Good morning, welcome to Trinity Reformed Baptist Church Jackson, Georgia. It's August 16th, 2015. Join us now as Brother Steve Martin brings us a message from the word. The title of this sermon and titles are not inspired, but sometimes helpful. Farewell to the tame God and coming to know the real God. Now, if we're saying goodbye to the tame God, the word tame means something that's domesticated, something that is no longer wild or does its own thing, but something that has a harness or a bridle and some means of controlling it, it's been domesticated. It does our will. And our passages are both from Isaiah chapter 6 and 2 Chronicles chapter 26. After we say farewell to the tame God, it's His coming to know the real God, coming to know the God that's true and not fake or pretend. But sometimes the way the Lord has us come to know the real God is to shock us out of our complacency, shock us out of where we've been living, just kind of turn our world upside down. And that's what we saw happen to Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 6. We're going to get to that. There's a professor who taught at Duke, now at Notre Dame, and he is a professor of sociology. His name is Christian Smith. And he has written several books on what Americans believe. And he and his associates and graduate students have done longitudinal studies by that I mean like over a decade on particularly what do high school kids believe. And he did it in the early 2000s and now this is 2015 so we're looking at some data that's almost 15 years old. But he said for the people then who now would be people who are 35 and under or 40 or under, He says the religion that most Americans believe is what he calls M.T.D., moralistic therapeutic deism. Now, what does he mean by that? He said, as he talked to young people, then again, this is a 15-year-old statistic. These people are now up in their early 30s. He said, they're moralistic. They believe that God rewards good behavior and punishes bad behavior, for the most part. So it's a religion of morals. Do good and good things happen. Do bad, bad things happen. Moralistic. Therapeutic. Therapeutic has to do with therapy, has to do with fixing things that are wrong. God's job is to fix my problems and keep me happy. So the God that I worship is a God who blesses you if you do good, maybe gives you some bad things if you do bad, but his job is to make me happy. His job is to fix my problems. I don't bother him most of the time, but if I have a problem, I know where to go. And the third word he used to describe our beliefs and our culture is deism. God rarely intervenes in the world or my affairs, except when I really need him to help me. But God rarely intervenes in the affairs of men in the world. He's kind of out there. That was like the religion of deism, first taught in the 1800s, that there is a God who made the world, but like a watchmaker makes a watch and then winds it up and walks away and leaves it on the table. The God of deism doesn't have anything to do with the day-to-day operations of planet Earth. He said most Americans under 35, and I'd say under 40, believe that God is moralistic, He rewards and punishes, and it's not a religion of grace, it's a religion of works. He's therapeutic, His job is to intervene only when you really need Him and you're in a tough spot and you need help. And He's deistic, He really leaves you alone the rest of the time. So I have a question for you. How do you see God in your mind? When you think of God, or if you're laying in bed tonight, or sitting at home today after you get home and have something to eat, and the word God pops into your mind, what do you think of, who do you think of when you think of God? What ideas do you have of the deity? Well, we're going to see in Isaiah 6 how a religious leader, a man who was a priest, who came from an influential family in Israel, Isaiah, he was already a priest, he was already a member of the chosen people, he was a member of Israel, and how he was a priest during some very down time, slack time in Israel, and how he came to know the real God and had turned his world upside down. God wasn't tame. He wasn't domesticated. He was real and He was holy, holy, holy. Let's go back to Isaiah 6 for a minute and read our text one more time. Isaiah chapter 6, I'll read the first nine verses. In the year of King Uzziah's death, that's a historical marker. I'm old enough to remember I was a sophomore in English class when we got word that JFK had been shot in Dallas. Those of you who are younger know where you were on 9-11 when you first heard that something was going on at the World Trade Center in New York City or at the Pentagon. You remember where you were. You will not forget that day in November 1963. If you're my age, you won't forget that day in September of 2001 when the World Trade Center was bombed in the Pentagon. historical marker. So Isaiah is beginning by saying here, remember when King Uzziah died? Remember that particular king? We'll come back and look at why Uzziah was a particular historical marker. I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim, angelic creatures, stood above him, each having six wings. With two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called out to another, this is what you call an antiphonal chorus, kind of going back and forth, two giant choruses, they're singing back and forth, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. and the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. Then I said, Woe is me, for I am ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts, Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. He touched my mouth with it and said, behold, or look, this has touched your lips and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? Then I said, here am I, send me. He said, go and tell this people, keep on listening, but do not perceive. Keep on looking, but do not understand. And the rest of the chapter just basically says that in a time when the people are terribly backslidden, God's not going to give them any grace. And they're going to continue to harden their hearts. And everything Isaiah says, they're just going to blow off and ignore to their own ultimate doom. So we're going to look at seven things briefly this morning. First of all, the context, the historical marker. So King Uzziah died. But we saw how King Uzziah died, and we're going to look in more detail why he died the way he did. And then why everything changed for Isaiah. What caused the big change? Well, for the first time in his life he really saw who God was. I saw the Lord. What's that like, seeing God in reality? Does it really do anything to your life or is it just like turning the page in a book? And number four, what impact did seeing God as He really is have on Isaiah's life? What specific concrete impact did it have on his life? Number five, how God cleanses guilty sinners. If you come to see yourself finally in relation to God and you see your guilt, how in the world does God cleanse guilty sinners? Number six, Who does God use to take the gospel to others? Is there any better person to take the gospel to others than someone who has just seen their own sins and something of the immensity of them and seen the glory and holiness of God and has been cleansed by God? And finally, who exactly did Isaiah see on that throne of glory? Well, we have our work cut out for us. Let's jump into it. First of all, the death of a proud, presumptuous king is our historical marker. We read in some detail, and you were probably wondering, what in the Sam Hill is this all about? Okay, he built this, and he built that. He had a big army, and he had big farms, and there's a lot of stuff going on in Israel. This is a period of material prosperity for Israel. He was a gifted king in terms of organizing and managing things. And it says, as long as he walked with the Lord and looked to the Lord, the Lord prospered him. But it's not a given that you'll walk with the Lord your whole life. It's not a given that if you start well, you finish well. So here's a man who started well. He needed counsel. You're 16 years old when you become the sole king. You're a vice regent with your dad for a while. Then he dies. He's assassinated, as you read the chapter before that. And you become the sole king. and you're going to be a good king. You're going to listen to the prophets and you're going to do things God's way. And pretty much for the most part he did. But his great success led to his downfall because he started to read his own press clippings. I am pretty great. I am a really good Jew. I'm a good Jewish king. I do good things. I've done a lot of good things for these people. I'm pretty special. I'm not like these other people. I'm special. It says that as long as he sought the Lord, the Lord prospered him. I had to ask myself in reading this, do I still seek the Lord at the age of 67 like I did when I was 20 and became a Christian? Do I still feel like I need the Lord? Do you still seek the Lord like you did as a young believer? Or do you seek Him at all? It says in verses 15 through 21 that it was through pride and presumption that he was brought down because he went into the temple to burn incense. You kind of go, well, that's not a big deal. Well, yes, it is. And if you said in your heart, that's not a big deal, it kind of already shows where your heart is at, because the Old Testament makes it very explicit. Nobody can come into the presence of God and live. The naive, foolish, smart-alecky people say, if God would just show himself to me, I'd be a real believer. No, you wouldn't. You'd be dead. You'd be incinerated. No man can see the face of God and live. God is holy, holy, holy. And only a certain portion of the people chosen by God, called priest, and only one of them, once a year, could go into the very holy of holies. The priest, there's a place called the holy place where the priest could minister. But only one priest, designated by God for that year, could go into the special place, the inner sanctum, the Holy of Holies. After having made sacrifice for his own sins, he would go inside and he would make sacrifice for the sins of the people. And because of fear that he might do something inappropriate and be struck dead, and nobody else can go back there to rescue his dead body, they would tie a rope around his ankle so if he got struck dead by God, you could pull him out so you didn't have a rotten carcass there waiting for you next year. When next year's high priest went in, here's this box, here is the Ark of the Covenant, and there's two representations of angels, seraphim made out of gold at the end of the box, and the box is overlaid with a thick layer of gold, and inside the box are the Ten Commandments, which God had given to his people for how to live. And there was Aaron's rod that had budded. And the top of this gold box was called the mercy seat. Why? Because only in the Holy of Holies was there a visible representation of God. There was a small cloud, the Shekinah glory, so to speak. Remember when Israel was wandering in the desert? They had a giant pillar of cloud by day, something of some break from the sun, and a giant pillar of fire by night. You didn't go under a street lamp to read your mail. There were no street lamps. There were no flashlights. Light in the desert was a great commodity. So there's a giant pillar of fire by day representing God's presence with His people by night, a giant pillar of cloud by day to shade the people, a visible manifestation of God and His glory. Well, in the Holy of Holies, On top of the Ark of the Covenant, there was a visible representation of God the Holy Spirit, the Shekinah glory was there, and the priest was to pour out the blood of the sacrifice on this Day of Atonement so that Israel would be forgiven for all of her sins and God wouldn't hold their sins against them. Only one person, once a year, having already made sacrifice for his own sins, is now going to go in there and make sacrifice for all the sins of all the people. We know from Leviticus chapter 10 that just after God had instituted the whole system of you cannot approach me in your sinfulness without me judging you. If you come as you are, I will judge you because no flesh can see my face and live. I am holy, holy, holy. My holiness will incinerate you. And you are to treat me as special, not like any other being you know. And we know from Leviticus chapter 10 that the two sons of Aaron, having just received the instructions of how to be junior priests, decided to mess around and do their own thing, and for their trouble, God struck them dead. Fire came out from the presence of God. We also know from later in the chapter that they were a little bit drunk. They had been drinking, and it talks about the need for sobriety among the priests. This is not some slapdash thing you throw together in any old way you feel. God has given you specific instructions how he is to be approached. And Leviticus says, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. So here was two men who had been struck dead for their trouble. We know earlier in the reign of David, we know of a man named Uzzah who the Ark of the Covenant was being taken back to Jerusalem and had been captured by the Philistines and God had struck them with tumors for their trouble. So they said, let's get rid of this thing and send it back to Israel. And it was being carried on an ox cart. It was not to be carried on an ox cart. It was to be carried by the long poles on the side of the Ark of the Covenant were rings, and you put poles or staves through those rings, and men were to carry it. They weren't to touch it. The wooden staves would carry it, and they were to hold them on their shoulders and do this. Well, they were carrying it on an ox cart, and the ox stumbled. The cart went like this. It looked like the Ark of the Covenant was going to fall in the dirt. So Uzzah reached out his hand to steady the Ark. And R.C. Sproul does a great job of imitating God. Thank you, Uzzah. I really needed that help. No, that's not what happened. If you know your Bible, God struck Uzzah dead for his presumption. The dirt's not going to defile the Ark of the Covenant. Nothing else in the creation is spoiled by sin except human beings. Human beings are the sinful things on planet Earth. Human beings foul things up. Your touching the Ark of the Covenant was a gross violation. Why did you think that falling in the dirt was going to be wrong? There's nothing wrong with the dirt. The dirt always obeys God. If it's dry, it's dirt. You add water to it, it's mud. Any questions? Dirt always obeys God. Human beings are the rebels. Human beings are the sinners. And so God struck Uzziah dead. Well, okay, well I think maybe we should need to read the directions of how we're supposed to carry this. God didn't judge Uzziah totally. He was merciful. He only struck him with leprosy. He still lived, but he lived as a leper outside of the king's palace, outside of the city, in the place where only the lepers could live. He was quarantined the rest of his life. He had the rest of his life to think about his presumption. And I had to ask myself, do I ever presume upon God? Here's a classic statement of presuming on God. Someone said they were going to do something and God will forgive me because that's his job. Really. He has to forgive you. Do you have his arm up behind his back and making him do something? Presuming upon God is taking him casually, taking him for granted. If you and I don't like to be taken for granted, how much more Almighty God? And He gives us specific instructions. So here at the beginning of this chapter, Isaiah says, in the year that our leper king died, in the year that our king who was struck with leprosy and died an outcast for his presumption, in the year he died, something else important happened to me. In my life it was cataclysmic. Uzziah is gone. But to me, it was cataclysmic. Thankfully, I wasn't struck with leprosy, I wasn't struck dead, but I was struck with coming to know God as He really is. And after having heard this passage and read it and studied it and heard others preach on it for many years, it dawned on me, oh, about 10 years ago, what's really going on here? Well, why did everything change? That's the second part of verse one. He says, in the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord. The thing that changed his life was he finally saw God for who he is. Isaiah saw Adonai, the sovereign God. I saw the Lord. Notice that it's capital L, but it's lowercase O-R-D. In our English Bibles, when it's like this, it stands for the Hebrew word Adonai. If it's all caps, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, that's for the Hebrew word Yahweh, God's covenant name. I am that I am. I will be that I will be. And I'm in a special covenant relationship with you forever. But that's not the word he uses. He uses the word Adonai, the sovereign one. enthroned in glory in his heavenly temple. Now, one of the things that J. I. Packer says early in knowing God is, you can know a lot about God, and you can know a lot about godliness, and not know God. You can read the right books, you can sit in the right churches, you can listen to the right people, you can know a lot about God, and a lot about godliness, and not really know the Lord. So Isaiah has served as a priest in the temple. He's helped with sacrifices. He's spoken often of God. I mean, he's a Jew. Everybody in Israel spoke of God. Everybody in Israel claimed God as their buddy, as their God. But as it turns out, Isaiah barely knows God at all. And for the first time in his life, he really, truly sees God for who he is. One of the things as you become familiar with your Bible is you'll notice that Isaiah wasn't the only person in the Bible who had their life turned upside down or right side up, rather, by coming to see who God really is. In the book of Ezekiel, which comes later, God tells the people of Israel through Isaiah, if you don't repent, judgment's coming. but I know you and you're not going to repent. And it doesn't come through the rest of Isaiah's ministry and it says so here. I'm sending you to people who are stubborn, stiff necked, they're not going to relinquish their ways, they're going to play on their jukebox, I did it my way. Well in the book of Jeremiah it says, too late, There is no repentance, and even if you wanted to, I'm not granting it. Judgment is here. And they're carried away into exile. In the book of Ezekiel, they're in exile in Babylon. Ezekiel's trying to live among the Hebrews and learn to speak Babylonian. But Ezekiel chapter 1 verses 26 through 28, Ezekiel has a vision of who God really is and he's to be a prophet, but you can't be a prophet if you don't know who God is and God's not behind you. Ezekiel said, above the expanse over the head of these creatures, there was the likeness of a throne. He didn't say it was a throne, he said it was like a throne. An appearance like sapphire and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness with a human appearance. Now, biblical authors, when they speak about seeing things in heaven, struggle to find conceptual human language to describe it. And so they use similes and metaphors. A simile means, well, it's like this. Or they say it is this, but it's meant to be a symbol. There's somebody I saw seated on the sapphire-like throne. And upward, from what had the appearance of his waist, I saw it was like gleaming metal. So this heavenly creature from the waist up was like metal that's been molten, that's on fire. And there was the brightness around him. And downward, from his waist down, it just looked like fire, the appearance of fire. And there was brightness around him. So this creature has glowing metal from the waist up, He's struggling to find things he's seen. It's like looking into a steel mill in the cauldron, this big vat of molten metal. And from the waist down, well, it just looked like fire. Brightness all around. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell on my face. Da-da-da-da-da. And the rest of the book goes on. God heals him, God puts him into work. But Ezekiel sees not the God that he expected. Well, maybe our God isn't so great. I mean, after all, we're in Babylon. He didn't protect us from the Babylonians. He let us be taken into captivity. Now he prophesied, if you disobey me, I will discipline you. And if you disobey me perpetually, I will chasten you so that you won't be able to sit down for not six weeks or six months, but for 70 years. But in the book of Revelation, at the end of the Bible, the Apostle John is exiled to a small island in the eastern end of the Mediterranean, and he has a vision of God which we call the Revelation. But this is how it begins. I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man. clothed with a long robe, and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze. He's struggling to find analogies. Refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters, Niagara. Victoria Falls, this booming noise. In his right hand, he held seven stars. From his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me saying, fear not, I am the first and the last, the living one. I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades. Wow. If you're going to have a really tough calling and ministry in your life, you better know who's backing you up. You better know who you're serving. You better know who's got your back. And the one who calls them to this really tough ministry is none other than the true and living God. But not like John had seen Jesus in his earthly life and ministry. He was there on the Mount of Transfiguration in Matthew chapter 17. were for a brief time, Jesus received back the glory that he set aside when he came to earth. The Bible says that when Christ came to earth, the worship of the angels and the glory of his person was temporarily veiled and he assumed human flesh so that we could relate to him. But here in heaven, in this vision, John sees Jesus more in his reality of his glory and he passes out. Several other people in the Bible saw God for who He really is. Job, who went through the most misery one can imagine, in Job 42, gets a glimpse of God in His majesty and says, I've heard of you at the hearing of the ears, but now I see you with the eye, and I abhor myself, and I'd like to leave. In Exodus 34, Moses sees the backside of God's glory. He says, God, I'd like to see your glory. I love you, I'd like to see more of you, I'd like to see the fullness of your glory." And God says, that wouldn't be a gift on my part to you, it wouldn't be gracious, it would be execution. No man can see the fullness of my glory and live. But I will put you on a cleft on a rock and I'll put my hand over you and as I go by I'll let you see the backside of my glory. Now, ladies, you might think about this, men don't. Can you imagine walking to a room back first? That's usually not the part of you, you know, none of us go into a room back first, oh I recognize their backside, here they come. That's not how we see one another, we always go this way. Hopefully we have a nice face, hopefully people like to see our face coming. God says you can't see the fullness of my glory, but so to speak, After being on a cleft in a rock and after putting my hand over you, you can see the backside, the least significant, least glorious part of my glory. And his face shone for several days afterwards. In Daniel 7, Daniel sees someone he's never envisioned before and he has the grace to persevere in Babylon. Matthew 17, I mentioned that the three disciples on the mountain with Jesus see him transfigured. In Acts 9, Saul of Tarsus is on his way to Damascus to arrest Christians and put them in prison. And he was so mean, boys and girls, that he didn't care if you didn't have a mommy and a daddy. He would put your parents in prison anyway and tough for you. Your relatives would have to take care of you. And suddenly he sees someone on the road to Damascus who is brighter than an Arabian sun at midday. Now, if you ever, some of these hot summer days, you and I dash between our air-conditioned house and car and office or wherever we're going, you don't think of standing out in the middle of the driveway and staring up at the sun and going, wow, isn't that a beautiful sun? I think I'll contemplate the sun. It's too bright, it's too hot, you can't stand it. Well, Saul, who later changes his name to Paul, said, it wasn't the sun, it was the glory of God was out shining the sun and I couldn't take it and I fell on my face. Is your vision or perspective on Christ worthy of Him? What comes to your mind when you regularly think about God? Well, in the last part of verse 1 and down to verse 4, what was it like seeing God in reality? What did Isaiah experience? It said, Isaiah thought that he knew God and what He was like. After all, he's a priest. But on this fateful day, God was not like everything he thought about God. He wasn't nice, neat, and tidy. He wasn't moralistic, therapeutic, or a deist. It says he was lofty and exalted. That means that he's higher than everything else. He's higher than any president, king, prime minister, potentate. It says he's high and lofty. He's seated on a throne. What's a throne a symbol of? Rule? Judging? Being in control? Being the boss? I have the final say-so. Your life is in my hands. If I choose to make certain cells in your body start exploding, you have cancer. If I choose to take away the breath in your lungs, you die. I have appointed your life and how many days you're going to live. You exist at my pleasure. You didn't have to be born. There was no compulsion for God to make you. He chose to make you. He wanted you to be born. Seated on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of his robe filling the temple. Now what's that all about? Ladies might get it and guys just read it and go on. R.C. Sproul tries to explain it for us because he was young enough to remember when Queen Elizabeth II was inaugurated as Queen of England back in 1951. Being only three years old at the time, I wasn't checking out the tube to check out her coronation. But I did look it up on the internet and had pictures of her gown, which was actually astounding. And I'm not into gowns, but it was pretty amazing. She had a train that was 21 feet long and all the pages that had to walk behind her to carry her train. Now, boys and girls, you go to weddings and sometimes you'll see a bride with a train. Maybe it'll be five or six feet long behind her, and somebody will help carry it so it doesn't drag through the dirt and stuff. But a 21-foot train, what's the purpose of that? It's meant to show not just beauty, but it's meant to show importance, grandeur. How great is this Queen Elizabeth of the British Commonwealth? Well, she had a 21-foot train behind her. Well, what is this king like? Does he have a 50-foot train? No. Does he have a 150-foot train, symbolizing his greatness? No. It says here that the train of his robe was filling up the temple. The train wound around the bottom of the throne and was actually filling up the temple, which I don't think it's meant to be taken literally, but it's symbolic of the greatness of God's majesty and glory. Your earthly kings are nothing. Queen Elizabeth's gown was outstanding. And she had, again, look it up on the internet and see what it looked like. And she had ermines sewn into different pieces and incredible gold and embroidery done. But it was nothing. It was a pale comparison to the glory of the king who really exists. Now, there's these angelic creatures called seraphim. There's only one other place in the Bible we see them, and that's in the book of Revelation. And they're saying the same thing in the book of Revelation, so they must be angelic creatures who serve in the presence of God. Now, I don't know what you think about angels as something on top of a Christmas tree or something that you see in a card store or, you know, angels watching over me or something like that. But angels are creatures made by God, like we're creatures made by God, but they're greater in terms of their capacity. They can do things that human beings can't. which is one of the astounding things, it says in the New Testament, that a third of the angels followed Satan into rebellion and were cast away from God's presence. There's no revealed plan for their redemption. They're cast into outer darkness where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. They're doomed forever. But when Christ stood up and set aside His glory, He assumed manhood, not angelic creaturehood. He assumed manhood so He could come to earth and save human beings who are lower than the angels. And it says in Ephesians 3.10, the angels that didn't leave their estate but are still holy angels are standing there with their mouths open going, He went down to rescue them? He didn't rescue Lucifer, he didn't rescue the third of the angels that went with him, but he's going down to rescue these little puny creatures? Christ is becoming one of them? He says, the angels marvel at what they see. Well, here's Seraphim, and they're in the presence of God, and they're apparently leading in worship, and they have this antiphonal chorus going back and forth, and what are they saying? Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of His glory. Now Sproul does an excellent job, and it's important. Why do they say, holy, holy, holy? Why don't they just say, holy, our God's holy? Next point. Because for the Hebrews to express themselves, they use different ways than we do. If you're sending an email or a letter to a friend or a text, there's different ways you can put emphasis. like LOL in caps, okay, laugh out loud, big laugh. If you want to make it even more important, you can underline it, you can put, embolden it, you can put quotation marks around it to set aside the emphasis of what you want to do. When the Hebrews were trying to emphasize something, one of the ways they would use to emphasize something is to repeat it. And Old Testament scholars will tell you, going back to the book of Genesis, that one of the kings was fleeing from his enemies. And as he was fleeing, it says, he and his chariot fell into a pit pit. Now, that's not what it says in our English Bibles. Various versions struggle. It was a tar pit. It was a big pit. But in Hebrew, it's, he fell into a pit pit. And Sproul likes to wax eloquent and say, now, I wonder what a pit pit is like. Was this the piteous pit that ever existed? What's so special about a pit pit? The point is, there's nothing special about it. By emphasizing it a second time, it means a really big pit. And he was captured by his enemies and killed. Now if I say God is holy, that simply states a fact about him. I'm naming something about God that's called nominative. If I'm saying God's holier than you, I'll say he's holy holy, that's to the comparative case. God's not just holy, he's holy holy. But it doesn't say that. He doesn't say He's holier than you or me. It says He's holy, yes. Holy, yes. Holy to the superlative. It's meant to say nothing in eternity, nothing in existence is holy like God is holy. He's set apart from His creation. You've never met anyone like Him. You couldn't envision anyone like Him. If He doesn't choose to reveal Himself to us, we're sunk because our sins have made a separation with Him. Holy, holy, holy. And look at the phrase, the Lord of Hosts. We sang A Mighty Fortress this morning, so you would sing that. You sang the phrase, Lord God Sabaoth. And that's what it says, would say in the Hebrew. Lord of Hosts. What is Lord God Sabaoth? When you sing that, you probably thought maybe Sabaoth sounds like Sabbath, and maybe it has something to do with the Sabbath. No, it's not the Hebrew word for Sabbath. It means the Lord God of hosts. It envisions God seated in this majestic throne, and there's myriads of angels, 10,000 times 10,000 of these angelic creatures. And they're sitting as a giant witness and testimony and jury And this is the vision of who God is seated in majesty, seated with this great wealth of angelic creatures with him, acknowledging his worth, acknowledging the wisdom of his judgment. And it's not that he's holy, holy, holy, but he's the Lord of infinite power. All these angelic creatures serve his bidding. In the Old Testament, one angel killed 83,000 of the army of Sennacherib in one night, 83,000 by one angel. Jesus said on the cross when Peter tried to defend him, or before he got to the cross when Peter tried to defend him, he goes, Peter, do you think wailing away with your sword is going to do a lot of good, like you cut off the slave's ear, okay, that doesn't do anything? If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight, and I could call upon my Father, and I could have six legions of angels right here. I could have 6,000 angelic creatures doing my bidding to defend me if my kingdom was of this world. Whoa. And something that, sadly, we only begin to see after we're converted, and then only in glimpses, it says, the whole earth is full of His glory. After you become a Christian, one of the things that God should do in your life is restore to you a wonder at their creation. Where did all this come from? Why does anything exist? Because God chose to make it. And even sin over thousands of years hasn't been able to mar all the beauty and wonder of the creation. There's an oak tree on this property. How in the world does this oak tree pull 2,000 pounds of water into the air without a pump in its own capillary system? How does it do that? Because God made it that way. When I was younger in school, they said, you know, Canadian geese fly south and fly north because of instinct. What's that? Instinct is something inside The bird, no it doesn't stink, it's not instinct, it's instinct and it's something innate in the bird. But now we know that birds have genes and chromosomes and the instinct is in the genes and chromosomes. What does that mean? We don't know, but somehow these birds fly north and south because that's what God made them to do. I was so thrilled when As a child, I had some wonder at the creation. I lost it when I started taking my first biology classes in school. And when I became a Christian one day, walking home from class, I looked at the trees that were budding out in the spring and how big and beautiful they were, and my father made all this. This is God's world. These are God's trees. These are God's fish in this pond. These are God's slugs eating my garden. And not only that, but one other detail. Not just did the seraphic creatures, these angelic creatures, sing God's praise, but the material creation couldn't help but be moved. And the foundations of the threshold trembled at the voice of him who called out while the temple was filling with smoke. The temple itself couldn't hold the majesty of God without having make it vibrate, so to speak, of something tremendous was happening to it. And the smoke filling the temple is emblematic of back when God gave the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. God was at the top of the mountain and you couldn't see the top of the mountain because it was covered with smoke and lightning flashes in the smoke. Okay, well I guess we'll just let the top of the mountain stay the top of the mountain. But Moses had to go up there and meet with God. And he came down and his face shone. What impact did seeing this almighty God have on Isaiah's personality? We'll look at verse three. Verse five, rather, I can't read. He pronounces a judgment upon himself. If you're a priest or a prophet, you have to say things for God. As a minister of the gospel, you say things for God. You represent him to the people. You say, this is what God has said in his word, and I'm just being a faithful messenger to relay this to you. Well, when a minister, or in this case a priest, pronounces woe, that's a term of judgment. In Matthew chapter 23, Jesus says to you Pharisees, woe to you Pharisees, seven different times. Seven is one of those biblical numbers that has a certain symbolic nature to it. It's a number for completeness, for fullness. To have seven-fold woe pronounced to you is final judgment. There's no hope for you, Pharisees. You've hardened your hearts. Judgment is coming. Woe to you, Pharisees. He pronounces judgment on himself here. Isaiah says, I'm done. I'm going to be judged. Woe is me, for I am ruined. Now, some versions have undone. Some versions have coming apart. The idea is here, I used to think I have it all together. I used to think that I was whole. I used to think I was a together person. But seeing who God really is has just shattered me. I'm not a together person. I'm coming apart. Isn't one of the problems for all of us before we're Christians that we think we have it all together? That we have arrived? I was thinking about the phrase the other day, who died and made you God? But for all of us, we all thought we were God before we were converted. There is a God, and it's me, and everything exists to serve me, and life is all about me. And when you become a Christian, God changes that. He shows you that it's not all about you, that you're but a creature, and you've been a sinful, rebellious creature at that, and God chooses to love and save sinful creatures anyway. But it is humbling to see who you really are. Have you ever been shattered by what you've seen of God? Have you ever seen God in anything of clarity such that you were shattered at what you saw about yourself? One year at a Banner of Truth conference, and I don't share this with too many people, but the men who were there, we talk about it frequently. In 1994, Pastor Jeff Thomas from Wales was speaking at a Banner of Truth conference, and he spoke on the first night from 2 Corinthians 4. He spoke on pride. After a few minutes, I said, this is a great sermon. I need to get a copy of it to give to some of my friends. And after a while, I just forgot about it. It was a great sermon. I need to give it to my friends. Because there was this giant screw. And we're sitting in a chapel at a college in Pennsylvania in Wooden Pews. And this giant screw is nailing me to the back of the seat. God was almighty. What a proud sinner I was. What a proud sinner I was. And God came down in such power that night that most of us couldn't sing the concluding hymn. We just stood there like dumb animals and I just bit my lips so I wouldn't burst out crying. I wanted to lay flat on the ground underneath the pew so that the presence of God wouldn't be heavy upon me. And my elder and close friend Bob said, come on, here's a side door, let's go out here. So we dashed out a side door, and it's at night, we went back to our dorm and looked, and here's all these pastors fleeing this place. And Jeff didn't yell, didn't call us names. He just showed us something of what God is like. But God chose to come down and make Himself real to us, and we were so convicted. Well, we got back to our dorm room thinking it would lessen up, and it didn't. And from about 8.30 or 9 o'clock at night to 1 in the morning, Something that we could not see was crushing us, weighing us down. The only thing I could think of was like when I used to work out with weights and sometimes you did one too many reps and you couldn't get it back up and you had nobody to spot and you're stuck with it sitting on your chest. Or maybe you picked up a manhole cover and we're doing with a manhole cover and suddenly the manhole cover is just squashing you. Some heavy weight was squashing me. And the word for glory is weight in the Old Testament. Kabob. And we were being squashed. And the only thing we could pray, we tried to pray, the only thing we could pray was the prayer from Luke's Gospel. God, be merciful to me, a sinner. And it went on until about one in the morning and the Lord lifted His hand up. We prayed a little bit more and we just fell asleep. In the morning we woke up. We needed to go down and get some coffee and process what happened last night. We went down to get some coffee and some guys And they said, come here. And we go, what? Did anything funny happen to you guys last night? Well, it wasn't funny, but something happened to us last night. And we sat down and talked. And they'd had the same experience in their room. God had come down and made himself known. And we were running around the room giving each other high fives and said, isn't it cool to be a Christian? Isn't God neat? Isn't he a great chum? Isn't he a buddy and a pal? He was Almighty God, and we were just privileged to be saved and serve Him as ministers of the Gospel. In the case of Isaiah here, he says, I'm a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips. And it's like, I remember R.C. Sproul, one of my teachers, said, well, maybe he just said some bad words, or maybe there was a dirty speech movement at his time. He says, I don't know what this is all about. And I didn't know for years, and finally it dawned on me, yes, I do. Yes, I do. Have you ever spoken about the Lord and what you said about Him was not worthy of Him? Have you ever spoken on the Lord in ways that were not worthy of Him? And that if He presented Himself to you as He really is, you would see the difference between what you said about Him and who He really is, and the dichotomy, the difference was overwhelming, and you saw it was just virtual trash. Not that you were trying to trash talk the Lord, but compared to who He really is, what you said was just wholly unworthy. Here's a minister, here's a priest, he speaks about God all the time. He doesn't really have a good grip on who God is and what God's like. And he sees that much of what he's done, spending his time, was just trash. I'm a man of unclean lips. The stuff that's come out of my mouth about the Lord, I wasn't speaking bad. I wasn't saying OMG all the time. I wasn't taking the Lord's name in vain, self-consciously. But what I thought of Him and said about Him was just not worthy of Him. and the people I live among, we're the Jews, we're not, I expect the Philistines to misuse the Lord's name. But I don't expect us fellow Jews, but you can look back in chapter five, and this is what we have, it's recorded in chapter five, verse 19. The people are saying, let God make speed, let Him hasten His work that we may see it, and let the purposes of the Holy One of Israel come near and come to pass that we may know it. They're mocking God. They even call Him the Holy One. Well, that's who He is. He's the Holy One. No, He's not. He's holy, holy, holy. He's infinitely holy. Not simply holy so you can use the word and throw it around, but He's infinitely holy. And the people would even use the word, but have no clue as to what they're saying. God hates it when people claim to be His, but speak of Him and treat Him as some petty deity, like a tribal God. A person can talk about God all their life and never speak about God, either speak to Him as God as He really is, or speak about Him correctly. The tongue is the overflow valve of your heart. I know what's going on in your heart because that's what you talk about. That's what I talk about. The tongue is the overflow valve of our hearts. And if the speech comes across my lips as not worthy of my God, then what I'm thinking and experiencing in my heart is not worthy of God. Isaiah, of course, came to see that. He got his vision corrected, he got his theology straight, and he says, the reason I must be going to be judged here is that my eyes have seen the King, the Yahweh of hosts, the Lord God's Sabbath. I've seen the Lord seated in His glory with these angelic creatures, and He's way infinitely above and beyond what I thought. He's inexpressibly holy, His majesty, His purity. Oh, I can't believe I served Him all these years and saying things about Him that were not worthy. Oh, God, have mercy on me. You're going to judge me. I'm sure I'm worthy of judgment. That's what it did to Isaiah. But God does the amazing thing, sinners. You know, I used to tell my youth group in the years when I pastored, I said, you know, I pray for you all the time. And I did. I prayed for my people. I prayed for the youth group members by name, and I said, I pray that God shows you yourself, that God shows you your depravity, that God shows you how really wicked you are. Because nobody goes to the doctor for fun. Nobody goes to see a doctor just because they're bored and have extra money. You only go to the doctor if you think you're sick. And unless God shows sinners how sick they are, they won't apply for a Savior. But if you see anything of how desperately wicked your heart is, you'll fly to the Savior as fast as you can. So I used to pray, Lord, show them their hearts. Show them how wicked they are. Make them to feel their guilt. Well, how does God save and cleanse guilty sinners? We'll look at verse 6 and 7. Then one of the seraphim, one of these angelic creatures, flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, and more specifically, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. Here's the altar. It's the altar of sacrifice. It's glowing hot with coal, so to speak, and symbolizing the fact that not even an angelic creature can reach in and grab one of the coals, because angels are not material beings as we are, but they're real beings. He doesn't simply reach in with his hand and go, okay, I'm going to take this over to this kid. No. He even has to use tongues symbolic of how white hot it is. God's holiness on the altar of sacrifice has destroyed the innocent sacrifice that the guilty may live. And the purpose in the book of Leviticus for all these sacrifices, they're all snapshots, old-fashioned Polaroids, so to speak, of Christ who was to come, who was to fulfill every one of these sacrifices. And off the altar of sacrifice, where you would burn up the sacrifice completely until it was no longer there, it wasn't even ashes, so to speak. He took one of these coals and he applies it to Isaiah and he says, what? He touched my mouth with it and said, behold, look, check this out. This has touched your lips. Yow, I guess it's touched my lips. I mean, I think the cauterization would be remembered for a while. And your iniquity is taken away and your sin, excuse me, your sin is forgiven. It cost Isaiah something, but God in infinite mercy said, I'm cleansing you from what you've done and what you've said. The sacrifice has been made. I took just one of the coals off the sacrificial altar and applied it to you. And in something of a discipline, I did apply it to your lips so that you'll remember in the future not to run your mouth and say things that are unworthy of me. Never again would Isaiah take God's name in vain. He would never ever think, let alone speak of God as a petty personal pet or some domestic deity, a tribal deity. Well, the Philistines have their God and we have our God and blah, blah, blah. The God who really existed was infinitely holy and sovereign. And the thing I think was amazing to him is to hear him say, your iniquity is taken away. Your sinfulness has been atoned for. Your sin is forgiven. You're fully pardoned. He expected judgment. As the not world's not best priest, he said, woe is me. I'm pronouncing judgment on myself. God says, I'm not going to judge you. I'm going to save you at the expense of the sacrifice. Coming to see your sin is awful. I had a man tell me one time he was trying to comfort a woman whose husband had been discovered committing adultery and she was shattered. And he was explaining to this woman, he said, you know, I can remember when my wife committed adultery against me and that was the second worst day of my life. She goes, what could have been worse than that? He said, about six weeks later, God showed me my sins. That was the worst day of my life. But to hear God say, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. As far as the East is from the West, so far has He removed your transgressions from you. But God demonstrates His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more." Is it possible? Is it possible that a God so great, so gloriously, so majestic, so infinitely holy, so pure, the absolute measure of moral rectitude, who doesn't wink at sin, but He would forgive sin at the expense of the substitute that He provides, His Son? Well, it leads to the next point. Who does God use to tell the gospel to others? People who have seen themselves to be sinners, people who have come to see and abhor their sin, and that are amazed that God saves sinners at the expense of Christ. And they just want to tell others. I can remember the first few months I was a Christian. I didn't know diddly. I was just like, Mr. Ignorant. You know, the basics of the gospel, but that's it. Christ would have died for me, and my sins are all forgiven. I mean, as you know, I didn't skip around campus like a fairy, but I felt like jumping around. I was so full of joy. I shared with people the gospel out of the overflow of my heart, out of the joy that was in my heart. God had forgiven all of my sins, and I knew something after 21 years of my sins. So God calls out, whom shall I send? Who will go for us? Well, who better to speak the good news than someone who's been cleansed and forgiven? He's been awakened, he's been awed, he's been convicted, he's been cleansed, and then Isaiah says, Here am I. It doesn't say here I am. This is not a geographical problem. Where are you? I don't see you. Oh, there you are. That's not a problem of geography. This has to do with volunteering for a job. Here am I. If you're looking for someone to go, if you're looking for someone to tell other lost centers the good news, pick me. Send me. I'm available. I'm willing. I get it. I see it. And then God gives them the commission that will be very hard. Go and tell those people, you can keep on listening, but you're not going to perceive. You can keep on looking, but you're not going to get it. Because I'm going to pass you by. If you're sitting here and you're not a Christian, God doesn't have to save you. God can pass you by like He did these unbelieving Jews and leave you in your sins. There's an old hymn, Savior don't pass me by. Because if you don't save me, I'm done. You don't have to save me, you're not obligated to. Salvation is by grace. It's not a duty that God owes me. It's not an obligation God owes me. So he's going to have the sad and frustrating reality of preaching to people who don't give a rip. But he's going to do it faithfully because he knows what it's like to see himself as a sinner and experience cleansing, forgiveness, and all that it means to come to know God in reality. So, to conclude, who exactly did Isaiah see on that throne of glory? Well, if you go ahead to the New Testament, John's Gospel, chapter 12, has this excerpt from the book of Isaiah. And it has these passages about, well, you're going to keep on hearing, but you're not going to get it. And then it says in John 12, 41, these things Isaiah said because he saw Christ's glory and spoke of Him. This wasn't the father seated on the throne in that incredible holiness. This was God the son. This was the one you can see, so to speak. This is the one who will come to earth. This is the one who you can relate to. One like a son of man. He sees sitting on a throne. He didn't see the father. This is the son. Have you ever seen your own shoddy ways of thinking about him and unworthy ways of speaking about him? Have you ever been brought to the place of seeing Him as He really is and an unspeakable majesty? Is your God majestic? Is He worthy of love and affection and service? Has He ever brought you to the place of seeing yourself as you really are? Undone, ruined, vile, polluted by your sins? Do you realize that you cannot cleanse yourself? Isaiah didn't cleanse himself. Nobody saves themselves. Has your heart ever said to the Lord, based upon the mercies of God what I've seen here, I now give myself to you irrevocably as a living sacrifice. Do with me what you will, I am yours. You created me, you own me by right of creation. You saved me by the work of Christ, you own me doubly. I give my life to you for whatever you want me to do. Have you ever done that? Romans 12, one and two. I exhort you to give yourself to him today. Jesus Christ is the best friend a poor, undone, wicked, vile sinner could ever have. He's the best friend you could ever have. Let's pray. Father, would you take my stammerings and separate out the chaff from the wheat? Would you seal it to people's hearts? Would you take captivity captive? Would you help people who came not knowing for sure that they know Christ to be repenters and believers in this great God of glory who saves sinners just the way they are? Would you give us new vistas of how great you are and would you shut down the petty, unworthy, small, foolish ways we have of thinking about you? Would you change our vision of who you are? Would you change us as a result? I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.