Sermon Tone Analysis

Opening Prayer

Let’s open with prayer.

If you have a prayer concern, just offer it up out loud in this space.

It can be a situation, a need, a family member or friend.

When I sense we are finished I will close out our prayer.

Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Amen.

Introduction

We are in the season of the church year called Epiphany, meaning “to appear”.

This season celebrates the revelation of Jesus as the Savior of the world.

During Epiphany we’re doing a series called The Hope of Glory, and we continue to look at how Jesus revealed his glory, and what this epiphany means for us.

What happens when a person encounters the Divine?

This morning we are going to look in parallel at two different people, separated by centuries, who encountered the Divine and how this encounter changed the course of their life.

To say that coming into God’s presence is life-changing is an understatement.

I’ve called the message Gone Fishing because, in the end, this is where Divine encounter leads.

When we come face to face with God we discover a new way to be human, what we were meant to be all along.

Ultimately, encountering the Divine changes us into agents of God’s grace.

Divine revelation

Isaiah and Peter share very little in common.

Isaiah, with his access to the kings of Israel, likely came from an aristocratic family.

He was accustomed to palaces and places of power.

Peter was a commercial fisherman.

He had never set foot in a palace his entire life, nor would he want to.

And yet even though they are separated by hundreds of years, they share a very similar encounter with God.

These encounters start completely differently.

Isaiah is likely at the Temple Mount when he has his vision, probably there for a time of worship or prayer.

He sees the God of Israel seated on his throne in heaven, but his throne room extends to the Temple on earth.

He is surrounded by angelic beings who call out responsively to one another, “Holy, holy, holy.”

His moment of Divine revelation was in a context of worship, and we are gripped by what must have been a moment of holy awe as God shows up, filling the Temple and shaking its very foundations.

Peter, on the other hand, is just trying to mind his own business.

He’d been fishing all night, frustrated that they had caught nothing, and now all he wanted to do was get his nets cleaned for the next night and go home and rest.

And they God showed up, producing another moment of holy awe.

But this is different, because it is a Divine encounter that is especially for Peter, a fisherman.

Having caught nothing, Jesus presses Peter to try one more time, and he snares so many fish in his net that they begin to break and he has to ask his partners to come help.

God showed up for Peter in the form of fishes.

The first lesson from these passages is that God is one who delights to reveal himself.

But he does it in ways that are consistent with who we are.

Had God shown himself to Peter the same way he showed himself to Isaiah, Peter might not have even known or understood what he was seeing.

He would be impressed, but would likely have missed what God was doing.

God wants to - and is - revealing himself to you, but it may not be in ways that are flashy.

Most often his revelation comes as a still, small voice only detectable to you, only discernable by you, because it is his revelation to you.

And the first thing we must ask ourselves is whether we are listening.

When God speaks, when he reveals, are my ears open?

Divine holiness

Isaiah and Peter have very similar reactions to encountering the Divine.

They are both filled with a sense of their own sin and unworthiness.

Upon seeing God in the Temple, Isaiah cries out, “Woe is me!

I am lost.”

Peter responds in the same way when he says, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.”

When coming face to face with God, both feel the chasm that separates God from them.

They know that He is holy, and they are not.

One of the things that happens when God draws near to us is that we are sometimes swamped with our own feelings of unworthiness and inadequacy.

In the presence of perfect holiness, we are laid bare as sinners.

We aren’t sinners simply because we’ve broken a moral code; we are sinners in that we have fallen far short of what God intended for us when he made us human.

We have forsaken our role as image bearers, and we have been deformed into beings that are now, in one sense, anti-human - at least anti-human compared to God’s original intent.

We feel this chasm of separation, but we need to be careful to understand that it is not God who separates from us because of sin; it is we who separate from him.

Like our first parents, we want to deal with our sin on our own and hide it from God.

But God will have none of that; he draws us out, exposing us, not to shame but to heal.

God looks upon us at our worst and declares that he will not condemn but restore.

God’s holiness is always redemptive.

Are you carrying a weight of sin? Are you under condemnation from self because of what you’ve done?

God is saying to you now “don’t hide”.

Instead, draw near in this moment of Divine encounter so that you may have this burden lifted.

Divine grace

Isaiah’s and Peter’s stories lead to a moment of Divine grace.

Isaiah graphically sees God remove his guilt as the seraph touches his mouth with a hot coal.

He understand that he has now been purified, his sins blotted out.

He has been restored to God through his grace.

Peter hears instead of sees grace.

After confessing himself a sinner, he hears Jesus simply say, “Do not be afraid.”

Both of these men have the gospel applied to their lives.

They receive grace and mercy.

But more than that, they are liberated from the anti-human forces that have controlled their lives and that have kept them from being and becoming who God made them to be.

The gospel still changes lives.

In another reading for this Sunday, Paul reminds the Corinthians the gospel he preached to them:

1 Corinthians 15:3–5 (NRSV)

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared...

We tend to focus the gospel on the dying for sin bit - which Christ did die because of our sin.

But there’s a phrase Paul uses twice we shouldn’t ignore.

According to the Scriptures.

We are reminded in these phrases that Jesus is fulfilling a bigger story.

He is the promise made to the forefathers of blessing for the whole world.

The gospel gathers us into a larger story that isn’t just concerned with sin, but with destroying all the work of the devil, defeating death, and culminating in God coming to live with us again.

In the gospel, God is healing the world, and us with it.

The gospel holds out to you the forgiveness of all your sin.

The cleansing from your past.

But it also offers you hope for the future.

The gospel of Jesus makes you a true human again.

Divine call

After their revelation of Divine love and grace, God now sets Isaiah and Peter on a new path.

God rhetorically asks, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”

And Isaiah, after meeting God and receiving grace, responds, “Here I am; send me!” Peter is more told than asked, yet we know his acceptance is still voluntary.

Jesus simply tells him, “from now on you will be catching people.”

Encountering God put Isaiah and Peter’s life on a new track; we could say they have a new vocation.

They have now become agents of God’s grace to others.

When we truly have an encounter with God, it puts our life back on track.

We are reminded and released back to our original vocation as image-bearers.

You were made to be God’s representative.

You were made to spread his love and justice.

Sin has marred that image-bearing capacity; the gospel has restored it.