if it comes from God Himself.

But God doesn’t demand that we go or bring His message to His people. When God calls us to lead others, He shows us his heart. His gentleness leads us to repentance, and his compassion compels us to take his light into the dark world we know too well.

You know the sin that breaks the world. You see the darkness and evil that consume the people God loves. You know this because you’ve been there and experienced the love of Jesus in some way that convinced you to let Him rescue you and follow Him into God’s presence.

You don’t have the wisdom, training, experience, or righteousness to save the world or even one person. But you have at least one experience with God you can share with those He sends you to. You may not have to go far, either. He may well send you to your own people. You don’t have to do many things. You only have to do one thing.

When God calls you into His presence, will you go?

Will you allow His grace to forgive and transform you?

Will you be His messenger and share what you have seen and heard while you are in the presence of Jesus?

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank You for seeing us when we are lost, desperate, fearful, and consumed by darkness. Thank You for giving Your all to save us from our sins. Thank You for calling us to follow You into God’s presence and sharing Your heart and love for the whole world with us. We confess we do not love like You. We don’t even think we could if we tried. But we can carry the message of Your love and share our experience with everyone You send us to so they can experience the glory and goodness of Who You are with us. We are many people with complicated lives. Help us to find our pure and holy focus in You. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

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