It was my privilege to preach on Monday of Christian Focus Week at Ouachita Baptist University. The them for the week was "Here I Am." Batting lead off, I got to take the very text from which that phrase comes, Isaiah 6:1-13. Another speaker from the week posted her message to her blog. That gave me the idea to do the same thing. Here is my message: Here I Am, Send Me …
*********
Excited to float the river, you put in your raft under
bright blue skies. Not three miles
downriver, a storm blows up out of nowhere.
Lightning flashing. Thunder
crashing. Wind whipping. Rain pouring.
River rising. Heart racing. Frigid white water splashing into your
raft. Clothes soaked. Feet and hands growing numb from the
cold. Current taking
control. Raft spinning in circles. Oar ripped from your hands as you try to push
off from a rock. Helpless now to steer
your course, you hold on for dear life … and just up ahead, the falls.
That was Isaiah in the temple.
Hear the word of the Lord … (read the text).
I
I
wonder if Annie Dillard had Isaiah’s experience in mind when she wrote these
words …
On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside
of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort
of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I
suspect, does no one believe a word of it?
The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry
sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' … hats to
church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.
Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash
us to our pews. For the sleeping god may
wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we
can never return. [1]
Isaiah had come to the temple that day seeking
the Lord. He may have been filled with
some grief and uncertainty. King
Uzziah was dead, and the whole nation was on edge. Uzziah had ruled Judah for 52 years. He was the only king Isaiah had known. The splendor of Uzziah's reign, recorded in 2
Chronicles 26, was impressive. He had modernized
the army, conquered territory in Philistia, extended commercial activities into
Egypt, and boosted agriculture. Not
since Solomon had the nation known such peace and prosperity. Had Judah been a democracy, Uzziah,
like Franklin Roosevelt, would have been elected over and over again. Not only was he a political giant, until he
got arrogant near the end, he mostly did what was right in the eyes of the
Lord. He was a pretty good king. And now this man who had done so much for his
country was dead.
To make matters worse, Assyria, the new
bully on the block, was coming into her own, beating her chest, harassing her
neighbors, and slaughtering enemies in the most ruthless ways. Assyria was a terrorist nation: ISIS,
Alqaeda, and the Taliban rolled into one.
Twisted, evil, bad to the bone.
The Northern Kingdom was already dealing with these animals. How much longer till Assyria set her sights
on Judah?
And why not? Judah’s righteousness—filthy rags. Judah’s sin—off the charts. Judah’s future was uncertain. Perhaps, Isaiah felt his own future a bit
uncertain. Uzziah was off his throne. Was God still on his? So Isaiah came to the temple seeking God.
And got more than he bargained for! He saw the Lord seated on a throne,
high and lifted up. His train filled the
temple. Seraphim were flying around
tending to the Lord. "Holy, Holy,
Holy!" was the anthem of the day.
Holy,
holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
his
glory fills the whole earth.
God's train filled the temple, and his glory
filled the whole wide world. The Lord is
too big to be held comfortably in the walls of a building. So as the seraphim sang and God's presence
filled that place, the door-posts shook, the foundation trembled, wafts
of smoke billowed about, and Isaiah reached to his head to make sure his crash
helmet was on good and tight.
What does a person say in the presence of
such things? Well, if he can say
anything at all, he echoes Isaiah. "Woe is me!" That's funeral language. He thought he was going to die. "Woe
is me!" he said. "I
am ruined. For I am a man of unclean
lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the
King, the Lord Almighty." How can
a sinner stand in the presence of a holy God and expect to survive? Isaiah
figured he was a goner for sure.
And if the place hadn't been heaving like a ship
in a storm, he'd have probably made a run for it. Instead, he tightened his seat belt and hung
on for dear life. When suddenly one
of the seraphim, with tongs in his hands, took a white hot coal off the
altar and made a bee-line for Isaiah. "Oh, no!" Isaiah must have
thought. "If I have to die, why do I
have to be burned to death."
Fearing for his life, his eyes red and stinging
from the smoke, Isaiah hunkered down and hoped for the best. The seraph took the coal, touched Isaiah's
lips and declared, “Your guilt is
gone, your sin forgiven.” What? Good news instead of bad news! A little cross before the cross. A little Jesus before he even
came. “Amazing grace! How sweet the
sound that save a wretch like me!” “Your guilt is gone, your sin forgiven.” What an incredible turn of events! Isaiah thought he would die because of his
sin, but God killed his sin and kept Isaiah alive.
And when Isaiah saw that he was going to survive,
he was so moved by the grace and mercy of God that when God gave the
invitation: "Who should I
send? Who will go for us?" Isaiah was the first one to step out from
his pew, walk down the aisle, and say to the Lord, "Here I am. Send me!"
And with that act of surrender, the smoke
cleared, the temple settled back on its foundation, Isaiah took off his crash
helmet, unbuckled his seatbelt, and walked away with a job to do, his life
never again to be the same.
II
It
was not an easy job. No cush assignment for Isaiah. It wasn’t a mission trip to Maui. It wasn’t, “Open a spiritual retreat center at the top of Mt. Hebron.” It wasn’t, “Go bring spiritual revival to the land.” No. You
heard God’s assignment for Isaiah in our text: “Dull their minds. Make them
deaf. Blind their eyes … lest they see,
hear, understand, turn back to me, and be healed.” Huh?
When I was ordained, the church told me, “Go preach the gospel. Preach people to salvation and shepherd them
to Christian maturity.” My
commission was, “Open eyes. Open ears.
Convince minds.” God had a
different commission for Isaiah. Judah
was growing sick with sin. Granite
hearts toward God. God had taken about
all he was going to take of their idolatry and rebellion. They had crossed some line of no return. “Dull
their minds. Make them deaf. Blind their eyes. Judgment is on the way.”
Isaiah was confused. He asked in v. 11 – “Lord, how long do I have to preach like that?”
And God said, “Until
cities are piles of rubble, houses are empty, the land doesn’t grow a thing, I
drive the people far away, and Judah looks like a forest of stumps.” Good grief!
So much for preaching for growth.
Isaiah’s going to have one lousy ministry resume.
I heard an African-American pastor tell about a
church he knew that was one sorry church. The pastor got so discouraged that he left
for greener pastures. The church had a
hard time finding another pastor, so they asked the only deacon in the
church who had any commitment, “Would you
be our pastor?” He prayed about it
and said yes. In telling his story, the
pastor said, “My first act was to get the
deacons together and tell them how things were going to be and what I expected
of them. They balked: ‘That’s asking way
too much. We’re not going to do
that.’
“So,
you know what I did? I fired those
deacons. I preached that church down
from 50 people to 8. And then God
started growing that church every way a church could grow. We’re more than a hundred now, and most of
those folks are on fire for Jesus.”
God’s assignment for Isaiah: fire those
deacons, fire those priests, fire those idolaters, fire those leaders who lead
people astray. Preach Judah down to a
tenth, down to a forest of stumps.
God gave Isaiah such a hard job to do, that on first
read, I thought, “Maybe it’s a wise
thing that God got Isaiah’s commitment—'Here I am. Send me’—before God gave him
his job.”
III
But
God almost always works that way with his people. He wants
us to respond to him, not to a job
opportunity. He wants us to worship him, not the mission. He is God, not some headhunter in Human
Resources. Unless you get a compelling
vision of God, your “Here I am. Send
me” is going to be nothing more than a flash in the pan. “Here I
am. Send me … until the job gets hard … or the job gets boring … or the results
don’t happen … or the pay’s too small … or the people to whom God sends me
don’t like me very much.” If your “Here I am. Send me” is going to weather
storms and downturns and hard times; if it’s going to last, it must begin with
a compelling vision of God …
·
the
one true God
·
King
God high and lifted up on his throne
·
the
holy, holy, holy God whose glory fills the whole wide world
·
the
forgiving God of grace and mercy who sees your sin and forgives your sin
not by a hot coal from the altar but by the blood of his own Son Jesus nailed
to the altar of the cross for you and for me.
Do you know this God? Or do you worship some lesser god, some
little-g god, some pipsqueak god?
·
Some
worship the god of my comfort—the
god who exists to make me happy and keep me healthy, wealthy, and comfortable.
·
Some
worship the god of my convenience—the
god who never interferes with my life and who always works with my schedule.
·
Some
worship the god in my pocket—the god
I can take out and use whenever I need him but tuck him away when things are
going my way.
·
Some
worship the god of my prejudice—the
god who likes the same people I like and hates the same people I hate. What are the odds?
Little g gods all. Is that all the god you want? Wilbur
Rees wrote …
I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my
sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the
sunshine. I don't want enough of Him to
make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant worker. I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want
the warmth of the womb, not a new birth.
I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please. [2]
Some worship any host of little
g-gods. False gods. No gods.
Gods who exist for me rather than the other way around. Gods who are in it for my glory rather than
their own. Pathetic, useless idols of my
own making. Three-dollar gods.
Our little g gods are not compelling. They can’t fill a temple, let alone the
earth. They have no authority. They have no glory. They offer no forgiveness. They inspire no obedience. They can’t call anyone to a mission. If you worship some little g god of your own
making, here’s the only response your idol compels: “Here I am. Serve me.”
But Isaiah’s God, the God of the Scripture, the
one true God, our God, inspires worship, obedience, mission …
IV
And
hope! Even when the mission is hard like
Isaiah’s. Even when it seems beyond
us. Hope! Even after God commissions Isaiah to preach Judah
into a forest of stumps, God can’t help himself but to work in a little hope. Alec Motyer says, “Typically of Isaiah, hope is the unexpected fringe attached to the
garment of doom.”[3] Hope. It’s in that last line in v. 13—“The holy seed is the stump.” All that hard preaching, but in the end, hope:
“the holy seed is the stump.” What seed? What stump?
Maybe a remnant of God’s holy people through whom God could keep his
covenant, do his work, and send Messiah to do for us what we could never do for
ourselves. Hello, Jesus.
·
Isaiah
7:14 – “The Lord himself will give you a
sign: the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel.” Hope.
·
Isaiah
9:6-7 – “For to us a child is born, to us
a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be
called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of
Peace. Of the greatness of his government
and peace there will be no end.” Hope.
·
Isaiah
11:1-2a – “Then a shoot will grow from
the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit. The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him.” Hope.
·
And
Isaiah 53:6 – “All we, like sheep, have
gone astray, we’ve turned everyone to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.” Hope.
“The
holy seed is the stump.” Even when the mission is hard, we serve with
hope. That hope is Jesus. Even before the foundations of the world,
as Trinity contemplated how to rescue us from our sin and the wreck we make of
our lives and God’s world, Jesus said to the Father, “Here I am. Send me.” And
when the time was right, Jesus put on flesh and came all the way down. Jesus showed us the Father. Jesus died on the cross. Jesus rose from the dead. Jesus ascended to the Father in heaven, and
one day Jesus will come again in glory and power and prove that his mission triumphs
no matter what things look or feel like in the moment.
We’re talking about the same Jesus who continues
his mission through you and me. You
may feel God is sending you to a dry hole.
You may see little results as the world counts results. But there’s hope. Jesus is with you. Because his glory fills the whole wide
world there is no place he can send you where he is not already there. Across the campus, across the world, he is
there. Get a vision of God high
and lifted up in the temple. Get a
vision of the resurrected Jesus who holds the world in his nail-scarred
hands. And that vision will so propel
your mission that its place or ease or hardship won’t be a factor in your “Here I am. Send me.”
V
Can you say that today? Back in the
50s and 60s a man named Clarence Jordan used to manage a place in Georgia
called Koinonia Farm. It was a
community to demonstrate in a most racist, Jim Crow time and place that people
of different color can live together in equality in Christ. As you can imagine, they were a misunderstood
and persecuted lot. Clarence had a
brother named Bob who was an attorney, and Clarence asked him if he would
represent Koinonia Farm in legal transactions.
“Clarence, I
can’t do that,” said Bob.
“You know my political
aspirations. If I represent you, I might
lose my job, my house, everything I’ve got.”
“We might
lose everything too, Bob.”
“It’s
different for you, Clarence.”
“Why is it
different? I remember, it seems to me,
that you and I joined the church on the same Sunday, as boys. I expect when we came forward the preacher
asked me about the same question he did you.
He asked me, ‘Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ What did you say, Bob?”
“I follow
Jesus too, Clarence … up to a point.”
“Could that
point by any chance be the cross?”
“That’s
right,” said
Bob.
“I follow him to the cross,
but not on the cross. I’m not getting myself crucified.”
“Then I don’t
believe you’re a disciple, Bob. You’re
an admirer of Jesus, but not a disciple of his.
I think you ought to go back to the church you belong to and tell them
you’re an admirer, not a disciple.”[4]
Yikes! Two boys.
Same upbringing. Same
church. Same service. Same sermon.
Both sensed something of God’s call in that worship service: “Who should I send? Who will go for us?” But I think Clarence got a vision of a
bigger God than Bob did. Clarence saw
the one true God—high and lifted up, the God whose train filled the church and
whose glory filled the earth, the God who had the authority and power and
gravitas to compel even the most difficult of missions. Clarence got a vision of the one true God. Bob must have seen a little g
God. Because on that Sunday when the
brothers professed faith in Christ, Clarence said, “Here I am, send me,” and Bob said, “Here I am, send Clarence.”
God
is here this morning. He’s looking out
on the room. He’s looking at you. “Who
should I send. Who will go for us?” How will you answer?
[1]Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, (New York:
HarperPerennial, 1982), 58-59.
[2]Cited
by Charles R. Swindoll, Improving Your Serve: The Art of Unselfish Living (Waco,
TX: Word, 1981), 29.
[3]J. Alec Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction and
Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 79.
[4]I have no direct source from this
story other than to say I have heard it in more than one venue.
