Jesus The Throne And The Cross, By Peter Mead, 26 Oct 2014

Christmas Planning, Family Tension, and the Need for a Better King

Well, it's coming up to November, and as November approaches, the shops get past Halloween, they start to kind of present us with Christmas, and everybody moans because we're not ready for Christmas yet.

But actually, I think one of the things that happens with Christmas coming is that people start going into planning mode, and in some ways you could almost call it plotting mode. You know, it's like, what can I afford?

I was just in a shop yesterday and I was told that if I got this certain card, it would help me to plan for the Christmas groceries. And then I'd be able to make plans and save money because everybody has a lot of expenses at Christmas.

And so, what can we afford becomes a big issue, doesn't it? It's sort of like, okay, well, October was expensive, how in the world are we supposed to do December? We've got to buy presents, got to buy food, all the extra kind of hassles and costs of that season.

And so, Christmas becomes a bit of a kind of a time of plotting and planning. And actually, finances, that's nothing compared to preparing for family gatherings. When it comes to plotting and scheming, family gatherings and Christmas seem to be a time of unique tension, right?

Well, if we're, you know, at his parents on Christmas Day, then when are we going to see her parents? What about Uncle John? And if Aunt Sophie shows up, I tell you what, I don't know where I'm going to put myself because she always says the most inappropriate thing.

And so, there's always this kind of plotting and planning and scheming. It's almost like we kind of go into manipulation mode, you know, like Christmas is coming and I better get my act together to navigate my way through this.

Isaiah as a Book for Plotters and Schemers

And so, we're starting a series in the book of Isaiah and you go, well, what's the connection? Well, Isaiah was a book written to a group of people who were absolutely plotters and schemers. They were like us, but on steroids.

They were facing both, they'd had a good time, but they were facing a tough time and their default approach was, right, how can we manipulate? How can we work this out? How can we make this work for us?

The nation of Judah, at that point, it's just a tiny little country. We're talking about something about half the size of Wales, okay? And it's in the Middle East, it's got Jerusalem as its capital and it's right there and it's surrounded by bigger, more powerful nations.

Egypt had been the superpower, now Assyria was becoming the superpower and there's Judah sitting in the middle of it. And they'd had a time of prosperity and things had gone well and they'd had a king for a good long time, over half a century.

Just think about having a monarch for over half a century. We can relate to that, right? Just imagine what's changed in Elizabeth's reign. Well, maybe there was that much change in Uzziah's reign too.

And over the course of those 52 years, generally things had been going in a good direction. Things were healthy, things were prosperous, it just seemed like things were in a good place for the nation, but suddenly Assyria was becoming this kind of threatening force.

It was sort of like this growing army and growing threat and so they did what they did naturally and what we do naturally. They started to scheme and to plan and to plot and to manipulate and to think that they could work things out to cope with this monster of an enemy on the border.

Isaiah, the Watchman Prophet, and the Coming of Jesus

And so then we come to the book of Isaiah and we're going to look at Isaiah for the next few weeks. And Isaiah is just this incredible, amazing book where over the course of 66 chapters we just get an overwhelming presentation of God's word.

He was a prophet. If you go into your Bibles and you find Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the four books that tell the story of Jesus when he was on the earth and his death and resurrection and so on. If you go to those, they're fairly near the end and turn left, you'll go straight back into the prophets and it's a big step back.

It's several centuries back before the time of Jesus. There's actually 16 prophets that have written and the first of those, as far as the order is concerned, was Isaiah. And Isaiah was a wordsmith. If we were to study Hebrew together and we got to a really proficient level, we would come to the conclusion, having read through the whole of the Old Testament, that Isaiah was a wordsmith.

He had a bigger vocabulary. He was a capable communicator. He was just a really high caliber person. And he was chosen by God to be a prophet, to speak for God to the people. When you go through the prophets, there's an image that the prophets use of themselves and that God uses of the prophets that I think helps us to get a sense of what it is we're reading when we read a prophet.

Because as some of you know, they're not the easiest books to read. They would often use this label of a prophet being like a watchman. Now imagine, if you can, living in a city with a wall around it, a guarded city.

And around the city, you've got this wall that's wide enough for people to walk around it and the people who would walk around and look around were the watchmen. Their job was kind of security of the highest level.

So you're walking through the streets at night, you're thankful that the watchman's there because they can spot if there's anything dangerous lurking in the streets. And even more importantly, they can look out and see if there's anything dangerous lurking in the bushes.

Probably quite a tough job, don't you think? Before any equipment or infrared kind of night vision goggles, they're looking out, that bush just moved, is it a fox or is it the enemy? And that was their job.

They were there to watch and so they would never sleep on their watch, they had to keep guard, but they had a unique perspective. They could look at the city and give perspective, they could look on the outside and give perspective.

They could look off into the distance and they could see things that were coming. If there was an army amassing on a hillside off in the distance, the watchman would spot it before you could. If there was a messenger running with a, we've won the war, we've lost the battle, they would see the messenger long before you did and so they had this unique perspective and so God took that image and he said, okay, that's what the prophets are.

They're like a watchman. They're on the wall and they've got my perspective and so actually a lot of what the prophets are doing is looking into the city, looking into the culture and saying, this is what God says about the way you are and so as we read it, sometimes we'll find it very challenging even for us because it's God's perspective on human nature.

Nothing predictive about that, it's just the way it is, but they would also look outside the city wall and they would look at the nations around and so there'll be great chunks in the big prophet books, there'll be chunks of writings about this nation and this nation and that nation and that nation and God giving his perspective on them too.

But then there's also the bits where they look beyond and they don't just look out for a few days or a few hours away or whatever, they look out sometimes centuries or even longer to see what's coming and that's obviously something God gives them, right?

Gives them that perspective to be able to say, here's the hope, here's the end of the story. And so what we're doing as we look at the book of Isaiah is we're kind of picking some of those highlights where he's looking beyond the present and looking out and saying, several centuries from now, Jesus is coming, the son of God, God is going to step in and he's going to take care of the big problems, the big issues.

And so as we read through it, we can kind of capture these little moments, they're a bit like trailers, they're just brief most of the time, they're not complete but they give you enough to make you go, oh, I want to know more about him.

So we're going to work our way through Isaiah, we're not going to go through every chapter, it's a long book, like I said, 66 chapters and we're going to just take six weeks, so we're dropping in for some highlights.

But I would encourage you to read the whole thing, over the next few weeks, why not take the dare, if you like, of reading through Isaiah, and let me just encourage you, you will find that there are chunks of Isaiah that you don't get, that's okay, don't get tripped up by that.

It's a bit like if you accessed a newspaper archive from a long time ago, you'd struggle to make sense of the front page news, it would be obvious to them, it's not so obvious to us. We're looking at front page news from 2 ,700 years ago, that's a long time.

So there's going to be parts of Isaiah that you just kind of scratch your head at, names and places, don't worry, because what you'll find is as you keep reading, there will be these bits that you think, oh, this is so bleak, this is so dark, this is like, oh my goodness, the sin of the people and the judgment of God, and then suddenly there'll be this little diamond, it's like a diamond on a black velvet background, little moments where you get this glimmer of hope, and God says, hey, check this out, here's some hope for you, and you'll find them all through the book.

Two Halves of Isaiah: Assyria and Babylon

Now in terms of the big picture of the book, let me just give you a very, very simple orientation, because it is such a big book, and my job today really is to kind of give us a sense of the whole. Basically, Isaiah falls into two parts.

Conveniently, and I think completely coincidentally, it matches, the number of chapters in Isaiah sort of match the number of books in the Bible. So if you've been to Sunday school growing up, you probably remember the songs about the number of books in the Bible and so on, it's 66 books, well, in Isaiah we've got 66 chapters.

And amazingly, and I still think it's a coincidence, but it is amazing, Isaiah falls into two chunks, like the Bible does. There's 39 chapters, and then there's 27 chapters. Just like in the Bible, there's 39 books in the Old Testament, and 27 books in the New.

Now, what you have in Isaiah is the first 39 chapters, really, are kind of early in his career, and they're at this time when Assyria is the great threat. I mean, Assyria were a hideous enemy to have.

They were really, if they were in the news today, we would be panicking. Maybe they are, but it's sort of not too dissimilar. There's this Assyrian threat that's hanging over them, and the people of Judah are facing something incredibly sinister.

And over the course of these first 39 chapters in the book, Isaiah speaks to the people and he urges them to trust God, and in the midst of all that darkness, God is the focus, because God's the one with perspective, he's the one in charge, and ultimately, as we'll see later on, he deals with the Assyrian army overnight with one angel.

So God is bigger even than Assyria, but for the people in Judah, they were the big deal. So 39 chapters of that. As that issue is dealt with, you then come to the second part of the book, from about chapter 40 onwards, and the focus there is Babylon, and we go, Babylon, what in the world is this all about?

Well, Babylon was nothing. Back then, Babylon was a bit like Luxembourg. It was just like a glorified city. But Babylon started to grow after Isaiah's time, and it became the empire that controlled the world.

And Isaiah, ahead of time, saw that coming, actually God did, he saw it coming, he knew what was going to happen, he knew that Babylon was going to take the Jewish people, God's people, away from the land, and take them away to be kind of prisoners in their land of Babylon, and God gave them a message ahead of time.

You think, that's a bit weird. Well, it's powerful, actually, if you think about it. I was reading somewhere where somebody put it this way, he said, imagine an aging grandfather who writes a letter to his granddaughter and puts it in an envelope to open on the day of your wedding, and then he dies, and years later, she gets married, and she opens that letter.

Wouldn't it be powerful just to read, from grandfather's perspective, he knows life, he couldn't see the future, but he knows life, and he knows marriage, and he knows what she's going to face, and so he pours out his heart to her.

That would be powerful, right? Written in advance, revealing something. Same thing with Isaiah. God has written this in advance, and then when they are off in exile, they get to read the scroll of Isaiah, and be encouraged and built up that God knew about this.

God knew way before we did. And so you've got these two sections of the book, the Assyria section, if you like, and the Babylon section, these two superpower sections. But actually, what you have in Isaiah, really, is a presentation of God, because God is the big focus in both halves.

While the people are going to be tempted to trust in themselves, God is saying, trust in me. While the people are going to be continuously moving deeper and deeper into sin, God is saying, I'll take care of that sin.

Trust in me. And so all the way through Isaiah, we keep getting these little trailers, these little previews of how God's going to step in, and how God is going to deal with it. In fact, big idea, I think, for the book of Isaiah as a whole, would be something like this, that failed and flawed people like us will always tend to trust in ourselves to try to fix our circumstances.

But God Most High is willing to stoop so low to win our trust, that we can trust in Him to deal with life and sin and its challenges. So that's a big idea for a big book. But what we're going to look at this morning is one chapter, primarily, that is right at the start, that gets us launched.

Isaiah 6: The Throne Room Vision and the Holiness of God

It's a very famous chapter. It's Isaiah chapter 6. If you're using a black Bible there on the table, it's page 571. Let's turn to Isaiah 6, because this is really the best place to get launched into the book.

Isaiah chapter 6. And this is called, often, the call of Isaiah the prophet. And you might think, well, hang on a second. If this is the point where his career launches, why isn't Isaiah chapter 1? Is it like a biography?

If you buy a biography today, you won't actually get right into the meat of the person's fame and career in chapter 1. There'll be a few chapters first, right? And then by the time you get to chapter 6, then he gets appointed manager of whatever team or he gets voted president or something.

So the first chapters are kind of biographical background, something like that? Well, not exactly. Actually, what we've got as background, Isaiah 1 to 5, is not so much here's Isaiah's story as here's the state of the nation at that time.

We're not going to look at it now because of time, but I'd encourage you to take a look. As you read through Isaiah, get a feel for how bleak the nation was. They were unfaithful to God. They were sinful.

They were determined to go after more and more sin all the time. They were rejecting God every way they could. And even though God is offering them these glorious glimpses of hope for the future, they're determined to say, get lost.

We will handle it our way. And then we get to chapter 6. Let's look at it. It's such a, maybe familiar, but certainly a powerful, powerful chapter. Let me just read the first three verses to get us started.

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. 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. We kind of need to turn on our imaginations, don't we, to picture that. Well, first of all, it was in the year that King Uzziah died.

This was a time of real instability. They'd had a king for 52 years. He'd been a good king. They'd had good times. But now he was dead, and there's no one on the throne. And naturally, a country that's had a king, not like a monarch we have, but a true leader that actually rules the place, and suddenly the ruler's gone.

You can imagine that's going to create some instability for them. And so everybody's looking around going, where's the next king? We're concerned. We're concerned. In fact, the story of Judah is a story of the kings of David.

It's the line of David, because God had promised King David a couple hundred years before, your son, your descendant is going to sit on the throne. And so unlike other countries where you get the Habsburgs and the Windsors and the different dynasties coming in, for Judah, it was always the son, son, son, son, son of David.

And so they're going through the sons and the grandsons and the great-grandsons, and they're always watching, thinking, is this the one? Is this the special one who's going to establish the kingdom over the whole world?

And then they go, oh, no, that's disappointing. And then the next one. And then, oh, what a waste. And then the next one. And with Uzziah, they'd had 52 years, and he'd done well. And some of them had started to wonder if maybe this is it.

Maybe this is the one. And now he's died. You can imagine the instability they felt. And in that context, Isaiah gets to see the throne. Not the throne of David in Jerusalem, the throne of the universe.

He gets taken in this vision up into the temple of heaven itself, not just the temple in Jerusalem, but up into heaven. And he stands on the threshold. And as he looks, he sees this most overwhelming sight.

Just think about the ideas here, just swirling around. The Lord is on his throne. He's high and lifted up. The train of his robe, that represents his authority. It's not just like three feet or six feet or nine feet long.

It fills the entire temple. And then there's his seraphim. I never met a seraphim. But seraphim are very, very high, elevated angels. And we see this description here that they've got six wings. Two wings are flying, two wings covering their faces because they can't look on the majesty and the glory of God.

And with two wings, they're covering their feet. It's sort of a declaration of humility, like we're here, but we're not, because he is. And they're singing back and forth. I think it's singing here, not just calling or shouting.

And I don't know, but I imagine that seraphim have some lung power, right? Imagine the volume. Think of the loudest, I don't know, sort of Handel's Messiah in something of Royal Albert Hall kind of moment.

It's probably that times 50. And they're calling to one another back and forth. And they're declaring, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. In English, I suppose we would say perfectly holy.

But in Hebrew, they'll put words back to back to reinforce the point. That's not just good gold. It's like gold, gold, or I know somewhere in the Old Testament, it talks about a pit and it's not just any old pit.

It's a pit pit, like it's a really bad pit. You put the words together, it kind of multiplies the force. And so here, as the seraphim are reflecting on the wonder of who God is, they just cry out, holy, holy, holy.

What does that mean? It means that God is separate, that he's not like us. He's not like us in this sense, that the world we live in is curved in. It's selfish, it's grabby and graspy. But God is completely different to that.

And so as the seraphim are watching and reflecting on the wonder of who God is, actually, I think what they're describing here is the glorious love of the Trinity. A God who is completely, perfectly different from the selfishness of this world.

He's a God who gives and gives and gives, and there's such a brightness to that. There's such an overwhelming sense to that, that he's high and he's exalted. The earth is filled with his glory, even though we can't see it.

But there's something radiating out from God that is powerful. And ultimately, we're going to come to Isaiah and see that he is totally just torn apart by the holiness of God and his own lack, his own total, absolute inadequacy.

It's such a powerful, powerful scene. And Isaiah's there, and he's watching this, and he's hearing this, and he's blown away by this. And it says, verse 4,. And Isaiah's response, I said, Woe is me, I'm cursed, for I am lost, or I'm undone, I'm coming apart here.

I wonder what our response would be if we were given the vision that he was given. If we were suddenly to find ourselves on the threshold of the throne room of heaven and to have our eyes on the Lord of hosts, and to see his glory, and to see his holiness, I suspect our response would be like his, don't you?

Actually, I think, in some ways, my response would be almost identical to his. Maybe yours would be slightly different. Let me explain what I mean. I don't think here that Isaiah is simply saying, you are holy, I'm a sinner.

That's certainly true. But I don't think he's saying simply this, I've done some bad stuff, and I've even said a few bad things. I think that actually, as Isaiah comes face to face with the majesty and the glory of God, I think that what he's saying here is that I am completely undone.

Even the very things that I thought were my strengths are nothing compared to you. Isaiah was educated, he was capable, he was a communicator, he was a prophet. Ultimately, that's what he became. And here was a man whose lips had been his life.

His ability to communicate was the way that he stood out from the crowd. And I think that it's in that sense that in this moment, he says, okay, I'm confronted by the majesty of God, even my greatest strength is as nothing before him.

I wonder what yours would be. For me, I'm a preacher, teacher, I get to talk a lot. And if I'm not talking, I'm talking through words, and that's kind of where I am. So I think I might say that too. Maybe your response would be different.

I'm a person whose determination counts for nothing. I'm a person whose work ethic is pathetic compared to this God. I'm a person whose perspective or intellect or knowledge or ability or skills or my ability with a screwdriver is nothing because I've come face to face with God, and I am completely undone.

You know, Christianity isn't simply about admitting that we've failed a few times and then Jesus pays the rest. It's actually that when we come into the presence of God, when we encounter God, we discover that we've got nothing to give.

We've got no strength. We've got no ability. We've got no righteousness. We are absolutely broken before him. And Isaiah says, I'm cursed. I'm done for. As he comes into the presence of God, I wonder if Jesus were to walk into this room, and we were to see, like on the Mount of Transfiguration, if we were to catch a glimpse of him, if you like, with his heavenly glory revealed, you know what our response would be?

We'd be flat on our faces, every one of us. We wouldn't be pally and matey and, oh, it's Jesus. We'd be flat on our faces in the presence of the glory of God, just like Isaiah was here. But the story goes on, the passage continues, and it says that God dealt with the issue.

Verse 6, 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.

Your sin is atoned for. One of the things that I'm continually stunned by is that when you read through the Bible and you're pursuing God in the Bible and you're looking, you find that God's response to sin and to failure is not what you expect.

I mean, after the buildup of these first three, four verses, you kind of expect Isaiah to be crushed. And instead, God dispatches somebody to take care of the problem. That's the nature of God. He steps forward and he leans in to the mess that we are.

In this case, he sends an angel, and the angel comes with this coal from the altar, a picture of the atoning sacrifice. In those days, they would take an animal and they'd kill it, and they'd say, right, my sin deserves death, but I'm going to kill this animal in my place, and so that can cover for my sin.

And so the image makes sense to Isaiah. And the coal that's burning red-hot comes, and it's placed against his lips, which is quite a frightening thought. And he's singed, and yet he's purified. And God says, okay, you think you're a man of unclean lips, let me take care of that for you.

How does God take care of that? How is there an atoning sacrifice? We need to hang on to that thought. But God moves towards Isaiah and deals with his undoneness. And then God wants to move toward the nation.

So in verse 8, Isaiah says, I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send, who will go for us? I said, here am I. Send me. And so God said, go. Here's a nation that have been shaking their fists in the face of God for generations.

And God wants to go to them. Again, it's that missionary heart of God. But we've got to get this. If we're going to read the rest of the chapter, we've got to understand God isn't just going to go and take care of it all kind of nice and easy.

Actually, these people are determined in their rejection of God. And so actually the story is going to be quite a bleak one for a while, but ultimately there's hope. We need to read through the chapter to get to that ultimate hope.

But Isaiah's told, okay, you're going to go. And if you just look at the page, verse 9, verse 10, it seems pretty bleak. Keep on hearing, but do not understand. Keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull, their ears heavy.

Blind their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and turn and be healed. And Isaiah's going, what? You're saying go to them and they're going to reject?

And you kind of want me to sort of cement that? You want me to bake that determination against you, Lord? Yep, yep, yep. Your preaching is going to make them even harder. They're going to hate it. And his natural response, like ours would be, how long?

Oh, Lord, how long is that going to go on for? Surely that's not the end of the story. And God continues, verse 11, Ooh, that's bleak. So how long is this going to go on for? There's just a stump left.

That's how long. This is a holy God we're talking about. A God who doesn't take sin lightly. A God who says there are consequences and those consequences are going to be played out. And somehow Isaiah's got to go and speak for him.

But notice the final line of the chapter. Here's the slightest, most tiny little glimmer of hope that you could ever possibly imagine. The last line says, It's like, okay, you've got this big stump of a tree that's been cut down and it looks completely dead.

And then as you look carefully, there's this tiny little shoot that comes up. And God's saying, that's the life right there. That's where there's hope. It's this tiny little unimpressive shoot after I devastate everything.

John 12, Isaiah 53, and Jesus Seen on the Throne

Now that's quite a powerful passage, isn't it? In fact, that passage is quoted at least five times in the New Testament. Isaiah is quoted more than any other book of the Old Testament in the New except for Psalms.

And this is one of the key passages. And you look at it and you go, wow. The holiness of God and then this message of destruction and yet there's this little glimmer of hope. Let me show you something on the screen here rather than turning to it.

In John's Gospel, let's go forward another one. In John's Gospel, there's this little section here. It's at a key moment and it's where seven centuries later, Jesus is talking to the people and they're refusing to believe in him.

And the writer of the Gospel says, though Jesus had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him. So that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah seven centuries before might be fulfilled.

Lord, who has believed what he heard from us and to whom is the arm of the Lord being revealed? That quote there is Isaiah 53. Therefore they could not believe for again Isaiah said, he has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart lest they see with their eyes and understand with their heart and turn and I would heal them.

Familiar? That's Isaiah 6. So the blue quote is Isaiah 53. This quote in red is Isaiah 6, the bit we just read. And look at verse 41. Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him.

Who was it that Isaiah saw when he looked on the throne and saw the Lord of hosts? I've grown up my whole life thinking he saw God the Father. Even though I've read that. It was only in the last few years that I read that and went, hang on a second.

That's saying that Isaiah saw Jesus' glory and spoke of Jesus. Isn't that astonishing? Here we have this glimpse in Isaiah 6 of Isaiah standing on the threshold of the throne room of God. And he says in verse 5, my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

And he's talking about God the Son. And God the Son's majesty and glory is so overwhelming. That whole passage is about the Son, yeah it is. And he moves outwards by sending the seraphim, by sending the prophet and ultimately by sending himself.

Ultimately it's God the Son who comes to resolve the issues. Remember that verse right at the end, the holy seed is its stump. Let's look, just as we finish and just as we move into a time of communion.

Let's look at Isaiah 53, the other passage that John is quoting here. And we'll put it up on the screen again, although you can turn to it. These two passages, interestingly, both begin by saying that he is high and lifted up.

He's exalted. They've got some things in common. But Isaiah 53 is anything but what you expect after Isaiah 6. Let's go to it, Aaliyah. Next couple of slides here, here we go. Isaiah 53 actually starts three verses before in 52, 13.

That's where you get the high and the lifted up. And then it comes into this. Who has believed what he has heard from us? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Look at verse 2. For he, this is the servant of the Lord.

This is the same person that we're talking about in John 12. This is Jesus being described 700 years ahead of time. He grew up before him like a young plant, like a root out of dry ground. There's that sprout, that little shoot coming out of the stump.

Where it seems to be dead, there's the tiniest bit of life. Only now, he had no form or majesty that we should look at him. No beauty that we should desire him. The seraphim covered their eyes because he had so much beauty and so much majesty.

They couldn't cope with looking at him. But this is God most high stooping so low. That humans couldn't look at him because he was so unattractive. It carries on. He was despised and rejected by men. A man of sorrows acquainted with grief.

And as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised. And we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.

Keep going. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. This is describing Jesus on the cross seven centuries before he was even born. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.

With his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone and have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted. Yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb that is led to the slaughter.

And like a sheep that before it shears his silence. So he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living.

Stricken for the transgression of my people. And they made his grave with the wicked. And with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence. And there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him.

He has put him to grief. And it continues. Isaiah gives us the most overwhelming extremes. On the one hand we have Isaiah 6. The Lord high and exalted. He's glorious and the seraphim can't even bear to look.

And Isaiah is undone. He's torn apart and he says I'm a sinner. I'm nothing. And yet God reaches out and deals with that. What is it about that altar call that makes sense? What is it about an atoning sacrifice that deals with sin?

Well then you get to Isaiah 53 and you get the answer. Because the little shoot that comes out of death. Out of a dead nation that suddenly springs up and is different and is alive. Here he is. And again people can't bear to look.

Because now instead of high and exalted on the throne. We see him high and exalted on a cross. Hanging naked and humiliated. In order to pay the price to atone for our sin. This is all Isaiah. This is all Jesus previewed.

The Jesus trailers. Just two of the many that we're going to see as we go through this series. And I think what we'll find if we have hearts that are open to it. We'll find that through the book of Isaiah our hearts will be ripped apart.

And stretched open to see God in his majesty. And to see him glorified on his cross. There's no other God like this God. A God who doesn't just send someone else to fix the problem. But a God who's willing to step in.

To go to the opposite extreme. In order to reach us. Our father we're stunned as we think about. What Isaiah saw. And if we could just catch a glimpse of your throne room. And to see your son sitting on that throne.

We know that our reaction would be like his. Lord we just want to tell you thank you so so much. For dying in our place. Thank you so much for coming such a long distance. From the throne of heaven to the.

Just the awful reality of that cross for us. We want to tell you that we love you. We want to ask you by your spirit to give us a fresh glimpse. Of both the throne and the cross this morning. Stir our hearts to worship you we pray.