The Wonderful, Awful Motivation For Ministry - [Isaiah 6:1-13]

Well, it is great to be back here at Bethlehem Bible Church. I love preaching, not just at this church, but to this church. I've been gone for the last three weeks. Three weeks ago I was in Florida preaching at an installation service at a Southern Baptist Church for a new pastor and a new elder, and then the last two weeks I've been preaching at a Reformed Baptist Church in California, and maybe it's Vancouver next.

I'm not exactly sure, but it's great to be back with you, to be able to preach to a church that loves Bible preaching. When I go to these other churches, I'm not sure how they'll respond, and I'm pretty much a one-trick pony kind of guy.

I can teach the Bible, and that's all I can do. If you want a book review or some kind of political insight or something like that, I don't have much to offer. And so when I preach the word, I never know how people will respond, but by the grace of God, He has given you a hunger and a desire to be fed more than just frosting.

You want the meat. And so today we're going to look at a passage that is the filet mignon of the Bible. Who are your favorite missionaries? Do you have some favorite missionaries? I love to read about missionaries.

Betty and John Stam in China, and they're over in China, and the rebellion is coming, and they know they'll die soon, and so they go upstairs to their little newborn, and they tuck in the equivalent of $5 into the diaper, pray over the baby, and then go downstairs to be slaughtered and meet Christ Jesus face to face.

I love stories about Mary Slessor, the Scottish single lady who goes to the jungles of Africa. And the African people would take babies out in this particular part of the continent, and if they were twins, they would be demon-possessed, they thought, and so they would take the twins, lay them out in the middle of the jungle for the panthers to come and devour them.

And when Mary Slessor got down there to Africa, the Africans called her White Maw, and she was a mother, and she was white, and she rescued 51 sets of twins and raised them as her own. I love the story about John Payton who would go to the New Hebrides Island, and they were cannibals there, and he shows up not speaking cannibalese and just showing up on the shore, praying that God would use His Word to break through to these people who would just as soon kill you as eat you.

And John Payton buried his wife and his newborn son on the beach and slept on their graves for days so that the bodies would rot before the cannibals would eat them. Polycarp being martyred, faithful to God.

The Elliotts, Jim Elliott and the other men going down there, actually having a gun in the Akka Islands, and having a gun so much so that they said to themselves, we won't shoot the natives because if we shoot them to protect our own lives, they will die and go to hell, yet if we are martyred, we'll be in the presence of God.

Don't those motivate you? Don't those make you think, to some degree, God, I want to be like them? I would like to have the same kind of desire and earnestness and desire to show the fame and glory and honor of Christ.

I would like to be like that. Not so we would be more loved by God, but because God has loved us already. And the Scriptures give us insight on how frail, fragile people, like John Huss, like Mary Slessor, can become bold lions for the Gospel.

All by looking at this simple attribute, an attribute that Stephen Charnock called the crown of all God's attributes, the life of all his decrees, the brightness of all his actions. An attribute that Mr. Howe called in 1670, the transcendent attribute, the attribute of attributes.

And that Jonathan Edwards called, more than a mere attribute of God, it is the sum of all his attributes, the outshining of all that God is. Let's turn to Isaiah chapter 6. And when I say holiness, you probably say Isaiah 6.

Let's look at Isaiah chapter 6 and see the holiness of God, a view of the holy sovereign God that motivates people, frail people, redeemed people. When you open up your Bible to the New Testament, I hope it falls open to Romans 5.

Mine does because I put a crease in it, and that shows that I'm a good theologian. When you open up your Old Testament, I hope it opens from now on to Isaiah 6. This is a shocking passage. It's dangerous.

It's like handling nitroglycerin because when I preach it, there may be people here at the church who aren't here in two years. You may say, you know, this chapter, Isaiah 6, has so turned my life upside down, I've got to go for the kingdom, not just to Mozambique, but go somewhere with my life.

This is the kind of passage that will no longer make you one of those neighbors that's just kind of kind and not dangerous and everybody gets along with, but you become a neighbor who is dangerously preaching the gospel to anyone who will listen.

Isaiah is a wonderful book, the third longest book in the Bible after Psalms and Jeremiah. This is a book, Isaiah, that Jesus Christ and the apostles quoted at least 21 times, more than they quoted from any other prophet, and even more than they've quoted from all the other prophets combined, a central book in the life of a New Testament church.

Amos and Hosea were in the northern kingdom ministering to Israel. Micah and Isaiah are ministering to the southern kingdom, Judah. And basically, Isaiah's message was this before we get into the text.

Yahweh, God is salvation. Yahweh is salvation. Matter of fact, that's such a good term, we should name somebody that. Matter of fact, Isaiah's name means exactly that. Isaiah, God, Yahweh is salvation.

He had two sons and his two sons were kind of sub chapters of his ministry and his proclamation. Now, I'm going to mess up the pronunciation, but that's half the fun. Shirazahub was one of his sons. A remnant shall return.

And Mahershalahazbaz was the other son. I don't know what his nickname was, but we could come up with a few. Hastening to the spoil. And you'll see in Isaiah both judgment, spoil, and grace remnant. Matter of fact, some people call it the Bible in miniature, right?

How many books in the Bible? Sixty-six. How many chapters in Isaiah? Sixty-six. Of course, grace all through Isaiah. But kind of if you look at the first 39 chapters of Isaiah, specifically talking about judgment, and then the last 27 chapters really highlighting and focusing grace.

A great, great book. And if you'd like homework already for this week, my homework for you is to read half of Isaiah this week, and then we'll be in Isaiah six next week. And you can read the other half next week.

Here is this book that has its purpose to display the greatness of God, to show the glory, and to show God's wonderful attributes and his majesty. That's the whole book of Isaiah. And if we zoom in here to chapter six, we are going to see Isaiah's vision and call to the ministry.

And it will shock you. I'm going to take my time. I'm going to go slowly through this. I preached this a couple weeks ago in one week, but I just got to kind of slow down because as my pastor would teach me, slower is always better than what?

Faster. It's just time to back this truck up and just think the greatness of this text. And in fact, I could use the illustration of eating. When we were kids, my father would say many things to us. If I drank too much milk, he would say, don't drink your supper.

But if I ate too fast, he would say, don't wolf your meal down. This is not worth wolfing. This is just worth reveling in. As you see one breaker after another in Isaiah six, shatter Isaiah, and I hope today you're shattered.

When you preach, you're supposed to have a purpose statement. Here's my purpose statement. I hope you are shattered. I hope you're never the same. If you can sit through this chapter today, not because I'm a great preacher, but because it's a great passage.

If you can just sit today and walk out going, Oh, can't wait for that golf match and NASCAR to get on TV. Then friends, let me use a little, uh, hyperbole. You're not saved. The new Testament writers would look at Isaiah and just think the glory of God.

And that is my prayer for you today. That you, as you look at Isaiah six, you say, even now in your heart, God, I don't want to be the same as I was when I walked in today. I want to be different. I want to be more on fire for you.

I want your grace, the spirit of God to make me more like Christ. Everything that's great about Christ. I want to be like Christ. And that's exactly what the intention of this sermon and Isaiah's vision should accomplish.

The transformation of a frail, weak person into ministry full-time part-time. I don't care if you go become a missionary overseas, but this is to equip you right where you are now. The outline will be this.

Five requirements or five views or five visions so that you can have Isaiah-like ministry. I could put it this way. Here are five things that you must see so that you can have a ministry like William Carey, that you can have a ministry like Amy Carmichael, that you can have a ministry like John the Baptist.

Five views from God that should both humble you and motivate you. And it's much better than reading Spurgeon's lecture to my students. People say, I might be called into ministry. You know what I always tell them?

Well, you need to get lectures to my students by Charles Spurgeon. And he has in chapter two, the call to ministry. You should read that. I still think that's good. But I'm going to start saying, you need to read Isaiah 6.

Why don't you memorize Isaiah 6? And then we'll talk about your call to ministry. Five transforming views of God that should inspire you to serve with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. View number one, you must see the holy transcendence of God.

If you'd like to be motivated for ministry, you'll see in the life of Isaiah and all these other great missionaries that they saw God as holy. And this wasn't just some kind of catchword or buzzword, you know, the attribute of God for H is holy.

And then off to the next thing, the holy transcendence of God on high. Let's go to Isaiah chapter six, verse one, and dive into the text. In the year of King Uzziah's death, and as all great preachers would say, we've got to stop right there.

I mean, we've got to put the context together. We just can't keep zooming in. Here is this King Uzziah, and sometime during that, he dies during the year. And so at some time of that, in that year, Isaiah has this vision.

Now, Israel has been doing very well. Why? Because they have had a man on the throne for how many years? Uzziah has been on the throne for 52 years. And if you think there's stability when the Roosevelt's were reigning as presidents in America, here you have a king, and things seem to be going well, and everything's prospering, and at least economically, politically, with the borders, with enemies.

I mean, they are singing as a national anthem, happy days are here again. They are very glad for this golden era. Israel and Judah aren't fighting. And here, very peculiarly, Isaiah dates this vision.

Nobody else does it like this. He does it once more in chapter 14, but he dates his vision in the year of King Uzziah's death. This man who was an institution, who was a military leader, who was efficient, maybe the greatest king since Solomon from a human perspective.

Yet what happened to Uzziah? Can you flip over to 2 Chronicles chapter 26, and we'll take a little peek into what happened and how he dies? 2 Chronicles 26 .16. If you have tabs on your Bibles, it's easy to find.

When I realized that John MacArthur used tabs in his Bible, it was so freeing. So I have tabs up here in my Bible, and it's fine to use. It's fine to use table of contents. The point is we want to see what Scripture would say.

And although the country was prospering externally, strong on the inside, it was a spiritual disaster. And as king goes, so do people go. And here's how Uzziah died. 2 Chronicles 26 .16. But after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall.

He was unfaithful to Yahweh, his Lord, his God. And enter the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense. You're not supposed to do that if you're a king. That's reserved for someone else, and it's not you.

Azariah, the priest, with 80 other courageous priests of the Lord, followed him in. They confronted him. It had to be men who are courageous because this is the king. This is the prosperous king. This is the strong king.

This is the king who's ruled for 52 years. It's difficult to confront a king. And so they come in and they confronted him and said, it's not right for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord. That is for the priests, the descendants of Aaron, who have been consecrated to burn incense.

Leave the sanctuary, for you have been unfaithful. Boy, what courage, Nathan-like. You will not be honored by the Lord God. Uzziah, who had a censer in his hand ready to burn incense, became angry. While he was raging at the priest in their presence before the incense altar in the Lord's temple, leprosy broke out on his forehead, on a place where everyone could see.

When Azariah, the chief priest, and all the other priests looked at him, they saw that he had leprosy on his forehead, so they hurried him out. You don't have a leper in this place, this holy place. Indeed, he himself was eager to leave.

You bet he was, full bore, because the Lord had afflicted him. King Uzziah had leprosy until the day he died. He lived in a separate house, leprous, and excluded from the temple of the Lord. Jotham, his son, had charge of the palace and governed the people of the land.

And don't you know Isaiah knows about this? Because chapter 26, verse 22, talks about all the rest of Uzziah's act, recorded by a little prophet named Yahweh is my salvation. All right, back to Isaiah chapter 6.

What is going to happen to this country? Isaiah is going to get a charge from God at a point where a charge needs to be given. The king's dead, the era's over. Babylon is approaching. Terrible spiritual condition.

They need a view from the real king. They need a king who is holy and upright and anything but unclean. They need a king who is going to reign forever, not just a few 52 years. They need a vision of a king who would transform not just the external politics and economics and military strategies, but would transform them on the inside.

One king's dead. And here's the next king. Do you see Isaiah 6 .1? In the year of king Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne. Here's the real king. You trust in humans and kings and in horses.

It's going to fail you. But here's the one in whom we should trust. And a great display. Isaiah sees this king. And this word see isn't the vision seen. This is not John in Patmos going, I got a vision seeing God.

This is the word what? I saw something. I see you. I see you. That's this word with some kind of being physically awake. And according to all his senses, he sees something. People think, well, it could be a dream.

I don't know exactly how this happened, but it seems like he's awake. And he now sees into the spiritual truth of the scene. He sees the Lord. That's what the text says. Not Yahweh, but here it says he sees the Lord.

He sees the king. He sees the sovereign one sitting there. Samuel Storm said this. One king was dead, but Isaiah was about to make contact with king who never dies. One king had lost his power. Another never will.

One king had seen his authority passed to the next generation. Another will rule from generation to generation. An earthly nation mourns the passing of its monarch. A heavenly nation praises the perpetuity of its monarch's reign.

Uzziah's power was limited and fleeting. God's power is limitless and forever. Needless to say, the contrasts in verse 1 are striking. And you see this throne that he's sitting on? He's sitting up on a throne.

Some kind of human form, almost an Ezekiel 1-like human form where in some kind of theophany, some kind of vision of God, there's a form there. There's a God who's sitting on this throne. And who sits on a throne but kings?

Verse Kings 22, Micah said, I saw the Lord sitting on his throne and all the host of having standing by on his right and on his left. Ezekiel said of God on the throne, son of man, this is the place of my throne.

God speaks through Ezekiel. And this throne is high and lifted up where only God would be. And what does he see? You see it in the text? He sees God sitting on a throne, loft and exalted, the great king with the train of his robe filling the temple.

The word there, train, is like a skirt or a garment or the end of your garment that hangs down low like a robe, the end of the robe. And you can imagine if you're an oriental monarch and you're a king back in those days, you would have these wonderful robes adorning yourself with stature and majesty.

Sometimes you'll see brides and they'll walk down the aisle and the train of their bridal garment is long and flowing and it just creates a sense of spectacular wonder. And here God, unlike these human monarchs that say, the larger my robe is, the more distinguished I am, says, I have a great glory to show.

And it's not going to come out just by my robe. The weight of all this to Isaiah has to be crushing. I can see Isaiah right now. He started off like this, and now he keeps shrinking lower and lower and lower.

It's not in the text, but that's how I imagine it. He is just shrinking, the incredible shrinking man in front of the holiness of God. It doesn't say he saw the top of the throne, does it? It doesn't say he's looked kind of up.

Why does he only see stuff that's on the ground? Because I think he is on the ground. And when you're on the ground, the next time you lay down and kind of have your head down like this, see how much you can see with your peripheral vision and how much can you see?

You can see the train of the robe is what you can see, because all of a sudden you see the throne, you see the Lord, and then down you go. I mean, it's just a reflex action. It is like, you know, you get hit on the knee with that little knee hitter thing on there and off you go.

It's just reflex at the doctor's office. And when I'm in the doctor's office, I kind of just make my leg go out a little bit just to make sure he thinks I still have reflexes. Isaiah didn't need to be prodded.

Down he went. He sees God. God's holy. He knows he's sinful and down he goes and he can just see out a little bit and he sees the train of this robe. This is just like Exodus 24 when Moses sees God. Then Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and the 70 elders of Israel.

And they saw the God of Israel. And when you see the God of Israel, Moses, Nadab and Abihu, what do you see? And they saw the God of Israel, and under his feet there appeared to be a pavement of sapphire as clear as the sky itself.

When you see God, you're on your face and your peripheral vision goes, huh, I see what's underneath him. And for Moses, it was pavement that was strangely opaque. And this temple was filled with the glory of God and filled with what?

His robe. And that word temple is not the regular word for temple. This is the word where we get palace. The king is in his palace. We don't see the Shekinah glory here. We don't see kind of that picture that's shown elsewhere, the glory of God.

We see God through the vision of Isaiah in some kind of palace where kings would be all saying, you know, this area might even have been the same area. Isaiah is thinking where Uzziah came and was slain with leprosy.

What does Isaiah say? High five, God, right on. You and me, we're going to save the world together right on down the aisle. What does he say? There is not a peep out of Isaiah, because when you're on the ground doing this, you don't talk.

He's not talking. He's silent. An encounter with the holiness of God yields silence, muting, because all the focus the writer is trying to show is the exaltation of this God on the throne. But the longer he looks, maybe he catches something out of the corner of his eye.

Maybe he's he's coming to his senses enough that he looks up a little bit higher than he sees something else. And there are other things flying around kind of in a dizzying manner. Do you see it in verse two?

He sees something else. Seraphim stood above God, above him, each having six wings. With two, he covered his face. With two, he covered his feet. And with two, he flew. The day I was looking at the raspberry bushes and out of the corner of my eye, I saw this darting back and forth.

This kind of little bird that was just zipping back and forth. And it was what? It's a hummingbird. Almost with like hummingbird fashion. You've got these seraphim angels, only mentioned here in the Bible, zipping in and out, kind of twirling and swirling and flying around.

And Isaiah is seeing all this. Darting back and forth, constant motion. And the word seraphim, we get the word a fiery serpent from that root word. Same used in Numbers 21, the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people.

And some people think the seraphim look like these snakes with wings. But I don't think that's the point. I think the fire is not talking even about if they bite you, it'll burn really badly. Kind of feels like fire.

The burn, some commentators think that. But I think it's talking about the burn of zeal, the burn of brightness, the burn of glory. These are the burning glory creatures spiraling around God, not some snake like angels.

If you were an eastern monarch, if you were an oriental monarch, you would want to have a whole entourage. You would want to show you were great by the size of your throne, how your throne was lofty, what you dressed in, how long was your robe, and how many attendants you have.

You can almost get the picture of people in the old days fanning the king and feeding him grapes and having all his different court there. And here, Isaiah knows what an oriental king looks like. He's seen one.

He knows Uzziah. But here, this king, the king of the universe, has attendants, but they're fiery seraphim flying around. Lots of times, fire directly associated with God's holiness. Now, Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans, and after putting fire in them, placed incense on it and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them.

The fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. And Moses said to Aaron, it is what the Lord spoke, saying, by those who come near me, I will be treated as holy.

Holy. And look at these seraphim. It's interesting. They're kind of above or around and about God. We don't know how many in the sizes and in the exact detail. They are different from the cherubim over the mercy seat.

And they have wings. Look at six wings. Two wings are used for this seraphim to cover his face. Why do you cover your face, by the way, if you're holy? Are these seraphim sinful? Well, God, when he's in the presence of humanity, those humans respond with Isaiah like fear and cringing.

But these aren't sinners. These aren't sinful angels. This isn't Satan and his hordes. Yet these angels with angelic blushing cover their faces because of the transcendent glory of God. They're not covering their ears because they need to be attentive to what God wants them to do.

And they also cover their feet. You know, if you met an eastern king back in those days, you would never wear shorts. You would always have your legs covered. Respect, decency, etiquette. One man said it is a great mark of respect in the east to cover the feet and to bow the head in the presence of a king.

And with two, they flew flying around. And here it's almost this prostration. And yet there's not just prostration in the front of a holy God. There's also praise. Verse three. Yes, you realize he's God.

Yes, you cover your face. Yes, you realize that he's he's different and he's other. But you also sing praises to this great God. And one called out to another the seraphims and said it doesn't say sing and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

The whole earth is full of his glory. Imagine how loud this must be. And most scholars think that if antiphonal like Miriam, she would sing and then people would sing back. Remember, we had the master's chorale.

Some would be up here singing and there was another group back there and they were singing in kind and responsively. And so here these angels, these seraphim are up there singing in antiphonal response to one another.

Holy, holy, holy. And then maybe another group all say the earth is full of his glory. What a scene, by the way, as you're in this passage, how's your checkbook balance right now? How's your yard? How are all those things in your to do list that you haven't got done yet?

About all those errands that you have tomorrow Monday morning to do about that big work meeting that you've got next week with your boss for the review. Have you thought about any of those things since you've been in this passage?

I haven't. So one of the great things about studying the word of God, because I'm pretty much had enough of myself and when I get involved, I mess it all up anyway. And God will have to meet me there tomorrow for those things.

And right now you just are in the word and you think this is amazing. Here are these angels. Holy, holy, holy. If I could say it in Hebrew, it might sound better. And it's easy because the word holy in Hebrew is Kadesh, Kadesh, Kadesh, Kadesh, Yahweh.

You could say it in Greek. Let me see. Make sure I get it right. Haggias, Haggias, Haggias, Kurias. Man, what's going on here? This is repetition for a reason. Because the Seraphim are trying to show us that to the superlative degree, to the maximum, there should be emphasis that God is holy.

If you want to emphasize something in the Bible, you can do it a variety of ways. One, say things three different ways. God is holy, set apart, and sanctified. Two, you use this little phrase, there are six things the Lord hates.

Yes, even seven to magnify the seventh for emphasis. Or the third way you do it is to repeat the word three times. The repetition for the Jew was emphatic, superlative. This is holiness to the nth degree.

Kadesh, Kadesh, Kadesh, Yahweh. R .C. Sproul says the Bible says that God is holy, holy, holy. Not that he is merely holy or even holy, holy. He is holy, holy, holy. The Bible never says that God is love, love, love.

Mercy, mercy, mercy. Wrath, wrath, wrath. Justice, justice, justice. It does say that he is holy, holy, holy. The whole earth is full of his glory. Lots of this kind of repetition. Oh, my son, Absalom, my son, my son.

Oh, earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord. The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, Jeremiah 7. And here we have something. I'll give you the big word for the day because it sounds neat, and it'll probably remind you of it.

This is the thrice holiness of God called the trisagon. Trisagon is kind of a butcher of hagion, which means holy. When you read something in a commentary or a book that says the trisagon, this is the thrice holy nature of God.

And if I could put words into the mouths of these seraphim, this is my story, this is my song, praising God's holiness all the eons long. Or I could put it another way. Isaiah is to receive this vision by God on the throne with the robe, with his attendants all shouting holy.

Here's the message for Isaiah. Hallowed be thy name. Doesn't it sound like Revelation 4? Out of the throne comes flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder. And there were seven lamps of fire burning around the throne, and they're the seven spirits of God.

And before the throne, there was something like a sea of glass, like crystal. And in the center and around the throne, four living creatures full of eyes in front and behind. And the four living creatures, each had six wings, are full of eyes around and without.

And day and night, they do not cease to say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come. Holiness must be seen by Isaiah for his inner revival, for his call to ministry, and you must see it as well.

If I bump you in the middle of the night and come over to your house and knock on the door, and I say, describe to me God, I hope you say, holy, holy, holy. And God is so holy, the third person in the Trinity is even named the Holy Spirit.

You want to be motivated for ministry, you need to know the nature and character of God as holy. Yes, he is all these other attributes, and he's manifesting all those attributes simultaneously. But occasionally in scripture, you see one attribute brought to the front for a reason, and it's brought to the front for the reason this time, because this is what the nation needs, this is what the prophet needs, and this is what his people of God need 3 ,000 years later.

Now, a little trick question, what does holiness mean? Now, if this was Sunday night, you could say it out loud, but since it's Sunday morning, we better not. Although that's the style these days of preaching.

Oh, preaching is horrible, because who wants to have one guy get up there and say a bunch of things about God? We want to kind of have a dialogue, and we don't want some kind of monologue from a private kind of, you know, prideful person up there telling us all these things.

Matter of fact, he's just a person anyway, and so how can he get up there every week and say all these things? We want a dialogue, and we want to share, and we want to give Holy Ghost back rubs and all these other things.

You see, preaching in the Bible, and it's forth telling from the prophet, thus says the Lord. But my question still remains the same. What is holiness? And if you say God is set apart from sin, you're not completely right.

Holiness does mean set apart. It does mean to mark off. It does mean there's a group of dishes here, and I pull two out for these special purposes, and these for special purposes are different. They're a cut above.

They're different and separate. They're holy. Yes, it does mean that. But we always think of holiness as some kind of ethical or moral attribute of God. He is not sinful. That would be correct. That would be right.

Jesus is sin less. There is no sin to be found in him. He forgives sins. He does not commit them. Jesus is holy. But there's another element of holiness, and the element of holiness that Isaiah is trying to project here has nothing to do with God is set apart from sinners, although that is true.

Isaiah is trying to let his people know this through the scripture, that God is different. God is other. God is not just set apart from sin. He's set apart. He's completely different. He's alien for Samuel.

It says there is no one holy like the Lord. Exodus 15. Who is like the O Lord among the gods? R .C. Sproul said he is an infinite cut above everything else. Holiness, R .C. says, and mark this, is not primarily a reference to moral or ethical purity.

It is a reference to transcendence. R .C. said we are so accustomed to acquainting holiness with purity, our ethical perfection, that we look for the idea when the word holy appears. When things are made holy, when they are consecrated, they are set apart into purity.

They're to be used in a pure way. They're to reflect purity as well as simply apartness. Purity is not excluded from the idea of holy. It is contained within it. But the point we must remember is the idea of the holy is never exhausted by the idea of purity.

It includes purity, but is much more than that. It is purity and transcendence. R .C. said it is a transcendent purity. In other words, transcendent, God is over, God is above, God is different. And when Isaiah sees God, he realizes, yes, that's true.

God is not just over. He is close to us, and we'll talk about that more next week. But all this is driving Isaiah to commitment to serve, adoration, praise. God is holy. Now, let's just stop here just for a second.

I want to say one thing about God's holiness now that I think will be very practical. True or false? Be careful before you answer because I'm really trying to go after you, but I'm going to use Isaiah to get to you.

True or false? Isaiah was bored with the holiness of God. True or false? When Isaiah was worshiping, when Isaiah was seeing the transcendent nature of God, as God was showing Isaiah himself, Isaiah responded with boredom.

I mean, it's laughable, isn't it? It's insane when we think he's bored. One man said a recent survey of ex-church members revealed that the main reason they stopped going to church was they found it boring.

It is difficult for many people, this writer says, to find worship a thrilling and moving experience. We note here, when God appeared in the temple, the doors and the thresholds were moved. The inert matter of the doorpost, the inanimate thresholds, the wood and the metal that could neither hear nor speak had the good sense to be moved by the presence of God.

Friend, if you're bored in church and there's Bible preaching, the indictment isn't on the team, the staff, the elders. The indictment is on your view of God. You've forgotten to come to the worship of the Lord to give.

Not to say, well, I didn't like that. I'm sure Isaiah didn't like this. I'm sure he didn't have a warm fuzzy and went home and said, honey, you know what, I need a foot massage and I got to tell you about my day to day.