Well, good morning. It’s good to see you.

Thanks again for last week. That was such a blessing to my heart to be able to be appreciated. So I think a lot of pastors go their whole ministries and they never get much of a thank you or feel loved. So that was a whole bunch of love

from y’all to me. So again, thank you. Thank you for your gifts. A lot of you gave very nice gifts. And so Jessica and I are very, very grateful for that. And I’m grateful to have my papaw preach. I almost decided I’m going to come up here and preach this Sunday. He did such a good job. But 80, he’s still killing it. So I was like, good night. So that was a good word. So no, that was a blessing.

Well, I’m going to pause for Matthew. We finished the Sermon on the Mount finally two weeks ago. And I feel like that’s kind of a natural place to take a break and look at some other things. So this morning I’d like to go to the book of Isaiah with you. If you turn with me to Isaiah 6. We’re going to be in verses 1-8.

Isaiah 6, verses 1-8.

And this is what the prophet writes. He says, 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. 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 threshold shook at the voice of Him who called. And the house was filled with smoke. And I said, woe is me, for I am lost. For I am a man of uncleanness. And I dwell in the midst 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. 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 atoned for. And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send? And who will go? And who will go for us?

Then I said, Here I am. Send me.

And He said, Go.

A lot of things you take for granted in life that you have every day, just simple things. One of those being glasses. I hate wearing glasses, but the alternative is you can’t see. And you get out of the shower and I put my glasses back on and everything’s foggy and whatever. It’s not a big deal. But you think about so many people in the world today, third world countries, particularly India and China. I was reading a lot of them just don’t have access to eye doctors. So eye care is one of the greatest health crises in the world today. And that’s more than unfortunate because kids in India, China, you can’t see. You go to the front of the class and hopefully you can see better, but it hurts your education. Obviously, it limits the physical activity you can do in sports. And ultimately, it limits the kind of jobs you can get in life and you can’t see well and you’re nearsighted, particularly. And of course, it’s dangerous, but people do it. You drive when you can’t see. When you don’t have clear vision, it affects the life you live.

And Isaiah is living in a time when the Israelites can’t see. They can’t see God very well.

But the prophet Isaiah, he receives a crystal clear vision from the Lord, of the Lord. And what he sees changes his life. What he sees, he sees changes his person. And without that same vision that Isaiah received, friends, we won’t be changed. We will fail to become the people God desires us to be if we can’t really see Him.

Isaiah received a vision of glory. That’s what Isaiah received.

And so that’s the same question for us this morning when we talk about following Jesus and knowing God. Can we say that we received a vision of glory?

Verse 1, Isaiah says, 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. And above Him stood the seraphim, and each had two wings. With two He covered His face, 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 threshold shook at the voice of Him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said, 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. So understand the climate, the spiritual climate in which Isaiah is getting this vision. And I feel like we talk a lot about, we ping back and forth between the Old and New Testament and just how ancient Israel’s usually in spiritual decline. They certainly are here, and they’re really in the last stages of that before they both, the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah are annihilated. So if you read the first five chapters of the book of Isaiah, you would discover how rampant their wickedness was. The southern kingdom of Judah, they’d be for God, and they’d swing like a pendulum and go to paganism. And sometimes they’d try to have a, you know, both God and paganism together. And God prophesies, you will in a few days, that guy’s going to Babylonian captivity. And the northern kingdom of Israel,

they are this close, so close to being thrown into Assyrian captivity. They’re already falling apart, and they go in waves to Assyria. So their decline is upon them imminently. And King Uzziah, the king of Judah at this time, the Bible says he does right in the eyes of the Lord, and he’s able to defend Judah mostly. But towards the end of his life, he becomes a very prideful man, so prideful, he decides to bust into the temple and do the sacred thing that only priests can do. He dares to take incense and burn it on the altar. And the priests tell him, stop, what are you doing? Don’t do this. And he gets angry with the priests. And God strikes him with leprosy, and he lives the rest of his life isolated with leprosy in a separate tower. So this is Isaiah’s world, if you will. They’ve lost, they’ve lost, wouldn’t you say, a crystal clear vision of God’s glory. That’s what’s happening here.

But if we’re going to have a vision of glory, I think the first thing that we’re going to learn from Isaiah this morning is, friends, we can never lose a vision of God’s holiness. God’s holiness. That’s so much of what Isaiah saw. He says he saw the Lord sitting high and lifted up on the throne. What he sees is, Isaiah in this incredible vision, it’s the Hebrew word Adonai. Maybe you’ve heard that word before. And it’s the Lord. He sees the Lord. He sees His kingly majesty. He sees His exalted splendor. He sees the dominion, really, of Jesus over all people, all places, all things. And you say, well, how do you know he saw Jesus? Well, surely he saw the full glory of God, of the Trinity. But the apostle John says in John 12,

Isaiah, what he prophesied about, he prophesied because he saw, the glory of Jesus. That’s what the apostle John says about Jesus.

So much of his ministry is then about what? Proclaiming out of this glory of his vision he gets of Jesus. And he sees his robe, the hem of his garments, fills the temple. You say, well, that’s a lot of robe. That’s a lot of hem there. It is, but you know what that means? It means Christ’s royalty, his splendor is everywhere. In other words, in this vision, there wasn’t a place that Isaiah could look where he couldn’t see Jesus’ dominion. That’s how expansive it was.

And then he sees a very strange thing. He sees these seraphim. There’s these angelic creatures. And surely they’re beautiful. And surely they’re pure. And surely they’re powerful creatures. Yet these creatures dare not look directly into the face of God. They cover their face. And in humility, they cover those lowly, parts of their body, their feet. And they back and forth all the time. They say, holy, holy, holy.

Now that’s three times. And three times in the Hebrew, it indicates a superlative degree. To say holy, holy, holy means that this God is uniquely holy and righteous and clean above everyone else in a way that nobody else is. This God is perfectly holy. And he’s the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. So this God is perfectly holy. And this God’s dominion goes over the fullness, the full breadth of the earth and the universe. And if that’s not enough, Isaiah then sees the place. It begins to shake. And smoke fills everywhere up. And if I’m Isaiah at this point, like I’m going to die. Like this is too much to take in. And you know what? Isaiah wants to die. It’s too much for him to take in. It’s more than I think in this vision. But it’s very similar if you remember in the wilderness experience when the Israelites are at the foot of Mount Sinai in Exodus chapter 20. It says, Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and they trembled and they stood far off and said to Moses, You speak to us and we will listen. But do not let God speak to us lest we die.

The people understood who this God, getting close to Him. Ooh, that’s not a small thing. It’s not a light thing, is it?

Isaiah says, Woe is me. And you’re like, Whoa, this is impressive. Woe as in great lamentation, great despair. Isaiah says, I’m lost. I’m undone it means. I’m unraveled. My life as I know it is getting ready to be unraveled. Why? Because he says, I’m a man of unclean lips. What those angels are saying up there, I can’t say with my lips because it’s not in my heart. And Isaiah realizes it’s not just him that has this problem. He says, I live in the midst of a people with unclean lips. He said, All of us, we’re all going to be undone. We’re all going to be unraveled before this holy God. He sees it crystal clear. He’s got a vision of the holy God of the universe.

C.S. Lewis has famously said, A man doesn’t call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.

Isaiah just discovered he has one crooked line.

Let me say to you this morning, a vision of God will always give us a vision of ourselves.

And when we get that vision, you know what we discover? We’re nothing like this holy God. Not at all. Isaiah goes on to say, None are righteous. No, not one. He says, Our best deeds before this God are filthy rags. Isaiah goes on in his book to say, None of us are even able to rouse ourselves to this conclusion. So we’re wicked and unrighteous and we can’t even bring ourselves to see it. We’re hidden from the face of God. We don’t see God unless this God reveals Himself in fullness to us. That’s what we need. So you know what that means? That means that we’re always going to have a compromised view of sin when we can’t see the full face of God. Sin’s not going to be a big deal to us. When we cease to dwell upon the holy judge, so Jesus isn’t just judge or just holy. He’s a judge and He judges according to His holy standard. When I don’t see that judge, that holy judge often, it calms my urgency to deal with sin in my life. Kind of mask the stench of uncleanness. But you know, God smells it and when I lose that full vision, sin, it stops being what it is. A dagger in my heart that’ll kill me and it’s like a house fly. Like I wish that wasn’t there. I had some people over last night and there was this fly and it was annoying, but I didn’t care enough to do anything about it. It was just kind of there. That’s how we see sin when we lose the splendor and majesty of the King of Kings.

I want to say to you this morning, more than ever, what you and I need, what we need is the church in the West is an awakened vision of the God who angels dare not look Him in the face. A fresh revelation of the God whose robe expanses the universe. This high and lifted up God who will judge in righteousness those who have unclean lips and corrupt hearts.

Because Isaiah’s vision has made it clear if our vision is compromised, we don’t live well and we will experience God’s judgment. And you know, we live in a culture that’s doing everything it can do to erase the lines between right and wrong. Reverent and irreverent. Good and bad.

Completely. So you know the last thing God needs you and I to do? Offer a watered down, compromised version of Him to appease the masses. God didn’t ask me to do that. He didn’t ask me to compromise Him to make Him more palatable. I think you’d send a man to hell faster than he’d send himself there if you gave him a tame picture of God. Because a tame picture of God is no picture of God at all.

Isaiah’s vision graphically reveals only a full revelation and vision of God will convict a sinner.

Perhaps you saw the story this past week about the mom and dad who are in this court battle over their seven-year-old son. And the mom wants to turn the seven-year-old boy into a girl. And the dad’s trying to fight this in court. And he lost first. The jurors ruled against him. She wants to turn James into Luna.

And it didn’t look good for the dad, but last minute, the judge said, the judge overruled it and now he’s going to have a say in not transitioning that little boy who was a biological boy and will only ever be a boy into a girl. How does it happen that in the year 2019, almost 2020, that kind of story is normal?

You’re saddened to hear me talk about that, but it’s not abnormal, is it, anymore to hear something like that? It’s become normal. How has it become normal? Well, in the same way, that it became normal to Uzziah to go into the temple. Do you think Uzziah just woke up one day and said, you know what? I’m going to go blaspheme the temple. I’m going to go on the altar and burn some incense. That’s not what happened. It was seasons of drifting. It was seasons of keeping his eyes on something other than Jesus. It was taking his eyes off of God and putting his eyes on himself and on the world around him. His vision drifted to the point where he was drunk with pride and did what he wanted to do. Go back to the nation of Israel. Why was Israel so desolate spiritually? Did they just wake up one day and say, hey, let’s be pagans? That’s not what happened at all. If you remember back when Joshua led the people into the promised land, God said, you had better wipe every nation out. Don’t leave anybody alive. It wasn’t because God’s harsh and mean. It’s because God said, if you leave any pagan nation alive, you’re going to be influenced by them. You’re going to abandon me. They didn’t do it. And here they reap the fruits of disobedience. It’s the same thing when our vision isn’t only on the holy God of the universe. Friends, we compromise and we make our lives about other things. So it’s like, Chad, are you saying if I take my eyes off Jesus, I’m going to be the worst version of myself? I don’t know. I know you’re not going to be the best version of yourself, which is to look like Jesus. So why do we want to be happy with having some of Jesus? Isaiah got a full vision. I need that full vision to know Jesus, to live for God, to be who he’s called, to be who he’s called me to be. I don’t want to have a compromised Jesus. Do you?

So let me ask you, in life, who or what are you allowing to reveal itself to you? Who are you learning from? Who are your friends? Who are the people that you let them reveal their life to you? What TV show do you think, oh, that’s just a TV show. That’s my show. That’s my binge. I like that show. What’s going on in that TV show and does it look like the glorious God who’s going to judge them? Let me ask you that. Who are you letting shape you? You know, you think like discipleship is a completely different category in the New Testament. That’s not the Old Testament. No, it’s discipleship. The Israelites have been discipled by the pagan nations and they’re reaping it. And Isaiah, by God’s grace, is getting a vision of how wicked that is when you let anyone other than Jesus be the disciple maker. Church, we’ve got to fight to keep our eyes on Jesus.

Super practical. And I’ve been convicted about this lately and I want to say it to you. The seasons in my life where I’ve maintained the memorization and meditation of Scripture are seasons when I have the clearest vision of Jesus.

And it is a fight to really do that, but there’s nothing like putting bits and pieces of God in your mind and heart every day and committing them to memory. Because you know, when you have that conversation and there’s that bad influence that comes around or you see that thing you shouldn’t see or you listen to that music you shouldn’t listen to, whatever it is, that bit of Jesus in your heart goes, hey, that doesn’t look like that doesn’t look like Isaiah’s God, does it? So let me encourage you. There are plenty of resources. I know Navigators. I love using Navigators stuff on their website, but they give you a full-blown chart in different categories of Scripture memorization to do over time. Work that into your life. It doesn’t need to be a burden. You’ve got to do 15 verses a week. Just take one verse. This is my verse for the week. I’m going to do it. It commits memory. God will use that. The Spirit will use that to keep a vision of holiness before you. So fight. You can’t be lazy with your vision. Fight for what you’ve been shown in Jesus. That’s the only way to stay pure together.

So a vision of glory. I want you to look at verse 6 with me.

It says,

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 atoned for.

And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send? And whom will go for us? Then I said, Here I am.

Send me.

So Isaiah is sure he’s going to be destroyed. He sees how holy and great this God is and he sees how he is under that holy God’s judgment. But to his great surprise and ours, he’s not destroyed, is he? That’s not what happens. In the place of deserved judgment, Isaiah receives freedom.

The seraphim comes to him with a burning coal from the altar and he puts it on his lips. And I want you to think about this now. Whose coal was it? It wasn’t the angel’s coal because it was the angel’s coal. Because it wasn’t his altar. It was God’s altar, so it was God’s fire. It was God’s refining fire on Isaiah’s lips.

Now, did Isaiah deserve this refining fire to clean him of his guilt and shame? No. Isaiah didn’t even know to ask for it, did he? God is solely responsible for showing Isaiah this thing we call grace. It was unexpected. It was undeserved. It was unmerited. But God chose to give Isaiah freedom in the place of deserved judgment. So God says, hey, I need somebody to go do some things for me. I need somebody to go out and be my representative. Who’s going to go? Now you think about it. Who’s here in this vision? It’s just Isaiah. Nobody’s there.

But he doesn’t care. He acts like there’s a million other people I could choose. Hey! Hey! Exclamation point. Here I am. Like, hey, don’t pass me by, God. I want to be used. Here I am. Send me.

Isaiah’s been changed by what he’s been shown. He’s somebody else. He’s found something real. He’s found something beautiful. He’s been set free to a whole new, better, beautiful life. And he doesn’t want to do anything but live in that life and know that God and serve that God. Everything else he knows means nothing will pass away. So he says, don’t pass me by, God. Use me. This man is full of wonder because he’s been set free.

Could it be that we’ve lost our sense of wonder about God and the grace He’s shown us because we’ve forgotten how unworthy we were to receive that grace?

Do we sometimes, even if it’s in the back of our heads, think, oh, well, it’s the gospel. You know, Jesus died. Yes, yes. You know, God owed that to me. God owed you nothing. God owes us. God owes us death. God owes us destruction. Yet He sent the King of kings to die a humiliating death of a criminal to pour out His blood for us as sinners. God owes us nothing. And yet He’s given us everything. Friends, when the gospel of Jesus becomes commonplace, the gospel stops being the gospel for you. Oh, it’s just something else in my life. It’s not something else in your life. The gospel is the supernatural message of God’s grace, love, and freedom. And when we really know the gospel for what the gospel is, what it does, it takes what’s common, what’s simple, what’s unworthy, that’s us, and lifts us up to the place where God is to have a vision of glory.

That’s what the gospel does when we see it right, when we love it the way that we should love it. I know I overquote it, but in the Pilgrim’s Progress, a Christian lays down to take a nap. Too long. He shouldn’t have done it. And he wakes up, and he runs ahead, and it’s nighttime on his journey, and he lost his ticket. He lost his certificate. He needed to get into heaven. He needed to get into heaven. So he runs back, and he’s searching everywhere, and finally, it says with trembling fingers, he grabs that certificate so tight, he holds it. You know, that’s how we should love the gospel. It’s not just something else. It’s all ahead. I’m just going to squeeze this thing. I mean, I’m going to love it and cherish it and hold it close to my chest because it’s that important.

You know, how rarely do we love the gospel of freedom that much, friends? What would it look like if we loved Jesus that much?

If we could rediscover the wonder of undeserved grace, what it means to be washed in the blood of Jesus, I fully believe that we would all of us say together with hands up in the air, here I am. Send me. I don’t care who else is qualified. I don’t care who else, you know, has more credit. I don’t care who else, you know, thinks they’re better at this or that. God, if you’ve got something done that needs to be done for your kingdom, here I am. Send me. There’s no suffering. I won’t endure. There’s no ministry too hard. Because you understand, Isaiah’s ministry was a hard ministry. You know, today in the 21st century, and I’m not knocking them, but pastors, you know, they post themselves and cool quotes and this, and, you know, they come out with books. I’ve got super celebrity pastors and, you know, it looks like, wow, what a fruitful, amazing ministry. Maybe it is that. But, you know, when Isaiah took his ministry on, he was, in terms of ministry success today, it’s been pointed out, an abject failure. Nobody listened to Isaiah. Isaiah spent his entire ministry doing nothing but preaching the truth and nobody wanted to hear him. Think if he was a pastor today. They’d say, get him out of here. We need somebody that can build something, grow something, fix something. Isaiah just said, hey, whatever I get or don’t get, it’s fine because I’ve already got what I want and that’s freedom in Christ. So he suffered the hard ministry for the sake of this God that he knew and loved. He knew there was no better way to live than in the freedom of this God. And, you know, Isaiah, so much of his ministry is not about the now and what I want now. It’s not about that. It’s about the suffering servant to come. It’s about the Messiah. It’s where we get all those popular Christmas passages. For us, a child is born. You know, all those wonderful passages we love around Christmas time. Because Isaiah’s living for that day when that Jesus shows up and makes everything right and everyone’s free and pure and holy. And he’s looking, looking forward to the second coming when Jesus comes and sets everything right forever. That is what Isaiah’s living for. That’s why he said, hey, here I am, send me. That’s his new reality. That’s his new vision. Is it yours? Is it mine?

I think a great New Testament example of this is Zacchaeus. You know, we all love that tacky little song in Sunday school. A wee little man was he, you know. But it’s really, it’s a powerful story. Because I think when we see that, it looks like PR. Like Jesus is doing, some PR. Hey, I’m going to spend some time, you know, on the poor side of town and talk to these folks and kiss some babies. Jesus isn’t doing PR. When Jesus said to Zacchaeus, hey, Zacchaeus, calm down. It wasn’t a question. He told Zacchaeus, I’m coming to your house. And that time and that culture for Jesus to come into a sinner’s house and sit and have table fellowship with Zacchaeus, it wasn’t Jesus being nice. It was Jesus doing something that only Jesus could uniquely do that nobody else could do. Jesus was loving and affirming Zacchaeus in the midst of his sin. In spite of his sin, in spite of what Zacchaeus deserved, Jesus, the Son of God, was loving him in that moment. And you know, the religious leaders, all the religious folks were disgusted by it. They hated it. But Jesus said, salvation’s come to this house. And you know it did because Zacchaeus had his Isaiah moment. He says, hey, Lord, if I’ve ripped anybody off, I’m paying them back. And then some, I’m giving it all away. Jesus said, here’s a son of Abraham. He says, here I am, send me. Zacchaeus got set free. You know, and he’s living in that freedom. That’s all that matters to him anymore.

In the words of John Piper in his very famous book,

let me just say this, don’t waste your life.

All of us have a very, very short life.

If you lived 200 years, it’s still short in terms of eternity. You have one life.

You have one life to live. For whose glory are you going to live that life? Because our little kingdoms that we can build, oh, they’ll pass away and there’ll be dust and no one will remember it. But to live for this God is different. John Piper said, God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work, not to be made much of, but to make much of Him in every part of our lives. To live in that freedom. Friends, this gospel of grace isn’t something for us to squander, but to steward. But to steward. To live well. Are we like the Pharisees who think I deserve that? Yeah, religion’s my thing. Or are we like Zacchaeus and Isaiah and we’re just free? We’re free. And we want to live in that freedom and share that freedom with the world.

In 2 Corinthians chapter 4,

the Apostle Paul says, he says this in verse 4, he says, in their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. The light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord with ourselves as Your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God who said, let light shine out of darkness has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. Where is the light of the knowledge of the glory of God? Where do I see what Isaiah saw? Where do I see and experience what Zacchaeus had when I look at the face of Jesus?

Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God, the Hebrew writer says. Paul says in Colossians, He is the exact imprint of His nature. So friend, to know this Jesus is to know the holiness,

the wonder, the unspeakable mysteries of heaven. To be satisfied in Him alone, to love Him, to be changed by Him. It’s only found in knowing and looking at and looking always at this Jesus.

In Christ we’re shown our great sin, but we’re shown how Jesus was righteous in our place. In Christ we do see the shackles of our shame,

much more the power of the cross to set us free. In Christ we’re shown the ugliness of our pride that seeks self, but Jesus shows us His humility that He would die for sinners. Friends, in Christ we see a vision of the glory of God. For all that is glorious about God is bound up in Christ, in Christ alone. And it was too small a thing for the Israelites.

Let me ask you, is that too small a thing for you? Or will it be your everything? I pray with Isaiah we would love it, cherish it, live in it, accept it, and say, Lord, here I am. Send me.

Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, he’s said to be to a Great Britain,

20th century Great Britain, what Charles Spurgeon was to 19th century Great Britain. Early 20th century, a decline in the church. The churches started doing a lot of entertainment and trying to get people to come back to the churches. But Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones says, I’m just going to preach this simple, timeless gospel. And oh, how he did, and what a revival came to Great Britain in that time, and how people flocked to hear this man preach. And he preached just the gospel his whole life. But on his deathbed, he said to his family, don’t pray for my recovery.

Don’t keep me from the glory.

I think that’s the same thing, friends. Are we all running to see the glory?