Yahweh's Call
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Isaiah 6:8.
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.”
The usage of “us” has two possible meanings. For Isaiah and his audience, it was God using the “royal we”. He was speaking as kings did when addressing their subjects. For us who are reading the OT through the progressive revelation of the NT, we can read this “us” to reference Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Either way, God has placed a call on Isaiah.
The voice of the Lord is calling to each of his children. “Who shall I send, and who will go for us?”
He is calling to you and me. He is calling us to be his envoys in this world (2 Corinthians 5:20). We are to live and speak his message to a world that has ears and eyes, but often refuses to see and hear.
We are to be his ambassadors in our homes.
We are to be his ambassadors in our work.
We are to be his ambassadors in our neighborhood.
We are to be his ambassadors in our village.
We are to be his ambassadors in our county.
We are to be his ambassadors in our state.
We are to be his ambassadors in our country.
We are to be his ambassadors in our world.
Being the envoy of Yahweh is daunting. Yet if we dwell in his presence, he will work through us, making us vessels of grace to those who hear and see, and messengers of judgment for those who harden their hearts to his message.
Will you respond to Yahweh’s call? Will you say, “Here I am! Send me.”? For he is calling all of his children to go.
Isaiah 6:9-13 gives us the message and its results.
And he said, “Go, and say to this people:
“ ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
Make the heart of this people dull,
and their ears heavy,
and blind their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”
Then I said, “How long, O Lord?”
And he said:
“Until cities lie waste
without inhabitant,
and houses without people,
and the land is a desolate waste,
and the Lord removes people far away,
and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.
And though a tenth remain in it,
it will be burned again,
like a terebinth or an oak,
whose stump remains
when it is felled.”
The holy seed is its stump.
This message is a three-fold prophecy.
The first fulfillment is Isaiah's message to Israel and Judah, who continued to harden their hearts against Yahweh. Jeremiah 5 makes this abundantly clear.
“Hear this, O foolish and senseless people,
who have eyes, but see not,
who have ears, but hear not.
Do you not fear me? declares the Lord.
Do you not tremble before me?
I placed the sand as the boundary for the sea,
a perpetual barrier that it cannot pass;
though the waves toss, they cannot prevail;
though they roar, they cannot pass over it.
But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart;
they have turned aside and gone away.
The result is that they are carried away into captivity by the Babylonians in 586 BC (2 Kings 25). 2 Kings 25:12 speaks of the tenth that are left, thus fulfilling this prophecy’s first fulfillment.
The second fulfilment is in Jesus’ ministry on earth and Israel’s rejection of the Messiah. Jesus states this in Matthew 13:14-15, Mark 4:12, Luke 8:10, and the Apostle John states it in John 12:37-40.
Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
“Lord, who has believed what he heard from us,
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”
Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said,
“He has blinded their eyes
and hardened their heart,
lest they see with their eyes,
and understand with their heart, and turn,
and I would heal them.”
The nation of Israel was once again dispersed by the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD by the Romans. See Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Book 6.
The third fulfillment of this message is in process, and it applies to us.
Paul writes this to Timothy 1 Timothy 4:1–5
1 Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons,
2 through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared,
3 who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.
4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving,
5 for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.
A seared conscience in one that does not hear or see the work of God and thus does not seek repentance. Paul also addresses this in Romans 1:18–32.
God has called us to speak and live his message. Many will reject that message for their hearts are hard, and God has not chosen to soften them through the work of the Holy Spirit.
This does not excuse us from the call, and it will definitely have us calling out with Isaiah, “How long, O Lord?”
For Isaiah, the call was until he died, for he did not see the judgment of Israel.
For Jesus, the call was until his death, which saved us all.
For us, the call is until we die or see Jesus and are transformed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.
This event will begin the Day of the Lord, in which God will judge the world and restore the remnant of Israel, from which Jesus the Messiah will rule and reign for a thousand years, thus fulfilling the promises God made to Abraham thousands of years ago.
Many of us are reluctant to the call; we are like Moses or Jeremiah who make excuses.
We want to be liked. This is often so strong a desire in us that we choose silence over the proclamation of God’s message.
We quickly forget that the world hates Jesus and thus hates us, for we represent him (John 15).
Church, may we be like Isaiah, who, in spite of the challenge, stands up and says, “Here I am! Send me.”
