Holy, Holy, Holy (2)

Big Idea: A true vision of God's holiness undoes us, cleanses us, and sends us.

Outline

Seeing the Lord (vv. 1–4)

Being Undone and Confessing (v. 5)

Being Cleansed (vv. 6–7)

Being Sent (v. 8)

Good morning Trinity. It is a blessing to be here again with you. For those who I have not had the pleasure of meeting, my name is Luke Long and I serve on staff at the Association. My goal this morning is to simply preach the Word of God. And more than anything else, I find this sermon to be a sermon of reminder.

▶ PREACH THE REMINDER, NOT A NEW THING.

You know I come to find, although there are endless sermons to preach, they often speak to a certain aspect of who we are as either saints, sinners, or sufferers. Sometimes we need encouragement as saints. Encouragement to keep going. Encouragement to remain faithful. Encouragement to stay the course.

Other times, we need a sermon as the sinners we are. We need conviction for our sins. We need correction for where we have gone wrong. We need reassurance that there is a Savior.

Then again, other times we need a sermon as the sufferers that we are. We need comfort in our time of struggle and pain. We need to feel the love of Christ when there seems to be none. And we just need peace that surpasses all understanding.

So we are room of saints, sinners, and sufferers this morning each in our own way, in need of reminders. And I submit to you that this morning there is truth to be found in all of those areas.

Our text this morning comes from Isaiah 6. Feel free to turn there this morning if you have a Bible and as you are turning I want to frame this message under a big idea: A true vision of God's holiness undoes, cleanses, and sends us.

So as we begin, I want to build some context for you. Isaiah is an interesting book for numerous reasons and from it come scriptures that have stood the test of time in many ways.

Just a glance and we see that Isaiah writes these famous scriptures:

Isaiah 9:6 "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

Isaiah 53:5 "But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed."

Isaiah 40:31 "but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint."

Isaiah 40:8 "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever."

And these great truths that Isaiah speaks are of great significance to us because first and foremost it is the Word of God, but also because these prophetic truths and wise sayings come from an individual who has spent great time with the Lord.

So we turn to the book and this is what Isaiah says. We're going to break this text into four parts this morning and work through it to reach our big idea.

So we look to Isaiah 6:1 "In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple."

You will notice that this scene came when the King Uzziah died. Some 742 years before Christ.

A man who took the throne at the age of 16 years old. A young man who was bound for greatness. A man who possessed great skill.

2 Chronicles 26:4 "And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that his father Amaziah had done."

2 Chronicles 26:5 "He set himself to seek God in the days of Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear of God, and as long as he sought the Lord, God made him prosper."

This man had great potential and his potential was realized.

2 Chronicles 26:8 "The Ammonites paid tribute to Uzziah, and his fame spread even to the border of Egypt, for he became very strong."

2 Chronicles 26:15–16 "In Jerusalem he made machines, invented by skillful men, to be on the towers and the corners, to shoot arrows and great stones. And his fame spread far, for he was marvelously helped, till he was strong. But when he was strong, he grew proud, to his destruction. For he was unfaithful to the Lord his God and entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense."

As he raged, the man was given leprosy. And he died a social outcast, and in a house not of the temple and far from the temple.

There is a lesson here for us all tonight. Lest we become greatly helped and greatly useful, we become very proud and very useless.

What may be true of an individual is also true of a fellowship, a church.

CONSIDER THE STATE OF ISRAEL

The prosperity of Israel that had occurred for 52 years was gone. The man that reflected God's favor was dead. This is the scenario Isaiah is witnessing.

This morning, we live in a world where we are constantly let down by the governing powers of the world. And so this morning we must take our eyes off of Capital Hill, off of the news casters, and from the assumption that the future of the world lies there.

The things that really matter in a divine history are found in a different place.

▶ KING UZZIAH IS DEAD—NOW LOOK UP.

This lies the first of our four parts.

The Throneroom

Isaiah 6:1 "In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple."

The king had fallen, the kingdom of Israel was in disarray, but God was in place.

As the hymn says: Kingdoms may rise, kingdoms may fall, Nations refuse to heed God's call, But the Word of the Lord endureth forevermore.

And Isaiah turns to the Lord in the midst of great need.

Perhaps the greatest need for believers this morning is a sight of God. A true sight of God.

For we have created gods of all kinds. Gods of materials. Gods of assurance. Gods of technology.

And we must ask ourselves, how to remove ourselves from these gods?

We must see the Lord.

And when we see the Lord God, we will see God as Isaiah saw him. Seated on a throne. Reigning over the world.

You at times it may not seem as if the Lord is reigning but he is.

And when we see him, he will not be on a cross. He will not be in a tomb. We will see him high and lifted up. Full of glory.

And when we see him in his place, we will see him as he is.

▶ GOD IS TOO SMALL—LET'S SEE HIM HIGH AND LIFTED UP.

You know the reason we struggle to see God as He is, is because our God is too small. Perhaps that is because of the finite part of our humanity. Perhaps that is because of the culture that surrounds us. But Isaiah points out that the God we serve is high and lifted up.

And this is the God we serve. And when we understand the person he is and the presence he belongs in, we see that he is holy, holy, holy.

Consider the Wizard of Oz, where a great team of four travail around the earth and they are summoned in a type of throneroom where this booming voice comes in…

It says that the train of his robe filled the temple. In this case, the train of the robe signifies the Lord's enormous and majestic presence. In other words, you will not and cannot miss him. He is the center of this room. All attention is on him.

And above are these seraphim. Now seraphim are these supernatural angelic beings. And these are not your hallmark cartoonish angels. The creatures have six wings. Two that cover their face likely out of reverence for God. Two that cover their feet which likely references modesty. And the last two by which they can fly and serve the Lord.

So in this throne room scene God is present, seated on his throne and the angels are above him in flight with one calling to another. And as they cry out to one another they say: Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory."

And more so, they say it three times. And for the Israelites who read this, it would have been obvious what was going on. Because the repetition of a word three times was to symbolize completion. In other words the angels are crying out that God is the most holy. The most supreme. The most set apart. This is the most sure truth about our God.

And although he is unapproachable in his godliness, the second line reveals a very interesting part of who God is. The angels cry out holy and state that "the whole earth is full of his glory." So even though he is that holy, he willingly reveals himself to his creation. His glory, his utter reality and splendor, fills the earth.

What a picture of who God is. And we are witnessing a glimpse of what Isaiah is seeing. And to make things even more powerful, the angels cry out joyful praise in such a way that the foundation of the threshold shake at the voice of him who called and the house is filled with smoke.

This is the scene that is being set and we get our first action.

2. Isaiah is undone and confesses (v. 5)

Verse 5 says, "And I (Isaiah) 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!'"

▶ YOU WILL NEVER SEE YOUR SIN UNTIL YOU SEE HIS GLORY.

Brothers and sisters do not miss this. Because although many of you may not have this crazy of an interaction with God in your earthly life, the pattern remains the same. You will never understand the depth of your sin, until you begin to understand the greatness of our God.

Isaiah enters the room with Uzziah on his mind and the mess that he had made. And yet when he saw the Lord, he forgot about Uzziah and remembered himself.

Perhaps it is like a dirty, dirty room that we clean.

Perhaps the great evidence of Scripture that a man or woman has seen Christ is not by the strange and bizarre stories about what happened, but will be found in the humility to grips their lives and to see themselves as they are.

Not my wife, not my siblings, not my children, not my neighbors, not my boss; but to see me Luke Long as I really am, as I see the Lord and witness his holiness. And I know that if I were truthful to witness the Lord in his glory, I would see myself as I am — a sinner.

Isaiah says, "Woe is me! For I am lost." That statement woe is me was a sign of the fear of judgment. Jesus in the gospel uses the same phrase to describe the sinfulness of the Pharisees. And then Isaiah says "For I am lost." The phrase literally means I am silenced. Isaiah is at a loss of words because the display of God's glory has shown who God is and who he is and there's a vast difference.

This being undone leads Isaiah to only one thing. To confess.

▶ NOTHING CHANGED EXCEPT THE LIGHT.

Your scene is like dust in a room. Many of you have probably experienced this where you're sitting in your house that's rather clean and a shaft of afternoon light comes through the window and suddenly the air is full of dust you never knew was there. Nothing changed except the light. Isaiah may have certainly been like Noah, an upright man among a people of great sin, yet the instant he stands in the light of God's holiness, his first word is not admiration, it was terror. All because he was unclean.

You see, brothers and sisters, in the presence of God degrees of sin become irrelevant. It is the holiness of God which reveals to us our true condition, not comparison with others.

And so, Isaiah drops any comparison of others and says: I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of unclean lips." Now that's an awfully strange thing to say is it not? Does he mean to say that he hasn't been brushing his teeth. Or more realistically, that he has been cursing too much.

No. In the Old Testament, they saw things as they were. They were simple folk. And in their minds, the heart was the moral guide in a person's being. That decided whether you would do good or bad. And the lips or the mouth was the avenue by which words were spoken and the heart was revealed. In other words, Isaiah is admitting the severe heart issue.

And this really communicates two things to us. First, he was admitting a general sinfulness about his life. But he was also expressing how unfit he felt to use his mouth for God's purposes.

What was thought to be a clean room by their own standard had been revealed to be full of dust in every nook and cranny. There was no escaping it. And he ends this confession by giving the reason for how he knows this: "for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!"

The King of Israel is dead and a new one is soon to rise, but that is of little concern to Isaiah. He has taken a glimpse upon the true king and that changes everything.

Now if we were to end the story there. That's kind of sad isn't it. To see God and feel destitute and unworthy. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do.

And yet our God is a God of grace. A God that recognizes our great sin and makes a way.

That leads to our third point.

3. Isaiah is cleansed (vv. 6–7)

The passage continues: "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.'"

▶ THE ALTAR IS EMPTY BECAUSE CALVARY IS FINISHED.

Notice that this coal is taken from the altar. The place where sacrifices were made. And yet today there is no true altar at the church today because the place of sacrifice was taken care at Calvary. There is no need to have an altar here for there is no sacrifice to be made. Rather we as Christians look to a table, a rather ordinary table at times, and take the Lord's supper as we remember that it was the cross where the true sacrifice was made.

Has the Lord touched you? Has God touched your life? Do you remember when God touched you at the greatest time of need?

In the story of Isaiah, God touched his lips and transformed his life.

Friends, this world today needs people with touched lips, with transformed lives.

The verse says: 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."

How did Isaiah get from here am I send me from in the year King Uzziah died.

I submit to you that it does not occur unless they have seen the Lord.

You see when we say Lord Here I Am without the other steps happening first, we are out of order.

Our Fourth Point: Isaiah is Sent

▶ ONLY THE CLEANSED CAN TRULY SAY "SEND ME."

When we notice the order of Isaiah, we see that he is undone, but that God doesn't tell him to clean himself up. The coal is brought to him; cleansing comes to the one who cannot cleanse himself, and only then comes the call.

Our God is a God of cleansing and he desires to make you clean today. He desires to give you purpose today. He desires to give you a wonderful task which is to share the good news of Jesus wherever you go!

Isaiah's sins have been atoned for, but that doesn't mean he will never sin again. He will have struggles when no one listens to him. He will have doubts and fears. He may on multiple occasions lose his confidence in the Lord. And yet, God will hold him fast. What Isaiah sees in his sin as a permanent problem, God sees as a problem that he can fix, a problem that he can mend and make anew.

And the reality is that he can do that in each and every one of our lives this morning.

It is not that there is not harvest to go to. But that there are not enough who have been sent. We must pray to the Lord.

▶ WHICHEVER QUESTION YOU'RE STUCK ON—START THERE.

So brothers and sisters have you seen the Lord? Have you cried out woe is me!? Has he touched your lips? Have you said Here I am Send me?

Whichever question you're stuck on this morning is where you must begin, and the reality is that if you are on the last, continue on that mission until in the most realest sense of the phrase you come to the end of your life with all joy, humility, and authenticity you can say once again "I saw the Lord."

▶ END WHERE ISAIAH BEGAN: "I SAW THE LORD."

That is the hope that we all long for. That is the hope we all live for.

Jesus says in Matthew 9:37–38 "Then he said to his disciples, 'The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.'"