Missions and the Unreached - Isaiah 6:1-8 - Mercy Hill

I'm just so honored to be here today. So thankful for Mercy Hill Church. And you know as I was writing this and preparing the sermon, you know the gospel requires us to take risk. And by God's grace I've been able to take many in my life.

But by far, hands down, the greatest risk I've ever taken is following this guy to Greensboro 12 years ago. All jokes aside, I'm so grateful for Pastor Andrew. If I'm the point to one person who has made the greatest spiritual impact in my life, it's hands down him.

And I know many of y'all would echo the same in here. And I'm also grateful for the opportunity to preach today on missions and the unreached from Isaiah 6. But before I do, I want to celebrate a few things from a mission standpoint here at Mercy Hill and cast a bit of vision. Mercy Hill will send our 50th long-term international missionary this summer. Yeah, absolutely.

Long term, meaning two plus years. It's incredible. We also have 24 people currently in the application process to go long-term who will probably be sent out in the next two or three years.

Yeah, it's incredible. Y'all, we already have a hundred and thirty-six people signed up to go on Go Teams this year. These trips don't even come out usually until this weekend, but a hundred and thirty-six people have already signed up to go. Our missions team is starting to scramble to find more trips.

It's awesome. We celebrate those 136, but are also praying for many, many more to jump in. We want to see 75 people jump into disciple-making intensives, DMI's, starting in a couple weeks.

We already have about 40 people signed up for those. If you want to be better equipped to share your faith and make disciples while doing it in community, this DMI is for you. We'll talk about this more in the sermon today, but the privilege of hearing the gospel comes with the responsibility of sharing the gospel.

This is what DMI's are all about. I'm praying that we would flood the triad with the gospel and we would invite others in to Mercy Hill to hear the gospel. Y'all, I long for the day when we send out our hundredth International Missionary from Mercy Hill and maybe a student sitting in here today or maybe a first-time guest today sent to the nation's three years from now. This is what the gospel does in our lives. So as we set things up today, I think many of us in here may be asking, even at our campuses, may be asking, why do we go? Why do we go? Why does Mercy Hill want to send out 500 people both internationally and domestically on church plants by the year 2032? You know, there's a huge placard, a huge sign over Pastor Andrew's office door, and it reads like this, we want to move the people of Mercy Hill from where they are to where the gospel is not. There's nothing that depicts this more accurately than this map right here.

This is why we go. God's glory and who He is demands and deserves the praise and worship from all 17,000 people groups that make up that map, that make up the world that we live in. He deserves the praise of all peoples.

He is worthy of it. But the reality is, at this very moment in time, all those red dots on the map you just saw, 7,391 of them, 38% of all the peoples on earth have no access to this gospel. This means that they will live and they will die and they will never hear what Jesus has done for them. 3.1 billion, 3.1 billion people make up these people groups that have no opportunity to worship Jesus because they've never heard of Him. So my goal today is to raise awareness for the unreached, but most importantly is for myself and all of us in here and all of our campuses to worship. Because the truth is we will never pray, give, or go unless we first worship. And the only thing that will move our feet to go is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we'll see this today from Isaiah's life. Jesus is the object of all of our praise, worship, and adoration. My prayer today is that our hearts will be filled with this gospel and we couldn't wait to raise our hands and say, here I am, send me. So here's our big idea for today. Our worship of God fuels our mission for God.

Let's dive in. We'll be in the first eight verses of Isaiah 6. Verse 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. So we get dropped off in the midst of history and the timeline of the people of God. You may recall God's people at this point were split into two kingdoms.

Israel to the north and Judah to the south. King Uzziah reigned over Judah, the southern kingdom, for 52 years. He was a mostly good king and a gift from God in the midst of some extremely poor leadership that had riddled God's people. But after his 52 year reign, he had died and everyone was anxious about the future and this created an instability in their hearts. King Uzziah was the only king many of them had ever known and this shook them up. But amidst this tragedy, Isaiah is gripped by this vision we see today.

A vision that changed his life forever. The real true king was still on his throne. King Uzziah had died, but the true king was still reigning. Throughout history, leaders, they come and they go. Kings have come, kings have gone. In the 245 years, the United States has been a nation.

We have had 45 different presidents. They come and they go, but one king will always remain. This king is sitting upon his throne high and lifted up. He is above all things and reigns over all things. Verse 2, above him stood the seraphim.

Each had six wings, with two he covered his face and with two he covered his feet and with two he flew. And one called to another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory and the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called and the house was filled with smoke.

What will heaven be full of? Worship. Worship. Worship of the true king. These seraphim, these fiery angelic beings, they never stop worshiping. Continuous worship on repeat. When we go to bed tonight, when we sit down tomorrow morning to eat breakfast, they have never stopped giving praise and worship to the king. And they will never stop.

A constant chorus of praise and adoration. We kind of understand this in a sense. I mean we've had songs and choruses just get stuck in our heads.

You probably have two or three from high school and college just rattling around. Different seasons of your life. I mean I'll give you an example. Watch an usher perform at halftime of the Super Bowl. A lot of y'all were singing too, I know. First off, unreal. That dude can flat-out dance. Unbelievable. But I kid you not, two songs in I told my wife Jenna, I said he has to have rollerblades on dancing like that. And then my man proves me wrong and actually goes puts a real pair of skate on.

Incredible. I mean I can't even roller skate or sing for that matter. And this dude is zooming around the tiny stage performing, skating, singing at the very same time.

But here's the point. I hadn't listened to Usher in probably ten years. But every song he sang, it was on loop in my head and it brought me back to different seasons of my life. Seasons that had long faded into the past. All these were just memories for me at this point.

It took Usher on stage at the Super Bowl for me to remember these songs. But this is what I want you to see. This song, these seraphim are belting out in praise it will never end. It will never fade into the past. It will be on continuous loop forever.

Why? Because of the object of who the song is grounded in. He's everlasting. He's worthy of all of our praise. These seraphim sing in undiminished praise. It's an explosion of adoration and joy in light of the holiness of God that they're seeing.

In light of who God is. He is the object of their worship. Holy, holy, holy.

This is on repeat, on loop. It's as if they're grasping for words because they can't describe, they can't put in the words the holiness that they're seeing before them. So they repeat holy three times for emphasis.

And night and day this continues. So this begs the question, what is holiness? What does it mean for God to be holy?

In one sense it means that God is without error. He is perfect, set apart, elevated above all things. Everything in Him is righteous. He's never had a wrong thought, never committed a wrong deed, and His motives are always pure. But He's not only without error, He's also without equal. There's no one like Him. Our God is incomparable. Isaiah 45 5 says this, I am the Lord and there is no other.

There's nothing we can compare Him to. His holiness is terrified, terrifying. His sovereignty is complete in all things. The earth is full of His glory.

God is sovereign over all nature. From knowing the number of hairs on your head, to every star in the sky. All 200 septillion of them. Y'all, I was a math major in college and I don't even know where to start with that number. I googled it. It's two trillion times a hundred billion if you want to track that down.

All I know is a two and a whole lot of zeros. And what does the Bible say? Our God knows each star by name. Our whole creation is a continual explosion of His glory. From telling the sun where to set and rise, to a baby taking their first steps, to the smell of spring that we know is coming next month.

But it will last about a week because of course we live in North Carolina. I want to show you this picture from the Middle East where we live. This is Wadi Shab.

Wadi means valley in Arabic. One of the most beautiful places on earth. We had a few guys come on a go team last year including Pastor Andrew and Steve Yurka.

I see him as well today. It's just incredible. It's an incredible hike.

It takes all day but it's worth it every single time. The pictures don't do it justice. It's just an explosion of God's glory everywhere you look. God is sovereign over nature and He is sovereign over nations. He charts the course of countries. He holds dictators, kings, presidents, rulers in the palms of His mighty hands. He sets them in place and He rules over them.

All the chaos in the Middle East right now, He controls it all. Let this grip our souls today. Our God is infinitely holy. Who God is sets up this whole passage. This is so important as we'll walk through the rest of this text today.

But fair warning this is gonna get heavy quick but here's the truth. We can't understand the goodness of the gospel if we first don't understand the depths of our sin. So what is Isaiah's reaction to this holiness that he is seeing in this vision? Verse 5 tells us, and I said Isaiah speaking here, woe is me for I am lost. For I'm 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.

Isaiah's reaction and response isn't wow, it's woe. Woe is me for I am lost. The actual Hebrew language is ruin upon me, destruction upon me. I'm a dead man in the midst of this incomprehensibly holy God. I'm lost. I'm ruined.

Bring the destruction upon me that I deserve. And I dwell in the midst of a people that are just as lost and ruined and deserve the exact same. Our problem is that we are at the core of who we are. At our very being, simply lost, cut off from God, condemned by God, and consequently destined to hell.

This is what Isaiah is seeing. We don't meet the standard. We don't measure up. We can't meet the standard because of our sin.

What do we do? We compare. Well I'm better than my co-worker sitting in the cubicle next to me at work. Or I'm more holy than the person I'm sitting next to today in church. Or that sin that I habitually commit, small, little white lies, road rage. I'll slip up every once in a while and I'll watch something on a computer screen or TV that I shouldn't.

No big deal. I'll rip into my spouse. I'll crush my spouse with my words on occasion, but it's nothing.

I'll yell at my kids. I mean they deserve it anyway. No.

No. It's sin and it deserves death and condemnation for all of eternity. Think about Adam and Eve. They took one bite of fruit.

That's it. And here we are today. Sin ruins us. We deserve destruction for it. Just one sin deserves death for all of eternity and we heap it up. You see, also what Isaiah is seeing is not only his sin, but who his sin is against. It's not only that our sin is wicked, but more importantly is who our wicked sin is against. And it's against a holy, infinite, gloriously infinite God. This is what the Bible says. We're cut off from God. We're condemned by God, enemies of God, slaves to sin, dominated by Satan, children of wrath, lovers of darkness, depraved minds, morally evil, spiritually sick, constantly perishing, and destined to hell. This is how the Bible describes the condition of man before God. And it's not good.

It's hard to even say. But praise God. Praise God for verses 6 and 7. Just listen to these verses. 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. God is incomprehensibly glorious, and man is simply lost, but God responds with mercy. Isaiah cries out in depravity. God responds in love and graciousness.

Isaiah stands guilty in his sin, ruined a dead man, but God acts. God commands a seraph to grab a coal from the altar and touches his lips. Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for. This burning coal was taken from the altar. The altar is a place of sacrifice and slaughter.

The blood of the sacrifice would have poured all over these coals. The sacrifice crushed and destroyed on the altar. Blood shed for the atonement, the payment of sin. We can take it back to the Passover lamb in Exodus 12, where blood was spread over the doorposts of God's people. And anywhere the angel of death saw blood, the angel passed over and did not kill the firstborn child in that family. The lamb was slain and its blood was shed. The lamb's blood showed the price had already been paid. Death was the price to be paid. From the Day of Atonement, annually performed, blood shed for the people's sins. Fast forward to Isaiah 53 and we probably get the clearest glimpse of what all this sacrifice means in the Old Testament. 700 years before Jesus ever walked this earth.

I'll read it here. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 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. All this sacrifice in the Old Testament points to the suffering servant, God himself, Jesus Christ. He has made a way for us through his blood, through the sacrifice, but it cost him his life. Jesus not only took the penalty for our sin, but he also stands in the place of sinners.

We can't miss this. Jesus would leave his glory in heaven and come dwell amongst us, a people of unclean lips. He would enter into our lives yet without sin or blemish. Yet he would march straight to the cross and shed his blood for our sin, the innocent for the guilty. On this burning altar Isaiah sees in this vision God would consume. He would crush his very own son in the fire of his wrath for our sin. Jesus would be destroyed for our sin in our place to make us, get this, to make us holy. All this blood shed in the Old Testament points to the once and for all sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Only Jesus can say because of his sacrifice for sin and the power of his resurrection, your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.

Only Jesus can say this because he took both. He took our guilt and sin for us to make us holy and purified, cleansing us from sin. Charles Spurgeon once told this story. It's said in the early 7th century there was a Saxon king, ruler of the great kingdom at the time. He was known for his love and justice, his fairness in all situations.

And because of this the people under his reign, they flourished. But one day the king discovered that money had been stolen from his treasury right under his nose. Someone was betraying him, one of his own. So he brings this matter before his people but the stealing day after day continues. Finally after several months the king brings all the people of the kingdom together and through tears issues a decree, an edict. Whoever is caught stealing from my treasury will be tied to the stake and receive 40 lashes less one.

Essentially the death penalty. As the story goes, two days later this thief is caught red-handed. It's the king's mother.

She was the one that had been stealing the whole time. The news of this quickly spreads all around the kingdom. Many wondered what this loving and just king would do. So the king asked for a couple days to deliberate over this decision.

An agonizing couple of days. But as he emerged he decreed that the law is the law and this punishment must be given. With all the people of the kingdom surrounded, the guard tied the king's mother to the stake and ripped open the back of her shirt. And as the guard raised his whip to bring down the first lash, the king yelled stop. The king walked over to his mom, looked at her lovingly, took off his royal robe and placed it on her. And then he wrapped his body around hers covering every square inch of her.

He looked back at the guard and he said continue. For the next few minutes, which seemed like an eternity, lash after lash after lash, ripped not into the mom but into the king's flesh until the last lash was delivered. And the king's bloodied beaten body crumbled to the ground dead. You see the king went down so that his mom could be left standing.

The innocent king took the punishment so his mom could go free. And this is exactly what Jesus has done for us. He was devoured on the cross so that you and I could go free.

He went down so that we could be left standing. God's wrath and holiness consumed him for our sin so that all we taste is love, mercy, grace, and freedom. Jesus took what we owed so that we can receive what only he deserved. This gospel is such good news because Christ has paid for our sin on the cross. God no longer sees us in our sin. He sees us as Christ.

Will we never get over that? We who were the exact opposite, me who is the exact opposite of holy, has been made holy by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for our sin. So we've now seen the glory and the holiness of God, the losses of man because of sin, and now the merciful Savior who has made a way. And because of this great gospel, only one conclusion remains.

We have an indescribably urgent mission. Verse 8, and I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? Then Isaiah said, here I am, send me.

This gospel makes Isaiah go from woe is me to send me. As I mentioned in the intro, the reality of our situation is dire. 3.1 billion people have no access to the gospel that changed Isaiah's life and likewise ours if we're in Christ today.

No access. 3.1 billion people, it's hard to wrap your mind around. So I'll give you something that gives you a little bit more perspective into how urgent our situation is. 173,441 of these 3.1 billion souls will die today, this very day, without ever having a chance to hear. That means that we've been in here for about an hour today and this hour alone 7,226 people will enter a godless eternity in hell. 7,226 people in this hour alone will die, never knowing that Jesus died on the cross for their sins because they never had a chance to hear. Romans 1 says that these 3.1 billion people have only enough knowledge of God to damn them to hell. You see, there are no innocent people around the world waiting to hear the gospel. There are only guilty people all over the world who need to hear the gospel because they're guilty of their sin, just like we were.

And what do they do? All around the world they try to remedy their sin. I witnessed time and time again in the Middle East, Muslims carrying their prayer mats into the mosque, bowing down towards Mecca, praying because they think it saves them, devoting their lives to a God who does not exist. I've been to India.

Many of our sent ones are there. I've seen men and women in India bowing down to an idol that they crafted with their own hands. They only have enough knowledge to know that they are lost and they're grasping for things. Things will never fulfill them. Unless they hear, they have to hear the gospel. 3.1 billion people today, the sun will rise on and the sun will set.

They will not know even in the slightest who to give the glory to. They will live and they will die and they'll never have a chance to respond to this glorious gospel that we've heard today. We have to go. We have to go. But my goal in all of this is not to guilt you into going. Guilt, it might get you there, but only God's glory will keep you there. My goal is for us to worship and let that spill out of our hearts to the nations. This is my story. Some of you in here right now at our campuses, this will be your story.

My heart just broke when I heard this and it still breaks today. This gospel is so good and so rich. I'm like the seraphim. I don't have the words to describe how good he is, but how dare I hoard it? How dare I sit on my hands and rot it out while 7,226 people have died since I started preaching today without ever having the chance to hear.

It's simple. We go because he came. He came for us in our sin, in our lostness.

He stepped in. He gave his life for mine. He gave his life for yours. As mentioned, my wife and I served in the Middle East for the past three years. One of the most unreached, unengaged peoples in all of the earth. There was a Bible study I started with two Muslims at the time, about two and a half years ago or so. They were Muslims when they started, but praise God they would become Christians a few months later. They did this through hearing the gospel and hearing the word taught and preached. This Bible study over the next couple years would grow to eight Muslim background believers and is still going strong today. A couple of these same guys who came to faith are now helping to lead this study. But one guy I walked with who came to faith, we were all praying.

I had done this study for over two years. Every Wednesday night we gathered. One of my favorite times of the week. We never missed, but this particular one was gonna be my last. It was super emotional. This guy was normally reserved, but he just started sobbing. And he said this through tears and I'll never forget it.

He said, Landon, it's as if you came for me. And all I can remember is saying through my own tears, all my lips could mutter was, no brother, Jesus came for us both. My life went from woe is me to sin me because of this glorious gospel. Not because of who I am, because of who He's made me to be. It's all about Him. It's all about His glory. We go because He came for us. I started today talking about worship and many of us in here maybe we think worship is just song and it is, but it's so much more. We worship Jesus in our going. We worship Jesus in our sending.

We worship Jesus even in our suffering. If you follow church history, you will know Isaiah's life was one of suffering, persecution, and constant rejection. Just read the book of Isaiah. But Isaiah never stopped sharing and going.

Why? Because he never stopped worshiping. This vision that he sees in our text today, this gospel never left his soul. And he worshiped to his very death. It's said that his very own people, King Manasseh, took a tree and he hollowed it out. And he stuffed Isaiah inside of it. And he sawed him in half. We get a glimpse of this in Hebrews 11, doesn't specifically say Isaiah, but men that are sawed in two for the faith. But this is what I want you to see. That through it all, through the rejection, the persecution, the suffering, even in the midst of his impending death, his hand was still raised high.

Here I am, send me. Because he had tasted the glory of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ. As we wrap this thing up today, I want to ask you one main question. And it's this. Is your hand raised today, or are you sitting on them? This gospel is too good for us to sit on our hands.

The need is too great. We often say at Mercy Hill, we are not an audience. We are an army. And we all play a role in seeing this gospel go to the ends of the earth.

If you think about the structure of an army, not everyone is sent out to the front lines. But those who aren't better be holding the rope. In the same way, not all of us will go. But all of us can pray and give. And those of us who do stay, who pray and give, who sin well, should be just as committed as those that go. I can't tell you in my family's three years overseas how many times the people of God prayed. You prayed.

The Lord heard and he answered. We've got to hold the rope in prayer for our sent ones. And we can give. For many of us, our role is to hit that QR code on that card in your seats and give to someone in your community group going on a go team this year. We had our first go team leader training a few weeks ago. We have some incredible go team leaders. But I told them, and I'll tell y'all, one of my goals for go teams this year is that everyone who signs up would be able to go. That everyone would raise their support. And many of them will only do this through y'all's generosity.

Would the gospel propel us to open our hands and give? But for many of us in here today at all of our campuses, you need to go. You need to sign up for a go team today. But for others, many of you, you need to take that step and go long term. It's scary. Maybe the Lord has been calling you for years and you've been sitting on your hands. Would you raise them today? Because the truth is, at a church the size of Mercy Hill, we are not all called to go. But there are many of you who He is calling that are not going. Will we take that step today? Would your hand go up in worship? Because Jesus is worthy of it. This gospel is worthy of your lives.

Will we go to the ends of the earth until all here? Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for just your gospel. Lord, your gospel that saves and sins. Lord, I pray right now that many would be moved to go. Lord, their hand would raise and they would go to the nations and proclaim your gospel to the unreached. We thank you for the power of the gospel that we go in. In Christ's name we ask, amen.