Who Shall Go For Us — Israel Wayne

Reach down to us. Lord, we just want to have grateful hearts that overflow in worship to You. Lord, we just praise You for Your goodness. We praise You for Your faithfulness. We just declare this morning that there is no other God like You.

You are the one and the true and living God. And Lord, we exalt Your name together. And Lord, we pray that You would be honored, that You would be glorified. In all that we say and do this morning, may You be exalted through the teaching of Your Word.

Lord, may You open our hearts and our minds to be responsive to what You would have to say to us today. May it be for the transforming of Your people, the equipping of the saints, and that You would be glorified in all things.

We ask these things in Jesus Christ's name, amen. Well, good morning, church. I've been blessed to be here with you this morning and enjoy getting to worship together with your church fellowship. My sister, Sony, who's here.

Sony, can you wave at everybody? My sister, Sony, and I are here today from Michigan and really enjoying the kind hospitality of your church. I'm gonna be preaching today on a text from Isaiah chapter six.

Isaiah’s Call to Serve in Isaiah 6

If you have your Bibles with you, you can go ahead and turn to that passage. The title of my message is based on a question that God asked in Isaiah six where He says, who should I send and who will go for us?

This is life lessons on service from the life of Isaiah. There is an old adage in the military where young recruits are often told, never be the first, never be the last, keep your mouth shut, and don't volunteer for anything.

Now, I've heard that in the military that can be really good advice because sometimes that keeps you from getting stuck with doing jobs that nobody else really wants to do. But one thing that I wonder is if that's good advice for us who are working in the kingdom of God.

I know sometimes that actually is the posture that we take where we don't wanna volunteer for anything, we don't wanna join up with anything because we think it might get us stuck doing some messy jobs.

I wanna look at some lessons here from Isaiah chapter six and see what the Lord would speak to us today. Let's begin in verse one of Isaiah six. I'm reading from the English Standard Version, the ESV.

It says this, in the year that King Uzziah died, I just wanna go ahead and stop there. Why do you think the Bible tells us this? Why does it open it up this way in the year that King Uzziah died? What's significant about this?

One thing I wanna suggest to you is that I find as Christians sometimes we read the Bible but we don't often study the Bible. And part of that is because we're a very goal-oriented to-do list people group.

And so sometimes our Bible reading is just an item, a check mark on our to-do list and we wanna rush through it as quickly as possible so we check it off our list and move on to everything else we have to do that day.

But I wanna suggest to you that as the people of God we need to not merely read our Bibles, we need to study our Bibles. And a few things that will help you and aid you in the study of your Bible, one is having a Bible timeline.

Something that shows you the chronology of the Bible and the dates in which things happen and that help correlate and correspond the things that happened in the Bible to the rest of history. So you have an idea of when things happened and what was significant about the dates and times.

A couple other things I would recommend that you purchase or acquire or use as an app would be a concordance, a Bible concordance that helps you to understand the words that are used and be able to do topical studies.

A Strong's Concordance or a Young's Concordance are both good resources. Another thing would be a Bible atlas where you have the maps and you actually look and see the locations and places that it's talking about in the scripture.

Because when the Bible gives us stories, it gives us narratives, it's actually giving us real history that has taken place with real people in real time. So we need to understand that there's a context to these things that are being told to us in the Bible.

Now when you and I read this and it says in the year that King Uzziah died, why do you think this is given to us? What's the significance of that year? What's significant about it? Well I'd like to suggest to you that if God thought it was important enough to say this in the Holy Scripture to inspire Isaiah through the Holy Spirit to write this down for us and give us a context for it, there must be something that God wants us to know about the year that King Uzziah died.

Now for you and I, contextually, historically, we may have a hard time relating to this. We may say, oh, I don't know what happened that year. I'm gonna give you the year, the year 740 B .C. You're like, okay, thanks dude.

Thanks for the history lesson, 740 B .C. That doesn't really mean a lot to me. I mean, what happened then? I'm trying to think back. 740 B .C., I don't think the Jets won the Super Bowl. Yeah, I got nothing, sorry.

So what's significant about that? Well, let me ask you this. Where were you on September 11, 2001? Does that mean anything to you? I heard a couple whispers. I wasn't born. And that just made the rest of us feel really old right there.

But the fact is, we have a point of reference for that, don't we? And that was an event that happened in our country that changed the dynamic of our nation. Our country will never be the same since September 11, 2001.

And so when this statement is made here in the year that King Uzziah died, it's giving us a point of reference that is of that kind of significance. So I'm gonna give you some historical background to kind of give us a running start up to this passage that we're about to read and to tell you what happened in this year, 740 B .C.

King Uzziah’s Pride and National Disgrace

So Uzziah, who was also called Azariah, became king of Judah when he was 16 years old. And he reigned in Judah for 52 years. He was a very godly king. He oversaw a great period of expansion and development in Judah, great building programs.

And he had a mentor. His mentor was the prophet Zechariah. And when the prophet Zechariah was alive, he followed the Lord and did, quote, what was right in the eyes of the Lord, end quote, according to 2 Kings 15 .3 and 2 Chronicles 26 .4.

However, when Zechariah died and his mentor was no longer involved in his life, in his later years, he became exalted in himself. He became lifted up in pride. And he did something extremely presumptuous.

He did something really rebellious, actually. He went into the temple of God and he had the audacity to offer incense on the altar, which was forbidden in the law of God. Only the priests were allowed to offer incense.

He's confronted by the priest, but rather than humbling himself and repenting of his sin, he becomes embittered. He becomes more prideful. And so God struck him with leprosy. Now, when you were a leper within the Israelites, you could no longer live in the community of the people of God.

You had to be sent outside the camp. You had to be an outsider. And literally, being an outsider meant you were outside of God's covenant people. You were cut off from the covenant of God because your identity was tied with his people.

And so he spent the remaining portion of his life separated from the people of God, no access to the temple of God, essentially cut off from God. And then to make matters worse, when he died, he was not buried with his fathers.

That was the great joy. That was the great anticipation of the Hebrew culture was I will be buried with my fathers, especially for the kings. You read this in Kings and Chronicles. He rested and was buried with his fathers.

Well, Uzziah was not able to be buried with his fathers. He was buried in a field adjacent to the burial place of his father. So you have this incident of national disgrace. You have this situation where this man who had led the nation of Judah in righteousness for all these years suddenly went rogue.

And he turned his heart away from God and he hardened his heart and he died in complete disgrace. There's no redemption to the end of the Uzziah story. There's no good ending. This is not a Hallmark movie.

And so when we think about it in terms of our cultural context, I'm not old enough to remember this, but I think something similar could be related perhaps to when Richard Nixon was impeached as the president in the United States.

You know, we just had the Vietnam War and then you have the impeaching of your president and the country is just at a loss. Where are we going from here? What's going on? But far more, I think, even than that, was this situation, this scenario for the people of Israel.

They suddenly have this sense of where is God in all this? And has God turned his back on us? And has he rejected us? And there's this sense of loss. And that's the background. That's the historical backdrop to what we're about to read.

So again, when you see something even as inane in your Bible as in the year that King Uzziah died, don't just read past that. There's a reason why God, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, has decided it's important for you to know what happened and what the background is.

Because it explains something about what's about to happen next. So we have this situation of Uzziah being irreverent in the presence of God, of coming into the temple of God and being exalted in himself.

And the scripture tells us that God himself says, no flesh will glory in my presence. So let's read what happens here. Isaiah 6, one. 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. Now the seraphim was an angelic being. Each had six wings. With two he covered his face. And with two he covered his feet. And with two he flew.

And one called to another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called. And the house was filled with smoke.

The Infinite Holiness of God

Why is it that the seraphim cries this in the presence of the Lord, that God is holy, holy, holy? I think in our modern day evangelical American church culture, if we were to take a survey and we were to ask us to describe or try to define God in one term, what word would we use to say God is, fill in the blank with one word, I think we would say love.

We would say God is love. And while it is true that God is love, the scripture tells us that very definitively, that God is love, and it also says that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. It tells us many other things that God is.

I truly believe that the most descriptive, the most definitive word that would describe who God is is not love. It's kind of a post-modern American version of God that we've created, and again, I'm not taking away from the love of God, but what I'm gonna suggest to you is that we can never properly understand the love of God until we understand God's primary characteristic and the way that he has chosen to reveal himself through his word, and that is that God is holy.

You will never understand the love of God until you understand the holiness of God, because the holiness of God helps us to understand not merely God's love, but it also helps us to understand God's justice.

God is so holy that no sin can abide in his presence, and because of his holiness, he has to avenge sin with his wrath. Now, that's something, again, we don't like to talk about in our culture. We don't like to talk about it in the church.

Something we feel very uncomfortable about, talking about and discussing the wrath of God. Romans 1 talks about that. The wrath of God is revealed against mankind who suppresses the truth in unrighteousness.

It's a biblical doctrine of the wrath of God, and the wrath of God comes from the holiness of God, and the holiness of God is what the angels talk about, and it's what they cry out before the throne day and night.

When you look in Revelation, the angels before the throne of God do not sing love, love, love. That was the Beatles. They sing holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is filled with his glory, and I wanna tell you the significance of this repetition that is called out.

In the Hebrew language, there is no punctuation. The Old Testament, which is written in Hebrew, has no way to be able to give exclamation to something because there is no punctuation. There's just the words.

And so, when you wanna say something with emphasis in Hebrew, if you wanna put an exclamation point on it, if you will, what you do is you say the word twice. So, you think of God when he met with Moses at the burning bush, and he calls out to him, and he says, Moses, Moses.

Well, that's like Moses with an exclamation point at the end. Jesus, even in the New Testament, although the New Testament is predominantly written in Greek, Jesus uses some of these Hebrew idioms, and he teaches, and he says, verily, verily, if you have an old King James, or truly, truly, I tell you, that's like, this is really, really true.

Exclamation point at the end. Or as one of the brothers mentioned to me, when he called Saul on the road to Damascus, Jesus says, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? One of the questions that Jesus asks in the New Testament.

And so, when you say a word twice, you are saying it with emphasis. You're saying that word, essentially, with an exclamation point at the end. However, in Hebrew, if you say something three times, you are not emphasizing it as a superlative.

You are saying that this word that you are emphasizing is in. So, when holy is spoken three times by the angel, they're not merely saying that God is holy. They're not merely saying he's holy with an exclamation point at the end.

These seraphim are affirming that God is infinitely holy. God is more holy than it is possible for us to conceive of any being, being that kind of holy. You just think about the most holy concept or construct that you can imagine in your mind.

God is way more infinitely holy than that. In fact, the holiness of God is such that on the mountain, on Mount Sinai, when Moses said to the Lord, show me your glory, God's response to Moses was, you can't handle my glory.

He says, if anyone were to look upon my face, they would die. That's how different we are. The word holy means set apart. It means other. It means distinct from, different from. God is not like you and me.

God is other. God is holy. It's not merely holy, God is infinitely holy. Holy to the point that when Moses, the man of God, whom God says, I call my friend and I talk with him, face to face as a man talks with his friend, when Moses asked to see the glory of God, God said, I can't do that, I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll let you see my backside.

And in the mountain, the presence of the Lord passed by and Moses caught a glimpse of the backside of the glory of God and in that little bit of revelation, when he came down from the mountain, his face was so radiant and was shining so brightly that the Israelites said, dude, you gotta put a brown paper bag over your head because we can't even stand to look at you, you are radiating so brightly, it's blinding us.

That is the intensity of the holiness of God. And it is because of this holiness of God that he has to oppose sin and he has to judge sin because sin is the opposite of his character, it's the opposite of what he is like.

And so God has appointed judgment, eternal punishment for not just sin but sinners. And again, this makes us very uncomfortable in this day and age. We have Christian pastors, supposedly Christian pastors, writing books published by Christian publishing houses, saying that God loves everyone so much that he could never bring himself to judge someone for all of eternity.

That there is no hell, that at the end, everybody goes to heaven when they die. This is a heresy called universalism and it's being promoted in best-selling books published by so-called Christian publishing houses by big-name teachers.

In fact, a pastor that comes from my area in Grand Rapids who is now a spiritual advisor to Oprah Winfrey wrote a big book called Love Wins promoting this concept. Best seller. The problem with this is that it does not understand and it does not rightly and correctly reflect the holiness of God.

Because God is infinitely holy, no sin can abide in his presence. So if that's the case, if that's true, which it is, then what hope is there for any of us, right? If we're gonna stand in the presence of that kind of infinite holiness, what kind of hope do we have?

Isaiah’s Unworthiness Before God

Well, let's see what happens here with Isaiah. So Isaiah has this encounter with the holiness of God and in verse five, after the, well, let's go back here and look at verse four for a minute. What was the response of the temple to this revelation of the infinite holiness of God?

It says, the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called and the house was filled with smoke. The very foundations of the temple of God shook and trembled at the proclamation of the infinite holiness of God.

Did you know that's actually the only proper response to coming into the presence of the living God? They shook and the temple itself, the house of God, it shook and trembled at this proclamation of God's infinite holiness.

And so Isaiah's response then in verse five is he says, woe is me for I am lost. For I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips for my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts.

Now, if you and I were gonna try to create a scenario where somebody had to go represent our nation before this infinitely holy God, we would try to think of, okay, who's our best candidate to go do this?

Well, at this point in time, we're gonna look around the planet and find somebody that might be a good selection to go stand before God. We probably think, let's pick somebody from the Israelites because they're God's chosen people.

So they were descendants of Abraham, set apart, chosen to represent God to the world. And so we would tend to think, well, let's find someone from the Israelites because they're gonna be the most holy people on the planet.

And then we would think, okay, within the Israelites, who are the people that might be the most holy among them? And the people that we might tend to think of as a group would be the prophets because the prophets were the ones who received the revelation from God.

They were the ones that God spoke through and gave his word to the people. And so we would say, let's consider one of the prophets. They might be able to stand before this holy God. And I think it's interesting how modern theologians have taken the prophets and they have relegated them into two categories.

They call them the minor prophets and the major prophets. Now, in my way of thinking, I think, in the Bible, there's only so many people whose names ever got mentioned in the Bible. And I think, man, if your name got mentioned in the Bible, that would be kind of a big honor, right?

You know, like, wow, my name. I mean, some people get excited when their name's in the newspaper. You know, but like, if your name is in the Bible, you'd be like, wow, that's pretty amazing. I mean, that's only a select group get mentioned there.

But then there's this group of prophets that they actually have books of the Bible named after them. You know, Nahum and Micah and Habakkuk and some of those guys, right? Well, these modern theologians have now said, these guys are the minor prophets.

Now, I don't know if just if it were me and I were one of those guys, I'd be like, okay, now you do know that basically I spent my whole life speaking on behalf of God. I experienced the mock and ridicule of the people.

They tried to stone me to death and then finally they sawed me in half and you're gonna call me a minor prophet. Okay, thanks, like, appreciate that. You know, and like, you know, these theologians are like, well, you know, they did a lot, but I mean, really, they're not, they're not made, they're like double A minor league team, you know?

And so, you go, okay, well, if we're gonna pick somebody who's gonna stand before God, well, we want somebody from the major prophets, right? So, who then are the major prophets in the Old Testament? Can you tell me?

Daniel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, right? These are the major, major prophets, right? This is the all-star team. So then you go, okay, so who is the captain of the all-star team? Well, you go, probably Isaiah.

I mean, because he's the guy who really had the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ and had all his prophecies about Jesus, Isaiah 53 and the crucifixion and all that. So you go, man, of the major prophets, Isaiah, he's pretty major, major.

You know, he's like the MVP of the all-star team. So let's get him to go stand before God because if there's anybody who's holy, it's probably gonna be the major, major, the major prophets. And yet, what happened when the most holy guy on the most holy nation in the planet stood before infinite holiness?

How did that go down? He says, woe unto me, I'm undone. I'm gonna die because I'm a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips. He saw himself in comparison to the infinite holiness of God and he knew there was no hope for him whatsoever.

I think about the patriarch Job and how God said of Job, have you considered my servant Job? He is a righteous and upright, perfect man. There is no one else like him on the earth. That's a pretty good commendation, I think.

Now, Job didn't say that about himself. Job's publicist didn't write that on his press release. Wasn't in his bio on his website. God said that about Job. So again, Job, according to God's word, Job was the most holy man on the planet by God's estimation, not even by our opinion.

God said so. And what happened with Job when Job came into the presence of this infinitely holy God? Job said, I had heard about you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore, I repent myself in dust and ashes.

That's the response of the most holy person on the planet when they came into the presence of this living holy God. I just think sometimes in our Christian American subculture, we've become too casual with God.

We've looked at God as though he's our little buddy. You know, he's like Deepak Modsang. He's our own personal Jesus. Someone who hears our prayers, someone who cares. Our own little self-help therapeutic deity.

I think sometimes we think of him as kind of a mix between Barney the dinosaur, you know, I love you, you love me, and Mr. Rogers. He's just begging and pleading us, won't you please be my neighbor? I don't think God wants to be our buddy.

I think he wants to be God. I think there's a sense in we've lost the awe of God. We've lost the reverence of God and we've lost the fear of God. The temple shook and trembled. The foundation of the temple of the Lord trembled at the proclamation of the holiness of God.

Do we tremble at the holiness of God? I think sometimes even when we talk about the fear of the Lord, we just limit it and we reduce it to the concept of respect. Certainly it should be respect. I think there is a sense in which there should be a holy terror that our hearts melt like wax and we say, woe is me.

I am undone. There is no hope for me. So where does that leave us? Does it leave us in a state of perpetual hopelessness? Does it leave us in a state of utter desolation and separation from God? Let's look at what happens next.

Atonement and the Mercy of God

Verse six, then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said, behold, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away and your sin is atoned for.

I'll tell you what, if you wanna understand the love of God, you'll never understand it apart from the wrath of God and the justice of God. God cannot ignore sin. He can't overlook it. He can't excuse it.

The wages of sin is death. Eternal punishment is what every one of us deserves. And yet what did God do? God took his just and holy wrath on sin and he poured out his wrath on his innocent, sinless son on the cross.

And he who knew no sin became sin for us. And this expresses the atonement. This touching of the lips of Isaiah with the coals expresses the atonement of what Jesus has done for every one of us. How Jesus took upon himself the wrath of God so that we could be declared the righteousness of God.

So that when God substituted what we justly deserved, put it on Christ and it said it pleased God to crush him. His only son. You wanna talk about love? You can never understand love until you realize how much you deserve eternal hell and how much God crushed his son on your behalf.

God is not our little buddy. God is infinitely holy. And yet God chose to crush his perfect son so that you could have a relationship with him and not be separated for all of eternity. That's love. That's mercy.

That's grace. But you'll never understand that apart from understanding the holiness of God. It is God's holiness that made him crush his only son. How dare we be flippant about that? Grace is free, but it did not come cheap.

It cost God the death of his son. How dare we ever be flippant about that? There's only one proper response to that kind of mercy, to that kind of love. That God said, I will crush my own son to be able to show you kindness, to show you mercy.

There's only one proper response to that. And that is to say what the Apostle Paul says in Romans 12. Therefore, in light of God's mercy, in light of what God has done for you, how can you not offer your body as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God?

This is your reasonable act of worship. So Isaiah has this experience of having his lips touched with the coal, his sin being taken away, his sin being atoned for, this great exchange where God says the wrath that you so justly deserve I've put upon my son, and now because of what he has done, because of his righteousness, because of his holiness, I will transfer to your account what he has done for you.

And I will declare you righteous. I will declare you forgiven. I will declare you holy, not because of works of righteousness that you have done, lest anyone should boast, but as a gift of my grace. When we say that God's grace is amazing, we don't know the half of what we sing.

Isaiah’s Willingness to Go

Verse eight. And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? I wrote a book called The Questions God Asks. It's based on 19 questions in the Old Testament that God asked people, and this is one of them he asks Isaiah here.

And this question is rather unique because of the wording of it. It says here, whom shall I send and who will go for us? Starts out with a singular. Who shall I send and who will go for us? Well, who is the I and who is the us?

I believe that the one true God is having a conversation within the Godhead. That our one God, three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they are having a conversation here together. And there's a need.

And the rhetorical question almost that's being posed here is whom shall I send, who will go for us? Just spoken into the room. And almost instantaneously, the overwhelmed, responsive heart of the prophet Isaiah, it's like you see him shoot up his hand and he says, here am I.

Send me. I'll go. I'll do it. Why? Because that's what a forgiven heart does. That's what a heart that's been redeemed does. When you know who God is and you see him in his perfect, infinite holiness, you see yourself for who you are, an unworthy sinner, completely without hope in this world.

But then when you realize what he's done for you and what he's made possible for you and that you have been redeemed, you've been justified, you've been cleansed, you've been made holy, then you begin to see not just yourself for who you are, but you begin to see other people as God sees them.

Until you've had this experience, it's almost impossible not to do what the apostle Paul says, where we go around comparing ourselves among ourselves. And Paul says, that's very unwise. Because when you compare yourself to somebody else, some other person in the church even, you're gonna find a way to justify yourself.

Remember the Pharisee and the publican? Lord, I thank you that I'm not like this person over here. I do good things, I tithe, I actually show up at church on time, whatever it is. You know what I mean?

We have this sense of exalting ourself. And you can make yourself feel good when your comparison is a horizontal standard. When your standard is the infinite holiness of God, we're undone. So when you see God for who he truly is, you see yourself for who you are.

But then you also see others as God sees them, people who are made in his image, who are deeply loved by the Father. And the way that we love and serve God is primarily by loving and serving other people.

And that is something that does not come natural to our flesh. There's nothing inside of us that wants to do that. That is simply the outcome of a redeemed heart. He who has been forgiven much, what? Loves much.

You know, I don't wanna brag on your church. I'm just gonna brag on your church for a minute. I don't know y 'all real well. But in conversations that I've had here just last night and this morning, and there's some people here who've been forgiven much.

And you know it, you're aware of it. And because of that, man, I see a lot of love. I see a lot of love that's coming from forgiven hearts. And that's what happens, man, when you really know what Christ has done for you and how unworthy you are.

Then you have this sense of saying, God, whatever it is you want me to do, whatever you call me to do, I'm available. I don't have a lot of skills. I don't have a lot of abilities. But what I have, I give.

Here's a blank check. Whatever you wanna do, wherever you wanna send me, wherever you wanna go, I'll do it. And sometimes I think we have this mentality as Christians. It's like, okay, Lord, here am I.

Send her. The work of the kingdom is gonna get done. You know, the scripture said, Jesus says down here in John 4, 35 through 36, do you not say there are yet four months and then comes the harvest? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields that they are white for harvest.

Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. There are seven and a half billion people on this planet, half of whom have not heard the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Church’s Responsibility to Evangelize

And God has given the evangelization of this generation of souls to this generation of Christians. That's us. If the work's gonna get done, it's gonna get done through us. Now, I wouldn't do it that way if I were God.

I wouldn't. I'm just being honest. Shouldn't admit it, but I'm just gonna say I would not look around this room, including myself, I would not say, oh, I need these people. That's not what I would think.

If I'd be like God, I'd be like, oh, there's gotta be a better plan than that. You know, I would just get a big megaphone and I'd be like, this is God. I'm gonna say this once, listen up. You know, that's what I would do if I were God.

I would just not use this lot at all. But God, as Paul said, has chosen the foolishness of this world to confound the wise. And he says, not many of you were wise, not many of you were intellectuals, not many of you were wealthy when you were called, and God chose you so that he could glorify himself.

So it would not be about us, it would be about the glory of God. And he called us and he's chosen us to be about the work. What a privilege, what an amazing opportunity. So the work of the kingdom will advance, it will get done.