Waiting develops us. There are too many times we become impatient, we move and make things more difficult.
We would say the timing has to be right. Then I said, here I am, send me. Now what I really like about this is that he didn't think about stepping forward, he stepped forward. He didn't volunteer. Well here the prophet is volunteering. He's not afraid to volunteer.
He's there to serve. We look at Paul, we say, man, he's a hero. But his sins tell another story. And then Paul adds, who will deliver me from this body of death? And then he goes on to say, thank God for Jesus Christ.
Essentially that's what he then says. I'm delivered by a Savior. He says, here in verse 5, because I'm a man of unclean lips. Well the sinner, like the leper, has to cry unclean. And sin makes us lepers. It makes us blind. And if it doesn't make us blind, it certainly blurs our vision. You know, when you like a sin, you can lose judgment trying to defend it, trying to keep it and tell, well it's really not that bad.
And you know, you go down that road. But Leviticus 13, now the leper on whom the sore is, his clothes shall be torn and his head bare, and he shall cover his mustache and cry unclean, unclean. Here's Isaiah said, woe is me, I'm a man of unclean lips. So as wicked as people of his day were, the prophet was well aware of his own impurity. This tells us he's not self-righteous with what he is about to say through the rest of his prophecy is not coming from a man who is unconscious of his own shortcomings. And yet, at the same time, he's saying, but that doesn't disqualify me in and of itself from being a messenger. Yeah, I got my issues, but here's the message. And the message doesn't come from me. Because Satan will do this, as his parents, you know, you see your child do something and say, well I used to do it too when I was a boy, so it's okay. No, it may not be okay. It may be very bad.
And you just can't, you know, you still have to process what's the best way to handle this and not dismiss it. And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. So he says, I'm bringing everybody with me. Because they're guilty. Earth is loaded with these types of people.
It always has been. It's loaded with unclean people. Christ died for sinners because there's no other type of people. And it is what the world doesn't want to hear, but they better hear it. Lost sinners, and they're not wanting to hear it, they have a defective view of their uncleanliness. Many of them don't believe they're unclean enough to be just sent to hell. And others just confuse it all the way along.
But we're supposed to help them. He says, for my eyes have seen the king, Yahweh of hosts, always humble and ready to serve as this man. It takes just a glance at God to know one's guilt.
It takes also that glance to understand his mercy. When Peter, who I will never deny you, and he denies him, Luke picks up the story. And Luke writes, And the Lord turned and looked at Peter, right when he denied him three times in the rooster crowed. Then Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.
So Peter went out and wept bitterly. He's just completely, woe is me. I'm unclean.
I blew it. He's right. The Lord is right. And it's just this love. There's all these things happening in Peter. Oh man, I would not want to be in that spot.
And yet, it is a beautiful spot to be in if that's what is required. And that's what happened. Anyway, just Peter, that looked. And the Lord, it says, And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. That's all he had to do. He didn't have to say a word. And I don't think there's any frown on his face.
Just a look of love. Verse 6, Then one of the seraphim flew to me, and having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with tongues from the altar. Well, this confession launched a solution. Woe is me.
I'm doomed. That's confession. But there's no confession without conviction.
Isaiah was convinced he was doomed. And so he confesses it. And that brings the cleansing.
The alliteration just happens to be there in the English. The conviction, confession, the cleansing. Well, it's not a forced fit. The seraph became a ministering spirit on behalf of the prophet. So Paul writes, Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation? Well, that fits Isaiah perfectly.
Where would Paul get something like that? Well, not only Isaiah. There are other stories in the scriptures that have the same effect. God heard the sigh of the sinner. Woe is me.
It's a big part. Could have named this woe is me, but, you know, there's too much more to it. So where do you go? There's so much in here. The song of the seraphs is interrupted by the confession of the sinner. They're holy, holy, holy. And then he makes this confession. Okay, church is over for a minute. And they get down to business. And they address the sinner.
Of course, all under the authority of God. This is the vision that he is getting. So worship is paused in order that the doomed sinner may be answered, having in his hand a live coal. That means this is hot, which he had taken with the tongues from the altar. This is likely the incense altar. There are two places of fire.
One flaming. That would be the brazen altar with flamings where the blood sacrifices were offered. And then as you went inside into the temple, there would be the golden altar where the incense was offered. But how did that incense lie? Well, they put the incense on the hot coals. And that would have the smoke ascend up to heaven, representing the prayers of God's people. Well, Isaiah is in the throne room of God. He's not outside where a brazen altar would be found. This is why I believe it is the incense altar. And it has everything to do with his prayer, which is baked into his, I am unclean, woe is me.
I am undone. There is an appeal in that. That confession is a prayer. And God receives it that way.
And this altar, the golden one, was where the nation's prayers were received. So fire from the altar speaks of God's response, well, sometimes in wrath, sometimes in purification, as it is here. And other times, the fire speaks of his presence with the smoke, as when the law was given and it was smoke on the mountain. Because that's where God was.
Who's causing that smoke up there? It was God. So, Elijah, then you call in the name of your gods, and I will call in the name of Yahweh. And the God who answers by fire, he is God. So all the people answered and said is well spoken. And Isaiah said, I don't need you to tell me that. No, he didn't say that.
But he could have. Anyhow, there's a picture, the God who answers by fire. And this is an answer. This is a response. Not necessarily to a question, but which it was, what was me, I am undone, O wretched man that I am.
It is a response to a need, an answer to a problem. Verse 7, And he touched my mouth with it and said, Behold, this has touched your lips, your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged. Well, if he's going to speak as God's messenger, those lips need to be purged. And this is contact. He touched my mouth with it.
Contact. But what was too hot for the seraphim to handle the lips of the prophet could take it. He had to use the tongs. This is illustrative. I mean, his feathers would catch on fire if he knew. Wings, never mind. This is all meant to tell us something.
It's not so we could skim over it and say, oh, look at that. The angel used tongs, the seraphim used tongs, but the prophet, it was no problem. Well, why? Well, because he's fit for ministry. I believe, I believe very strongly that we are fit to deal with the curse of being sinners. Otherwise, we wouldn't have a chance. God, when man fell into sin, God says they can make it through this if they want to.
If they do it my way, they'll make it through this. It's sort of God saying, you know, you need to jump off the roof into my hands. I will catch you. And if you don't trust me, then you're going to be doomed. You're stuck. Let's just say the roof's on fire.
You've got to put something on there to make you have to jump. Well, anyway, behold, this has touched your lips. So he makes it very clear.
There's no guessing. He's telling him that he knows what's happening to him. And Isaiah is, of course, he's going to write this down into this prophecy. And the vision, this vision is something that the other prophets don't seem to have. We don't read about Elijah going through this. They had their own experiences. We don't read of Daniel going through this. He had his experiences.
So it's not mandatory, not a mandatory cookie-cut calling. This was for Isaiah, the one who spoke more about the Messiah than any of the prophets. Your iniquity is taken away and your sin is purged. The spiritual cleansing that prepped him for service. Now, this is not for salvation.
He's already saved. This is for serving. Your iniquity is taken away, your sin is purged.
That could be for anything. It applies to whenever the Lord does it. But the context of all of this is the calling of the prophet. And letting him know, you are a sinner and you have to be purged of your sin. And it has to come from the throne of God.
This did not happen independent of these things. So God has to always make us fit to serve. And we notice that all Isaiah had to do was receive.
That's all he had to do. He wasn't told, give him the tongs, let him go take the coal off the... All he had to do was receive it after his confession. Verse 8, Also I heard the voice of the Lord, Adonai, not Yahweh, same person, but he is Lord in addition to being Yahweh, saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? And I said, here I am, send me.
Notice the plural pronoun us. This is the Godhead. It shows up in Genesis 1, let us make man in our own image. And again in Genesis 11, where the Lord comes down and speaks in the same manner. This doctrine of the Trinity, the Godhead that we know it to be, is not as explicit in the Old Testament, though it is there. In the New Testament, it's quite implicit, you're baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
So God is the same God in both Testaments, no question about that. But here he looks to send servants. But too often servants go without being sent before they've been developed by the Lord. Waiting develops us. Too many times we become impatient. We move and make things more difficult.
We would say the timing has to be right. Then I said, here I am, send me. Now what I really like about this is that he didn't think about stepping forward, he stepped forward. And the world teaches, well don't volunteer. Well here the prophet is volunteering. He's not afraid to volunteer. He's there to serve. And the Lord says, who will I send? And well, he's been cleansed. He's fit for duty. Isaiah, he stopped, no more woe is me.
Now he's acting on the call. And it is, you know, ministry is not something we do. Ministry is something God does through us, and we're seeing that happen in this section of Scripture. So to those who say, never volunteer, you can say, well if Christ had that attitude, we'd have no Savior. If Christ, if Isaiah had that, we'd have no book of Isaiah. Psalm 110, your people shall be volunteers in the day of your power in the beauties of holiness.
That has a future and a present application. Now we come to verse 9. And he said, go and tell 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 shut their eyes, lest they should see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and return and be healed. God just gave them the solution to salvation. See, listen, and return to God.
He just gave it to them. But is this packaged in satire, in sarcasm? These are inverted parallelism. You know, the meaning just switches around.
It gives vigor to the point that he is emphasizing. Any sane person will say, no, no, no, no, I'm going to listen. Any sane person will say, uh-uh, I am not going to be.
I am going to listen. And God, as I mentioned, notorious for using sarcasm in an effort to reach people. In Ezekiel 20, verse 39, he does the same thing, God speaking. As for you, O house of Israel, thus says Yahweh God, go serve every one of you his idols. Now, God is not going to tell people to go send idols, unless he is sarcastic. Like telling your child, go, go jump off the roof. No, don't do that. But, you know, so the God will say, no, I'm not going to do that.
It's crazy. So, this is, um, I love this when God does this in Scripture. We have to watch it, because we're not God. We can be just harming people if we're not careful. But some of it sometimes is very helpful to use the absurd, to jar someone, to appeal to their sense of reason. Verses 9 and 10 that I just read, they show up six times in the New Testament.
That's how important they are. In all the Gospels, it is repeated. In Acts and in Romans.
This is big stuff. So, he tells him in verse 9, go and tell this people. There's the commission to send him out. But before there's a go, there had to be a woe.
See, again, it works out in English. He had to say, woe is me. He had to say he was a sinner. That he wasn't, you know, well, I should be a pastor. I'm the smartest one here.
You know, I should. I'm more holy than everybody else. It makes perfect sense that I would be invited to be a board member, or I would be invited to lead the worship, because I am that good. Years ago, you'd say most people wouldn't talk like that.
Now, looking at all these self-absorbed folks, you wonder. Not in the church, I hope. Anyway, God says, he doesn't say they're my people. He said, go tell this people.
We've seen this before. He says, keep on hearing and do not understand. So, he calls the prophet, the prophet volunteers, and he says, okay, here's your message.
Go tell them that I love them, I have a plan for their life. Well, that's true, but that's not enough. You know, that's like sending someone on a journey with just water, and they have other needs too, and they're still going to die without it.
You've got to have, there's more to it. And this message that he is giving him is sort of like Samuel's first message. Samuel's first message was to tell his mentor that he was messed up and God was going to deal with him. That's what Samuel's first message was.
And here Isaiah is, I'll go, I'll go, good. Tell these people I'm going to slam them. And so, you know, what do the Rick Warrens do with messages like this from the Bible?
Edit them out. Don't tell congregations this. They might not come back Sunday.
Well, if that offends them to that point, you don't want them to come back on a Sunday. Paul said, listen, if you don't clean out this leaven in the church, it's going to wipe the church out. And so when you see a church of pastors exercising or disfellowshipping someone because of some sin that is not either confessed or dealt with, it is because the Bible teaches us this. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul says a little leaven leavens a lump. He's talking about a specific sexual sin. But if you let this go on in your congregation, it's going to spread through it.
And it worked with Paul. The person that was guilty repented and he was restored. Anyway, coming back to this, Isaiah 5, he already preached some of this.
One reason why I said the first five chapters were an introduction to everything else. And Isaiah gives you this segment here of his calling before he unloads the remaining chapters. In verse 5 of chapter 1, he says, God speaking, why should you be stricken again? You will revolt more and more.
The whole head is sick and the whole heart faints. So the prophet is, you know, he's on top of it. He's delivering his message. He says, keep on singing, do not perceive. Again, neither God nor the prophets are beyond sarcasm.
It is not meant to hurt but to expose. Paul quotes this passage in Acts like I mentioned. He says in Acts 28, he says, so when they did not agree among themselves after he preached about Christ to the Jewish people in Rome, they departed after Paul had said one word.
They departed after Paul had said one word. The Holy Spirit spoke rightly through Isaiah the prophet to our fathers. And he quotes this section. Therefore, what the Holy Spirit says, God says. Because Paul is saying what Yahweh was saying to Isaiah was the Holy Spirit saying it to Isaiah. Wait a minute, I thought you said Yahweh is Christ. That's right. It's the Trinity at work.
You're not going to get away from this. God is so tight. The Godhead is so woven together. They're inseparable.
They only are, and divided is not the right word, but presented to us in a triune form so we can get ahead around what's going on in the mind of God as He deals with us. The glory of the Father, the salvation of the Son, and the power of the Holy Spirit is hard enough to understand what God is all about. These things really help.
These presentations help a lot. Anyway, Spurgeon has an excellent quote I want to share. He says, the main reason why men are not persuaded to be Christian lies in their own hearts. It is not a flaw in the preacher's logic. It is a flaw in the hearer's nature. It is an error in the hearer's will. It is not that the reasonings are not powerful. It is that the man does not wish to feel their power and so endeavors to elude them.
He got that from me. He's saying the people that weren't listening to God are closing their ears and their eyes because they don't want to hear it. There's nothing wrong with the message that's delivered.
It's the recipient. And, you know, you can defeat some people with truth and they will tighten their grip on a lie. You've just disproved their entire religion and they won't give it up.
And I hate that. And I think with a righteous indignation that they will not succumb to truth. Integrity stands or falls on this. Naaman, he got it. But he had an abject lesson. Dionysus that we just read about in Acts 17, he understood the message of Paul even though his colleagues scoffed at him. These men, Naaman and Dionysus, they laid hold of the truth. Ahaz, he will defy God. He won't take it.
He's coming next chapter. Anyway, verse 11, Then I said, Lord, how long? And he answered, until the cities are laid waste and without inhabitant. The houses are without a man.
The land is utterly desolate. Verse 12, Yahweh has removed men far away and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. This is a heartfelt inquiry.
How long, Lord? And he's saying it's going to be past your lifetime, Isaiah. The judgments, they come from not heeding the warnings.
The worldliness of mind creates lukewarmness, apathy. And then, of course, that brings the judgment. Verse 13, But yet a tenth will be in it and will return and be for consuming as a terebinth tree or as an oak whose stump remains when it is cut down, so the holy seed shall be its stump. So, ever typical of the Lord and the prophets to lay out the judgments, the solutions, and the hope, and the nation will appear to be lifeless, but life will be still there. So, it's a saying, you can't kill a hardwood with an axe. If you cut down a pine tree, that stump that you leave behind is not going to sprout. It's dead. If you do it to an oak, the chances are almost sure, a few exceptions, it's going to start sprouting again.
So, that's the point. God is saying the stump will be cut in judgment, but it will again, it will still be alive. There will be a remnant that will survive. And the holy seed here is the dual meaning there. The genealogy from Abraham to Manasseh, technically Isaac to Manasseh, because Abraham had other children that are not covenant children, but you can say Abraham to Manasseh. Ezra makes this reference in chapter 9. The seed of the woman then applies to this in its second application to the Messiah. And this is a foreshadowing of the messianic promise.
We get to chapter 11, and this is what we read. There shall come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of its roots. And so, life is still there, and that is talking about the Messiah.
Isaiah is talking about the Jewish people will continue in spite of the judgments, and Messiah will come from them. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio today. Cross Reference Radio is a ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel mechanicsville in Virginia. If you'd like to learn more about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com.
You'll find a number of teachings from Pastor Rick available there. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of new editions of Cross Reference Radio. Just search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. You can also follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. We're glad we were able to spend time with you today. Tune in next time to continue learning from the book of Isaiah with Pastor Rick, right here on Cross Reference Radio.
