It is my privilege to join you for this conference, and now I would like to ask you to turn in Holy Scripture to Isaiah 6.
Isaiah 6, and I shall begin by reading the entire chapter. Hear then the word of the Lord. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above Him were seraphs, each with six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is full of His glory. At the sound of their voices, the doorposts and thresholds shook, and the temple was filled with smoke. Woe to me, I cried. 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. Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it, he touched my mouth and said, See, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send and who will go for us? And I said, Here am I. Send me. He said, go and tell this people be ever hearing, but never understanding, be ever seeing, but never perceiving. Make the heart of this people calloused, make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes here with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn and be healed. Then I said, For how long, oh, Lord? And he answered, Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged, until the Lord has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken. And though a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste. But as the terrible and oak leaves stumps when they are cut down, So the holy seed will be the stump in the land. This is the word of the Lord.
Very often it is when we come to an end of ourselves, when we are in mortal danger or when we are facing enormous emotional pain that we begin to live and think with eternity's values and views. It may be that we have already accepted a kind of intellectual heritage on such points, but they simply do not mean much to us as long as we are deeply attached to this line. Sometimes such fresh recognition has long-range results, sometimes not. It's merely one more temporary space.
After 9-11, not this year but last year, then the places of worship in the land were filled. Why? Partly because, as a whole, we felt increasingly our fragility, the existence of evil. We were no longer secure. Geography was not enough to protect us. And so we start thinking about God and what He might do. That does not by itself guarantee conversion. It does not by itself ensure long-term holiness. But it is at least a step in the right direction insofar as it recognizes our finitude, our weakness, our insecurity. The truth of the matter is that we begin to recognize the transience of everything this world affords. The lack of security in mere things, or in mere politicians, in mere ecclesiastical structures, in mere governments. So many things that seemed to look so important suddenly seem less important when you discover that you have a terminal case of cancer. It reorientates your entire perspective, does it not?
As soon as the last support that belongs to the entire structure of who you are and how you identify yourself is taken away, what do you have then? Pain, disappointment, fear, danger, fragility, mortality, they serve either to make us bitter or to make us better. Sometimes the first first. followed by the second as we come to appropriate our fragility and thus our absolute dependence on God. It is not great poetry, but it is still true, He washed my eyes with tears that I might see. Now that is something of what Isaiah experiences in the opening verses of this chapter. It is important to grasp where chapter six stands in the argument of the book.
Chapters one to five constitute a massive denunciation of Jerusalem and Judea for its sins. Pick up just two or three of the crucial passages. Chapter two versus six and following. You have abandoned your people, the house of Jacob. They are full of superstitions from the east. They practice divination like the Philistines and clasp hands with pagans. Their land is full of silver and gold. There is no end to their treasures. Their land is full of horses. There is no end to their chariots. Their land is full of idols. They bow down to the work of their hands, to what their fingers have made. So man will be brought low and mankind humbled. Do not forgive them. Sounds vaguely reminiscent of the contemporary culture if you make a few substitutions here. Full of superstitions from the East? Endless practicing of divination? Clasping hands with pagans? Land full of horses and chariots, make that cars, SUVs and motorboats. Land is full of idols, the work of our hands. Chapter three, verse one, a long list of woes. See now, the Lord, the Lord Almighty is about to take from Jerusalem and Judah both supply and support, all supplies of water and all supplies of food, the hero and warrior, the judge and prophet, the soothsayer and elder and so forth. And then the denunciation. Verse nine, woe to them, they have brought disaster upon themselves. Verse 12, you suppress my people, women rule over them. Oh, my people, your guides lead you astray. They turn you from the path. And then when you read on, you discover in chapter five that in order to get their attention, the prophet, as it were, breaks out a guitar and start singing a little ballad. Everybody likes a little ballad. A narrative set to music. You toe-start tapping. You listen in. I will sing a song about the one I love. A song for his vineyard. My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a good crop of grapes, but it yielded only stinkers. Bad fruit. Second verse, in case people haven't got it yet. Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah judge between me and my vineyard. What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? Now I will tell you what I'm going to do with my vineyard, and the denunciations of the judgments fall. Next verse. The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the garden of His delight. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed for righteousness, but heard cries of distress. It always remains true that righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. We had better understand, even in the horrible violence of 9-11, that on many, many, many fronts, the Muslim world is less sunk in degradation than our world. So listen to the denunciations multiply. 5.8. Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you alone live in a land. A kind of Coercive capitalism that squeezes out little people until they have no room whatsoever. Verse 11, woe to those who rise early in the morning to run after their drinks and stay up late at night till they are inflamed with wine, a drunken society full of orgies of self pursuit and self satisfaction. Verse 18, woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit and wickedness as with cart-wolves. To those who say, let God hurry, let him hasten his work, so we may see it. Let it approach. Let the plan of the Holy One of Israel come, so we may know it. This is an amazing culture. We come to the end of the 20th century, in which we have managed to butcher something like six million Jews. A million and a half Gypsies, a million and a half Armenians, 20 million Ukrainians, 50 million Chinese, a third of the population of Cambodia, a million Hutus and Tutsis, and on and on and on. A hundred million men and women butchered apart from war. And we come to the end of the century and postmodernism teaches us there is no such thing as evil. And then we laugh at God. Verse 20. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Well, of course, it's all the same thing in a postmodern world, isn't it? It all depends on your point of view. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight. or to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and champions at mixing drinks, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, but deny justice to the innocent.
6 · Continues exposition of Isaiah's structure, showing that chapters 7-10 warn against political alliances and point toward God alone as redeemer through His anointed, while revealing God's sovereignty in using even pagan nations as instruments of judgment
And then after chapter 6, after this denunciation of Jerusalem and Judea, chapters 7 and 8 constitute, first of all, a massive warning against putting any confidence and trust in Assyria or any other superpower. Redemption finally comes only through the Lord. That is the chief argument in 812 and following and through the Lord's anointed in Chapter 9, 1 and following. And meanwhile, in Chapter 10, 5 and following, the Lord is quite prepared to use the nation of Assyria to chase in his own people. And then we'll turn around and hold Assyria to account for the way they did it.
7 · Transitions from the broader prophetic context to the specific crisis moment of Isaiah 6 by identifying King Uzziah as Judah's last remaining pillar of stability, whose death left the nation without earthly hope
So in many respects, then, things are pretty bleak in Isaiah's day. Yet there was one pillar. King Uzziah. At least he was a good man, an able administrator and military leader, Judah prospered under his reign, and there was some measure of genuine reform. But at the end, his life collapsed in moral disaster, and he died.
8 · Establishes the theological principle that God's self-disclosure often comes precisely when all human securities are removed, because only then are we truly empty of the pride that would attempt to manipulate or bargain with God
And in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord. It is so often the way that when all of the final supporting pillars of society and culture are stripped aside, when at last we do begin to recognize our ultimate fragility, moral weakness and defenselessness. That so often is when the Lord discloses himself. Precisely because we no longer feel we can manipulate him. We no longer feel we have something with which to barter.
9 · Structural announcement dividing the exposition into three major sections corresponding to the chapter's movement: God's holiness, Isaiah's humbling, and his commission
It will be helpful, I think, at this juncture to break the chapter into three parts. First, a holy God. Second, a humbled servant. And third, a hard message.
10 · Begins exposition of verses 1-4 by noting that Isaiah's vision removes normal barriers between holy spaces, yet even then Isaiah sees only God's hem filling the entire temple—a caveat emphasizing God's transcendence even in revelation
First, then, a holy God, verses one to four. In the vision, and it is a vision, the temple dividing the most holy place from the holy place is apparently removed. And in any case, Isaiah the prophet sees the Lord, on a throne, high and exalted, and yet at the same time there is something anomalous here. Most of our English versions say the train of his robe fills the temple, but in ancient Near Eastern garb amongst monarchs, they did not have trains to their robes. That came later. And the same word that is rendered train here can mean simply hem. And I suspect that is what is meant here. That is to say, Isaiah sees the Lord, and yet another way of looking at it is that just the hem of his garment fills the whole temple.
11 · Develops the canonical pattern that direct vision of God is fatal to sinful human beings
You see, this is always the sort of caveat that is put in when Old Testament writers speak of human beings seeing the Lord. There is such a broad theme in scripture about how no one can look on the Lord and live. So when there seems to be some sort of apparent exception, in every case it's got this caveat, this footnote put in to relativize the claim, for example. In Exodus 1921, God speaks to Moses, go down and warn the people so they do not force their way through to the Lord. And many of them perish. This with respect to the revelation on Sinai. Or again, 2019, but do not have God speak to us or we will die. Yes, in a sense God speaks to Moses face to face, but yet at the same time he is the God who says to Moses in 3320, but you cannot see my face for no one can see me and live. Face to face in Hebrew regularly means person to person. It is a personal revelation. But to gaze on God, not even Moses can do that. He says, show me your glory. And God says, I will let all my goodness pass in front of you. Then hides him in a cleft in the rock so that the most that Moses is permitted to see is something of the trailing edge of the afterglow of the glory of God after he is passed by. Or again in Deuteronomy 18.16, let us not hear the voice of the Lord our God or see the great fire anymore. Or Manoah in Judges 13.22, when he is aware that somehow there has been a theophany in this angelic manifestation, he says, we are doomed to die. We have seen God.
12 · Extends the biblical-theological pattern into the New Testament, showing that even the incarnation veils God's full glory
You see, this is such a constant theme in scripture. And it recurs in the New Testament, does it not? At the end of the Johannine prologue, no one can look on God and live, but God himself, God, the Word made flesh, who is in the bosom of the Father. He has made him known. Thus, there is a kind of veiling of God's glory even in the incarnation. That's why the transfiguration is so important. It is a taking away of some of that veil. It is why the vision in Revelation 1 is so important. Now we see Christ with his face burning as the noonday sun in all of its brilliance. That is why in the few passages in scripture where there is some sort of claim to have seen God, in every case it is circumscribed immediately, as here, I saw the Lord, seated in a temple. Well, actually, the hem of his garment filled the whole temple. How great is this God, whose mere hem swallows up the whole temple, as it were?
13 · Continues exposition of the vision's apocalyptic elements—seraphs as fiery angelic beings who cover their faces (even angels cannot gaze on God), cover their feet (modesty), and fly (readiness to serve)
In visions that partake of apocalyptic language, at the end of the day it becomes impossible to draw the picture. It is full of separate additional features that fit in, but they do not fit in to make a coherent picture. We'll see this yet more clearly this afternoon. So although it fills the whole temple, he sees that above him somehow were serifs. The word means fiery. It's used, for example, of the venomous snakes in Numbers 21. Here, apparently they are some kind of fiery angelic beings in attendance on him with two wings. They covered their faces. Even they were not permitted to gaze on God. Even the angels of heaven cover their faces with their wings. With two they covered their feet, a sign of modesty in the ancient Near East, and with two they were flying, probably to indicate speed to execute God's commands.
14 · Begins exposition of the trisagion by questioning common reductive definitions of holiness
And they were calling out to one another, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is full of His glory. What does this word holy mean? It is not an easy word to account for. Some think it means separate. But is it an adequate rendering to imagine the seraphs are crying back and forth, separate, separate, separate is the Lord God Almighty. It loses something, doesn't it? Shall we think it means moral? Moral, moral, moral is the Lord God Almighty. that too loses something, does it not?
15 · Detailed word study on 'holy
Holy is one of those words with a kind of core meaning, a core usage, which then extends in concentric circles of widening diameter to cover quite a variety of things. But at the center, holy is almost an adjective for God himself. In the narrowest, tightest sense, only God is God. Only God is holy. In the narrowest, tightest sense, God is God. God is holy. and because only God is God. He is necessarily, in some respects, removed from us. He is separate from us. He is other than we are. Now there are connections as well, we'll see that in a moment, but there is distance. And in that sense, only God is God. He is separate from us. God is holy. And then, you see, the things that are His are said to be holy. Thus, the shovel that takes out the ash from the altar before the tabernacle is said to be holy. It's just a shovel. It's not moral. A shovel is a shovel. But it is reserved for the worship of God according to the stipulations of the covenant, and because it is reserved for God, separated unto Him, it is said to be holy. It is not God, but it is reserved for God in this next concentric round, do you see, of usage. And then likewise, that is applied to us as well. We are to be gods. That is the basis of so much moral demand in the Old Testament, is it not? You're supposed to honour your parents. I am the Lord. You're not supposed to cheat. I am the Lord. You're supposed to make sure that you pay the wages of your employees. For I am the Lord. In other words, because we are first and foremost the Lords, there are entailments on how we live. Morality. But first and foremost, because we are the Lords. In that sense, you see, holiness becomes what the theologians call a communicable attribute, that is, an attribute which we may share. The texts never say, be omnipresent, for I am omnipresent, because omnipresence is an incommunicable attribute of God. It is not an attribute of God that can be shared with finite beings. And in that sense, you see, God is other, God is separate, God is holy. The texts never say, be omnipotent, for I am omnipotent. And in that sense, you see, God is different from what we are. That is an incommunicable attribute of God. But the texts do say, be holy, for I am holy. And you start saying, how exactly can that be? What it means, of course, is that we are to be exclusively God's. with all that works out from that centrality in how we live and how we treat others. It is precisely for that reason that the first command is to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength. And the second is to love our neighbors as ourselves. That is what it means to be holy. to belong to God, to be His with all of the entailments. And then the word can work out even farther to mean something like the domain of the sacred. Thus, in the Old Testament, occasionally the word holy, the kadosh word group can refer to pagan priests who are working in the domain of the sacred. They are not working in the domain of the secular. They are not working in God's domain. They are, after all, pagan priests. But they are at least working in the domain of the sacred. And thus the word stretches out a little farther. You see, there are these expanding circles of meaning that stretch out farther and farther and farther. But only in two passages is the word repeated three times. The so-called trishagion, the three holy. Here, and as we shall see later in the day in Revelation 4, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.
16 · Theological reflection on the declaration 'the whole earth is full of His glory
And in the context then, this holiness of God, this sheer Godhood of God is bound up on the one hand with Isaiah's terror, And on the other, with the manifestation of God and His glory, even in this world, the whole earth, we are told, is full of His glory. Now that's a massive rebuke. It is a massive rebuke. For this is a glory we so often do not see. We become naturalistic, secularized. We are supposed to look around us and see the world as a manifestation of God's glory. This holy God, this sheer Godhood God, disclosing himself in all of the natural order. And a measure of our blindness is precisely that we do not see that. You see, the author presupposes, Isaiah presupposes, that if we were perfect beings, if we were sinless, if we were completely God-oriented as we ought to be, if we had no memory of failure, if we walked with God the way Adam and Eve walked with God in the cool of the garden before sin was introduced, then everywhere we looked, all around us, we would see reflections of God's glory. That is the way we would think. That is the way we would perceive things.
17 · Series of natural illustrations demonstrating what it means to see God's glory in creation: sunsets, woodpeckers, hummingbirds, elephants, and the vast scale of the cosmos
But for us, God help us now. It takes an act of will to see things that way, doesn't it? Or we see things that way once in a while, in a spectacular sunset. We wonder what kind of great God could invent this strange combination between the peculiar frequencies of electromagnetic waves and our eyeballs that we think of as spectacular color. Or we watch a woodpecker on a tree, a downy perhaps, with its strange tail feathers pushing so hard against the tree that its neck can knock so hard at the other end. No other kind of bird but Woodpeckers are like that. Or we set out a hummingbird feeder and watch those amazing little creatures float in the air and dance backwards. And then we take our children to the zoo and see a giant pachyderm. An elephant. And recall that This world order extends to our certain knowledge to a factor of 10 to the 40 power bigger and 10 to the 40 power smaller. And we wonder what sort of a God has done all of this. With order and color and enjoyment and strength and integration, design. The whole earth is full of His glory.
18 · Concludes exposition of God's holiness by noting the physical shaking of the temple and smoke obscuring the vision—even revelation contains veiling
A God who imposes moral order and brings justice and judgment to individuals and nations, whether in this world or in the world to come. And sometimes it is when everything else is stripped away that God grants us that kind of vision. At the sound of their voices, the door posts and thresholds shook, and the temple was filled with smoke, as if the whole thing were somewhat obscure, yet the very foundations themselves give way and shake before the transcendent holiness and glory of the Lord Almighty. I am glad we are singing a little later, immortal, invisible, God only, wise, in light inaccessible, hid from our eyes, most blessed, most glorious, the ancient of days, almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise. A holy God.
19 · Begins exposition of Isaiah's response to God's holiness
And then second, a humbled servant. Verses five to seven. Woe to me, I cried, 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. Did you recall that Isaiah had spent parts of two chapters saying, woe to this group, and woe to that group, and woe to some other group? And God knows, all of his denunciations were prophetic, they were true, they were accurate analyses of the culture, and now he says, woe is me.
20 · Contemporary illustration contrasting post-9/11 preachers who condemned others' sins with Isaiah who recognized his own
Do you recall last year, after 9-11, two notable American preachers said that this was the judgment of God that had come upon us because of the rise of homosexuality, abortion, and sexual sin at large in the nation. Do you recall? Were they right? The sad truth is they were half right. And they were desperately unlike Isaiah. They were right insofar as it is important to remember the judgment falls on a nation in all kinds of ways. Because of sin, God and His sovereignty speaks to us in the loud voice of war. You cannot really believe the Old Testament and not see that. But at a time when the nation was full of hurt and suffering, they spoke of other people's sins. When Isaiah sees the Lord, now he says, woe is me. For I am a man of unclean lips. How much more effective if those same preachers had said, God help us, this is a judgment upon our arrogance, upon our endless love of hedonistic pleasure, upon our passionate pursuit of everything that distracts, with very little time for God, or for spouse, or for children, or for neighbor, This is a time when the nation as a whole is sinking in an orgy of materialism, of sheer lust for the next high. And God help me, I am part of that too. May He have mercy upon us. Instead, it divided the nation and forced them in a few days to apologize publicly because they condemned select sins that were other people's sins.
21 · Establishes the doctrinal principle that genuine encounter with God produces self-awareness of sin before awareness of others' sin
But when men and women genuinely come in contact with the living God, the last thing they do is condemn only other people's sins. When people come into contact with a living God, the first thing of which they are aware is their own sin. It's not as if there is no place then any further in the rest of the book of Isaiah for the condemnation of sin, individualistic, cultural, priestly, covenantal, the rest of the book of Isaiah is full of that. But now it is out of the framework of his massive recognition that he himself stands only by grace.
22 · Distinguishes Isaiah's brokenness from existentialist angst—he is not crushed by finitude but by moral uncleanness
Now Isaiah is a broken man. Moreover, it is very important to recognize that Isaiah's humility, his brokenness here, is not the existentialist angst based on finitude, but the moral angst based on dirt Isaiah does not feel small. He is not worrying because he is so little, but because he is so unclean. That is what crushes Isaiah. He is participated in the dirt and his lips as an expression of his heart have expressed that same dirt. And what is it that has brought him to this place? He says, my eyes have seen the king. No longer King Uzziah. This was the year that King Uzziah died. Now, he says, my eyes have seen the king. And his first response is not to say, yes, and now this king will look after the nasty Assyrians. Now his first response is to say, I am undone. Woe is me. I'm a man of lips, of unclean lips, and I dwell in a whole culture of unclean lips. Before this king, who will stand?
23 · Personal pastoral aside introducing extended contemporary application
I've been doing university missions now for 30 years. I've seen a lot of changes in our culture in that time. Because whether we like it or not, universities are on the front line of cultural change. Within margins of error, I can tell you what the next generation will be like because I watch the next generation of students.
24 · Extended description of contemporary biblical illiteracy among university students
Do you know the hardest thing to get across today in the university mission? You must understand today that contemporary university students are so massively biblically illiterate, most of the people with whom I have to do, don't know the Bible has two testaments. They've never heard of David, or Daniel, or Abraham. And if they've heard of Moses, well, if they're a little older, they confuse him with Charlton Heston, and if they're a little younger, they confuse him with a recent cartoon figure. So what's the hardest thing to get across to them? I have to explain to them the big numbers and the little numbers, the chapters and verses on the text that I circulate, because nobody who brings a Bible, few have actually held one. No one's read it. And their extraordinarily limited religious vocabulary, in every case, means something different from what I mean. God, faith, spirit, truth, hope, in every case, it means something different from what I mean. Let me tell you, the challenge of contemporary evangelism, once you start moving outside churchy circles, is how to evangelize people who have no categories at all that line up very closely with biblical categories. You're starting, whether you like it or not, a lot farther back.
25 · Rhetorical build-up eliminating traditional doctrinal difficulties (Trinity, deity of Christ, resurrection) as the hardest thing to communicate
Now, in that frame of reference, what is the hardest thing in our culture to get across to these people? The doctrine of the Trinity, perhaps? They don't know enough to ask any of the tough questions. If I say that God is three in one, and there are ways of looking at it, and this is what the Bible says, well, it's OK if that's what Christianity holds. Well, OK, fair enough. Go ahead. What's your next point? They don't know enough to ask any of the tough questions. The deity of Christ, perhaps? The resurrection of Jesus from the dead? No. No. They may not believe it, but they can certainly understand it. They're not going to take umbrage by it. The hardest thing to get across in today's culture, without exception, is sin.
26 · Establishes the soteriological logic: understanding sin is prerequisite to understanding salvation
But unless men and women see their sin, they cannot possibly see the Saviour. They cannot see what the cross is genuinely about. Unless you know what the problem is, you cannot get agreement on what the solution is. You cannot.
27 · Establishes the methodological principle for addressing cultural sin-blindness: elevate God rather than merely denounce sin
And yet, the strange thing is that one of the best ways of beginning to get across the sheer heinousness of sin turns out to be. Not mere thundering denunciations, though they have their place, ask Isaiah. But the elevation of God. For when you begin to see something of this God, sooner or later, sin in all its foulness is an inescapable component of the vision.
28 · Diagnosis of cultural and ecclesial problem: loss of God-centeredness produces loss of sin-consciousness
One of the reasons why then our culture is so weak on sin. Yes, you can point to the impact of postmodern epistemology, yes you can point to the impact intellectually of Nietzsche, whatever. But one of the chief reasons why it is so weak on sin is because it has lost the ability to think about God. And likewise, even in the church. Very frequently, God becomes the assumption. While we then work out the ethics and the morality and what to do with our marriages and how to be happy, though single and how to rear our children, while God is the assumption. Not the starting place, the place for adoration, the place for understanding, the place for worship. the one who is to be adored and to be glimpsed through the revelation that He Himself has given and supremely in the person of His Son. For when we begin to see God, sin manifests itself in all its ferocious heinousness. And we cry, woe is me, I am undone.
29 · Exposition of Isaiah's cleansing (vv
Mercifully, here in verses six and seven, there is also God's grace. God acts not in response to Isaiah's plea. There is no record of such, but because he is that kind of God. In other words, there is no record in this account of Isaiah saying, please, will you fix me up? Now, maybe he did, but there's no record of it. Rather, in the account, God, because He is that kind of God, reveals Himself then, not to destroy, but to bless and to cleanse and to redeem. And thus this purifying coal is taken from the altar. It cannot be the altar of incense, because incense does not produce coals. This must be the altar of sacrifice, bloody sacrifice. The rootage here is in such passages as Leviticus 16 and 17 and the like. An anticipation of the great sacrifice who would be our sacrifice taking away sin once for all. This fire purifies, it transforms, it cleans up because of a sacrifice that has been offered on an altar. I cannot pursue that longer here since I must now come to the last part of the chapter. It too speaks to our culture. A hard message. Verses 8 and following.
30 · Exposition of Isaiah's commission (v
Now, for the first time in the chapter, God speaks. Isaiah was not ready to hear before this, but now God speaks, which also suggests that the purification of Isaiah in the preceding verses was not in this chapter and in itself. but moved toward an end, namely the mission of Isaiah, the purpose for which he is purified, as we are not purified by the gospel merely as an end in itself. But we are then called in consequence to serve and to proclaim the gospel to another generation. Do you see? So the challenge goes out. It is not even as if God here directly addresses Isaiah. It's as if he addresses the heavenly council in a rhetorical question which Isaiah is allowed to overhear. Who will go for us? And Isaiah cries out, Here am I, send me.
31 · Corrects misreading of Isaiah's response as heroic volunteerism
Now, you must understand that in the light of the sequence of this chapter, this is not. The wall else will fail you, Lord, I will go send me. It is not heroic. It makes no sense of the sequence. The tone is rather something like this. Do you want somebody to go? Would I do, please? Could you send me, please? Could I have some small part?
32 · Brief pastoral aside contrasting Isaiah's broken humility with contemporary seminarians who approach ministry with heroic self-regard
I've been teaching in seminaries now for a lot of years. And I am always suspicious of those seminarians who carry themselves and speak as if they're almost doing God a favor. Or as if somehow they're going to be heroic in their mission.
33 · Exposition of God's shocking commission (vv
They clearly present God as, in some sense, preventing repentance by the message so that total judgment will occur. It is a very powerful word. This is what you are to tell this people. Be ever hearing, but never understanding. Be ever seeing, but never perceiving. In fact, God says to Isaiah, you are to make the heart of this people calloused. You are to make their ears dull. You are to close their eyes. That, Isaiah, is what you are ordained to do. Otherwise, they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed. And clearly in the context God is saying, and I don't want that! I want judgment to come on them! Your job is now so to preach, so to articulate the truth, so to lambaste the people that in fact they become harder and more calloused and more deaf and more blind so the judgment will fall on them because otherwise they might hear and turn and repent and I don't want that. That's what the text says.
34 · Direct rhetorical challenge to the listener: don't evade this text
Now stick that in your theological pipe and smoke it. It is what the text says. How are we to make sense of this at all?
35 · Addresses the interpretive difficulty by citing biblical parallels: 2 Thessalonians 2:11 (God sends delusion as judgment) and especially John 8 (because Jesus tells truth, people disbelieve)
We should, in the first instance, recall numerous passages in Holy Scripture where something similar is said. This is not the only place. In addition to the Lord Jesus quotation of these words in Matthew 13 and parallels. You find a passage like two Thessalonians 2 11. where the Lord will actually send a spirit of delusion so that people will believe the lie. It becomes a form of judgment, do you see? But I think that the most stunning passage of all, by way of parallel, occurs in the ministry of Jesus, in John chapter 8, where Jesus goes so far as to say, because I tell you the truth, you do not believe. Listen, the conjunctions are crucial. The text does not say, although I tell you the truth, you do not believe that would be a concessive clause. It would be serious enough, but the text says much more. It's a causal clause because I tell you the truth. You do not believe now that is shattering. You see, if Jesus had said, although I tell you the truth, you do not believe, then there would still be some small escape hatch, some route, perhaps, by which perhaps somehow they could they could perhaps admit some small corner of the light and things would open up and gradually they would understand. But Jesus is saying in that particular context that it is the truth itself which shuts them down. It is the truth itself which causes them to disbelieve. It is the truth itself which ensures their unbelief. Did you hear that? Because I tell you the truth, you do not believe. So then what are your options? Start telling lies? Because they're easier to believe? trim it so it's a little less unpalatable? What are your options? Shut up, in the hope that at least people will not actively disbelieve? What are your options? When a culture has gone to the place where it is precisely the truth that is offensive, what do you do?
36 · Exposition of Isaiah's anguished question 'How long?' (v
You see, God is not saying here, I am going to give you a perverse message so that these people will be damned. That's not what he's saying. He's saying, rather, that this culture is so lost. These people are so hardened. The judgment is now so certain that it is precisely the truth which you must preach, which will guarantee that people will be calloused and hardened and all the rest. And that's what I want you to do. As Jesus likewise came and preached the truth. and then had the chief to tell the people, because I tell you the truth, you do not believe. Isaiah finds this a little steep. Hence the cry, do you see, in verse 11. For how long, O Lord? You see, I don't mind preaching this way and facing this sort of antagonism for 10 years, and then revival will break out. Forty years, and then there will be a massive turn. Fifty years? Just give me some insurance, Lord! Give me some word that at the end of all this, there will be a happy ending! And God says, you keep on at it, Isaiah, until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant. That is, until judgment comes. until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged until the Lord has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken. You see, the judgment of exile has already been pronounced. It will take place. And let me tell you, as I even at that point, should you live so long to see it? And he doesn't. Final judgment depends on Jude about 140 years later. But even at that point, if there were still something alive in the land, though a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste. Now, how would you like that preached at your ordination service?
37 · Exposition of the chapter's final hope (v
And then right at the very end of the chapter, there is finally a tiny glimmer of hope. But, as the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land. You see, this is preparing the way for later developments in this book. Thus, for example, at the end of Isaiah chapter 10, See the Lord, the Lord Almighty, will lop off the boughs with great power. The lofty trees will be felled. The tall ones will be brought low. He will cut down the forest thickets with an axe. Lebanon will fall before the Mighty One. A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse.
38 · Personal illustration from Vancouver: a B
I used to live in Vancouver, Canada. And right downtown in Stanley Park, when you come off the peninsula where the business section is, you cross the bridge and come into Stanley Park and there's a road that runs one way around the whole park. When you turn right, there used to be within a couple of hundred yards on the left, a small zoo, which I understand has been taken away and quite magnificent aquarium, which is still there. And you went to the parking area and you see almost immediately the stump of a huge B.C. Douglas fir. Now, they're not quite as spectacular as the California redwoods. But not bad. Not bad. Many, many feet across. And the North American Indians up there, in that part of the world, used to cut them down with stone axes, up there 200 years ago, and roll them into the sound and carve them out with their axes to make ocean-going canoes. These trees could be 15 feet across. I mean, they were huge trees. And this tree had obviously been cut down by some Indian group 150, 200, 250 years before. And the stump is left there. And out of the stump, is growing a B.C. Douglas fir. And every time I saw that when I lived in Vancouver, I thought of this passage.
39 · Extended exposition of Isaiah 11's Messianic vision: the Spirit-anointed King who brings perfect justice and cosmic restoration
Even mighty David's line will be cut down. Judgment will fall. But out of the stump, the root of Jesse will grow again. And his reign His reign will be glorious. That is the point of chapter eleven. The spirit of the Lord will be upon him. Verse two, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and power, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. He will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes or decide by what he hears with his ears, but with righteousness he will judge the needy with justice. He will give decisions for the poor of the land and so forth, and then ultimately Verse six, the wolf will lie with a lamb, the leopard will lie down with a goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together, and a little child will feed them, the cow will feed with a bear, the young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. Do you see? Frederick Kipling's law of the jungle will no longer prevail. You remember the law of the jungle? This is the law of the jungle as old and as true as the skies, and the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die. What is the law of the jungle? Eat or be eaten, kill or be killed, but then they will not hurt or destroy it all. My holy mountain. says the Lord. For verse 9, the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. In that day, the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the people. Plural, the nations will rally to him and his place of rest will be glorious. And so the church cries, even so come Lord Jesus.
40 · Signals transition from exposition to application
A hard message. Brothers and sisters, let me conclude with one or two practical reflections.
41 · First application: Isaiah 6-11 refutes open theism
First, when you study passages of this source, it is very hard to align with them any of the sheer vagaries of the openness theology that presupposes that God doesn't know the future. when free human beings make free decisions. Here is a God who knows exactly what the decisions will be, even when they're negative, and goes right ahead in any case because he controls the future 700 years in advance when the root will emerge from the stump of Jesse.
42 · Second application: sometimes judgment is the order of the day in God's sovereign plan
The second thing to observe is that there are times in human affairs when reproach and judgment are the order of the day. You must not view God's movement in history as on such a short scale that somehow simply by getting things right and by having your worship services right and by trying harder or having an all-night prayer meeting, somehow you can wrest from God certain blessings that will be poured out upon all the people. Now, do not misunderstand. God wants us to seek Him. We do not know the end from the beginning.
43 · Extended application: we may live in times of judgment like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel—or times of renewal
I'm neither a prophet or the son of a prophet. I work for a nonprofit organization. I don't know what's going to happen. And it may be that God will give us great times of revival. But at the same time, I can't control them. And I cannot simply try harder to ensure that they come. We may live, you and I, in times of massive judgment. We may. This does not mean that God's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save. Just because Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel lived in horrible times, does not mean that there was not a time when people returned from the exile, that there was not a time when the Messiah did come, that there was not a time when ultimately there will be massive renewal, when ultimately the Lord Jesus himself comes. No. But on our small scale, our little span of three score years and ten, We do not always see clearly what the Lord is doing. And sometimes when we are called to discharge our ministry in that slot, like an Ezekiel or Daniel, we live in hard times. And then we are called to be faithful to the message that has been given by God in his most holy word, faithful to it right across the board, whether it be one of those times where God uses that message simply to make people's hearts more calloused, where it is the message itself that is offensive, that guarantees unbelief. Or it's one of those times and one of those places where that same message by God's grace brings illumination, conversion, transformation, regeneration, and even a powerful sweep of reformation and revival. You and I do not control that. The call of God upon our lives, this holy God, is to be a broken people, faithful with God's word in every situation of life, with our eyes fastened on the end.
44 · Closing prayer gathering the sermon's themes: rejection of both facile optimism (ignoring sin) and functional pessimism (acting as if God is impotent)
Let us pray. Forbid, Lord God, that we should think like foolish optimists who do not take sin seriously. Forbid, Lord God, that we should think like foolish pessimists who act as if you are dead. And make us rather see you in your glory more and more, as disclosed in Scripture. that we may worship you with heart and soul and mind and strength and be faithful in the small spheres in which you place us. For Jesus' sake. Amen.